Meeting Minutes - Office Hours for CTI - 2026-08-28

Fri Sep 4 16:40:12 GMT 2026

On 2026-09-04 12:04, Zack Weinberg wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2026, at 11:27 AM, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
>> Please review past threads on this topic.
> 
> I have.
> 
>> The decision was explicitly *not* arrived at at any Cauldron
> 
> I never said the Cauldron was the venue for the off-list meetings.
> 
> All the past threads constantly refer to conversations which did not
> happen on this mailing list, and documents which were not posted to
> this mailing list.  I don't know, nor do I *care*, exactly where
> they did happen.  All I care about is that the conversations should
> have happened right here and the documents - not links - should have
> been posted here.
> 
> No decision on this topic is legitimate as long as it cannot be fully
> reviewed by asynchronous-only community members and/or external stake-
> holders by reviewing the libc-alpha mailing list archives *and nothing
> else*.  Presenting summaries of external conversations is not enough.
> This is why I said you need to start over.
> 
>> You asked to be candid and I did respond to you then, candidly.
>> Please check the archives!
> 
> I did check the archives.
> 
> In <https://sourceware.org/pipermail/libc-alpha/2026-January/174676.html>
> you said "we did the groundwork" and posted a link to
> <https://cti.coretoolchain.dev/projects/enum.html>.  *Only* text
> posted to this mailing list counts, so I did not review the linked
> document.  (To be clear, I'm being utterly inflexible about
> this because the mailing list archive is an *archive*.  We can count
> on what's in the mailing list archive staying the same for decades
> into the future.  No such guarantee exists for documents posted on
> external sites.)

I don't think that's a reasonable position to argue from.

> In <https://sourceware.org/pipermail/libc-alpha/2026-February/175196.html>,
> and <https://sourceware.org/pipermail/libc-alpha/2026-February/175232.html>
> you expressed a personal lack of trust in the "overseers" group.  It may
> well be that this is a deal-breaker for you personally -- that there's
> *nothing* the overseers could do to regain your trust -- but that's still
> a personal opinion, which the *community* must balance against other

My personal lack of trust is limited to the conversations we've been 
having about CTI because over the years I feel like the conversation has 
been unfairly manipulated to paint the community into a corner and 
giving the impression that there's no choice.  That is not the basis of 
the move proposal at all, which predates this whole thing.  I've 
mentioned in those threads the main motives I support for the move: 1) a 
lack of scalable funding to the levels that will actually support 
growing resource requirements of the GNU toolchain projects 2) lack of a 
real growth plan for the sourceware overseers volunteer group.

My personal lack of trust in the individuals is also not broad, it is 
specific to the conversations we've been having about CTI.  I routinely 
work with Mark and Frank on a day to day basis on other things, in my 
day job as well as on sourceware stuff.

Finally, the proposal at the moment is limited to moving critical 
infrastructure (git and email) to LF IT, not replace sourceware.  Since 
some of the overseers decided to continue supporting sourceware (and we 
came to terms with it) we realized that it's better to have the use of 
both infrastructures.

> people's personal lack of trust in the Linux Foundation.  (Speaking for
> myself alone, back in Jan 2026 I had no particular reason *not* to trust
> the LF and its funders, but today I very much *do not* trust them, on
> account of their embrace of the LLM bubble and its adjacent hard-right
> political advocacy groups.) You said at the bottom of that message

I don't think any commercial organization is immune from the LLM 
garbage.  I "trust" the Linux Foundation as much as I trust Red Hat (my 
employer, although that hat is strictly off when I communicate upstream) 
or even SFC or FSF, which is limited.  Over the years I've realized that 
every commercial (including non-profit) organization is more than 
willing to bend and manipulate public emotions and sometimes even facts 
to their benefit.  I've been training myself to work through that 
distrust to try and get what I think is the best result for the glibc 
community.  I do trust individuals in the community more than 
organizations (maybe because my involvement in the GNU toolchain is as 
myself and not as a Red Hat employee), to the extent to which I can 
trust their ability to act independently of the organization that they 
work for.

>> I think we've addressed all concerns other than the "I don't like the LF",
>> which I don't think we can address.
> 
> so here's the thing: Because both sourceware and LF have vocal groups who
> don't trust them, I don't think distrust of sourceware, by itself, can
> possibly produce consensus for a move *to* LF hosting.  So we have to go
> back to the "other concerns", and that's the stuff that has not actually
> been discussed on libc-alpha.  If you think it will help, I'd be willing to
> agree that we *cannot reach consensus* on which organization is a better
> long-term steward, therefore when you start the discussion over from
> scratch, that particular aspect of the issue does not need to be revisited.
> 
> Follow-ups to 2026-February/175232.html were entirely about Alexandre
> Oliva's distaste for "SaaSS", which only he seems to understand what
> that even *is*, so I'm willing to declare that aspect of the older
> conversations unproductive and not to be revisited again either.
> 
> I do not see any other replies by you to my 2026 January message in the
> archives.  If I've missed something, please point me at it.
Maybe not directly to that message of yours, but:

https://sourceware.org/pipermail/libc-alpha/2026-January/174602.html
https://sourceware.org/pipermail/libc-alpha/2026-February/174850.html
https://sourceware.org/pipermail/libc-alpha/2026-February/174852.html

I've been an admirer of your contributions to glibc since the day I 
started, so I'd never let your messages hang there without a response.

Sid