conflicts in the gnu project now affect guile

From: Andy Wingo Subject: conflicts in the gnu project now affect guile Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2019 15:14:06 +0200 User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/26.2 (gnu/linux)

Hello all, In the last few weeks, a conversation among GNU maintainers that has been simmering for years burst into public. For a while it resubmerged into private GNU lists, but now it has resurfaced to affect the Guile project. Just for background information, I wrote about my thoughts here: https://wingolog.org/archives/2019/10/08/thoughts-on-rms-and-gnu The summary is that, like many people in GNU, I have long treated Richard Stallman not as a hero, not as a leader, but rather a "missing stair" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair) that one has to route around. This approach was never very inclusive -- if you don't have much experience in GNU, it's possible to not know about it, and to fall in the hole yourself. On the other hand if you know of RMS but not Guile, you might think that Guile developers support RMS. However, recent events made me realize this approach was not only unfair to newcomers, but unjust as well, as by continuing to work on GNU and not saying anything, I was both lending unmerited prestige to RMS, enabling his creepy behavior towards women, and additionally, enabling his apparent pedophilia-advocacy. Regarding this latter point, I wasn't really aware that this was a view RMS was promoting, but I am ashamed to admit that I had heard rumors that Richard publically advocated sex between adults and teenagers, defended sexual harassers, and questioned the experience of victims of sexual assault, and I preferred not to listen. Looking again, and I think Richard's web site speaks for itself: https://web.archive.org/web/20170612074722/http://stallman.org/archives/2017-mar-jun.html#26_May_2017_(Prudish_ignorantism) https://web.archive.org/web/20180131020215/https://stallman.org/archives/2017-jul-oct.html#29_October_2017_(Pestering_women) https://web.archive.org/web/20180104112431/https://www.stallman.org/archives/2017-nov-feb.html#27_November_2017_(Roy_Moore's_relationships) https://web.archive.org/web/20180509120046/https://stallman.org/archives/2018-mar-jun.html#30_April_2018_(UN_peacekeepers_in_South_Sudan) https://web.archive.org/web/20180911075211/https://www.stallman.org/archives/2018-jul-oct.html#17_July_2018_(The_bullshitter's_flirting) https://web.archive.org/web/20180911075211/https://www.stallman.org/archives/2018-jul-oct.html#21_August_2018_(Age_and_attraction) https://web.archive.org/web/20180924231708/https://stallman.org/archives/2018-jul-oct.html#23_September_2018_(Cody_Wilson) https://web.archive.org/web/20181113161736/https://www.stallman.org/archives/2018-sep-dec.html#6_November_2018_(Sex_according_to_porn) https://web.archive.org/web/20190325024048/https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jan-apr.html#14_February_2019_(Respecting_peoples_right_to_say_no) https://www.stallman.org/archives/2019-may-aug.html#11_June_2019_(Stretching_meaning_of_terms) https://web.archive.org/web/20190801201704/https://stallman.org/archives/2019-may-aug.html#12_June_2019_(Declining_sex_rates) https://web.archive.org/web/20190801201704/https://stallman.org/archives/2019-may-aug.html#30_July_2019_(Al_Franken) https://web.archive.org/web/20190903050208/https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#27_August_2019_(Me-too_frenzy) Anyway. So far, so GNU. A couple weeks ago I thought it an opportune moment to declare publicly the views that I have long held privately: that I do not consider RMS to be the leader of GNU, and that GNU maintainers and other developers with a stake in the project should organize to fill the void. * * * I pause here to mention that you may not agree with this perspective and that is fine. There are many ways that we can continue to work together while this discussion plays out. Part of the purpose of this mail though is to make it clear that there are differences of opinion and that the GNU project is in flux. * * * Now we get to how this issue affects Guile. Before the RMS/GNU/FSF conversation started, Mark Weaver left Guile, for essentially unrelated reasons. He threatened to leave because he wished to be consulted before I landed mixed definitions and expressions and shipped them in the 2.9.4 release; I responded over email asking to talk about the issues; in response a week later I see that he resigned from maintainership and left the Guile group on Savannah. It was truly a shame for Guile, as Mark is an excellent hacker and has done a lot of good work for Guile. It's true also that, mixed with the sadness, I felt a modicum of relief. It has never been easy to work with Mark. I could toil on Guile for weeks, taking time away from my family, and then wake up to receive a private mail excoriating me for my work. It was also far from the first time he threatened to leave the project if he did not get his way. I have never let the problems between Mark and me into the public sphere though, preferring to preserve his reputation, and it is only out of necessity that I do so now. Yesterday, on internal project-wide GNU mailing lists, Mark brought up his personal grievances with me, arguing that the only reason I was ignoring RMS was because, in his opinion, RMS is the only person that could stop me from being Guile Dictator For Life; that I was attacking Richard out of some kind of hypocritical, tyrannical megalomania. Naturally I don't think this is the case. We all have our problems but this particular one isn't mine. It is true that when I get home after a long day of work and take care of my family and maybe have a precious half-hour or hour here or there, I usually prefer to devote it to retiring items from my personal Guile 3.0 to-do list, rather than helping others; a failing, perhaps, but not a malicious one. I always tried to enable Mark's work, supporting him becoming committer, then maintainer, then trying to keep him on board; but evidently that was not enough. Fair enough; I can't please everybody. Still, it was with surprise that I woke up this morning to a request from Mark to re-join the Guile project on Savannah, saying that RMS had appointed Mark to become co-maintainer, and that Mark assented -- "given recent events". Now, Richard has no idea about Guile or how it works either technically or socially, and has not consulted with me as Guile maintainer, nor to my knowledge did he consult with Ludovic. I don't know what to conclude about RMS's motivations -- is it retaliation? And why would Mark assent, especially if he professes to be scandalized by autocratic behavior and messianic tendencies? I can't say as I have no more information than this Savannah request. It a test, perhaps? Mark is already aware that I do not consider RMS to have a leadership role in the GNU project, but although this position is shared by others, it is not a consensus position, and I don't think it's Mark's position. Of course it goes without saying that I don't consider this supposed appointment of Mark as co-maintainer of GNU Guile to be legitimate in the least, but who else will go along with it? And what role is Mark looking for? Are we to have commit wars or something? I would certainly hope not but I can't tell. I don't think the conditions exist currently for good collaboration between me and Mark, so I am not sure how this will play out in the future. * * * I guess I shouldn't be surprised that conversation about the future of GNU has now reached Guile, but it is still strange to find that the questions of "how much pedophilia advocacy is too much pedophilia advocacy" or "how much creepiness towards women is acceptable" should have any bearing on the development of an implementation of Scheme. But, here we are. The differences of position are real and we need to see how to go forward with them. Perhaps this moment is an opportunity, to see where the Guile community stands. In that spirit I invite Guile community members to weigh in on the issue. What do you think about Guile's continued relationship with GNU? What about its relationship with RMS? Finally, what would you like to see happen regarding the future of Guile? Yours in free software, Andy

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