Working together and gaining trust

[Siddhesh Poyarekar]

On 2026-02-16 05:14, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> Five years ago, when Jeff was still at Red Hat, we were genuinely
> worried about the specific relationship of the FSF and Red Hat
> [1]

Like I said earlier, the CTI efforts predate that by another 5 years. 
This had nothing to do with the RMS/FSF debacle; FSF has always found it 
hard to attract donations from companies beyond a certain point, despite 
the Working Together fund.

> So the question became how do we do infrastructure in a way that
> we can get funding to it, isnt the sole responsibility of the FSF or
> Red Hat, and do it in a way that respects the community and the Free
> Software ideals. Which is when the process of looking for a good home
> for Sourceware started where everybody, not just Red Hat and/or the
> FSF could contribute [2].

Oh come on Mark, please do not deceive yourself.  The overseers, 
including you, were made aware of the GTI project since well before 
Frank's call to support sourceware.  You reached out to the SFC after 
you learned about the GTI and did not like the idea.  I can respect that 
you didn't like the idea, but "forgetting" details that are inconvenient 
to your argument is inexcusable.

> Now, five years later, after lots of discussions on the mailinglists,
> at conferences like Cauldron and Fosdem, joining the SFC as member
> project and with the formation of a Sourceware Project Leadership
> Committee I think we have achieved that.

There is one thing we have ended up acheiving.  With sourceware forming 
its own PLC, we have multiple avenues of funding.

> I think it is more subtle than that. And also works the other way
> around. For example I talked to potential corporate sponsors that
> didn't like they would needed to become LF members before being

Please make sure you secure funding from them for Sourceware.  It's 
perfect that we turned out to have two sets of infrastructure, one to 
try things out and one to host stable core infrastructure.

> allowed to donate money. But there are also corporations that, if
> there are competing organizations that say to represent the same
> community, pick supporting a business league that puts corporate
> interests first and doesn't explicitly commit to Software Freedom or
> community interests.

That's a feeble excuse, here's another way to look at it: there are 
organizations that cannot justify funding a group that is basically a 
couple of volunteer administrators with little oversight.  However like 
I said, with CTI, Sourceware PLC and the GCC compile farm, ISTM that we 
have a wide funding net for infrastructure, core, ancillary as well as 
experimental.

> Which is why it is so important that before this CTI plan proceeds the
> FSF as the original fund raising organiation for the GNU Toolchain
> signs off on it and makes sure that a clear charter and board that
> works in the interest of the community and guarantees the money is
> spend on Free Software.

Nope, you're just inventing new governance rules now and creating 
friction where none exists.

Sid