Re: removing toxic emailers

[Thomas Koenig via Gcc]

My 0.02 Euro-Cent:

There is a minor problem with contributors being overly harsh/
borderline abusive on the mailing list.  In my > 15 years with
the project, I have only had that problem with one single
person, and I have resolved that by never again touching the
system that particular person is responsible for, also not
for testing.

The _real_ problem is in bugzilla, mostly with abusive users
complaining about the time it sometimes takes to fix bugs
("Why didn't you fix this?  Are you stupid or what? That bug
has been open for _weeks_!") or who will not understand that
their program has an error, and insist on the compiler sanctioning
their particular non-standard usage.

On bugzilla, there is also a rather minor problem with contributors
being overly harsh/borderline abusive, but that is also quite
restrictive.

If we talk about gcc becoming a more welcoming place, bugzilla
is the place to start.

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Chris Punches via Gcc]

I think (if it matters to anyone what I think) that would be great to
see as long as there was some social/cultural incentive to not elect
"gatekeeper" types.  I see alot of folks with very thin skin misusing
the authority they are trusted with in open source communities, it's
just never over any of these socially charged reasons that get
communities so hyped up so things just get weird for a while when it
happens.

-C

On Wed, 2021-04-14 at 20:13 -0400, Paul Koning via Gcc wrote:
> > On Apr 14, 2021, at 5:38 PM, Ian Lance Taylor 
> > wrote:
> > 
> > On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 1:49 PM Paul Koning  > > wrote:
> > > > ...
> > > 
> > > This is why I asked the question "who decides?"  Given a
> > > disagreement in which the proposed remedy is to ostracise a
> > > participant, it is necessary to inquire for what reason this
> > > should be done (and, perhaps, who is pushing for it to be
> > > done).  My suggestion is that this judgment can be made by the
> > > community (via secret ballot), unless it is decided to delegate
> > > that power to a smaller body, considered as trustees, or whatever
> > > you choose to call them.
> > 
> > Personally, I think that voting is unworkable in practice.  I think
> > decisions can be reasonably delegated to a small group of trusted
> > people.  A fairly common name for that group is "moderators".  It
> > might be appropriate to use voting of some sort when selecting
> > moderators.
> 
> Yes, that seems reasonable.  I think the NetBSD project is an example
> of this, where the membership votes for the trustees, and the
> trustees are responsible for a number of project aspects including
> correcting bad behavior such as we're discussing here.
> 
> The SC was mentioned earlier in this thread, though that's not quite
> so natural given how that is appointed.
> 
>   paul
> 

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Soul Studios]

On 15/04/2021 11:09 am, Adrian via Gcc wrote:

Eric S. Raymond :
Speaking as a "high functioning autist", I'm aware of the difficulties that
some of us have with social interactions - and also that many of us
construct a persona or multiple personae to interact with others, a
phenomenon known as "masking".

I understand why "Asshole" can function as a viable mask for many people,
because there are cultures where it's tolerated, particularly in
remote-working groups like mailing lists, where physical altercations are
unlikely and no-one has to confront the results of their interactions with
others if they don't want to.



Just wanted to say thanks for this Adrian-
regardless of which position people take on this, I think this serves as 
a collection of useful insights - as does Eric's contribution.

cheers

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Paul Koning via Gcc]

> On Apr 14, 2021, at 5:38 PM, Ian Lance Taylor  wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 1:49 PM Paul Koning  wrote:
>> 
>>> ...
>> 
>> This is why I asked the question "who decides?"  Given a disagreement in 
>> which the proposed remedy is to ostracise a participant, it is necessary to 
>> inquire for what reason this should be done (and, perhaps, who is pushing 
>> for it to be done).  My suggestion is that this judgment can be made by the 
>> community (via secret ballot), unless it is decided to delegate that power 
>> to a smaller body, considered as trustees, or whatever you choose to call 
>> them.
> 
> Personally, I think that voting is unworkable in practice.  I think
> decisions can be reasonably delegated to a small group of trusted
> people.  A fairly common name for that group is "moderators".  It
> might be appropriate to use voting of some sort when selecting
> moderators.

Yes, that seems reasonable.  I think the NetBSD project is an example of this, 
where the membership votes for the trustees, and the trustees are responsible 
for a number of project aspects including correcting bad behavior such as we're 
discussing here.

The SC was mentioned earlier in this thread, though that's not quite so natural 
given how that is appointed.

paul

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Christopher Dimech via Gcc]

> Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 at 6:19 AM
> From: "Nathan Sidwell" 
> To: "Martin Jambor" , "gcc@gcc.gnu.org" 
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> On 4/14/21 12:52 PM, Martin Jambor wrote:
> > Hi Nathan,
> > 
> > On Wed, Apr 14 2021, Nathan Sidwell wrote:
> >> Do we have a policy about removing list subscribers that send abusive or
> >> other toxic emails?  do we have a code of conduct?  Searching the wiki
> >> or website finds nothing.  The mission statement mentions nothing.
> > 
> > I think that (most?) people have already figured out that messages from
> > unfamiliar senders on certain topics have to be ignored.  It is much
> > easier than any moderation, which would be ugly work (someone would have
> > to read the often horrible stuff).
> > 
> > I think that you only "associate" with trolls if you feed them.  I have
> > recently made that mistake on this list once and will not repeat it.
> 
> I disagree.  Their emails pollute the list.  Just as I wouldn't like to 
> go to a bar where there are noisy jerks in a corner, I don't like to 
> frequent an ML where there are.  Bouncers exist in physical space, is it 
> so hard to electronically bounce jerks?  Is it so hard to explicitly say 
> 'be a jerk and be thrown out'?
> 
> Their presence makes the place unwelcoming.
> 
> - nathan - > Nathan Sidwell

What are we?  Adults or Children?  You know, as I know, that identities
can be made up.  There are many computing specialists who can do that.
They can even be made so it looks as though they were sent by you, or 
from your work and home address.  They could even be made up to look as
though your children sent them.

I remember a closing comment by Eben Moglen during a full-day program at
Columbia Law School in 2016.  And I agree with him.

So my point here — if it’s okay just to have a point when people should already 
be drinking and dancing — my point is let’s not get confused. This is not war 
time. This is diplomacy time. Skill counts. Agility counts. Discretion counts. 
Long credibility counts. Ammunition? Ammunition is worthless because wherever 
we fire it, we work everywhere and it’s only going to hit us. - Eben Moglen

Christopher

 

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Ian Lance Taylor via Gcc]

On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 4:39 PM Frosku  wrote:
>
> On Thu Apr 15, 2021 at 12:36 AM BST, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> >
> > (And I'm still not sure why you think he would "probably be
> > moderating.")
> >
> > Ian
>
> In my experience, those people who seek code of conducts generally envision
> themselves as the enforcers, not the parties upon which they should be 
> enforced.
> If you're telling me that it's unlikely, that makes me feel better.

It seems unlikely to me.

Ian

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Frosku]

On Thu Apr 15, 2021 at 12:36 AM BST, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
>
> (And I'm still not sure why you think he would "probably be
> moderating.")
>
> Ian

In my experience, those people who seek code of conducts generally envision
themselves as the enforcers, not the parties upon which they should be enforced.
If you're telling me that it's unlikely, that makes me feel better.

>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Ian Lance Taylor via Gcc]

On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 4:28 PM Frosku  wrote:
>
> On Thu Apr 15, 2021 at 12:19 AM BST, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 3:41 PM Frosku  wrote:
> > >
> > > I think, in general, it's fine to leave this decision to moderators. It's
> > > just a little disconcerting when one of the people who would probably be
> > > moderating is saying that he could have shut down the discussion if he
> > > could only ban jerks, as if to imply that everyone who dares to disagree
> > > with his position is a jerk worthy of a ban.
> >
> > I haven't seen anybody say that, so I'm not sure who you are talking
> > about. In any case, what makes you say that that person, whoever they
> > are, would probably be a moderator? And why do you infer that that
> > person believes that everybody who "dares to disagree with his
> > position" is a jerk? Did they say so? Or are you making the same
> > mistake that you are attributing to this person: equating disagreement
> > over ideas with disagreement about appropriate behavior?
> >
> > Ian
>
> This was the quote:
>
> > The choice to /not/ have a policy for ejecting jerks has serious costs.
> > One of those costs is the kind of rancorous dispute that has been
> > burning like a brushfire on this list the last few weeks.
>
> My read is that this is suggestions that if the 'jerks' were simply
> removed from the discussion, there would be no dispute. The only way this
> would be true is if all the jerks were on a single side of it, and I make
> the assumption that the individual I'm quoting wasn't suggesting that he
> himself be banned.
>
> Perhaps you can suggest a more charitable read. Ambiguity is the enemy of
> good discussion in text, after all.

You are assuming that all dispute is rancorous.  That is not the case.

(And I'm still not sure why you think he would "probably be moderating.")

Ian

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Frosku]

On Thu Apr 15, 2021 at 12:19 AM BST, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 3:41 PM Frosku  wrote:
> >
> > I think, in general, it's fine to leave this decision to moderators. It's
> > just a little disconcerting when one of the people who would probably be
> > moderating is saying that he could have shut down the discussion if he
> > could only ban jerks, as if to imply that everyone who dares to disagree
> > with his position is a jerk worthy of a ban.
>
> I haven't seen anybody say that, so I'm not sure who you are talking
> about. In any case, what makes you say that that person, whoever they
> are, would probably be a moderator? And why do you infer that that
> person believes that everybody who "dares to disagree with his
> position" is a jerk? Did they say so? Or are you making the same
> mistake that you are attributing to this person: equating disagreement
> over ideas with disagreement about appropriate behavior?
>
> Ian

This was the quote:

> The choice to /not/ have a policy for ejecting jerks has serious costs.
> One of those costs is the kind of rancorous dispute that has been
> burning like a brushfire on this list the last few weeks.

My read is that this is suggestions that if the 'jerks' were simply
removed from the discussion, there would be no dispute. The only way this
would be true is if all the jerks were on a single side of it, and I make
the assumption that the individual I'm quoting wasn't suggesting that he
himself be banned.

Perhaps you can suggest a more charitable read. Ambiguity is the enemy of
good discussion in text, after all.

>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Ian Lance Taylor via Gcc]

On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 3:41 PM Frosku  wrote:
>
> I think, in general, it's fine to leave this decision to moderators. It's
> just a little disconcerting when one of the people who would probably be
> moderating is saying that he could have shut down the discussion if he
> could only ban jerks, as if to imply that everyone who dares to disagree
> with his position is a jerk worthy of a ban.

I haven't seen anybody say that, so I'm not sure who you are talking
about.  In any case, what makes you say that that person, whoever they
are, would probably be a moderator?  And why do you infer that that
person believes that everybody who "dares to disagree with his
position" is a jerk?  Did they say so?  Or are you making the same
mistake that you are attributing to this person: equating disagreement
over ideas with disagreement about appropriate behavior?

Ian

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Adrian via Gcc]

Eric S. Raymond :
> there is actually a value conflict between being "welcoming" in that
sense and the actual purpose of this list, which is to ship code.

Speaking as a "high functioning autist", I'm aware of the difficulties that
some of us have with social interactions - and also that many of us
construct a persona or multiple personae to interact with others, a
phenomenon known as "masking".

I understand why "Asshole" can function as a viable mask for many people,
because there are cultures where it's tolerated, particularly in
remote-working groups like mailing lists, where physical altercations are
unlikely and no-one has to confront the results of their interactions with
others if they don't want to.

It doesn't necessarily follow that "smart" == "asshole" though.

I disagree fundamentally that the assessment that the code contributions of
such people are necessarily more positive than those of the people they
drive away - *especially* people like me, another high-functioning autist,
because our difficulty with social interaction often includes a phenomenon
called RSD - Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria - characterised by a
disproportionately overwhelming response to criticism amongst other things.

I've been coding for the better part of 4 decades and generally have
confidence in my ability, and still balk at participating in Free and OSS
projects where the lead members have an abrasive and confrontational style.
I learned to avoid these people (well, maybe the less smart people whose
mask they are copying) at school. Note - I'm not talking about constructive
criticism, I'm specifically talking about being unnecessarily unpleasant.

In contrast I still remember (and talk about) experiences contributing to
projects where the leads have been nothing but friendly and helpful.

It's not just about "the code alone" of one or a few talented "autist"
persons. These projects are intrinsically about community - that's baked
into the license. No-one really "codes alone". The code you never see
because people don't want to join in _could_ be just as great - but if
presenting as assholes has always been and always will be tolerated, maybe
you'll never see it.

Adrian Wilkins

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Frosku]

On Wed Apr 14, 2021 at 9:49 PM BST, Paul Koning via Gcc wrote:
>
> My answer is "it depends". More precisely, in the past I would have
> favored those who decline because the environment is unpleasant -- with
> the implied assumption being that their objections are reasonable. Given
> the emergency of cancel culture, that assumption is no longer
> automatically valid.
>
> This is why I asked the question "who decides?" Given a disagreement in
> which the proposed remedy is to ostracise a participant, it is necessary
> to inquire for what reason this should be done (and, perhaps, who is
> pushing for it to be done). My suggestion is that this judgment can be
> made by the community (via secret ballot), unless it is decided to
> delegate that power to a smaller body, considered as trustees, or
> whatever you choose to call them.
>
> paul

I think, in general, it's fine to leave this decision to moderators. It's
just a little disconcerting when one of the people who would probably be
moderating is saying that he could have shut down the discussion if he
could only ban jerks, as if to imply that everyone who dares to disagree
with his position is a jerk worthy of a ban.

>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Patrick McGehearty via Gcc]

To provide a face-to-face example of how banning can work without
a formal written policy, I been in the leadership of a social gaming
organization with chapters in various places. Our local group typically
has 30-40 people show up at events and over the 30+ years of our
existence, we've had multiple hundreds of different people participate.
Those numbers somewhat match the number of active participants on
this mailing list (to an order of magnitude at least).

Like participants of this mailing list, we discourage disagreeable
behavior because we lose participants if a few people make it
unpleasant for the rest of us. When someone goes over the line,
we (one or more people in the leadership) takes them aside (privately
if possible) and politely point out their behavior is not
doing them or the group any favors. If they seem to understand
and agree to do better, that can be the end of it. Some people
may need guidance more than once, but good intentions count.

There have been a very small number of attendees to our group who's
behavior is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. I can think of only
three specific cases in the last 15 years. In each case, there was a
broad consensus that the group would be better off without them.
There have been many more cases where someone started going over the
line but pulled back when corrected. With positive intervention, their
behavior was modified and they continued in the group.

I believe the same approach could work here. When someone goes over
the line, a respected leader with a talent for calming things down
could suggest to them privately that perhaps they might tone it down
to a more appropriate level of discourse. There is a skill to calming
done tempers and not everyone has the right talents for that, but the
right intervention can help.

While I have been irritated at some of the emails, I have not seen
behavior that is severe enough to build a broad consensus for banning.
To be very clear, I am not complaining about what position anyone
has taken, only about when they present their point of view
in a hostile or offensive way or presume the opposing point
of view represents the face of evil. Hostility does not tend to
change anyone's mind.

I don't believe a formal policy is necessary. It should be
clear when someone is way over the line and cannot accept
counseling and guidance. At that point, the steering committee
can give warning and finally take the necessary action.

- Patrick McGehearty


On 4/14/2021 4:24 PM, Jeff Law via Gcc wrote:


On 4/14/2021 2:39 PM, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 9:08 AM Jeff Law via Gcc  
wrote:

once or twice when physical violence with threatened, but that's about
it (aside from spammers).  I don't think we want to get too deep into
moderation and the like -- IMHO it should be an extremely rare event.
As much as I disagree with some of the comments that have been made I
don't think they've risen to the level of wanting/needing to ban those
individuals from posting.

I think it's useful to observe that there are a reasonable number of
people who will refuse to participate in a project in which the
mailing list has regular personal attacks and other kinds of abusive
behavior.  I know this because I've spoken with such people myself.
They simply say "that project is not for me" and move on.

So we don't get the choice between "everyone is welcome" and "some
people are kicked off the list."  We get the choice between "some
people decline to participate because it is unpleasant" and "some
people are kicked off the list."

Given the choice of which group of people are going to participate and
which group are not, which group do we want?

(I'm raising this as a kind of first principle.  If there is a system
for banning people from the list, there are various things to discuss
as to how that might work.  And I've seen it work effectively in other
communities.  But if we don't agree on that first principle, there is
no point to continuing.)


It's been a long time, but I think when we've banned someone it's been 
through the steering committee.


But yes, I understand your point and it's a good one and I think we 
can probably find some common ground there -- but even so I think 
banning should be a rare event and some official outreach to the 
offender should happen first.



jeff

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Ian Lance Taylor via Gcc]

On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 2:24 PM Jeff Law  wrote:
>
> But yes, I understand your point and it's a good one and I think we can
> probably find some common ground there -- but even so I think banning
> should be a rare event and some official outreach to the offender should
> happen first.

Agreed (except for cases of obvious spam entirely unrelated to the project).

Ian

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Ian Lance Taylor via Gcc]

On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 1:49 PM Paul Koning  wrote:
>
> > On Apr 14, 2021, at 4:39 PM, Ian Lance Taylor via Gcc  
> > wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 9:08 AM Jeff Law via Gcc  wrote:
> >>
> >> once or twice when physical violence with threatened, but that's about
> >> it (aside from spammers).  I don't think we want to get too deep into
> >> moderation and the like -- IMHO it should be an extremely rare event.
> >> As much as I disagree with some of the comments that have been made I
> >> don't think they've risen to the level of wanting/needing to ban those
> >> individuals from posting.
> >
> > I think it's useful to observe that there are a reasonable number of
> > people who will refuse to participate in a project in which the
> > mailing list has regular personal attacks and other kinds of abusive
> > behavior.  I know this because I've spoken with such people myself.
> > They simply say "that project is not for me" and move on.
> >
> > So we don't get the choice between "everyone is welcome" and "some
> > people are kicked off the list."  We get the choice between "some
> > people decline to participate because it is unpleasant" and "some
> > people are kicked off the list."
> >
> > Given the choice of which group of people are going to participate and
> > which group are not, which group do we want?
>
> My answer is "it depends".  More precisely, in the past I would have favored 
> those who decline because the environment is unpleasant -- with the implied 
> assumption being that their objections are reasonable.  Given the emergency 
> of cancel culture, that assumption is no longer automatically valid.
>
> This is why I asked the question "who decides?"  Given a disagreement in 
> which the proposed remedy is to ostracise a participant, it is necessary to 
> inquire for what reason this should be done (and, perhaps, who is pushing for 
> it to be done).  My suggestion is that this judgment can be made by the 
> community (via secret ballot), unless it is decided to delegate that power to 
> a smaller body, considered as trustees, or whatever you choose to call them.

Personally, I think that voting is unworkable in practice.  I think
decisions can be reasonably delegated to a small group of trusted
people.  A fairly common name for that group is "moderators".  It
might be appropriate to use voting of some sort when selecting
moderators.

Ian

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Jeff Law via Gcc]

On 4/14/2021 2:39 PM, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:

On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 9:08 AM Jeff Law via Gcc  wrote:

once or twice when physical violence with threatened, but that's about
it (aside from spammers).  I don't think we want to get too deep into
moderation and the like -- IMHO it should be an extremely rare event.
As much as I disagree with some of the comments that have been made I
don't think they've risen to the level of wanting/needing to ban those
individuals from posting.

I think it's useful to observe that there are a reasonable number of
people who will refuse to participate in a project in which the
mailing list has regular personal attacks and other kinds of abusive
behavior.  I know this because I've spoken with such people myself.
They simply say "that project is not for me" and move on.

So we don't get the choice between "everyone is welcome" and "some
people are kicked off the list."  We get the choice between "some
people decline to participate because it is unpleasant" and "some
people are kicked off the list."

Given the choice of which group of people are going to participate and
which group are not, which group do we want?

(I'm raising this as a kind of first principle.  If there is a system
for banning people from the list, there are various things to discuss
as to how that might work.  And I've seen it work effectively in other
communities.  But if we don't agree on that first principle, there is
no point to continuing.)


It's been a long time, but I think when we've banned someone it's been 
through the steering committee.


But yes, I understand your point and it's a good one and I think we can 
probably find some common ground there -- but even so I think banning 
should be a rare event and some official outreach to the offender should 
happen first.



jeff

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Paul Koning via Gcc]

> On Apr 14, 2021, at 4:39 PM, Ian Lance Taylor via Gcc  wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 9:08 AM Jeff Law via Gcc  wrote:
>> 
>> once or twice when physical violence with threatened, but that's about
>> it (aside from spammers).  I don't think we want to get too deep into
>> moderation and the like -- IMHO it should be an extremely rare event.
>> As much as I disagree with some of the comments that have been made I
>> don't think they've risen to the level of wanting/needing to ban those
>> individuals from posting.
> 
> I think it's useful to observe that there are a reasonable number of
> people who will refuse to participate in a project in which the
> mailing list has regular personal attacks and other kinds of abusive
> behavior.  I know this because I've spoken with such people myself.
> They simply say "that project is not for me" and move on.
> 
> So we don't get the choice between "everyone is welcome" and "some
> people are kicked off the list."  We get the choice between "some
> people decline to participate because it is unpleasant" and "some
> people are kicked off the list."
> 
> Given the choice of which group of people are going to participate and
> which group are not, which group do we want?

My answer is "it depends".  More precisely, in the past I would have favored 
those who decline because the environment is unpleasant -- with the implied 
assumption being that their objections are reasonable.  Given the emergency of 
cancel culture, that assumption is no longer automatically valid.

This is why I asked the question "who decides?"  Given a disagreement in which 
the proposed remedy is to ostracise a participant, it is necessary to inquire 
for what reason this should be done (and, perhaps, who is pushing for it to be 
done).  My suggestion is that this judgment can be made by the community (via 
secret ballot), unless it is decided to delegate that power to a smaller body, 
considered as trustees, or whatever you choose to call them.

paul

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Christopher Jefferson]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 21:40, Ian Lance Taylor via Gcc  wrote:
>
> On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 9:08 AM Jeff Law via Gcc  wrote:
> >
> > once or twice when physical violence with threatened, but that's about
> > it (aside from spammers).  I don't think we want to get too deep into
> > moderation and the like -- IMHO it should be an extremely rare event.
> > As much as I disagree with some of the comments that have been made I
> > don't think they've risen to the level of wanting/needing to ban those
> > individuals from posting.
>
> I think it's useful to observe that there are a reasonable number of
> people who will refuse to participate in a project in which the
> mailing list has regular personal attacks and other kinds of abusive
> behavior.  I know this because I've spoken with such people myself.
> They simply say "that project is not for me" and move on.
>

As a single data point, I used to contribute somewhat to gcc
(libstdc++ specifically) -- I did a bunch of work implementing bits of
TR1 and C++03. I found the "GCC community" an unpleasant place to be
(there were many nice individual nice people), and didn't enjoy being
involved. I just moved on to work on several other, open-source
non-GNU projects, which I have been happily contributing to for the
last 10 years or so.

Chris Jefferson

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Ian Lance Taylor via Gcc]

On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 9:08 AM Jeff Law via Gcc  wrote:
>
> once or twice when physical violence with threatened, but that's about
> it (aside from spammers).  I don't think we want to get too deep into
> moderation and the like -- IMHO it should be an extremely rare event.
> As much as I disagree with some of the comments that have been made I
> don't think they've risen to the level of wanting/needing to ban those
> individuals from posting.

I think it's useful to observe that there are a reasonable number of
people who will refuse to participate in a project in which the
mailing list has regular personal attacks and other kinds of abusive
behavior.  I know this because I've spoken with such people myself.
They simply say "that project is not for me" and move on.

So we don't get the choice between "everyone is welcome" and "some
people are kicked off the list."  We get the choice between "some
people decline to participate because it is unpleasant" and "some
people are kicked off the list."

Given the choice of which group of people are going to participate and
which group are not, which group do we want?

(I'm raising this as a kind of first principle.  If there is a system
for banning people from the list, there are various things to discuss
as to how that might work.  And I've seen it work effectively in other
communities.  But if we don't agree on that first principle, there is
no point to continuing.)

Ian

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Christopher Dimech via Gcc]

> Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 at 6:32 AM
> From: "Paul Koning via Gcc" 
> To: "Nathan Sidwell" 
> Cc: "GCC Development" 
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
>
>
> > On Apr 14, 2021, at 2:19 PM, Nathan Sidwell  wrote:
> >
> > On 4/14/21 12:52 PM, Martin Jambor wrote:
> >> Hi Nathan,
> >> On Wed, Apr 14 2021, Nathan Sidwell wrote:
> >>> Do we have a policy about removing list subscribers that send abusive or
> >>> other toxic emails?  do we have a code of conduct?  Searching the wiki
> >>> or website finds nothing.  The mission statement mentions nothing.
> >> I think that (most?) people have already figured out that messages from
> >> unfamiliar senders on certain topics have to be ignored.  It is much
> >> easier than any moderation, which would be ugly work (someone would have
> >> to read the often horrible stuff).
> >> I think that you only "associate" with trolls if you feed them.  I have
> >> recently made that mistake on this list once and will not repeat it.
> >
> > I disagree.  Their emails pollute the list.  Just as I wouldn't like to go 
> > to a bar where there are noisy jerks in a corner, I don't like to frequent 
> > an ML where there are.  Bouncers exist in physical space, is it so hard to 
> > electronically bounce jerks?  Is it so hard to explicitly say 'be a jerk 
> > and be thrown out'?
>
> Who decides?
>
> Bouncers enforce the policy of the owner of the joint.  In any meetingplace 
> that has an owner who has authority over who enters, it's possible to 
> establish rules controlling ejection and bouncers to do the ejecting.
>
> Our place does not have a single owner who has the authority to decide 
> unilaterally "you're not wanted, leave".  What mechanism would you use 
> instead?  Ostracism, in the classic Greek sense of a secret ballot to decide 
> for or against banishment?
- paul

We can reintroduce the duel.  It was originally reserved for the male members
of the nobility in the late 18th century in England using pistols.  What do
you think of that? :)

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Christopher Dimech via Gcc]

> Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 at 6:27 AM
> From: "Joseph Myers" 
> To: "Eric S. Raymond" 
> Cc: gcc@gcc.gnu.org, "Nathan Sidwell" 
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> On Wed, 14 Apr 2021, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
>
> > I'm not judging RMS's behavior (or anyone else's) one way or
> > another. I am simply pointing out that there is a Schelling point in
> > possible community norms that is well expressed as "you shall judge by
> > the code alone".  This list is not full of contention from affirming
> > that norm, but from some peoples' attempt to repudiate it.
>
> Since RMS, FSF and GNU are not contributing code to the toolchain and
> haven't been for a very long time, the most similar basis to judge them
> would seem to be based on their interactions with toolchain development.
> I think those interactions generally show that FSF and GNU have been bad
> umbrella organizations for the toolchain since at least when the GCC 4.4
> release was delayed waiting for a slow process of developing the GCC
> Runtime Library Exception.
>
> Things have gone most smoothly when no actions or decisions from FSF or
> GNU have been required and when RMS has not attempted to make any
> decisions related to the toolchain.  When RMS has attempted to make any
> decisions, or suggest features, etc., that's generally served to waste a
> lot of time explaining to him why his ideas are irrelevant or based on a
> fundamental lack of understanding of the issues involved.  Even when he's
> made suggestions that are reasonable, he's still wasted a lot of people's
> time arguing about points that should not be controversial.
>
> (By way of example, on 20 Sep 2017 he suggested to the SC that GCC should
> support direct use of non-ASCII characters in identifiers.  I replied
> pointing him to the guidance I'd given in bug 67224 comments 11, 19 and
> 21.  So far, that's reasonable, but he then entered into prolonged
> discussion of the details of what particular patches did or didn't do,
> exactly what characters should or should not be allowed in identifiers,
> how GNU relates to standards, to what extent we need to design a feature
> properly before including it in GCC, and so on.  None of his comments
> there were at all useful, since he's far too far removed from current GCC
> development to comment usefully on such matters, and any useful comments
> in that area would have been better somewhere public anyway.  And in due
> course we did get a new GCC contributor who successfully implemented the
> feature in GCC following the guidance I'd given, despite RMS's notions
> that that would be too hard.)
>
> In things where the FSF and GNU have been supposed to be acting as
> umbrella organizations, that has generally been done badly (e.g. there
> have been problems with long delays in processing copyright assignments
> many times over the years; they never managed to come up with a simple
> GPL/GFDL dual-licensing notice so requiring instead the cumbersome system
> of having both GPL and GFDL copies of certain text in target.def and
> tm.texi).

Have suggested the need to work on the GFDL to make it compatible with
GPL-like licenses.

> For fairness, I should note the *unique case I know of in the past decade*
> where RMS was involved in a positive toolchain contribution.  On 11 Nov
> 2011 he started a discussion with me regarding the problems with glibc
> maintenance, and that ultimately started the transition to more
> community-oriented glibc development.  But ultimately the key parts of
> that transition were not the parts that actually involved RMS - it was
> discussions with Roland McGrath, not with RMS, that were key to achieving
> the transition successfully.
>
> New GNU maintainers of glibc, as recommended by me, were added on RMS's
> direction (maintainers revision 1.1352 on fencepost, 10 Feb 2012).  But
> the actual problems before then with glibc development weren't with the
> GNU maintainers (steering committee), beyond that they didn't do anything
> much to address the dysfunction in glibc development - it wasn't the GNU
> maintainers who were pushing away contributions.  And it was the
> deliberate work on building a community, getting people contributing,
> getting contributions committed (bootstrapping off Roland's authority to
> approve changes regardless of whether the then lead developer cared for
> them) that was actually the key part.  The announcements relating to
> changes
> 
>  were
> primarily concerned with a situation that already existed at that time,
> and that had been achieved by following a process that Roland had
> convinced me would be the right way to achieve changes, not with
> announcing anything done on the authority of RMS (which had happened over
> a month earlier without any public announcement).
>
> So in that case, while RMS started the discussion (or at least

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[Ahmed Sanaullah via Gcc]

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Robert Munafo, PhD student in the  CAAD Lab at Boston University

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Ahmed Sanaullah, Senior Data Scientist at Red Hat

For more information, contact rhresearchd...@redhat.com

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Paul Koning via Gcc]

> On Apr 14, 2021, at 2:19 PM, Nathan Sidwell  wrote:
> 
> On 4/14/21 12:52 PM, Martin Jambor wrote:
>> Hi Nathan,
>> On Wed, Apr 14 2021, Nathan Sidwell wrote:
>>> Do we have a policy about removing list subscribers that send abusive or
>>> other toxic emails?  do we have a code of conduct?  Searching the wiki
>>> or website finds nothing.  The mission statement mentions nothing.
>> I think that (most?) people have already figured out that messages from
>> unfamiliar senders on certain topics have to be ignored.  It is much
>> easier than any moderation, which would be ugly work (someone would have
>> to read the often horrible stuff).
>> I think that you only "associate" with trolls if you feed them.  I have
>> recently made that mistake on this list once and will not repeat it.
> 
> I disagree.  Their emails pollute the list.  Just as I wouldn't like to go to 
> a bar where there are noisy jerks in a corner, I don't like to frequent an ML 
> where there are.  Bouncers exist in physical space, is it so hard to 
> electronically bounce jerks?  Is it so hard to explicitly say 'be a jerk and 
> be thrown out'?

Who decides?

Bouncers enforce the policy of the owner of the joint.  In any meetingplace 
that has an owner who has authority over who enters, it's possible to establish 
rules controlling ejection and bouncers to do the ejecting.

Our place does not have a single owner who has the authority to decide 
unilaterally "you're not wanted, leave".  What mechanism would you use instead? 
 Ostracism, in the classic Greek sense of a secret ballot to decide for or 
against banishment?

paul

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Christopher Dimech via Gcc]

> Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 at 6:19 AM
> From: "Nathan Sidwell" 
> To: "Martin Jambor" , "gcc@gcc.gnu.org" 
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> On 4/14/21 12:52 PM, Martin Jambor wrote:
> > Hi Nathan,
> >
> > On Wed, Apr 14 2021, Nathan Sidwell wrote:
> >> Do we have a policy about removing list subscribers that send abusive or
> >> other toxic emails?  do we have a code of conduct?  Searching the wiki
> >> or website finds nothing.  The mission statement mentions nothing.
> >
> > I think that (most?) people have already figured out that messages from
> > unfamiliar senders on certain topics have to be ignored.  It is much
> > easier than any moderation, which would be ugly work (someone would have
> > to read the often horrible stuff).
> >
> > I think that you only "associate" with trolls if you feed them.  I have
> > recently made that mistake on this list once and will not repeat it.
>
> I disagree.  Their emails pollute the list.  Just as I wouldn't like to
> go to a bar where there are noisy jerks in a corner, I don't like to
> frequent an ML where there are.  Bouncers exist in physical space, is it
> so hard to electronically bounce jerks?  Is it so hard to explicitly say
> 'be a jerk and be thrown out'?
>
> Their presence makes the place unwelcoming.
> - nathan - Nathan Sidwell

I agree, but the question is - Who will decide?

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Joseph Myers]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2021, Eric S. Raymond wrote:

> I'm not judging RMS's behavior (or anyone else's) one way or
> another. I am simply pointing out that there is a Schelling point in
> possible community norms that is well expressed as "you shall judge by
> the code alone".  This list is not full of contention from affirming
> that norm, but from some peoples' attempt to repudiate it.

Since RMS, FSF and GNU are not contributing code to the toolchain and 
haven't been for a very long time, the most similar basis to judge them 
would seem to be based on their interactions with toolchain development.  
I think those interactions generally show that FSF and GNU have been bad 
umbrella organizations for the toolchain since at least when the GCC 4.4 
release was delayed waiting for a slow process of developing the GCC 
Runtime Library Exception.

Things have gone most smoothly when no actions or decisions from FSF or 
GNU have been required and when RMS has not attempted to make any 
decisions related to the toolchain.  When RMS has attempted to make any 
decisions, or suggest features, etc., that's generally served to waste a 
lot of time explaining to him why his ideas are irrelevant or based on a 
fundamental lack of understanding of the issues involved.  Even when he's 
made suggestions that are reasonable, he's still wasted a lot of people's 
time arguing about points that should not be controversial.

(By way of example, on 20 Sep 2017 he suggested to the SC that GCC should 
support direct use of non-ASCII characters in identifiers.  I replied 
pointing him to the guidance I'd given in bug 67224 comments 11, 19 and 
21.  So far, that's reasonable, but he then entered into prolonged 
discussion of the details of what particular patches did or didn't do, 
exactly what characters should or should not be allowed in identifiers, 
how GNU relates to standards, to what extent we need to design a feature 
properly before including it in GCC, and so on.  None of his comments 
there were at all useful, since he's far too far removed from current GCC 
development to comment usefully on such matters, and any useful comments 
in that area would have been better somewhere public anyway.  And in due 
course we did get a new GCC contributor who successfully implemented the 
feature in GCC following the guidance I'd given, despite RMS's notions 
that that would be too hard.)

In things where the FSF and GNU have been supposed to be acting as 
umbrella organizations, that has generally been done badly (e.g. there 
have been problems with long delays in processing copyright assignments 
many times over the years; they never managed to come up with a simple 
GPL/GFDL dual-licensing notice so requiring instead the cumbersome system 
of having both GPL and GFDL copies of certain text in target.def and 
tm.texi).


For fairness, I should note the *unique case I know of in the past decade* 
where RMS was involved in a positive toolchain contribution.  On 11 Nov 
2011 he started a discussion with me regarding the problems with glibc 
maintenance, and that ultimately started the transition to more 
community-oriented glibc development.  But ultimately the key parts of 
that transition were not the parts that actually involved RMS - it was 
discussions with Roland McGrath, not with RMS, that were key to achieving 
the transition successfully.

New GNU maintainers of glibc, as recommended by me, were added on RMS's 
direction (maintainers revision 1.1352 on fencepost, 10 Feb 2012).  But 
the actual problems before then with glibc development weren't with the 
GNU maintainers (steering committee), beyond that they didn't do anything 
much to address the dysfunction in glibc development - it wasn't the GNU 
maintainers who were pushing away contributions.  And it was the 
deliberate work on building a community, getting people contributing, 
getting contributions committed (bootstrapping off Roland's authority to 
approve changes regardless of whether the then lead developer cared for 
them) that was actually the key part.  The announcements relating to 
changes 
 
 were 
primarily concerned with a situation that already existed at that time, 
and that had been achieved by following a process that Roland had 
convinced me would be the right way to achieve changes, not with 
announcing anything done on the authority of RMS (which had happened over 
a month earlier without any public announcement).

So in that case, while RMS started the discussion (or at least the part of 
the discussion I saw, I don't know what might have happened before 11 Nov 
2011 involving other people), the useful changes could have been achieved 
by following the same plan with Roland but without RMS involved at all, 
whereas if only RMS's part had happened and there had been an attempt to 
change things only on the authority of RMS

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Christopher Dimech via Gcc]

> Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 at 5:09 AM
> From: "Jeff Law via Gcc" 
> To: "Jonathan Wakely" , "Thomas Koenig" 
> 
> Cc: "gcc@gcc.gnu.org" 
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> 
> On 4/14/2021 8:49 AM, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc wrote:
> > On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 15:39, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> >> On 14.04.21 15:18, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> >>> A strong norm about off-list behavior and politics being
> >>> out of bounds here is also helpful.
> >> That would have banned the whole discussion about the potential
> >> fork from the start.
> > No, because once again, I raised the topic of a fork because I do not
> > feel that association with GNU or FSF benefits the GCC project. I did
> > not say "we have to cancel them because I don't like their politics"
> > (as it happens, I do like their politics, which is why I've spent two
> > decades writing copyleft code for GCC, I just think they have failed
> > to evolve and are sadly irrelevant today).
> 
> [ Speaking for myself, not the steering committee or my employer... ]
> 
> 
> Well said (and I'm not being sarcastic).  While my politics may not line 
> up 100% with those of the FSF, GNU project or RMS, they have been close 
> enough for me to spend 30+ years of my life working on GNU tools.  I 
> agree with you Jon that the organizations and RMS personally have failed 
> to evolve - Jeff
 
I have been involved in discussions arising from a failure to evolve, I can't
deny it.  Eventually things get rectified, but there is a problem of things
taking too long.  On the other hand forcing people hard won't work.  So I do
live with quite some inconveniences.

Still, I find that things bended in the right way decade-by-decade.  
Day-by-Day - things oscillate.  

Christopher

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Nathan Sidwell]

On 4/14/21 12:52 PM, Martin Jambor wrote:

Hi Nathan,

On Wed, Apr 14 2021, Nathan Sidwell wrote:

Do we have a policy about removing list subscribers that send abusive or
other toxic emails?  do we have a code of conduct?  Searching the wiki
or website finds nothing.  The mission statement mentions nothing.


I think that (most?) people have already figured out that messages from
unfamiliar senders on certain topics have to be ignored.  It is much
easier than any moderation, which would be ugly work (someone would have
to read the often horrible stuff).

I think that you only "associate" with trolls if you feed them.  I have
recently made that mistake on this list once and will not repeat it.


I disagree.  Their emails pollute the list.  Just as I wouldn't like to 
go to a bar where there are noisy jerks in a corner, I don't like to 
frequent an ML where there are.  Bouncers exist in physical space, is it 
so hard to electronically bounce jerks?  Is it so hard to explicitly say 
'be a jerk and be thrown out'?


Their presence makes the place unwelcoming.

nathan

--
Nathan Sidwell

Re: GCC association with the FSF

[Christopher Dimech via Gcc]

> Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 at 5:42 AM
> From: "Jeff Law" 
> To: "Christopher Dimech" , "Toon Moene" 
> Cc: "Richard Biener" , "Jonathan Wakely" 
> , "Jonathan Wakely via Gcc" , "Thomas 
> Koenig" 
> Subject: Re: GCC association with the FSF
>
> 
> On 4/14/2021 10:55 AM, Christopher Dimech wrote:
> >> Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 at 4:35 AM
> >> From: "Toon Moene" 
> >> To: "Jeff Law" , "Richard Biener" 
> >> , "Jonathan Wakely" , 
> >> "Jonathan Wakely via Gcc" , "Thomas Koenig" 
> >> 
> >> Subject: Re: GCC association with the FSF
> >>
> >> On 4/14/21 6:18 PM, Jeff Law via Gcc wrote:
> >>
> >>> On 4/14/2021 6:08 AM, Richard Biener via Gcc wrote:
>  On April 14, 2021 12:19:16 PM GMT+02:00, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc
>   wrote:
> > N.B. Jeff is no longer @redhat.com so I've changed the CC
> > On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 11:03, Thomas Koenig 
> > wrote:
> >> - All gfortran developers move to the new branch.  This will not
> >>      happen, I can guarantee you that.
> > This is the part I'm curious about (the rest is obvious, it follows
>  >from there being finite resources and the nature of any fork). But I'm
> > not going to press for reasons.
>  Note the only viable fork will be on the current hosting (which isn't
>  FSF controlled) with the downside of eventually losing the gcc.gnu.org
>  DNS and thus a need to "switch" to a sourceware.org name.
> >>> I strongly suspect you're right here.  Ultimately if one fork reaches
> >>> critical mass, then it survives and the other dies.  That's a function
> >>> of the developer community.   Right now I don't see the nightmare
> >>> scenario of both forks being viable playing out -- however I'm more
> >>> concerned now than I was before due Thomas's comments.
> >> When plans for the EGCS were underway, and the (then) Fortran supporters
> >> were into the plans, it scared the hell out of me, because it was
> >> completely unclear to me where it would end.
> >>
> >> But in the end: I am a supporter of Free Software, not a organization,
> >> or a person, but *developers* who support Free Software.
> >>
> >> That's what got me to go for the fork of EGCS - and I have not been
> >> disappointed.
> >>
> >> -- 
> >> Toon Moene - e-mail: t...@moene.org - phone: +31 346 214290
> >> Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG  Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
> > The two projects once again united because multiple forks are proved to be
> > inefficient and unwieldy.   As long as the license terms for free software
> > are met and there is compatibility, I am pleased.
> 
> Umm, no.  The projects re-united because the FSF fork wasn't viable and 
> we structured EGCS so that if it was successful it could supplant the 
> FSF fork.  Toon, myself and others were part of that process.

Would you consider the current situation as separate still?  It seems that
some coordination is needed, irrespective of disagreement, if there is to
be a future in all this.

Had asked Thomas Koenig for details which I could follow very clearly.
He talked sense to me. 
 
> jeff
> 
>

Re: GCC association with the FSF

[Christopher Dimech via Gcc]

> Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 at 4:18 AM
> From: "Jeff Law via Gcc" 
> To: "Richard Biener" , "Jonathan Wakely" 
> , "Jonathan Wakely via Gcc" , "Thomas 
> Koenig" 
> Subject: Re: GCC association with the FSF
>
> 
> On 4/14/2021 6:08 AM, Richard Biener via Gcc wrote:
> > On April 14, 2021 12:19:16 PM GMT+02:00, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc 
> >  wrote:
> >> N.B. Jeff is no longer @redhat.com so I've changed the CC
> >>
> >> On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 11:03, Thomas Koenig 
> >> wrote:
> >>> - All gfortran developers move to the new branch.  This will not
> >>> happen, I can guarantee you that.
> >> This is the part I'm curious about (the rest is obvious, it follows
> > >from there being finite resources and the nature of any fork). But I'm
> >> not going to press for reasons.

> > Note the only viable fork will be on the current hosting (which isn't FSF 
> > controlled) with the downside of eventually losing the gcc.gnu.org DNS and 
> > thus a need to "switch" to a sourceware.org name.

It is likely that gcc.gnu.org would not be available.

> I strongly suspect you're right here.  Ultimately if one fork reaches 
> critical mass, then it survives and the other dies.  That's a function 
> of the developer community.   Right now I don't see the nightmare 
> scenario of both forks being viable playing out -- however I'm more 
> concerned now than I was before due Thomas's comments.

> Given there would be actual work involved on the FSF side to keep a "fork" 
> with the exact same setup (and thus transparent with existing setups) I don't 
> see it keeping live (but I see somebody populating savannah with sources).
> 
> Absolutely.  I could even see a small community continuing to push the 
> FSF fork for a while until it becomes abundantly clear that only one 
> fork is long term viable.  That's what happened with EGCS -- the 
> majority of the developer community went with the EGCS fork with a small 
> community staying on the FSF fork.  Eventually it became clear that EGCS 
> had much broader developer support and the FSF fork ultimately withered 
> away.

The issue would then be of compatibility.  Free Software is that which, by
definition, may be forked from the original development team without prior
permission, without violating copyright law.  Gcc would continue as a Gnu 
Project nonetheless.  Technically, gcc is not a fork.   
 
> Jeff
> 
> 
>

Re: GCC association with the FSF

[Jeff Law via Gcc]

On 4/14/2021 10:55 AM, Christopher Dimech wrote:

Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 at 4:35 AM
From: "Toon Moene" 
To: "Jeff Law" , "Richard Biener" , "Jonathan Wakely" 
, "Jonathan Wakely via Gcc" , "Thomas Koenig" 
Subject: Re: GCC association with the FSF

On 4/14/21 6:18 PM, Jeff Law via Gcc wrote:


On 4/14/2021 6:08 AM, Richard Biener via Gcc wrote:

On April 14, 2021 12:19:16 PM GMT+02:00, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc
 wrote:

N.B. Jeff is no longer @redhat.com so I've changed the CC
On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 11:03, Thomas Koenig 
wrote:

- All gfortran developers move to the new branch.  This will not
     happen, I can guarantee you that.

This is the part I'm curious about (the rest is obvious, it follows

>from there being finite resources and the nature of any fork). But I'm

not going to press for reasons.

Note the only viable fork will be on the current hosting (which isn't
FSF controlled) with the downside of eventually losing the gcc.gnu.org
DNS and thus a need to "switch" to a sourceware.org name.

I strongly suspect you're right here.  Ultimately if one fork reaches
critical mass, then it survives and the other dies.  That's a function
of the developer community.   Right now I don't see the nightmare
scenario of both forks being viable playing out -- however I'm more
concerned now than I was before due Thomas's comments.

When plans for the EGCS were underway, and the (then) Fortran supporters
were into the plans, it scared the hell out of me, because it was
completely unclear to me where it would end.

But in the end: I am a supporter of Free Software, not a organization,
or a person, but *developers* who support Free Software.

That's what got me to go for the fork of EGCS - and I have not been
disappointed.

--
Toon Moene - e-mail: t...@moene.org - phone: +31 346 214290
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG  Maartensdijk, The Netherlands

The two projects once again united because multiple forks are proved to be
inefficient and unwieldy.   As long as the license terms for free software
are met and there is compatibility, I am pleased.


Umm, no.  The projects re-united because the FSF fork wasn't viable and 
we structured EGCS so that if it was successful it could supplant the 
FSF fork.  Toon, myself and others were part of that process.



jeff

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Christopher Dimech via Gcc]

There are many things one can say, but when Richard Stallman talks
about computing, he talks sense.  I categorise him with Mathematician
Paul Erdos.  Furthermore, when I had disagreements with him, I never
got ousted.

> Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 at 1:18 AM
> From: "Eric S. Raymond" 
> To: "Nathan Sidwell" 
> Cc: "gcc@gcc.gnu.org" 
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> Nathan Sidwell :
> > Do we have a policy about removing list subscribers that send abusive or
> > other toxic emails?  do we have a code of conduct?  Searching the wiki or
> > website finds nothing.  The mission statement mentions nothing.
>
> I'm not a GCC insider, but I know a few things about the social
> dynamics of voluntarist subcultures. You might recall I wrote a book
> about that once.
>
> The choice to have a policy for ejecting jerks has serious costs.
> One of those costs is the kind of rancorous dispute that has been
> burning like a brushfire on this list the last few weeks.  Another,
> particularly serious for hackers - is that such a policy is hostile to
> autists and others who have poor interaction skills but can ship good
> code.  This is a significant percentage of your current and future
> potential contributors, enough that excluding them is a real problem.
>
> Most seriously: the rules, whatever they are, will be gamed by people
> whose objectives are not "ship useful software". You will be fortunate
> if the gamers' objectives are as relatively innocuous as "gain points
> in monkey status competition by beating up funny-colored monkeys";
> there are much worse cases that have been known to crash even projects
> with nearly as much history and social inertia as this one.
>
> Compared to these costs, the overhead of tolerating a few jerks and
> assholes is pretty much trivial.  That's hard to see right now because
> the jerks are visible and the costs of formal policing are
> hypothetical, but I strongly advise you against going down the Code of
> Conduct route regardless of how fashionable that looks right now.  I
> have forty years of observer-participant anthropology in intentional
> online communities, beginning with the disintegration of the USENET
> cabal back in the 1980s, telling me that will not end well.

All of this needs transformation, that can be agreed.  What you have said
makes sense - the fundamental purpose is to enhance our knowing and our
computing capability.

> You're better off with an informal system of moderator fiat and
> *without* rules that beg to become a subject of dispute and
> manipulation. A strong norm about off-list behavior and politics being
> out of bounds here is also helpful.
>
> You face a choice between being a community that is about shipping code
> and one that is embroiled in perpetual controversy over who gets to
> play here and on what terms.  Choose wisely.

There has been an unfortunate history of discrimination at all levels.
Yet, many are simply talking activism originating from rudimentary ideas,
many picked up from the west.  People are mixing things.  There is
exploitation, but not necessarily discrimination.  Exploitation is not
just of the woman.  Anybody who is weaker than you, people are
exploiting - whether it's a man, woman and child.

Should one take Nathan's approach, it would be equally valid to state
that Nathan and some of his associates are in no position to give lessons,
considering the hidden history of exploitation perpetrated by their
employers.  Assisting a company that unleashes exploitative practices,
for income, is equally reprehensible.  Correct me if I am wrong.

> --

>   http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond
>
>
>

Re: My 2nd attempt to devel for gcc

[Prathamesh Kulkarni via Gcc]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 22:54, Joseph Myers  wrote:
>
> On Wed, 14 Apr 2021, pawel k. via Gcc wrote:
>
> > My best guess is if we could hookify all target code everything callable
> > either from frontends or midend, we could try to severly cut this estimate.
>
> That's a 700-patch series (there are about 700 target macros).  For every
> target macro, it's necessary to work out the corresponding target hook
> interface, which shouldn't always correspond one-to-one to the macro
> interface (and hooks have well-defined argument types, which macros don't
> always), and deal with the conversion, covering all the irregular ways in
> which different targets define the macros (including e.g. cases where some
> architectures define a target macro differently for different target
> OSes).
Joseph has articulately summarized the process in this thread on
target macro conversion:
https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2015-February/216586.html

Thanks,
Prathamesh
>
> --
> Joseph S. Myers
> jos...@codesourcery.com

Re: My 2nd attempt to devel for gcc

[Joseph Myers]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2021, pawel k. via Gcc wrote:

> My best guess is if we could hookify all target code everything callable
> either from frontends or midend, we could try to severly cut this estimate.

That's a 700-patch series (there are about 700 target macros).  For every 
target macro, it's necessary to work out the corresponding target hook 
interface, which shouldn't always correspond one-to-one to the macro 
interface (and hooks have well-defined argument types, which macros don't 
always), and deal with the conversion, covering all the irregular ways in 
which different targets define the macros (including e.g. cases where some 
architectures define a target macro differently for different target 
OSes).

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
jos...@codesourcery.com

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Jeff Law via Gcc]

On 4/14/2021 8:49 AM, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc wrote:

On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 15:39, Thomas Koenig wrote:

On 14.04.21 15:18, Eric S. Raymond wrote:

A strong norm about off-list behavior and politics being
out of bounds here is also helpful.

That would have banned the whole discussion about the potential
fork from the start.

No, because once again, I raised the topic of a fork because I do not
feel that association with GNU or FSF benefits the GCC project. I did
not say "we have to cancel them because I don't like their politics"
(as it happens, I do like their politics, which is why I've spent two
decades writing copyleft code for GCC, I just think they have failed
to evolve and are sadly irrelevant today).


[ Speaking for myself, not the steering committee or my employer... ]


Well said (and I'm not being sarcastic).  While my politics may not line 
up 100% with those of the FSF, GNU project or RMS, they have been close 
enough for me to spend 30+ years of my life working on GNU tools.  I 
agree with you Jon that the organizations and RMS personally have failed 
to evolve -- and I'll go a step further than you did in this message and 
state that, IMHO, they are actively harmful to GCC and the free software 
movement in general.



I don't relish the idea of forking GCC again.  Been there, done that, it 
was painful.  But again, I think we're at a point where it's necessary 
again.



Jeff

Re: GCC association with the FSF

[Christopher Dimech via Gcc]

> Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 at 4:35 AM
> From: "Toon Moene" 
> To: "Jeff Law" , "Richard Biener" 
> , "Jonathan Wakely" , 
> "Jonathan Wakely via Gcc" , "Thomas Koenig" 
> 
> Subject: Re: GCC association with the FSF
>
> On 4/14/21 6:18 PM, Jeff Law via Gcc wrote:
> 
> > On 4/14/2021 6:08 AM, Richard Biener via Gcc wrote:
> 
> >> On April 14, 2021 12:19:16 PM GMT+02:00, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc 
> >>  wrote:
> 
> >>> N.B. Jeff is no longer @redhat.com so I've changed the CC
> 
> >>> On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 11:03, Thomas Koenig 
> >>> wrote:
> 
>  - All gfortran developers move to the new branch.  This will not
>      happen, I can guarantee you that.
> 
> >>> This is the part I'm curious about (the rest is obvious, it follows
> >> >from there being finite resources and the nature of any fork). But I'm
> >>> not going to press for reasons.
> 
> >> Note the only viable fork will be on the current hosting (which isn't 
> >> FSF controlled) with the downside of eventually losing the gcc.gnu.org 
> >> DNS and thus a need to "switch" to a sourceware.org name.
> 
> > I strongly suspect you're right here.  Ultimately if one fork reaches 
> > critical mass, then it survives and the other dies.  That's a function 
> > of the developer community.   Right now I don't see the nightmare 
> > scenario of both forks being viable playing out -- however I'm more 
> > concerned now than I was before due Thomas's comments.
> 
> When plans for the EGCS were underway, and the (then) Fortran supporters 
> were into the plans, it scared the hell out of me, because it was 
> completely unclear to me where it would end.
> 
> But in the end: I am a supporter of Free Software, not a organization, 
> or a person, but *developers* who support Free Software.
> 
> That's what got me to go for the fork of EGCS - and I have not been 
> disappointed.
> 
> -- 
> Toon Moene - e-mail: t...@moene.org - phone: +31 346 214290
> Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG  Maartensdijk, The Netherlands

The two projects once again united because multiple forks are proved to be
inefficient and unwieldy.   As long as the license terms for free software
are met and there is compatibility, I am pleased. 

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Martin Jambor]

Hi Nathan,

On Wed, Apr 14 2021, Nathan Sidwell wrote:
> Do we have a policy about removing list subscribers that send abusive or 
> other toxic emails?  do we have a code of conduct?  Searching the wiki 
> or website finds nothing.  The mission statement mentions nothing.

I think that (most?) people have already figured out that messages from
unfamiliar senders on certain topics have to be ignored.  It is much
easier than any moderation, which would be ugly work (someone would have
to read the often horrible stuff).

I think that you only "associate" with trolls if you feed them.  I have
recently made that mistake on this list once and will not repeat it.

Martin


P.S.: For what it is worth, I would love us to disassociate from FSF as
much as possible for reasons that I swear have nothing to do with
politics of US or any other country.

Re: GCC association with the FSF

[Toon Moene]

On 4/14/21 6:18 PM, Jeff Law via Gcc wrote:


On 4/14/2021 6:08 AM, Richard Biener via Gcc wrote:


On April 14, 2021 12:19:16 PM GMT+02:00, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc 
 wrote:



N.B. Jeff is no longer @redhat.com so I've changed the CC



On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 11:03, Thomas Koenig 
wrote:



- All gfortran developers move to the new branch.  This will not
    happen, I can guarantee you that.



This is the part I'm curious about (the rest is obvious, it follows

>from there being finite resources and the nature of any fork). But I'm

not going to press for reasons.


Note the only viable fork will be on the current hosting (which isn't 
FSF controlled) with the downside of eventually losing the gcc.gnu.org 
DNS and thus a need to "switch" to a sourceware.org name.


I strongly suspect you're right here.  Ultimately if one fork reaches 
critical mass, then it survives and the other dies.  That's a function 
of the developer community.   Right now I don't see the nightmare 
scenario of both forks being viable playing out -- however I'm more 
concerned now than I was before due Thomas's comments.


When plans for the EGCS were underway, and the (then) Fortran supporters 
were into the plans, it scared the hell out of me, because it was 
completely unclear to me where it would end.


But in the end: I am a supporter of Free Software, not a organization, 
or a person, but *developers* who support Free Software.


That's what got me to go for the fork of EGCS - and I have not been 
disappointed.


--
Toon Moene - e-mail: t...@moene.org - phone: +31 346 214290
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG  Maartensdijk, The Netherlands

Re: GCC association with the FSF

[Jeff Law via Gcc]

On 4/14/2021 6:08 AM, Richard Biener via Gcc wrote:

On April 14, 2021 12:19:16 PM GMT+02:00, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc 
 wrote:

N.B. Jeff is no longer @redhat.com so I've changed the CC

On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 11:03, Thomas Koenig 
wrote:

- All gfortran developers move to the new branch.  This will not
happen, I can guarantee you that.

This is the part I'm curious about (the rest is obvious, it follows

>from there being finite resources and the nature of any fork). But I'm

not going to press for reasons.

Note the only viable fork will be on the current hosting (which isn't FSF controlled) 
with the downside of eventually losing the gcc.gnu.org DNS and thus a need to 
"switch" to a sourceware.org name.
I strongly suspect you're right here.  Ultimately if one fork reaches 
critical mass, then it survives and the other dies.  That's a function 
of the developer community.   Right now I don't see the nightmare 
scenario of both forks being viable playing out -- however I'm more 
concerned now than I was before due Thomas's comments.





Given there would be actual work involved on the FSF side to keep a "fork" with 
the exact same setup (and thus transparent with existing setups) I don't see it keeping 
live (but I see somebody populating savannah with sources).


Absolutely.  I could even see a small community continuing to push the 
FSF fork for a while until it becomes abundantly clear that only one 
fork is long term viable.  That's what happened with EGCS -- the 
majority of the developer community went with the EGCS fork with a small 
community staying on the FSF fork.  Eventually it became clear that EGCS 
had much broader developer support and the FSF fork ultimately withered 
away.



Jeff

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Jeff Law via Gcc]

On 4/14/2021 8:08 AM, Nathan Sidwell wrote:

On 4/14/21 9:18 AM, Eric S. Raymond wrote:

Nathan Sidwell :
Do we have a policy about removing list subscribers that send 
abusive or
other toxic emails?  do we have a code of conduct?  Searching the 
wiki or

website finds nothing.  The mission statement mentions nothing.


I'm not a GCC insider, but I know a few things about the social
dynamics of voluntarist subcultures. You might recall I wrote a book
about that once.

The choice to have a policy for ejecting jerks has serious costs.
One of those costs is the kind of rancorous dispute that has been
burning like a brushfire on this list the last few weeks. Another,
particularly serious for hackers - is that such a policy is hostile to
autists and others who have poor interaction skills but can ship good
code.  This is a significant percentage of your current and future
potential contributors, enough that excluding them is a real problem.

Most seriously: the rules, whatever they are, will be gamed by people
whose objectives are not "ship useful software". You will be fortunate
if the gamers' objectives are as relatively innocuous as "gain points
in monkey status competition by beating up funny-colored monkeys";
there are much worse cases that have been known to crash even projects
with nearly as much history and social inertia as this one.

Compared to these costs, the overhead of tolerating a few jerks and
assholes is pretty much trivial.  That's hard to see right now because
the jerks are visible and the costs of formal policing are
hypothetical, but I strongly advise you against going down the Code of
Conduct route regardless of how fashionable that looks right now.  I
have forty years of observer-participant anthropology in intentional
online communities, beginning with the disintegration of the USENET
cabal back in the 1980s, telling me that will not end well.

You're better off with an informal system of moderator fiat and
*without* rules that beg to become a subject of dispute and
manipulation. A strong norm about off-list behavior and politics being
out of bounds here is also helpful.

You face a choice between being a community that is about shipping code
and one that is embroiled in perpetual controversy over who gets to
play here and on what terms.  Choose wisely.



I'd just like to eject the jerks, because they make the place 
unwelcoming.  I wouldn't associate with them in physical space, I 
don't want to associate with them here.  And yes, I fully realize 
there are other ways I can choose to not associate with them here.


We've generally avoided kicking folks off the lists -- it's been done 
once or twice when physical violence with threatened, but that's about 
it (aside from spammers).  I don't think we want to get too deep into 
moderation and the like -- IMHO it should be an extremely rare event.  
As much as I disagree with some of the comments that have been made I 
don't think they've risen to the level of wanting/needing to ban those 
individuals from posting.


Jeff

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Christopher Dimech via Gcc]

> Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 at 2:08 AM
> From: "Nathan Sidwell" 
> To: e...@thyrsus.com
> Cc: "gcc@gcc.gnu.org" 
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> On 4/14/21 9:18 AM, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> > Nathan Sidwell :
> >> Do we have a policy about removing list subscribers that send abusive or
> >> other toxic emails?  do we have a code of conduct?  Searching the wiki or
> >> website finds nothing.  The mission statement mentions nothing.
> >
> > I'm not a GCC insider, but I know a few things about the social
> > dynamics of voluntarist subcultures. You might recall I wrote a book
> > about that once.
> >
> > The choice to have a policy for ejecting jerks has serious costs.
> > One of those costs is the kind of rancorous dispute that has been
> > burning like a brushfire on this list the last few weeks.  Another,
> > particularly serious for hackers - is that such a policy is hostile to
> > autists and others who have poor interaction skills but can ship good
> > code.  This is a significant percentage of your current and future
> > potential contributors, enough that excluding them is a real problem.
> >
> > Most seriously: the rules, whatever they are, will be gamed by people
> > whose objectives are not "ship useful software". You will be fortunate
> > if the gamers' objectives are as relatively innocuous as "gain points
> > in monkey status competition by beating up funny-colored monkeys";
> > there are much worse cases that have been known to crash even projects
> > with nearly as much history and social inertia as this one.
> >
> > Compared to these costs, the overhead of tolerating a few jerks and
> > assholes is pretty much trivial.  That's hard to see right now because
> > the jerks are visible and the costs of formal policing are
> > hypothetical, but I strongly advise you against going down the Code of
> > Conduct route regardless of how fashionable that looks right now.  I
> > have forty years of observer-participant anthropology in intentional
> > online communities, beginning with the disintegration of the USENET
> > cabal back in the 1980s, telling me that will not end well.
> >
> > You're better off with an informal system of moderator fiat and
> > *without* rules that beg to become a subject of dispute and
> > manipulation. A strong norm about off-list behavior and politics being
> > out of bounds here is also helpful.
> >
> > You face a choice between being a community that is about shipping code
> > and one that is embroiled in perpetual controversy over who gets to
> > play here and on what terms.  Choose wisely.
> >
>
> I'd just like to eject the jerks, because they make the place
> unwelcoming.  I wouldn't associate with them in physical space, I don't
> want to associate with them here.  And yes, I fully realize there are
> other ways I can choose to not associate with them here.
>
> nathan
>
> --
> Nathan Sidwell
>

Everybody knew what you wanted to do with that post from the beginning.
Eradication.  Glad you said it.

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Didier Kryn]

Le 14/04/2021 à 16:49, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc a écrit :
> On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 15:39, Thomas Koenig wrote:
>> On 14.04.21 15:18, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
>>> A strong norm about off-list behavior and politics being
>>> out of bounds here is also helpful.
>> That would have banned the whole discussion about the potential
>> fork from the start.
> No, because once again, I raised the topic of a fork because I do not
> feel that association with GNU or FSF benefits the GCC project. I did
> not say "we have to cancel them because I don't like their politics"
> (as it happens, I do like their politics, which is why I've spent two
> decades writing copyleft code for GCC, I just think they have failed
> to evolve and are sadly irrelevant today).
 

    Well,  /I just think they have failed to evolve and are sadly
irrelevant today/  boils down to  /They have again elected RMS./ The
word  /today/  sounds like a reference to the  /modern standards/  I
have read before on the subject. (~:

--     Didier

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Frosku]

On Wed Apr 14, 2021 at 12:18 PM BST, Richard Kenner via Gcc wrote:
> > The choice to /not/ have a policy for ejecting jerks has serious costs. 
> > One of those costs is the kind of rancorous dispute that has been
> > burning like a brushfire on this list the last few weeks.
>
> Although I agree with the sentiment, there's a real risk that if we
> were heading in that direction, we'd be replacing part of that
> rancorous dispute with another rancorous dispute, this time about
> whether to eject people.

And after that, an ongoing rancorous debate about who to eject, which
was ESR's premise: a project which decides its purpose is to separate
from wrongthinkers is naturally going to waste a lot of valuable time
and effort arguing about what counts as wrongthink. Time and effort
which could better be spent developing free software.

>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Eric S. Raymond]

Nathan Sidwell :
> The choice to /not/ have a policy for ejecting jerks has serious costs. One
> of those costs is the kind of rancorous dispute that has been
> burning like a brushfire on this list the last few weeks.

The situation isn't that symmetrical.  The brushfire didn't happen when it
was a norm here that off-list behavior was not the list's business.  It
only came about when some people decided that norm should no longer apply.

I'm not judging RMS's behavior (or anyone else's) one way or
another. I am simply pointing out that there is a Schelling point in
possible community norms that is well expressed as "you shall judge by
the code alone".  This list is not full of contention from affirming
that norm, but from some peoples' attempt to repudiate it.

(For those of you unfamilar with the concept, a Schelling point is
one of natural equilibrium in a two- or molti-player game, such that
when you move away from it all parties' decision costs go way up.)
-- 
http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Richard Kenner via Gcc]

> The choice to /not/ have a policy for ejecting jerks has serious costs. 
> One of those costs is the kind of rancorous dispute that has been
> burning like a brushfire on this list the last few weeks.

Although I agree with the sentiment, there's a real risk that if we
were heading in that direction, we'd be replacing part of that
rancorous dispute with another rancorous dispute, this time about
whether to eject people.

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Frosku]

On Wed Apr 14, 2021 at 3:57 PM BST, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 15:49, Jonathan Wakely wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 15:39, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> > >
> > > On 14.04.21 15:18, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> > > > A strong norm about off-list behavior and politics being
> > > > out of bounds here is also helpful.
> > >
> > > That would have banned the whole discussion about the potential
> > > fork from the start.
> >
> > No, because once again, I raised the topic of a fork because I do not
> > feel that association with GNU or FSF benefits the GCC project. I did
> > not say "we have to cancel them because I don't like their politics"
> > (as it happens, I do like their politics, which is why I've spent two
> > decades writing copyleft code for GCC, I just think they have failed
> > to evolve and are sadly irrelevant today).
>
> And "the leader of the project had some good ideas but has terrible
> leadership skills" is also not political. It's a valid criticism of a
> project that we are nominally supposed to be part of.
>
> I don't have more "technical" reason because GNU isn't a "technical"
> project, it's a political/philosophical one. The FSF even more so.
>
> And I don't need anybody's consensus to create a fork. Somebody
> doesn't understand how free software works.

Nobody said that you need a consensus to create a fork. The intent of
making a proposal to a community mailing list, however, is generally to
persuade and/or measure public opinion (i.e. gather consensus). In this
case, creating a fork risks splitting the community and the contributors
between two projects -- maybe that's a good thing, though apparently not
for the gfortran developer who's saying it would kill his project.

If RMS's leadership has had a tangible and measurable negative effect on
GCC, that would probably have been the place to open your argument, not
with media hit pieces and a mostly-debunked letter which have nothing to
do with the project.

Turning high-level code into machine code isn't political, it's technical.
The only political aspect is free software, which unless something has
massively changed in the last few days, RMS & FSF both support.

>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Thomas Koenig via Gcc]

On 14.04.21 16:49, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc wrote:

On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 15:39, Thomas Koenig wrote:


On 14.04.21 15:18, Eric S. Raymond wrote:

A strong norm about off-list behavior and politics being
out of bounds here is also helpful.


That would have banned the whole discussion about the potential
fork from the start.


No, because once again, I raised the topic of a fork because I do not
feel that association with GNU or FSF benefits the GCC project.


It sure feels like the proponents of the fork want it for political
reasons, and in this case I mean political reasons which have nothing
to do with open source and everything to do with gender, identity,
race and whatnot politics, more specifically US politics.

If I am mistaken, then the best course of action would be to now focus
on getting gcc 11 out of the door and revisit the whole thing in a few
months, when a rational discussion on the merits and demerits of moving
the project away from the FSF has become possible again.

If I am not mistaken - well, if a fork succeeds in drawing away
a significant amount of developers, the only benefactor will
be LLVM, which may or may not what you want, or are willing
to tolerate in pursuit of your other aims.

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Eric S. Raymond]

Nathan Sidwell :
> I'd just like to eject the jerks, because they make the place unwelcoming.

I understand the impulse.  The problem is that there is actually a value
conflict between being "welcoming" in that sense and the actual purpose
of this list, which is to ship code.

It's a much more direct conflict in the hacker culture than elsewhere
because so many potential contributors are high-functioning autists.
That makes the downstream consequences of politeness enforcement a lot more
damaging to the project's ability to ship code than they would otherwise be.

There is a hypothetical world, of course, in which jerks and assholes
are such a huge problem that they interfere measurably with shipping
code.  But contemplete the amount of angry verbiage on this list
recently from people who could have been using their fingers typing
code, and I think it's clear that the amount of social friction
oroduced by attempts to eject the jerks will be far higher than if
you simply continued to tolerate them.
-- 
http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Frosku]

On Wed Apr 14, 2021 at 3:54 PM BST, Nathan Sidwell wrote:
> On 4/14/21 10:23 AM, Richard Kenner wrote:
> >> The choice to have a policy for ejecting jerks has serious costs.
> >> One of those costs is the kind of rancorous dispute that has been
> >> burning like a brushfire on this list the last few weeks.
> > 
> > I agree.  Look at the huge ongoing debate about Section 230 in the US
> > that's been going on for at least months.  This is something that seems
> > like it ought to have a simple solution, but it doesn't.
> > 
>
> The choice to /not/ have a policy for ejecting jerks has serious costs.
> One of those costs is the kind of rancorous dispute that has been
> burning like a brushfire on this list the last few weeks.
>
>
> --
> Nathan Sidwell

The implication of this being what? That you would have just removed
everyone who disagreed with you from the debate for being 'jerks'? There is
a way to avoid this kind of "rancorous dispute" -- not proposing and then
doubling down on widely unpopular and technically meritless ideas.

>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Jonathan Wakely via Gcc]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 15:49, Jonathan Wakely wrote:
>
> On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 15:39, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> >
> > On 14.04.21 15:18, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> > > A strong norm about off-list behavior and politics being
> > > out of bounds here is also helpful.
> >
> > That would have banned the whole discussion about the potential
> > fork from the start.
>
> No, because once again, I raised the topic of a fork because I do not
> feel that association with GNU or FSF benefits the GCC project. I did
> not say "we have to cancel them because I don't like their politics"
> (as it happens, I do like their politics, which is why I've spent two
> decades writing copyleft code for GCC, I just think they have failed
> to evolve and are sadly irrelevant today).

And "the leader of the project had some good ideas but has terrible
leadership skills" is also not political. It's a valid criticism of a
project that we are nominally supposed to be part of.

I don't have more "technical" reason because GNU isn't a "technical"
project, it's a political/philosophical one. The FSF even more so.

And I don't need anybody's consensus to create a fork. Somebody
doesn't understand how free software works.

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Nathan Sidwell]

On 4/14/21 10:23 AM, Richard Kenner wrote:

The choice to have a policy for ejecting jerks has serious costs.
One of those costs is the kind of rancorous dispute that has been
burning like a brushfire on this list the last few weeks.


I agree.  Look at the huge ongoing debate about Section 230 in the US
that's been going on for at least months.  This is something that seems
like it ought to have a simple solution, but it doesn't.



The choice to /not/ have a policy for ejecting jerks has serious costs. 
One of those costs is the kind of rancorous dispute that has been

burning like a brushfire on this list the last few weeks.


--
Nathan Sidwell

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Jonathan Wakely via Gcc]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 15:39, Thomas Koenig wrote:
>
> On 14.04.21 15:18, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> > A strong norm about off-list behavior and politics being
> > out of bounds here is also helpful.
>
> That would have banned the whole discussion about the potential
> fork from the start.

No, because once again, I raised the topic of a fork because I do not
feel that association with GNU or FSF benefits the GCC project. I did
not say "we have to cancel them because I don't like their politics"
(as it happens, I do like their politics, which is why I've spent two
decades writing copyleft code for GCC, I just think they have failed
to evolve and are sadly irrelevant today).

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Richard Kenner via Gcc]

> The choice to have a policy for ejecting jerks has serious costs.
> One of those costs is the kind of rancorous dispute that has been
> burning like a brushfire on this list the last few weeks.

I agree.  Look at the huge ongoing debate about Section 230 in the US
that's been going on for at least months.  This is something that seems
like it ought to have a simple solution, but it doesn't.

Re: On rms controversy

[pawel k. via Gcc]

Ok i might have to retract on some of those i unnevessaily got personal. F
course i didnt intend to put not your words into your mouth.

As on your politics for sure it matters though as snowflakes got so
diverged off into murky partition of world where they no longer understand
basic wording and respect most basic values that used to be bipartisan so
to say. I hope this one reached the target and rightly so. Read parasitic
mind if you wanna get less stupid than me on leftism/rightism spectrum.
On this one: sorry but not sorry.

Regards,
Kunio

śr., 14.04.2021, 16:17 użytkownik Jonathan Wakely 
napisał:

> On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 15:10, pawel k. wrote:
> >
> > Thank You Jonathan for your very valuable opinions. I was sure the more
> far lefty you are the less you will understand me, if my assumptions about
> your worldviews are correct. If not apologies. Ill review your previous
> stance on rms mess and explain.
>
> I'm not sure what my politics have to do with this.
>
>
> > Ill reply with a quote from one of my tee shirts:
> >
> > "Your story has truly touched my heart. Never before have i met a person
> with as many problems as you. Now [edited] go away and stop bothering me."
> >
> > Aka i value your opinion but instead of critique you say "youre stupid"
>
> No, I said your email made weak arguments. I did not make any
> statement about you personally, only your email.
>
>
> > awaiting for me to say "no, you are stupid" which i wont do as im not as
> low clown as kindly you. Enough toying with unlogical clown of you as you
> were kind to call me.
>
> I described the past few weeks as "this whole clownshow". That is also
> not a personal statement about you.
>
> Get offended if you want, but don't put words in my mouth.
>

Re: On rms controversy

[Jonathan Wakely via Gcc]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 15:10, pawel k. wrote:
>
> Thank You Jonathan for your very valuable opinions. I was sure the more far 
> lefty you are the less you will understand me, if my assumptions about your 
> worldviews are correct. If not apologies. Ill review your previous stance on 
> rms mess and explain.

I'm not sure what my politics have to do with this.


> Ill reply with a quote from one of my tee shirts:
>
> "Your story has truly touched my heart. Never before have i met a person with 
> as many problems as you. Now [edited] go away and stop bothering me."
>
> Aka i value your opinion but instead of critique you say "youre stupid"

No, I said your email made weak arguments. I did not make any
statement about you personally, only your email.


> awaiting for me to say "no, you are stupid" which i wont do as im not as low 
> clown as kindly you. Enough toying with unlogical clown of you as you were 
> kind to call me.

I described the past few weeks as "this whole clownshow". That is also
not a personal statement about you.

Get offended if you want, but don't put words in my mouth.

Re: On rms controversy

[pawel k. via Gcc]

Thank You Jonathan for your very valuable opinions. I was sure the more far
lefty you are the less you will understand me, if my assumptions about your
worldviews are correct. If not apologies. Ill review your previous stance
on rms mess and explain.


Ill reply with a quote from one of my tee shirts:

"Your story has truly touched my heart. Never before have i met a person
with as many problems as you. Now [edited] go away and stop bothering me."

Aka i value your opinion but instead of critique you say "youre stupid"
awaiting for me to say "no, you are stupid" which i wont do as im not as
low clown as kindly you. Enough toying with unlogical clown of you as you
were kind to call me.

Best regards,
Kunio

Ps i share some trait with rms if that mattered to a clown in a clown show.



śr., 14.04.2021, 15:51 użytkownik Jonathan Wakely 
napisał:

> On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 13:38, David Malcolm wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, 2021-04-14 at 08:01 +0100, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc wrote:
> > > On Wed, 14 Apr 2021, 07:50 pawel k. via Gcc,  wrote:
> > >
> > >
> >
> > [...snip...]
> >
> > > Very logical argument, thanks for sharing.
> >
> > Jonathan, it's clear to me that you're being sarcastic, but it might
> > not be clear to others.  Please avoid sarcasm - it amplifies
> > misunderstanding on the internet, and it seems to me that that's
> > counterproductive when discussing a sensitive topic.
>
> For the avoidance of doubt, I was being sarcastic. I didn't think it
> was a logical argument, I thought it was one of the worst so far in
> this whole clownshow.
>
> > I disagree with much of what Pawel wrote, but this discussion has left
> > me feeling drained.  I don't have the mental energy to do a point-by-
> > point response, and I don't think it would be a productive thing to
> > post to this mailing list.
>
> Which is why I went for sarcasm instead.
>

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Nathan Sidwell]

On 4/14/21 9:18 AM, Eric S. Raymond wrote:

Nathan Sidwell :

Do we have a policy about removing list subscribers that send abusive or
other toxic emails?  do we have a code of conduct?  Searching the wiki or
website finds nothing.  The mission statement mentions nothing.


I'm not a GCC insider, but I know a few things about the social
dynamics of voluntarist subcultures. You might recall I wrote a book
about that once.

The choice to have a policy for ejecting jerks has serious costs.
One of those costs is the kind of rancorous dispute that has been
burning like a brushfire on this list the last few weeks.  Another,
particularly serious for hackers - is that such a policy is hostile to
autists and others who have poor interaction skills but can ship good
code.  This is a significant percentage of your current and future
potential contributors, enough that excluding them is a real problem.

Most seriously: the rules, whatever they are, will be gamed by people
whose objectives are not "ship useful software". You will be fortunate
if the gamers' objectives are as relatively innocuous as "gain points
in monkey status competition by beating up funny-colored monkeys";
there are much worse cases that have been known to crash even projects
with nearly as much history and social inertia as this one.

Compared to these costs, the overhead of tolerating a few jerks and
assholes is pretty much trivial.  That's hard to see right now because
the jerks are visible and the costs of formal policing are
hypothetical, but I strongly advise you against going down the Code of
Conduct route regardless of how fashionable that looks right now.  I
have forty years of observer-participant anthropology in intentional
online communities, beginning with the disintegration of the USENET
cabal back in the 1980s, telling me that will not end well.

You're better off with an informal system of moderator fiat and
*without* rules that beg to become a subject of dispute and
manipulation. A strong norm about off-list behavior and politics being
out of bounds here is also helpful.

You face a choice between being a community that is about shipping code
and one that is embroiled in perpetual controversy over who gets to
play here and on what terms.  Choose wisely.



I'd just like to eject the jerks, because they make the place 
unwelcoming.  I wouldn't associate with them in physical space, I don't 
want to associate with them here.  And yes, I fully realize there are 
other ways I can choose to not associate with them here.


nathan

--
Nathan Sidwell

Re: On rms controversy

[Jonathan Wakely via Gcc]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 13:38, David Malcolm wrote:
>
> On Wed, 2021-04-14 at 08:01 +0100, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc wrote:
> > On Wed, 14 Apr 2021, 07:50 pawel k. via Gcc,  wrote:
> >
> >
>
> [...snip...]
>
> > Very logical argument, thanks for sharing.
>
> Jonathan, it's clear to me that you're being sarcastic, but it might
> not be clear to others.  Please avoid sarcasm - it amplifies
> misunderstanding on the internet, and it seems to me that that's
> counterproductive when discussing a sensitive topic.

For the avoidance of doubt, I was being sarcastic. I didn't think it
was a logical argument, I thought it was one of the worst so far in
this whole clownshow.

> I disagree with much of what Pawel wrote, but this discussion has left
> me feeling drained.  I don't have the mental energy to do a point-by-
> point response, and I don't think it would be a productive thing to
> post to this mailing list.

Which is why I went for sarcasm instead.

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Frosku]

On Wed Apr 14, 2021 at 2:28 PM BST, Thomas Koenig via Gcc wrote:
> On 14.04.21 15:18, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> > A strong norm about off-list behavior and politics being
> > out of bounds here is also helpful.
>
> That would have banned the whole discussion about the potential
> fork from the start.

It's quite clear from the discussion here that there is no consensus
to fork GCC. Doing so anyway is clearly against community interest
and serves only the egos of those proposing the fork. Unless there is
a *technical* reason to sever ties with the GNU project, it shouldn't
be done.

>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Frosku]

On Wed Apr 14, 2021 at 2:28 PM BST, Thomas Koenig via Gcc wrote:
> On 14.04.21 15:18, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> > A strong norm about off-list behavior and politics being
> > out of bounds here is also helpful.
>
> That would have banned the whole discussion about the potential
> fork from the start.

Given that the whole discussion seems to have been purposed entirely
to calculate a way for certain GCC contributors to virtue signal
their disapproval to the founder of the project's (debunked) bad
behaviors, perhaps that would have been a good thing.

Unfortunately, I think ESR's suggestion was merely that people
shouldn't be banned for off-list behavior or politics (which also
would have prevented RMS from being removed from the SC).

Perhaps the best lesson to take is that allowing a mailing list
which is supposed to be for technical discussion to be turned into
a space for virtue signalling and political gatekeeping isn't ideal.

>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Thomas Koenig via Gcc]

On 14.04.21 15:18, Eric S. Raymond wrote:

A strong norm about off-list behavior and politics being
out of bounds here is also helpful.


That would have banned the whole discussion about the potential
fork from the start.

Re: removing toxic emailers

[Eric S. Raymond]

Nathan Sidwell :
> Do we have a policy about removing list subscribers that send abusive or
> other toxic emails?  do we have a code of conduct?  Searching the wiki or
> website finds nothing.  The mission statement mentions nothing.

I'm not a GCC insider, but I know a few things about the social
dynamics of voluntarist subcultures. You might recall I wrote a book
about that once.

The choice to have a policy for ejecting jerks has serious costs.
One of those costs is the kind of rancorous dispute that has been
burning like a brushfire on this list the last few weeks.  Another,
particularly serious for hackers - is that such a policy is hostile to
autists and others who have poor interaction skills but can ship good
code.  This is a significant percentage of your current and future
potential contributors, enough that excluding them is a real problem.

Most seriously: the rules, whatever they are, will be gamed by people
whose objectives are not "ship useful software". You will be fortunate
if the gamers' objectives are as relatively innocuous as "gain points
in monkey status competition by beating up funny-colored monkeys";
there are much worse cases that have been known to crash even projects
with nearly as much history and social inertia as this one.

Compared to these costs, the overhead of tolerating a few jerks and
assholes is pretty much trivial.  That's hard to see right now because
the jerks are visible and the costs of formal policing are
hypothetical, but I strongly advise you against going down the Code of
Conduct route regardless of how fashionable that looks right now.  I
have forty years of observer-participant anthropology in intentional
online communities, beginning with the disintegration of the USENET
cabal back in the 1980s, telling me that will not end well.

You're better off with an informal system of moderator fiat and
*without* rules that beg to become a subject of dispute and
manipulation. A strong norm about off-list behavior and politics being
out of bounds here is also helpful.

You face a choice between being a community that is about shipping code
and one that is embroiled in perpetual controversy over who gets to
play here and on what terms.  Choose wisely.
-- 
http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond

Re: On rms controversy

[David Malcolm via Gcc]

On Wed, 2021-04-14 at 08:01 +0100, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Apr 2021, 07:50 pawel k. via Gcc,  wrote:
> 
> 

[...snip...]

> Very logical argument, thanks for sharing.

Jonathan, it's clear to me that you're being sarcastic, but it might
not be clear to others.  Please avoid sarcasm - it amplifies
misunderstanding on the internet, and it seems to me that that's
counterproductive when discussing a sensitive topic.

I disagree with much of what Pawel wrote, but this discussion has left
me feeling drained.  I don't have the mental energy to do a point-by-
point response, and I don't think it would be a productive thing to
post to this mailing list.

We all care about GCC, and we're all human.

Dave

removing toxic emailers

[Nathan Sidwell]

Do we have a policy about removing list subscribers that send abusive or 
other toxic emails?  do we have a code of conduct?  Searching the wiki 
or website finds nothing.  The mission statement mentions nothing.


nathan
--
Nathan Sidwell

Re: GCC association with the FSF

[Richard Biener via Gcc]

On April 14, 2021 12:19:16 PM GMT+02:00, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc 
 wrote:
>N.B. Jeff is no longer @redhat.com so I've changed the CC
>
>On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 11:03, Thomas Koenig 
>wrote:
>> - All gfortran developers move to the new branch.  This will not
>>happen, I can guarantee you that.
>
>This is the part I'm curious about (the rest is obvious, it follows
>from there being finite resources and the nature of any fork). But I'm
>not going to press for reasons.

Note the only viable fork will be on the current hosting (which isn't FSF 
controlled) with the downside of eventually losing the gcc.gnu.org DNS and thus 
a need to "switch" to a sourceware.org name. 

Given there would be actual work involved on the FSF side to keep a "fork" with 
the exact same setup (and thus transparent with existing setups) I don't see it 
keeping live (but I see somebody populating savannah with sources). 

Richard. 

Richard. 

Re: GCC association with the FSF

[Jonathan Wakely via Gcc]

N.B. Jeff is no longer @redhat.com so I've changed the CC

On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 11:03, Thomas Koenig  wrote:
> - All gfortran developers move to the new branch.  This will not
>happen, I can guarantee you that.

This is the part I'm curious about (the rest is obvious, it follows
from there being finite resources and the nature of any fork). But I'm
not going to press for reasons.

Re: GCC association with the FSF

[Thomas Koenig via Gcc]

On 14.04.21 09:57, Jonathan Wakely wrote:

On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 08:46, Thomas Koenig via Gcc  wrote:

There is no discussion at the moment. Most people on the fortran
mailing list do not follow gcc.  I know of at least two contributors
(myself incluced) who would in all probability stop contributing
in that case.


Do you mind if I ask why?

(I totally understand that you'd rather not have this topic spill over
onto the gfortran list, so I'm only asking why you'd stop contributing
if there were two active forks of GCC, not anybody else).


Because I am not willing to donate my time and effort for a doomed
project, and if that split happens, I consider gfortran doomed
for good.

Let's look at

- All gfortran developers stay on the FSF branch.
  Bug fixing goes on as usual, the other branch picks up whatever
  it wants.  This I could see as working, sort
  of.  If the FSF and the other branch diverge in their middle
  end interface, or if the other branch decides not to port something,
  this is bit rot that the maintainers of the other branch
  would have to deal with.  So, gfortran bitrots on the new
  branch, basically.  The question then is if the FSF branch
  will still be the relevant one the future.  If not, gfortran
  will then die a lingering death.

- gfortran developers try to work on both branches, or have
  one primary branch and one other branch.  Dealing with two
  versions is far too much for our resources, we can hardly
  keep up with one.  This is a recipe for disaster, and
  I will not spend my volunteer time on this.

- Some gfortran developers decide to move to the other branch,
  cross-porting fixes if necessary.  This will also lead
  to fewer resources of a project that has already too few,
  and is not sustainable.

- All gfortran developers move to the new branch.  This will not
  happen, I can guarantee you that.

- Somebody decides that hiring a couple of professional programmers
  working full-time keeping the project alive on both sides.
  That has not happened in decades (gfortran has always been
  mostly volunteer-driven), and I consider that extremely
  unlikely.

So, let me modify my statement: It only makes sense for me to
continue working on gfortran if the branch fails.  In that case,
the maxim usually employed by pharmaceutical R&D applies:
"Fail early, fail cheap", and the cheapest way to fail is
never to start.

GCC and it's association with FSF

[Rakesh Kumar via Gcc]

Hi,
I am a long time user of GCC, and have been keenly observing the recent
thread about GCC's association with FSF. IIUC, the motivation to fork is to
change perception "at large" of GCC (and GNU Tools) being linked to RMS ?
Could that be possibly done in a less invasive way than forking ? I thought
David E's decision to remove RMS from SC was a sufficient symbolic gesture
in that regard.

While I agree with the rationale for forking, and the intent of having a
more inclusive and diverse friendly community, could GCC really afford a
fork in practice ? Or will being linked to FSF, potentially turn off
would-be contributors from under-represented backgrounds ?

Personally, I'd probably vouch for a fork, if it won't harm GCC. However,
as a user, I'd be sad to see the GCC community getting split, and I fear if
that would eventually leave the compiler biting dust.

Also, let me take this opportunity to thank all the developers for their
passion and commitment towards creating a free and production quality
compiler like GCC!  I believe GNU Tools is one of the flagship programs of
FSF, and owes its success largely to the success of GNU tools.

(If you intend to reply, please put me on CC as I am not subscribed,
thanks!)

Best Regards,
Rakesh

Re: GCC association with the FSF

[Jonathan Wakely via Gcc]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 08:46, Thomas Koenig via Gcc  wrote:
> There is no discussion at the moment. Most people on the fortran
> mailing list do not follow gcc.  I know of at least two contributors
> (myself incluced) who would in all probability stop contributing
> in that case.

Do you mind if I ask why?

(I totally understand that you'd rather not have this topic spill over
onto the gfortran list, so I'm only asking why you'd stop contributing
if there were two active forks of GCC, not anybody else).

Re: On rms controversy

[Franz Fehringer via Gcc]

Very good!

Am 14.04.2021 um 07:53 schrieb pawel k. via Gcc:

Hello,
Im multiyear gcc user on many targets. I love the project and wish it all
the best.
Im also senior c/cpp and linux sw devel with 20 years of experience.

Im observing an rms controversy from some perspective and here are my
thoughts:
-you didnt base attack on real data but allegations. Additionally falsified
ones.
-nobody asked rms whether he retracts and indeed he does on some and
clarify on others.
-part of fsf is rotten by far left mental virus parasite. See gad saads
book on the topic.
-basically rms didnt do what he was alleged he did.
-nobody gave him way to defend like in legal process.
-he is back and he should stay.
-those who attacked him baselessly and thoughtlessly should disappear in
shame and their names should be on gcc and fsf front pages linked shamelist.
-rms is heavily autistic as some may know and he might not have perfect
judgmental powers over his words.
-last but not least all far left snowflakes of you assuming guilt and
barring one from defence, please f off and f you for now.
-possibly some of you wanted to steal his project so as per above big f off
and f you.

That would be it.

Best regards,
Pawel kunio

Re: On rms controversy

[Jonathan Wakely via Gcc]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2021, 07:50 pawel k. via Gcc,  wrote:

> Hello,
> Im multiyear gcc user on many targets. I love the project and wish it all
> the best.
> Im also senior c/cpp and linux sw devel with 20 years of experience.
>
> Im observing an rms controversy from some perspective and here are my
> thoughts:
> -you didnt base attack on real data but allegations. Additionally falsified
> ones.
> -nobody asked rms whether he retracts and indeed he does on some and
> clarify on others.
> -part of fsf is rotten by far left mental virus parasite. See gad saads
> book on the topic.
> -basically rms didnt do what he was alleged he did.
> -nobody gave him way to defend like in legal process.
> -he is back and he should stay.
> -those who attacked him baselessly and thoughtlessly should disappear in
> shame and their names should be on gcc and fsf front pages linked
> shamelist.
> -rms is heavily autistic as some may know and he might not have perfect
> judgmental powers over his words.
> -last but not least all far left snowflakes of you assuming guilt and
> barring one from defence, please f off and f you for now.
> -possibly some of you wanted to steal his project so as per above big f off
> and f you.
>

Very logical argument, thanks for sharing.