GNU C Library Steering Committee - Aligning glibc terminology with gcc

Carlos O'Donell carlos@redhat.com
Thu Jun 5 18:24:53 GMT 2025


In 2012 we officially dissolved the GNU C Library steering committee
(active since 2001) with Roland posting about it here:
https://sourceware.org/legacy-ml/libc-alpha/2012-03/msg01038.html

Since 2013 we began using the term "steward" as shorthand for
glibc maintainers that had responsibilities to the GNU Project as
GNU Project maintainers.

Regardless of what we call these people, I am incredibly thankful
for them and all the developers who contribute day-in and day-out
to the project in support of our users :-)

Recently the EU CRA legislation has given specific meaning to the
term "open-source steward" and so in order to avoid any confusion
and align our terminology with the rest of the GNU Toolchain
I'm suggestion we reinstate the term "steering committee."

(1) Use the term "steering committee" to refer to the collection
     of all of the GNU Project Maintainers for glibc

     - The "libc steering committee" exists in the GNU Project
       maintainers file and Maxim and I maintain
       libc-maintainers@gnu.org with updated records, and some past
       maintainers are on the list to help answer historical
       questions (only Roland and Mark currently).

(2) Use "steering committee" instead of "steward" on the
     MAINTAINERS page: https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/MAINTAINERS

(3) No other change in the way the project operates today.

     - The intent is to make a "name only" change.

I think it's a good idea to align with the usage in gcc, and thus
the GNU Toolchain usage.

If I don't hear any objections I'll go ahead and make these changes
in July ahead of the August release of glibc 2.42.

Please feel free to provide any feedback.

-- 
Cheers,
Carlos.



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