Working together and gaining trust

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi Sid,

I genuinely believe we should try to work together by gaining trust. I
don't find your tone very useful to achieve that. We aren't enemies
deliberately trying to work against each other. We just have slightly
different priorities to work towards a common goal. Please be
respectful of others.

On Mon, Feb 16, 2026 at 08:18:04AM -0500, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
> >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.

You make it sound like we didn't like the idea of making Sourceware
independent from Red Hat or that reaching out to the SFC to setup a
proper Sourceware organisation was somehow not part of this plan. I
believe all overseers (whether they happened to work for Red Hat or
not) were initially enthousiastic about the idea to get more resources
for Sourceware. We even started making public resource estimates and
technical plans [1] [2]. The only detail some of us were worried about
was how we would make sure the community could be in control of the
assets, like new machines or contracts with payed staff. And Carlos
agreed with that worry and suggested we made sure Sourceware as
organization/community should be part of a 501(c)3 public benefit
(which is how https://www.kernel.org/nonprofit.html is also setup). So
we went with that idea, asked the SFC if they would like to help and
did a couple of months public consultation with the community (and
obviously Red Hat and the FSF) to make sure everyone was OK with that
and that it achieved those goals.

> there are organizations that cannot justify funding a group that is
> basically a couple of volunteer administrators with little
> oversight.

Which is precisely why we setup Sourceware as a Software Freedom
Conservancy member project. We now have staff that can help us buy our
own equipment, are experienced in drawing up contracts for paid
contractors or admin staff. Overseen by a Project Leadership Committee
with more than 100 years of combined experience hosting and
maintaining core toolchain and developer tool projects as Free
Software communities. We organize monthly meetups to coordinate with
all hosted projects, admins and the volunteers. Produce quarterly and
yearly progress reports. And coordinate the fundraising and all the
work the paid staff at the various organizations do to keep all
infrastructure running.

> >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.

I am not inventing, the friction is already there. The FSF has real
issues with this idea [3]. And given that the FSF is legally the
steward of the GNU Toolchain it is only professional for the LF to
discuss with the FSF if they want to take over some of that to make
sure they align on the goals.

And they aren't the only ones, other people have raised the same or
similar concerns. Lets try to address those. I hope we are still
trying to achieve community concensus. I have my own issues with the
FSF but that doesn't mean I don't take them serious and won't talk to
them. In fact I found them very cooperating. They do have paid staff
themselves which take care of various infrastructure for GNU
projects. We now help each other out where possible.

Cheers,

Mark

[1] https://inbox.sourceware.org/overseers/YpU+o8C8hyFsgtuP@wildebeest.org/
[2] https://lwn.net/Articles/898655/
[3] https://inbox.sourceware.org/f20ce996-e9c6-4b6c-856d-eec6e14af26e@fsf.org