Re: conflicts in the gnu project now affect guile

[Linus Björnstam]

Hi Andy!

Your work (and amazing blog) and the wonderful work by the GUIX team is what 
brought me to guile. I don't have any I'll feelings towards Mark (I have 
appreciated his support on the mailing list many times), but I will follow 
Guile wherever you and Ludo take it, inside or outside the GNU project.

I am but a lowly hobby programmer (who found a home in scheme) soI don't think 
I can contribute much in either case, but if financial support for hosting is 
needed I can contribute to that. Apart from trying my best to help people in 
the IRC channel.


Thank you for your work.
-- 
  Linus Björnstam

On Wed, 16 Oct 2019, at 15:14, Andy Wingo wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> In the last few weeks, a conversation among GNU maintainers that has
> been simmering for years burst into public.  For a while it resubmerged
> into private GNU lists, but now it has resurfaced to affect the Guile
> project.
> 
> Just for background information, I wrote about my thoughts here:
> 
>   https://wingolog.org/archives/2019/10/08/thoughts-on-rms-and-gnu
> 
> The summary is that, like many people in GNU, I have long treated
> Richard Stallman not as a hero, not as a leader, but rather a "missing
> stair" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair) that one has to
> route around.  This approach was never very inclusive -- if you don't
> have much experience in GNU, it's possible to not know about it, and to
> fall in the hole yourself.  On the other hand if you know of RMS but not
> Guile, you might think that Guile developers support RMS.
> 
> However, recent events made me realize this approach was not only unfair
> to newcomers, but unjust as well, as by continuing to work on GNU and
> not saying anything, I was both lending unmerited prestige to RMS,
> enabling his creepy behavior towards women, and additionally, enabling
> his apparent pedophilia-advocacy.
> 
> Regarding this latter point, I wasn't really aware that this was a view
> RMS was promoting, but I am ashamed to admit that I had heard rumors
> that Richard publically advocated sex between adults and teenagers,
> defended sexual harassers, and questioned the experience of victims of
> sexual assault, and I preferred not to listen.  Looking again, and I
> think Richard's web site speaks for itself:
> 
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20170612074722/http://stallman.org/archives/2017-mar-jun.html#26_May_2017_(Prudish_ignorantism)
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20180131020215/https://stallman.org/archives/2017-jul-oct.html#29_October_2017_(Pestering_women)
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20180104112431/https://www.stallman.org/archives/2017-nov-feb.html#27_November_2017_(Roy_Moore's_relationships)
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20180509120046/https://stallman.org/archives/2018-mar-jun.html#30_April_2018_(UN_peacekeepers_in_South_Sudan)
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20180911075211/https://www.stallman.org/archives/2018-jul-oct.html#17_July_2018_(The_bullshitter's_flirting)
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20180911075211/https://www.stallman.org/archives/2018-jul-oct.html#21_August_2018_(Age_and_attraction)
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20180924231708/https://stallman.org/archives/2018-jul-oct.html#23_September_2018_(Cody_Wilson)
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20181113161736/https://www.stallman.org/archives/2018-sep-dec.html#6_November_2018_(Sex_according_to_porn)
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20190325024048/https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jan-apr.html#14_February_2019_(Respecting_peoples_right_to_say_no)
>   
> https://www.stallman.org/archives/2019-may-aug.html#11_June_2019_(Stretching_meaning_of_terms)
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20190801201704/https://stallman.org/archives/2019-may-aug.html#12_June_2019_(Declining_sex_rates)
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20190801201704/https://stallman.org/archives/2019-may-aug.html#30_July_2019_(Al_Franken)
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20190903050208/https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#27_August_2019_(Me-too_frenzy)
> 
> Anyway.  So far, so GNU.  A couple weeks ago I thought it an opportune
> moment to declare publicly the views that I have long held privately:
> that I do not consider RMS to be the leader of GNU, and that GNU
> maintainers and other developers with a stake in the project should
> organize to fill the void.
> 
>                                *  *  *
> 
> I pause here to mention that you may not agree with this perspective and
> that is fine.  There are many ways that we can continue to work together
> while this discussion plays out.  Part of the purpose of this mail
> though is to make it clear that there are differences of opinion and
> that the GNU project is in flux.
> 
>                                *  *  *
> 
> Now we get to how this issue affects Guile.
> 
> Before the RMS/GNU/FSF conversation started, Mark Weaver left Guile, for
> essentially unrelated reasons.  He threatened to leave because he wished
> to be consulted before I landed mixed definitions and expressions and
> shipped them in the 2.9.4 release; I responded over email asking to talk
> about the issues; in response a week later I see that he resigned from
> maintainership and left the Guile group on Savannah.  It was truly a
> shame for Guile, as Mark is an excellent hacker and has done a lot of
> good work for Guile.
> 
> It's true also that, mixed with the sadness, I felt a modicum of relief.
> It has never been easy to work with Mark.  I could toil on Guile for
> weeks, taking time away from my family, and then wake up to receive a
> private mail excoriating me for my work.  It was also far from the first
> time he threatened to leave the project if he did not get his way.  I
> have never let the problems between Mark and me into the public sphere
> though, preferring to preserve his reputation, and it is only out of
> necessity that I do so now.
> 
> Yesterday, on internal project-wide GNU mailing lists, Mark brought up
> his personal grievances with me, arguing that the only reason I was
> ignoring RMS was because, in his opinion, RMS is the only person that
> could stop me from being Guile Dictator For Life; that I was attacking
> Richard out of some kind of hypocritical, tyrannical megalomania.
> 
> Naturally I don't think this is the case.  We all have our problems but
> this particular one isn't mine.  It is true that when I get home after a
> long day of work and take care of my family and maybe have a precious
> half-hour or hour here or there, I usually prefer to devote it to
> retiring items from my personal Guile 3.0 to-do list, rather than
> helping others; a failing, perhaps, but not a malicious one.  I always
> tried to enable Mark's work, supporting him becoming committer, then
> maintainer, then trying to keep him on board; but evidently that was not
> enough.  Fair enough; I can't please everybody.
> 
> Still, it was with surprise that I woke up this morning to a request
> from Mark to re-join the Guile project on Savannah, saying that RMS had
> appointed Mark to become co-maintainer, and that Mark assented -- "given
> recent events".
> 
> Now, Richard has no idea about Guile or how it works either technically
> or socially, and has not consulted with me as Guile maintainer, nor to
> my knowledge did he consult with Ludovic.  I don't know what to conclude
> about RMS's motivations -- is it retaliation?  And why would Mark
> assent, especially if he professes to be scandalized by autocratic
> behavior and messianic tendencies?  I can't say as I have no more
> information than this Savannah request.
> 
> It a test, perhaps?  Mark is already aware that I do not consider RMS to
> have a leadership role in the GNU project, but although this position is
> shared by others, it is not a consensus position, and I don't think it's
> Mark's position.  Of course it goes without saying that I don't consider
> this supposed appointment of Mark as co-maintainer of GNU Guile to be
> legitimate in the least, but who else will go along with it?
> 
> And what role is Mark looking for?  Are we to have commit wars or
> something?  I would certainly hope not but I can't tell.  I don't think
> the conditions exist currently for good collaboration between me and
> Mark, so I am not sure how this will play out in the future.
> 
>                                *  *  *
> 
> I guess I shouldn't be surprised that conversation about the future of
> GNU has now reached Guile, but it is still strange to find that the
> questions of "how much pedophilia advocacy is too much pedophilia
> advocacy" or "how much creepiness towards women is acceptable" should
> have any bearing on the development of an implementation of Scheme.
> But, here we are.  The differences of position are real and we need to
> see how to go forward with them.
> 
> Perhaps this moment is an opportunity, to see where the Guile community
> stands.  In that spirit I invite Guile community members to weigh in on
> the issue.  What do you think about Guile's continued relationship with
> GNU?  What about its relationship with RMS?  Finally, what would you
> like to see happen regarding the future of Guile?
> 
> Yours in free software,
> 
> Andy
> 
>