Working together and gaining trust

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi Alex,

On Sun, Feb 08, 2026 at 10:47:45PM -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> On Feb  8, 2026, Mark Wielaard <mark@klomp.org> wrote:
> > On Sat, Feb 07, 2026 at 11:07:27PM -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> >> On Feb  7, 2026, "Frank Ch. Eigler" <fche@elastic.org> wrote:
> >> >> Could we possibly run it on a machine under our control?
> >> 
> >> > Who is the "us" you are talking about?
> >> 
> >> [...]
> >> Sourceware, a separate entity, seems to be doing our computing under
> >> its control, instead of our doing our computing under our control.
> 
> > Please stop this "us" versus "them".
> 
> There's no "versus" here.  It's just that there are boundaries between
> individuals, between organisms, between organizations, and those make a
> difference.

Lets break down those boundaries. Individuals can cross these
boundaries and be part of multiple communities. And one can give
another control of their computing over these boundaries.

> So, you see, if we (glibc) run something on shared rather than
> autonomous infrastructure, and we ask you (Sourceware) to make a change
> for us, and you refuse on the grounds that, for example, it's shared
> infrastructure, that's a symptom that we are not free.

But what happens in practice is that the sharing is between people in
both the (for example) glibc and binutils communities. And if you
really are unable to share we (all of us together) would split the
infrastructure in two, so that the communities both have autonomous
control.

> > instead you both are creating division by manufacturing crisis
> 
> I get where that feeling is coming from, but I don't accept that I'm
> manufacturing crisis or creating division. [...] I'm not
> manufacturing crisis either.  The crisis, namely the threat to our
> software freedom principles with the possibility of moving to a
> freedom-hostile provider, was in place when I joined the discussion.

Right. I do see that. And that upsets me to. That was clearly an
hostile threat trying to run around getting community consensus and a
break down of project governance. It is unacceptable.

But I don't think the solution is to divide people even more by trying
to define who is in and who is out of the community or place
unnecessary boundaries around them. I know it is hard with the current
break of governance. But lets fix this together. Lets make sure we
define the community and the governance/control in a way that we all
have Free Software with control over our own and/or community compute
on our joint project's servers.

Cheers,

Mark