Hi Nathan and hello everybody, On Fri, 26 Mar 2021 16:02:30 -0400 Nathan Sidwell wrote:
> The USA is not the world and the SC is not the US government. For > those in the USA, the (inapplicable) first amendment provides 5 > rights, including showing an unwelcome guest the door. [...] > > If we fail to do so, it will continue to be harder and harder to > attract new talent to GCC development. I do not know if I qualify to speak here because I'm Italian and I ported GCC 9.2.0 to Jehanne (a Plan 9 fork, see http://jehanne.io/2021/01/06/gcc_on_jehanne.html), but due to the pandemic I wasn't able to align it with the new developments and contribute the port upstream. Also, I have no idea if you would be interested in running GCC on a Plan 9 fork and thus accept my contribution. Yet, after a careful read of this thread I realized that I might be considered the kind of "new talent" Nathan is talking about. So here is my perspective on this topic, "in the hope it helps but without any warranty". :-D I do not share many of Stallman's opinions (we are VERY different), but when I write free software and contribute to a free software community, what I want is long term assurances about one and only one topic: that the software will stay free as in freedom, as a common good for the whole humanity. As of today, GPLv3 is the legal tool that best suit this goal. I don't think it's perfect in this regards, but that's another story. As an Italian I'm having a hard time trying to follow your reasoning about Stallman being a problem to attract new talents. I could understand such statement if he had committed actual crimes, was legally persecuted, processed and condemned like Reiser. But while I try, I cannot really understand why you think that his name in the Steering Committee would drive away people from contributing GCC I ported GCC to Plan 9 because I want a free compiler suite for my OS. Porting CLANG would have been easier (to some extent) BUT my choice was political and Stallman in the Steering Committee is a long term warranty that GCC development will not steer away from the Free Software conception that I know, betraying my trust. My impression is that you are, in absolute good faith, projecting your own culture (quite US-centric, as far as I can deduce by this thread) to the whole world. I do not really know if the removing Stallman from the Steering Committee would attract more US people in GCC development. Or if it would attract more US people that now prefer to work in LLVM only because of they feel somehow bad working with Stallman in the SC. But I can assure you that, as Pankaj Jangid said before me, many many people are attracted to GCC, as users and developers, BECAUSE of Stallman presence, because they know that something like this https://medium.com/@giacomo_59737/what-i-wish-i-knew-before-contributing-to-open-source-dd63acd20696 will not happen to them. World wide, people do not LIKE Stallman, but we TRUST him on this. Just like the GPLv3, RMS is not perfect, but it does ONE THING well. So, since you care about demographics, please consider that. Removing RMS you might attract more of certain US demographics, but you will certainly alienate a lot of people world wide that do not align your political values (despite respecting them a lot!) and do not think that a compiler suite can fix US systemic issues anyway. As for me, I would NOT trust GCC (or FSF) in the long term, had you to distance Stallman, because I've already seen with my eyes what happen when people do not have anything to loose to betray your trust, and Stallman has all to lose by betraying Free Software. Maybe I'm not the "new talent" you are looking for. But please, do not turn GCC into a US-centric project. Giacomo
