1:42 p.m.
Hi!
Ludovic Courtès <ludo(a)gnu.org> skribis:
We can start collecting questions from people who learn about the
Assembly. A common question might be “is this a fork of GNU”?
We can discuss our individual answers here, with an eye on synthesizing
them and publishing them in a blog post in a week or so.
Here’s a tentative FAQ; please comment and send patches! :-)
Ludo’.
title: Answering frequently asked questions
author: The GNU Assembly
--
Following the [Assembly
kick-off](https://web.gnu.tools/en/blog/2021/04/kicking-off-the-gnu-assembly/),
we received lots of questions and read comments that deserved answers.
This post attempt to answer the most common questions.
# Meta-question: why so much confusion around GNU/FSF?
Good question! A common belief is that GNU and the Free Software
Foundation (FSF) are the same thing. This is untrue: GNU is not a
registered non-profit, it’s an informal association among contributors,
separate from the FSF. The FSF is oblivious to technical matters in
GNU.
The FSF supports GNU development primarily in three ways: by taking care
of copyright assignments (for the few GNU packages that require it), as
a [fiscal sponsor](https://www.fsf.org/working-together/fund) for a few
projects, and by providing infrastructure like
[Savannah](https://savannah.gnu.org). For the most part, the FSF
“supports GNU development” in the same way that Microsoft “supports” the
development of projects hosted on GitHub.
# Is this a fork of GNU?
No. The notion of “fork” applies to software. The [software in
question](/en/software) is not being forked here, and the people who
write that software remain the same.
What changes is how these people organize themselves beyond their
individual projects—from a
[BDFL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life)
top-down model to a [community-oriented, consensus-based
model](https://gnu.tools/en/documents/governance/).
# Is this backed by FSF/OSI/SFC/XYZ?
No, it’s not! The Assembly was founded by GNU maintainers and
contributors and receive no support, financial or otherwise, from any
three-letter-acronym organization. Evil Corp™ isn’t helping either.
# Is this _against_ FSF/OSI/SFC/XYZ?
Nope! The Assembly is not a _reaction_ to the three-letter acronym of
your choice—it’s first and foremost a _constructive_ project.
It is at odds with the three-letter acronym you have in mind? Maybe!
But we’re interested in _building_ something more than in arguing about
what others are doing.
# You’re just a minority anyway
That’s not a question, but you’re right: about [30 people](/en/people),
mostly maintainers, endorsed the [Social
Contract](/en/documents/social-contract) and may participate in the
Assembly. The number keeps increasing but is still a fraction of the
number of contributors to GNU packages: there are 300+ GNU maintainers
“on file”, though not everyone and [not each project is
active](https://wingolog.org/archives/2020/02/09/state-of-the-gnunion-2020),
[some](https://www.gnuradio.org) [even](https://www.r-project.org)
[left](https://gnutls.org) [years](https://www.gnome.org)
[ago](https://www.gimp.org) despite being [still
listed](https://www.gnu.org/software).
Is being a minority a problem? We don’t think so: we hope our platform
appeals to many GNU contributors, but we can do great things even
without on-boarding everyone!
# Why didn’t you try to effect change from the inside?
We did! It goes back to [at least ten years
back](/en/blog/2021/04/kicking-off-the-gnu-assembly/). The project was
met with enthusiasm from some and hostility from others. That’s fine,
we don’t have to agree!
Unfortunately, most of these discussions happened behind closed doors on
private mailing lists. The Assembly is determined to have transparent
processes—this will not happen here.
# Do you support PDP-11 assembly?
Some us write assembly code (not sure about
[PDP-11](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-11) though), but all this is
about [a different kind of
“assembly”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_assembly).