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

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi DJ, Hi Sid,

On Mon, Feb 02, 2026 at 12:15:27PM -0500, DJ Delorie wrote:
> Siddhesh Poyarekar <siddhesh@gotplt.org> writes:
> > On 2026-02-02 09:38, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> >> 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
> >
> > There's a lot to unpack in what you've written and I can't engage with 
> > it all right now

Please don't feel like you have to, the summary was meant to be just
that. An overview of what was discussed (in a very ad-hoc matter) and
what is being worked on to see if we can resolve some disagreements
and/or confusion. Hopefully without raising the temperature of this
thread.

> , but really, please stop saying this.  The original 
> > email is quite clear in its intent, backed publicly by a significant 
> > number of GNU toolchain contributors and maintainers and you constantly 
> > misrepresenting the situation is not helping things at all.
> 
> Please assume good intent here.  I read mjw's comment as "some people
> think that since there was no real plan...", which is a perfectly valid
> thing to report on.

Yes, I really didn't mean this as saying I agree or disagree with some
of the stuff people said. It is also a bit of a sanity check for
myself. I was glad that people did give me their opinion even if they
didn't wanted to "pick sides" as DJ calls it below. They even were
(brutally) honest to tell me what I was missing (without implying that
I was wrong, just that I have my blindspots). I hope you also see
that. But I think mainly people have seen this come up every couple of
years and feel they already know how it will play out, so they don't
feel they have to repeat their opinion yet again.

> And while you say intents are clear, I'm one of the doubters.  Folks
> have been "clear on intent" for years now, but it's all behind the
> scenes and so far nothing has come of it.  From the point of view of the
> regular contributors, all we see is two sides saying "our side is better
> and we're doing things our way" but such anti-discussions do not
> generate trust and confidence that something useful will happen.

Yeah, this is the problem. People don't want to choose sides they just
want to work together. I am really sad that it feels like this. It is
as if some minor misunderstandings over how to manage (community)
funding for infrastructure like Sourceware created totally opposing
groups of people in the same community about who is "right" in the
abstract.

We now have 3 "foundations" that want to help the community out. But
it is clear there is some serious confusion/conflict on what their
organizational roles are. So I was really happy that they managed to
come together at Fosdem and agreed to have a meeting about this.
Hopefully something good comes out of that.

Cheers,

Mark