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

[Andrew Pinski]

On Fri, Sep 4, 2026 at 9:41 AM Siddhesh Poyarekar <siddhesh@gotplt.org> wrote:
>
> 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.

Let's ask ourselves why it is painted that way? Instead of just saying
it.  Everytime it comes up; there are 2 very volocal folks seemly to
push all or nothing. Never what can be done right now to solve issues
of sourceware; never alternatives; just move and move to LF IT. And
then let's talk about the threat of physical violance that was once
used. That alone was something which pushed folks away from the move;;
it definitely did it for me.

> 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.

I find this interesting here because you didn't think to help out on
the growth plan either; or the level of funding. Or anything instead
you right away decided it was not fixable.

>
> 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.

Except that is replacing all of sourceware.

>
> > 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.

There is also a trust issue of how a member of CTI used the threat of
physical violence once.  And that person didn't fully step away from
CTI. Mending that trust here would have been step one, 3 or more years
ago but nothing.  The other trust issue with CTI is how the proposals
come up and then there is dissent and then nothing about the proposal
is delayed or anything; just quiet until a new date is proposaled. So
the dissenter think the proposal is gone and not to bring up again.

A recent example is the proposal to move in August. There was some
dissent and then nothing until September. How can we trust this when
this kind of communitation happening like this?  I made this an issue
before and will still make this a bigger issue here again. I dissented
based on the timeline not being doable and even asked for better
dates.  But no communication there; instead there was an update to the
wiki with some TODOs and then nothing.  THere was no communication to
the list so nobody else knew was going on for the whole month of
August.
This is part of the trust issue here.

On a different subject, there has only been one dissent on moving to
the forge for glibc and that has also a person who is very vocal on
the move to using LT IT.  glibc has less than 50 commits a week.
While glibc/binutils gets over 50 commits a week and GCC gets between
150 and 200 commits a week.  GCC has started to move some reviews and
patches to the forge already. New folks are more likely to use the
forge than email in patches.
And yes this is based on actual data since I started the newsletter.

Oh and also bringing up email lists items; GCC mailing lists have
allowed html emails while glibc just banned it recently based on the
requests of overlapping folks of CTI and glibc community.  This has
pushed away some folks in the past for GCC; this is why GCC allows it
now.

>
> >> 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