On US corporate influence over Free Software and the GCC Steering Committee

Giacomo Tesio giacomo@tesio.it
Tue Apr 20 06:54:46 GMT 2021


Hi GCC developers,

just to further clarify why I think the current Steering Committee is highly problematic,
I'd like you to give a look at this commit
message over Linux MAINTAINERS

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net.git/commit/?id=4acd47644ef1e1c8f8f5bc40b7cf1c5b9bcbbc4e

Here the relevant excerpt (but please go chech the quotation):

"As an IBM employee, you are not allowed to use your gmail account to work in any way 
on VNIC. You are not allowed to use your personal email account as a "hobby". You 
are an IBM employee 100% of the time. 
Please remove yourself completely from the maintainers file. I grant you a 1 time 
exception on contributions to VNIC to make this change." 


This is happened yesterday (literally).

And while this is IBM, the other US corporations with affiliations in
the Steering Committee are no better: https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-April/235777.html

I can understand that some of you consider working for such corporations "a joy".
But for the rest of us, and to most people outside the US, their influence
over the leadership of GCC is a threat.
Please, do not create a hostile environment for indipendent contributors.

Please... please...
Fix the GCC Steering Committee.


Giacomo


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