Re: [rain1@airmail.cc] Delete abortion joke

From: Richard Stallman <rms-AT-gnu.org> To: Siddhesh Poyarekar <siddhesh-AT-gotplt.org> Subject: Re: [rain1-AT-airmail.cc] Delete abortion joke Date: Sun, 06 May 2018 22:00:57 -0400 Message-ID: <E1fFVST-0003rH-B9@fencepost.gnu.org> Cc: zackw-AT-panix.com, libc-alpha-AT-sourceware.org Archive-link: Article

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > The GNU C Library project is mostly a consensus-based community-driven > project. I think that's literally true, due to the word "mostly", but people could get the wrong idea from it. GNU Libc is not an independent project. The GNU C Library is a GNU package -- part of the GNU Project. That means I appoint official maintainers who are in charge of the work. They are responsible to the GNU Project and specifically to me as Chief GNUisance. I appointed the GNU Libc maintainers in that way. Occasionally I give specific instructions to package maintainers about some specific point. But that's the rare exception. All the other points, I leave to the package maintainers to decide -- following the overall policies and goals of the GNU Project. For many GNU packages, the sole maintainer does the work. However, maintainers can recruit other contributors. The maintainers of GNU Libc recruit lots of contributors, and delegate many decisions to them; but the maintainers are responsible to the GNU Project for all the work on the package, including what they delegate. As long as the maintainers carry out their responsibity, on the issues which that touches, how they decide everything else is up to them. If they wish to do it through consensus among the community of project contributors, that's fine, as long as they get good results that way. Thus, it may be well be the case that the GNU C Library is _mostly_ a consensus-based community-driven project -- if the maintainers have decided to delegate most decisions that way. However, on _some_ questions they have specific responsibility to the GNU Project, so they can't delegate the authority to you. I exercise my authority over Glibc very rarely -- and when I have done so, I have talked with the official maintainers. So rarely that some of you thought that you are entirely autonomous. But that is not the case. On this particular question, I made a decision long ago and stated it where all of you could see it. If you would like me to change it, it is up to you to convince me to change my decision. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.