11:02 a.m.
Hello,
Am Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 12:02:06AM -0400 schrieb Jack Hill:
I think it is confusing who should appear on the Software page. It
currently
says "Maintainers of the following projects," but there are people like me
who are on the mailing list, but aren't maintainers for whom this third step
doesn't make sense (except for the introduction bit, that seems great).
It seems promising to open up discussion of GNU to more project participants
than just the maintainers, but I can understand if that isn't really what
you were hoping for either.
on the contrary, that was exactly what we were hoping for! We just needed
to bootstrap the process, and starting with the existing maintainers seemed
like an easy and relatively logical choice. Notice that since we question
the legitimacy of a "Chief GNUisance" appointing maintainers, even the
notion of who is a maintainer needs to be bootstrapped from the status quo.
Ideally, this would also be a somehow collective decision (by a governing
council of the GNU Assembly, by the full GNU Assembly, or by the different
projects themselves; how exactly becomes a question of governance).
If you look at the last paragraph of the GNU Social Contract, it speaks
of "contributions" and "contributing to its efforts on any of the many
tasks that require work". The intention is clearly to include not only
maintainers or even programmers, but everyone who can advance our work.
The current maintainers were the easiest subset to identify, and adding
other people poses the question of governance; and in particular, how to
avoid being overrun by trolls who only claim to be participating in GNU
without actually contributing. So we need to be inclusive, but at the same
time be careful in whom we include.
Andreas