On 4/15/2021 2:26 PM, Chris Punches via Gcc wrote:
What I see here in sum is another high level tightly integrated Red Hat employee saying the gist of "I'm really not saying it out of my employer's interest and it has nothing to do with my personal feelings". Every single proponent of this argument that I have seen so far is employed by one of the same 5 companies and "really isn't doing it on behalf of my company I swear". Why is it almost exclusively that specific crowd saying it here, then? I just don't buy it. Please say anything that would not support the emerging theory that these companies are using integrated employees to try to emulate justification/pretext for a rift to attack the free software world. Anything at all.
[ Again, speaking or myself, not my employer or for the steering committee. ]
So first, my employer (Tachyum) has had absolutely no clue what's going on with this discussion until yesterday afternoon when I mentioned it in passing. We're much more focused on getting our bits where they need to be rather than policy, procedures and politics of the upstream projects. However they have repeatedly, up to the CEO level emphasized that upstreaming our work and being good players in the various relevant communities is important and the various concerns I raised around that prior to joining were answered to my satisfaction.
Second, I was the technical lead for Red Hat's tools team until about a month ago. I've also held management positions in Red Hat (and Cygnus prior to the acquisition) during my 25+ year career there. Red Hat and Cygnus have consistently worked through the years to be good stewards for the GNU tools. Management has consistently had a hands-off approach to the upstream community, allowing engineers to exercise their own judgment on if when and how to engage in various discussions. The only time management got involved in these kinds of discussions was to throw support behind EGCS -- including being supportive of bringing in outside advisors for what ultimately became the steering committee.
You may not buy it, but that's OK. That's ultimately your decision to make.
I do buy it. It's consistent with what I've seen over nearly three decades of dealing with GNU tools and what I've *directly observed* as part of the leadership and management teams.
Jeff
