RMS removed from the GCC Steering Committee

[Giacomo Tesio]

Thanks Kenner...

On April 4, 2021 1:49:57 PM UTC, kenner@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu wrote:
> > I'm scared by the dangerous influence that dangeours US corporations
> > and a dangerous military nation with a long history of human rights
> > violations (see Snowden's and Assange's revelations and the ongoing
> > Assange's trial) HAVE over the GCC development.
> 
> I agree that that's a concern

... at least this is a step forward. :-)

> but the point being made is that the SC is not relevant to this
> because they, as a practial matter, have almost no influence on GCC
> development.

Yet enough to slow down certain developments such as Nathan's libcody
or the plugin framework.

> GCC development is mostly influenced by those companies that pay
> people to work on GCC.  It is a fact that most of these are US
> corporations.  But the only way to change that is to encourage
> companies that are *not* in the US to contribute too.

False: it's not the only way.

You can also put trustworthy and credible observers to protect the
interests of the global Free Software movement.

Stallman serving in the Steering Committee, had such function.

So far, what I've read in these threads makes me doubt he was actually
paying attention to GCC, but if the SC workload was as light as you
say, I'm reasaured he probably was.


> > Except that the President of FSF (and Chief GNUissance himself) was
> > receiving copy of all the communications of the Steering Committee.
> 
> Do we know this as a fact?  

Ian wrote so in his response to Nathan.
https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-April/235269.html


> > You said you involved him in SC discussions.
> > You said you treated him as a member of the Steering Committee.
> 
> You're missing the point here.  The role of the SC is to act as the
> official maintainer of GCC.  The official maintainer of a GNU project
> coordinates things with the GNU project (a tautology).  RMS is indeed
> involved in those communications (which I suspect are quite rare), but
> as a representative of the GNU project, *not* of the GCC SC.

What I have to say for you to understand that I'm NOT arguing here for
RMS?

The removal of Stallman revealed a huge issue in GCC.
Maybe you can't see it. Maybe you don't want to see it.
But it's evident to any seasoned programmer outside the US.

It's like when you fix an UI glitch and you uncover a terrible
consinstency bug causing a severe data corruption that is ongoing on
your database and that the glitch was hiding.

I did not request to put back the UI glitch.

I asked to fix the Steering Committee.


Don't you want to? Fine!

Everybody can draw their conclusion.


Giacomo