Re: SC issues

[kenner at vlsi1 dot ultra dot nyu dot edu (Richard Kenner)]

    A few people who saw drafts of the message you're quoting saw an
    earlier version of that paragraph and said "Oh, you mean Kenner".  I
    didn't (specifically).  I tried to change it to avoid that confusion.
    It didn't work.  My recollection of the times before the SC,
    especially long before the SC, has RMS (an officer of the FSF) taking
    a more involved role than what you describe.

Well, RMS was indeed the GCC maintainer before me, but I'd argue that he
did not do so in his capacity as "an officer of the FSF".

    I disagree with you when you say that no maintainer is bound by those
    constraints.  

I did not say that.

    The situation with the SC is both similar and different from historic
    maintainerships.  One the one hand, in theory, if the FSF demanded
    some direction and the SC refused, they could lose their status as
    "official maintainer".  

Correct.

    Unlike most historic maintainers though, the SC and the companies who
    have employees that are part of the SC have a lot of power (by virtue
    of doing a lot of GCC-related work): it isn't at all obvious that
    there is any other practical way to choose a GCC maintainer than to
    find a person or organization that all those parties can agree to.

I disagree.  The central rule of the SC is that it's members are their
*as individuals*, not as representatives of their company.  Sure they may
well (and often will) have points of view that agree with those of their
companies, but I disagree that this means the company has "power" in the
sense you seem to imply.

    So in effect, GCC is now a commons maintained by a political process
    in which individual user's of GCC and companies not listed in the SC
    affiliations have no representation.  

I *strongly* disagree with that claim, for one thing because I don't agree
with the entire concept of "representation".

    The GNU project is itself aimed to promote an interest of the general
    public.

No.  This represents a major misunderstanding of the GNU project.  I suggest
you read some of its literature.