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

[Ekaitz Zarraga <ekaitz@elenq.tech>]

So,

On 2024-10-26 22:22, Ludovic Courtès wrote:

> We have enough money, about 50k€ currently at the FSF plus a couple
> thousand € at Guix Foundation⁰.

So we rely on the FSF for the funding, mostly.

I don't want to discuss if we want to separate ourselves from the FSF or 
not, but in the end, if we want to be independent we should control 
where is the money coming from. Can the FSF cut the funding?

In any case, I think the money should be employed on keeping the 
substitutes, the CI and so on. That is important, because a great 
package manager that is unreliable easily becomes a poor package manager.

Having a reliable Guix is good for everything. And many of us are 
developers, and don't like to do the reliability work.

I could also think about the ramifications of the thing, the people who 
control the machines control everything and they might become evil and 
be too powerful. But it's a risk I think we should take.

We have people that have been thanklessly doing this job for very long 
time, I don't expect them to become bad actors. If they didn't break 
after so long... I think they proved themselves.

> 
> ⁰ There’s a ledger at
>    <https://framagit.org/guix-europe/guix-europe/-/blob/main/accounting/accounting.ledger>
>    but I don’t remember how to get the balance with the ‘ledger’ command.
>    :-)
> 
>> - Is the Guix Foundation the way to do it?
> 
> It is one way to do it, yes.

Should we invest on making it **The Way**?

>> - Does GNU, or the FSF, have some role on that?
> 
> GNU isn’t a legal structure, it “doesn’t exist” so to speak.
> 
> The FSF reimburses when we send them invoices; Guix Foundation can pay
> services, hardware, etc. directly, which is more convenient.
> 
> My preference would be to have a single structure, to improve legibility
> and simplify things, and that structure would not be the FSF.

I can agree with that. I don't dislike the FSF specially but I prefer to 
be more independent. What I do like is the principles we share with the 
FSF, and having a different financial structure should not change that. 
I think we all agree on the fact that Guix should continue to be a Free 
Software distribution.

>> - Can we improve anything relieving weight from the shoulders of some
>>    people instead of putting even more on them?
> 
> Yes!  Committers can review code; people interested in governance can
> help with the next steps, in particular the RFC process at
> <https://issues.guix.gnu.org/66844>; sysadmins/devops/hackers can help
> with the infrastructure¹; and so on.
> 
> These are some of the thankless tasks that are key to a healthy project
> and where we must ensure a fair distribution of work to avoid burnout.

I like that.

> 
> ¹ https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2024-05/msg00183.html
> 

That link is lost in the ML, shouldn't all that list be somewhere in the 
Guix manual so we can understand the whole picture of Guix?
Maybe with an explanation about how these parts interact with each other?

I think we should add something like that in "Contributing to Guix" part 
of the manual.

>> - Would having more committers help relieve some of the weight?
> 
> Only if they participate in code review.

I'm not very good at it. But I'd like to help.

>> - If so, should we propose commit access to people, instead of waiting
>>    them to propose themselves?
> 
> We should.  I think maintainers started doing it?

Maybe we should do it more.

> 
>> - Should we ease the process of becoming a committer?
> 
> Do you think the process is difficult?  Or intimidating maybe?

Yes.

I think it's intimidating because for some it's hard to take 
responsibility. I feel way more comfortable as an outsider. Also, I 
don't consider I deserve to be a committer or anything like that. I 
don't know how to deal with that. I approached you and told you I 
thought it was time for me to help, some of you agreed and when the 
process started to take long I preferred to let it cool down.

I feel like I'm asking for too much. IDK.

I think it would be more encouraging if it was proposed to people, and 
not the other way around. Making people ask for it may make them think 
twice and be cautious. Proposing them may make them feel encouraged and 
wiling to demonstrate they deserved the "price".

I don't know. I don't like the process, that's for sure. But I don't 
know because of my personal case was weird or in general. I also saw 
some people saying their request was delayed and so on. The current 
process generates some awkwardness we could ease.

> 
> Ludo’.

In the end Ludovic, if I may:

0. Is the donate page in guix.gnu.org up to date? Maybe we should make 
sure it is, and maybe include the Guix Foundation?

1. Adopt an RFC process. I think it's valuable.

2. Decide if we want to invest on the Guix Foundation:
   - What is the status of it? Is it a fully functional organization?
   - Can we use the Guix Foundation for, for example, Tax exempt 
donations in the EU? And the US? Maybe some famous streamer could use 
their platform to make fundraisers for the Guix Foundation. (see what 
the Zig Software Foundation does)
   - Could we use the Guix Foundation to make a minimal Business (I hate 
that word) model to make a Guix-based product to get funds to improve 
Guix itself? Say, make a Guix hosting service? Currently most of us are 
throwing money to corporations for our small servers and would be happy 
to redirect that to something we love, while also having a great Guix 
based workflow.
   - Or maybe some of us could make that model and donate all or part of 
the profits to the Guix Foundation? (I think owning the hardware helps a 
lot)

3. Once we have money we can use, choose some people to maintain the 
infrastructure and pay them.
   - Can we really afford our machines? (are we paying for all of them? 
what are we going to do with the ones that are in a basement somewhere?)
   - Is Guix sustainable?

4. Maybe decide if we want to have paid maintainers/security-maintainers 
or committers (or teams!).

5. Relieve weight from people that have too much on their shoulders. I 
won't name names, but some of you are in the border to the burnout.
   - How could the rest of us mitigate that? Maybe it's time to speak 
and ask for help.

6. Propose more committers. Encourage committers to review patches, and 
also non-committers! (Steve, you are doing a valuable thing)

7. Add documentation about Guix's infrastructure to the Contributing 
section of the manual, so anyone can pay attention to that part of Guix 
too. I'll try to do that myself, if someone else is committed to commit 
it ;)

Those points we could act on in the short/mid-term, or at least give us 
some direction.

What do you think, am I missing something?
Maybe some of the calls to action you don't like? Are they practical enough?