forge vs gitolite (Re: CTI - Making a decision for glibc.)

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Feb  6, 2026, Gabriel Ravier <gabravier@gmail.com> wrote:

> Wait, so what about the transition is SaaSS, then ?

TBH, I don't really know.  I was worried because nobody seemed to be
taking this possibility into account, and it looks like I was right, and
that it's already much worse than I thought.

> Or are certain (otherwise identical) services that are not SaaSS when
> done on Sourceware but are SaaSS when done on LF ?

No, the only ways to make them non-SaaSS would be for them to run under
our control, for them to be someone else's computing, or for them not to
run at all.

> Or is the fear that glibc *might* end up using SaaSS from LF in the
> future ???

Yeah, this has been largely my concern.  The intentions I heard about
made me very worried that these concerns weren't even in the radar, and
that's a sure way to make mistakes that will cost us our freedom and our
autonomy.  Since the whole thing already sounded like bait for a power
grab, there was plenty of reason to be concerned.

> I will say, I think that SaaSS and slavery aren't exactly comparable.

You may indeed argue that the losses of freedom in these two cases are
of different degrees, and I'd agree with that, but I don't think they're
of fundamentally different nature.  That makes them comparable, even if
they're not even close.

But it's not my fault that the philosophical argument is from a time in
which slavery was common practice, so that it happened to be the topic
in which the fallacy was described and called out.  If it had been
coined in present days, it would probably be about how people lose their
freedom and autonomy willingly through technology.  In both cases, the
fallacy is the same, about a supposed freedom to give up freedom that
isn't a freedom because it leads to loss of freedom.


-- 
Alexandre Oliva, happy hacker            https://blog.lx.oliva.nom.br/
Free Software Activist     FSFLA co-founder     GNU Toolchain Engineer
Learn the truth about Richard Stallman at https://stallmansupport.org/