1:50 p.m.
We do not yet have to have a detailed governance, but we should have a placeholder that
shows that we are serious about doing this well.
My guess is that we are passed the point of no return for the former GNU project. The
document someone pointed to about the "appointment for life" of the chief
gnuisance makes it clear that nothing will happen there: it that document was created
*after* the 2019 events. The FSF appears to be an echo chamber for its founder rather
than what we wish it were, and that is unlikely to change.
I'd like to point to a couple of resources y'all might want to consider as we
prepare our governance structure. One is an interview to Keith Packard (one of the
authors of X and author of countless other free s/w projects, committed to both software
freedom and good structures) in FLOSS Weekly:
https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly/episodes/622
he discusses the current matter, and also points out how x.org and freedesktop.org took
example from examples of good governance. He ultimately points to the Gnome foundation as
an example. (He also has cool comments on modern *technical* issues, like shared
libraries and containers, that are worth being aware of and that go beyond most
people's initial thinking of such things.)
(If anyone is interested in the history of how the Gnome foundation developed I can
forward you the emails from that time.)
The other is the delightful book by Tamim Ansary, "The Invention of Yesterday" -
one of those single-book world histories. He discusses constitutions, in the context of
the US constitution if I remember well, and has a passage that goes something like this:
Every real-world constitution has two aspects. On the one hand it's a manual for
running a country; on the other it's a treaty among all interests competing for
advantage at the moment the constitution is created. [...] Some constitutions are more
manual; some lean more toward treaty."
I like Ansary's framing of the matter. It doesn't really apply to us in any
concrete sense. But it reminds us that we have a nice angle on the "treaty among all
interests competing for advantage..." because our shared interest in software freedom
is a massive keel that unites us, and the social contract and code of conduct are well
embraced here. This allows us to craft a more straightforward "manual on how to run
the GNU assembly".
A while ago I sent out an email with some detailed thoughts on GNU structure, and was
delighted to see the tone the discussion took - I feel that we have something good here,
the kind of GNU community that we need. I liked all the
disagreements-with/clarifications-of my issues as much as the agreements :-)
The next step on the critical path seems to be:
Make sure that we have a convincing placeholder for governance, something like drafting a
list of 4 or 5 people we have asked to draft the governance structure. That way the web
page can convincingly state that we are working on that. A lot of this will depend on who
wants to volunteer a solid bit of time on GNU assembly leadership :-)
(Note that if we become a Software Freedom Conservancy project, Conservancy will require a
project leadership committee of some 3 people or more, so getting that in place will be
important if we then submit a full package.)
Other things can probably wait, but we might want to write a preliminary letter to
Conservancy. There is an evaluation committee meeting tomorrow (then one in a month) and
getting a preliminary letter in would mean that some informal conversation in the
evaluation committee would put us on Conservancy's radar.