Working together and gaining trust

[Siddhesh Poyarekar]

On 2026-02-17 06:36, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> Hi Sid,
> 
> I genuinely believe we should try to work together by gaining trust. I

I agree a 100% that we should try to work together, but by omitting the 
parallels in the timelines you're trying to put out a narrative that the 
CTI initiative was sprung up on you after you had reached out to the SFC 
and done all of these things leading up to Cauldron 2022, which is 
simply not true.

This makes it hard for me to gain trust to the level I had 5 years ago, 
but I've worked in environments where I don't have ultimate trust in a 
person or organization's motives and I can live with having to work 
together without that implicit trust.

> 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.

I apologize if I put anything out disrespectfully, I don't mean to 
disrespect you by calling you out on what I see as misrepresentation of 
events, I'm only pointing out that you're twisting the narrative to suit 
your argument.  I don't even mean to imply that it's malicious on your 
part, it could well be a detail that you've repeatedly missed addressing 
or simply don't remember.

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

I don't deny that you didn't dislike the idea of being solely dependent 
on Red Hat for funding but again, you're sharing links that simply 
reinforce my conviction that reaching out to SFC was a reaction to 
disliking the LF IT proposal, which you were made aware of much before 
you let on in these public conversations.  It's absolutely OK if it was 
a reaction, it's fine too if you may have had reached out to SFC before 
or around the time that you got to know about the LF IT proposal.  But 
pretending that you didn't know about it until much later is 
disingenuous and doesn't invoke trust.

But you know what, it doesn't matter as far as the practical 
consequences are concerned because FWIW we've actually ended up in a 
better state where sourceware overseers have an avenue where they can 
continue to have full sysadmin control over their machines, we (the 
glibc project) has multiple avenues that it can tap into for infrastructure.

I have moved on from being upset at the Sourceware overseers playing 
politics to understanding that it all ended up being for the better of 
the ecosystem.

> 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.

That's great, like I said, I've come to realize over the years that it 
doesn't have to be SFC vs CTI and that the two independent 
infrastructure avenues is a net positive outcome.  We're still going to 
continue using sourceware for a number of services, so I hope you're 
able to tap into more funding and volunteer admins to make that viable.

>>> 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.

I'm referring to your claim of needing a signoff from the FSF; I don't 
think we need any such signoff since we satisfied their demand of not 
calling it GNU Toolchain Infrastructure.

> 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

We've had most of the prominent glibc developers and maintainers respond 
to this thread with their support, and I thank them for doing this in 
public this time because I know it can be mentally draining to be 
involved in such discussions.  We're not going to make every single 
person happy here, but we can be extra vigilant with this knowledge and 
make sure that any worries that are expressed remain unfounded.

> 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.

I think we've addressed all concerns other than the "I don't like the 
LF", which I don't think we can address.  The best we can do is invoke 
our personal currency in the community as individuals in the TAC and say 
that we will ensure that if we're made aware of anything that goes 
against the principles of our community (which implicitly includes Free 
Software principles) we will do whatever it takes to remedy that, 
including moving infrastructure out if needed.

Sid