Fosdem Summary (Re: CTI - Making a decision for glibc.)

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi All,

On Fri, Jan 30, 2026 at 02:13:57AM +0100, Zoë Kooyman via Overseers wrote:
> On 1/29/26 18:05, Karen M. Sandler wrote:
> >On 2026-01-29 10:20, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> >>I have added Karen Sandler, the SFC Director, Zoë Kooyman, the FSF
> >>Director and Ian Kelling, the FSF president, sysadmin and of course
> >>Sourceware PLC member to the CC. I'll meet them this weekend at Fosdem
> >>and they might be able to help you with some of your questions about
> >>coordinating funding for hosting to help us with making a decision for
> >>glibc.
> >
> >Yes, I would be happy to discuss this at FOSDEM.
> >
> Yes, I would be available as well.

Thanks so much for meeting with me, but especially meeting and talking
to each other at Fosdem. Which was wonderful, but also very chaotic
(in a good way!)

I had a really nice chat with Kris Borchers (added to CC) from the
OpenSSF/LF. Zoë and Kris made an appointment to discuss the situation
and what are appropriate followup steps.

I think everybody agreed that breaking off existing services from
Sourceware would be very painful and counterproductive if done for no
good reason. But that if other foundations do have the money to
provide additional mirrors of existing services, provide additional
hardware for build/CI servers or money to hire staff/contractors to
assist the community running the services that would certainly be
appreciated.

There seems to be real confusion about the necessity of setting up yet
another "foundation" to handle the funding for the community or
whether (directed funding) to hiring extra staff or contractors to
assist the community in doing more tasks was possible. As Karen
explained the existing foundations/funds can of course handle that,
even for really big corporations (which in general already have good
relationships with the existing foundations).

But there was also some criticism (even from our own fiscal sponsor)
of the Sourceware Project Leadership Committee for not being more
proactive and ambitious about publishing budgets and plans that could
use funding. So Tracy, Bradley (from the SFC) and I sat down to write
down a budget for the current running costs and as if we would hire
contractors/payed staff to fund all our plans. The Sourceware PLC will
work those out and present them to the community, OpenSSF and others
to consider.

It is unfortunate that it takes meeting in person to get some heat out
of the discussion. Various glibc developers I spoke to seemed kind of
afraid to engage in a 100+ message thread. Some said they didn't
engage because they felt there was no need for change since things
were fine and they had seen these ideas before. Since there was no
real plan for any transition, it would probably all go away anyway
(for better or worse). Some felt their voice didn't count because they
weren't paid full time to work on glibc. Some felt they (where "they"
ranged from me personally, to the corporate industrial complex) had
already ruined what little there was left of the Free Software
community around glibc. I hope I can share a little from all sides in
this discussion (hopefully without adding another 100 messages to this
already long thread). Thanks to those who talked honestly with
me. Meeting face to face it was clear people weren't really angry, but
clearly disappointed and sad about the tone on the list and at people
talking at/past each other. Lets see if we can change that.

One thing that I hadn't heard/realized before is how much people
appreciate the glibc Weekly Patch Review meetings. Even though (or
maybe precisely because?) it takes place at a fixed time during US
working hours. People really don't want to loose that. So in case it
is necessary the SFC has offered the use of their BBB server to run
such meetings to all Sourceware hosted projects (some other Sourceware
hosted projects are already using it). https://bbb.sfconservancy.org/
Please ask if you want an account to setup such meetings.

Cheers,

Mark