Re: New assembly member
by Ludovic Courtès
Hi,
Mark Wielaard <mark(a)klomp.org> skribis:
> Maybe, but it is an extra process. I am not against a people page or
> something, but someone needs to update it (and what is the
> removal/expiry process? Or don't we need one?)
>
> I see you created https://web.gnu.tools/en/contribute/ which directs
> people to email social-contract(a)gnu.tools and then subscribe to this
> mailinglist. Can we just change that into joining this mailinglist?
In the “New Assembly Members” thread, we seemingly reached consensus
that to subscribe to this list, one would need to be first endorse the
Social Contract:
https://lists.gnu.tools/hyperkitty/list/assembly@lists.gnu.tools/message/...
It was suggested as a way to avoid infiltration.
Do we agree on this?
> social-contract(a)gnu.tools was a quick and dirty alias setup for the
> social contract bootstrapping process. If we are going to use it for
> real then we should make it a proper mailinglist. The simply alias may
> bounce as we just noticed.
Either way is fine with me, as long as only endorsers join the assembly
list.
Thanks,
Ludo’.
3 years, 7 months
Re: A new web site
by Ricardo Wurmus
Mark Wielaard <mark(a)klomp.org> writes:
> I am not really happy about reusing the ikiwiki git repo for the
> website. If you don't mind I would like to make it into its own git
> repo so the wiki and website (I assume web.gnu.tools will replace
> www.gnu.tools later this week).
Yes, a separate git repo for the web site would be good.
--
Ricardo
3 years, 7 months
New assembly member
by Marius Bakke
Hello Assembly!
I am a co-maintainer of GNU Guix, and also joined the "GNU Womb" a while
back but did not yet contribute due to a lack of time.
I'm concerned about the future of GNU and FSF, and am happy to endorse
the Social Contract proposed here.
Thanks for your work,
Marius
3 years, 7 months
practical vs. foundational aspects of the current GNU situation
by Mark Galassi
Dear GNU maintainers in the assembly,
The disarray in the FSF gets worse. The zdnet article seemed to me to be well written:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-free-software-foundations-leadership-cr...
With a lot of staff quitting, one thing that might happen is that the smaller GNU projects might have to deal with deteriorating infrastructure. Imagine what would happen if savannah and the mailing list servers were to go down. The ftp/web server that links to our projects and documentation might also not be well-maintained.
This is a practical rather than a foundational aspect of the matter at hand. The foundational matters are also very important: what happens to stewardship of the GPL and to projects that have "GPL v[23] or later as published by the FSF" in their license statement? That's for a separate thread. Same goes for fiscal sponsorship.
On the practical side:
The business of running an IT shop for GNU projects is non-trivial. Some projects have their own (like the project that kindly donates this list), but that's less ambitious than a turn-key system for many loosely connected projects.
My collaborator Allison mentioned some possible replacements for project s/w infrastructure, and I'll copy that info here just to get some talk going.
(stuff below is copied)
One quick and easy option for the infrastructure is:
https://opendev.org/
They only do infrastructure for free software, and nothing else. I
suspect the GNU maintainers will feel at home with their mission
statement "Free software needs free tools", OpenDev is dedicated to
running only free software. All the infrastructure services are free,
and it's automated so they can spin up a git repo or mailing list in
minutes, instead of a long tedious manual process. Some of the team who
runs OpenDev used to work for me, so I'm happy to make introductions if
any GNU projects want to explore this as a backup plan.
Another free infrastructure option is Oregon State University's Open
Source Lab. Again, they only do infrastructure, and wouldn't have any
involvement in project or technical governance. It's largely staffed by
student interns to the department, so not as experienced as the OpenDev
folks, and there have been some issues. But, still more reliable than
FSF's infrastructure.
https://osuosl.org/
There are some other general free software umbrella organizations that
have a little more of an infrastructure focus. Software in the Public
Interest (who host Debian and X.org) comes to mind. But, they are
primarily a fiscal umbrella rather than infrastructure, and would likely
have a more lengthy human review process. (With OpenDev, I have
literally reached out over IRC about a new project, and had a mailing
list up within an hour.)
Feel free to share this info with any GNU maintainers.
Oh, one more slightly more unusual option is a small free software
foundation that's been operating in the US since 2018, and just
established a new entity in Belgium: Nordix Association (nordix.org). It
doesn't actually host projects in the Conservancy sense, but it does
host mailing lists and git repos for projects. Fair warning, though, I
personally admin the mailing lists (all GNU Mailman), which is good in
the sense that I can set up new ones very quickly, but it does mean that
I don't have the capacity to do spam review for a large number of new
mailing lists, so they'd have to do that part themselves. Nordix doesn't
host its own git repos, so that would be GitLab. I wouldn't rate this as
their best option, but having a place they can move to quickly may end
up being important, depending on how things go.
3 years, 7 months
FSF voting members
by Andreas Enge
Hello,
following the statement by KDE e.V. on the recent events at the FSF:
https://ev.kde.org/2021/03/24/on-the-reappointment-of-rms-fsf/
where they point out the transparency of their government structure,
I was curious how the FSF is actually organised.
I thought it was obvious as for non-profits in France ("association loi
1901"), and Germany ("eingetragener Verein") that the board of directors
would be elected by all members of the organisation; in these two countries
this is required by law. Is it related to the fact that the FSF is an
"inc."?
When we created Guix Europe, our aim was to be as open, transparent and
participatory as possible: our financial accounts as well as our decisions
are documented publicly.
For the FSF, I found their bylaws at:
https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/fsf-amended-bylaws-current.pdf
It turns out that the organisation is run by the "voting members", and
this quality is passed on from generation to generation, more like a
family business than a non-profit.
Now my question: Is the list of voting members publicly known? If yes,
I would be grateful for a source.
Andreas
3 years, 7 months
