Re: [rain1 at airmail dot cc] Delete abortion joke

[Richard Stallman <rms at gnu dot org>]

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  > The GNU C Library project is mostly a consensus-based community-driven 
  > project.

I think that's literally true, due to the word "mostly", but people
could get the wrong idea from it.  GNU Libc is not an independent
project.

The GNU C Library is a GNU package -- part of the GNU Project.  That
means I appoint official maintainers who are in charge of the work.
They are responsible to the GNU Project and specifically to me as
Chief GNUisance.  I appointed the GNU Libc maintainers in that way.

Occasionally I give specific instructions to package maintainers about
some specific point.  But that's the rare exception.  All the other
points, I leave to the package maintainers to decide -- following the
overall policies and goals of the GNU Project.

For many GNU packages, the sole maintainer does the work.  However,
maintainers can recruit other contributors.  The maintainers of GNU
Libc recruit lots of contributors, and delegate many decisions to
them; but the maintainers are responsible to the GNU Project for all
the work on the package, including what they delegate.

As long as the maintainers carry out their responsibity, on the issues
which that touches, how they decide everything else is up to them.  If
they wish to do it through consensus among the community of project
contributors, that's fine, as long as they get good results that way.

Thus, it may be well be the case that the GNU C Library is _mostly_ a
consensus-based community-driven project -- if the maintainers have
decided to delegate most decisions that way.  However, on _some_
questions they have specific responsibility to the GNU Project,
so they can't delegate the authority to you.

I exercise my authority over Glibc very rarely -- and when I have done
so, I have talked with the official maintainers.  So rarely that some
of you thought that you are entirely autonomous.  But that is not the
case.  On this particular question, I made a decision long ago and
stated it where all of you could see it.

If you would like me to change it, it is up to you to convince me
to change my decision.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.