Re: Guix (and Guile's) promise, and how to (hopefully) get there

[Ekaitz Zarraga <ekaitz@elenq.tech>]

Hi Christine,

I think you very well said here.

My original discussion wanted to tackle several points, some of them you 
very well mention here:

- There's already people getting paid for working on Guix, and that is 
not a problem at the moment but we could do it better.

- If there's any commercial application for Guix that would be an 
interesting source of energy (people and money). Maybe some people from 
the community could start that.

EXTRA: maybe the Guix Foundation could offer some of that! They have 
machines, they collect money for Guix stuff, they have the social 
structure, they are legally registered and they can get payments. That 
could be an interesting source of income, combined with selling the very 
cool stickers they sell.

- Governance is important, and we are in a position where there's no 
governance because we all are too cautious about it, to the point 
nothing is really done.

- We all are looking to Ludovic to be our leader here, and he factually 
is. Probably the best one we could have.

There are some points I think you miss here though, and I think they are 
important.

- In a project like Guix money is not only important, but structural. We 
are not just software. We have many machines running (sometimes poorly), 
and I don't like to talk too much but a big part of it as far as I know 
is running in somebody's basement. That person has been in the border of 
a burnout for long, as long as I know. I don't want to push anyone to 
air details about their personal economy but that thing is expensive, 
and *I*, Ekaitz, don't feel comfortable having people doing things they 
don't want to just because they feel some moral obligation to the 
project. As I said, in the original thread: we have been asking for too 
much from some people, for too long.

- This comes to Ludovic too. I wouldn't like to be in his position 
because there's pressure on him. It's too easy for people to point to 
him and say: "Ludo, what should we do? Ludo, you are the leader! We'll 
follow you". Again, we are asking too much from some people.

Instead, I advocate for sharing the load. I'm a small guy, I can't lift 
a lot of weight, but with some responsibility I think I could help. I 
didn't do much in the last years, but I think it was honest, and that's 
what I believe we should do more.

About GNU, the FSF and so on, I don't think we should drive our 
decisions out of _image_ or _reputation_. There should be only one 
criterium to follow in the current situation we have: is it useful for 
us or not. I don't think image really matters.

Being brutally honest here, if any of that mattered we all would be 
wearing a suit in the Guix Days and FOSDEM, and probably we would be 
afraid to come out as we really are. That's not what I saw when I was there.

I try to be human, and that's what triggered all this conversation. I'm 
the less corporate friendly guy you could ever find but I do care about 
people: those who feel helpless and those who feel they have to help, 
even if they are tired.

I think we need a proper structure, or at least make the structure 
obvious. I shared this problem in the Guix Days: we have a social 
structure, but it's not explicit. We have all these implicit rules of 
this person and this other one and who should you ask for something and 
who not, but that's really hard to grasp if you come from the outside.

This whole thing looks like an uncoordinated mess, but that's not what 
we are. We are functioning set of humans, that work together extremely 
well taking in account the low effort we put on the coordination. I 
don't want to change that, I think it's marvelous, but I think we could 
do more with less, without burning down people in the process.

So, I focused the thing on the money not because I think we should make 
this more corporate or anything, but because the only people who don't 
care about the money is those who have it. I care about those who don't 
have it, and want to make this thing great, and I care about those who 
are running out of it, just for keeping this thing from falling apart.

So governance and all that, yes, we should solve that, but I don't want 
to that conversation to be so long and so ineffective we don't pay 
attention to the actual goal: giving a hands to our friends that might 
be struggling a little bit now while we are talking.

So, in summary. You bring interesting ideas to the table, and I'm more 
than happy to discuss them, and take part in some. But I'm more for 
action in the short term, and I have questions that might help to trace 
a path to follow:

- Do we need independent funding so we can pay for our machines and 
maintenance?
- Is the Guix Foundation the way to do it?
- Does GNU, or the FSF, have some role on that?
- Can we improve anything relieving weight from the shoulders of some 
people instead of putting even more on them?
- Would having more committers help relieve some of the weight?
- If so, should we propose commit access to people, instead of waiting 
them to propose themselves?
- Should we ease the process of becoming a committer?


What do you think?