RMS is at it again

[Ulrich Drepper <drepper at redhat dot com>]

A few weeks ago RMS started the next attack on me (a single mail,
followed by indirect tries to take influence, followed by another mail
today).

The essence is that he complains I am not following "GNU policies" and
therefore have to be replaced by a steering committee of which I could
be a part.  Some of you (namely Roland and Andreas S.) probably know
about this since he proposed both as other members of the committee.
In addition there was Mark Brown listed (I know somebody of this name
at IBM who would also fit in this group but I'm not sure whether it is
really him.)


Anyhow, I completely reject this.  It is not helping at all, the
opposite is true.  First, I am not aware of any essential policies I'm
violating.  The only ones are that I'm not following orders from RMS
which clearly have political intends (which is of course a sacrilege)
and possibly that I do not care about Winblowz (if the latter counts
at all).  None of this will change in any way.

I have not heard about any complains from somebody else.  This also
means I have not heard about any *technically* based complains.  I
think I can trust the people in this group enough to assume they have
not started any backroom politics since I don't think I gave reasons
for this to be necessary.

Installing a steering committee from which I (and others) have to get
blessings before major actions are taken is crippling the work even
more.  And it completely goes against anything I am standing for in
free software development: those who write the code have the say.
This does not mean others have absolutely no influence.  Roland, for
instance, has not too much time (and interest?) to work on glibc
anymore.  But still I'm taking all his input serious since he proved
in the past (and of course still nowadays) to see things straight (and
not because I consider him a friend of mine).  But this does not mean
that if I'm completely disagreeing with him (which happened a few
times) I'll back down from my decisions only because he opposes them.
Exactly this is what such a committee would lead to, and there would
be no constructive decision making process.


Since I don't see any room for maneuvers I see three ways out (those
longer on this list will remember his last attempt and find the
possibilities quite similar):

1. Nothing changes.  Probably the best for the project, worst for RMS'
   ego.


2. If people want this, I'll split from the FSF and create a "Free libc"
   or whatever.  No restrictions imposed by the FSF (which will make
   many possible contributors happy, especially on the Linux side) will
   hinder the development.

   It also means that the new code developed on this side (as opposed to
   a potentially continued FSF version) can be used by the FSF since
   assignments are missing.  It also means that the manual cannot be
   printed and sold anymore unless they find somebody to duplicate the
   work).

   This approach would only ease my (and probably your) work and will be
   attractive at least in the Linux arena.  Don't know about Hurd.


3. If #2 is not what people want, I'll step down completely.  Glibc is
   now at a point where it more or less does what I want and I can go
   back to actually using it.


I've told RMS about this and left him the choices above.  If he cannot
go with #1, either #2 or #3 are mandatory on my side.  What will
happen I do not know yet.  If you could let me know which of the
possibilities #2 or #3 you prefer (or suggest a new possibility I
missed) this would help me finishing my position and present it to
RMS.


Thanks,

[PS: This mail goes to the libc-hacker list which can be read by everybody.]

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Ulrich Drepper  \    ,-------------------'   \  Sunnyvale, CA 94089 USA
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