Ian,
thank you for taking the time to write this. I appreciate that you have
reached out. I do have a couple of comments though.
On 4/1/21 3:19 PM, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
On Thu, Apr 1, 2021 at 10:08 AM Nathan Sidwell <nat...@acm.org> wrote:
I think you want the steering committee to issue a statement about
RMS's behavior. I think that is approximately as likely as collecting
the GCC maintainers together to issue a statement about RMS's
behavior. It's not impossible. But it's not something anybody is
really trying to do.
And that speaks volumes. The one thing we have in the form of structure
is not trying to do that thing.
Going back to the GCC steering committee, you make several accusations
(I think that is a fair word to use here). Again I'm going to give my
own personal reactions. I'm telling the truth to the best of my
recollection, but I can't prove what I say.
That's understandable.
/You/ gave him controlling rights.
No, we didn't. The pattern of his interactions with the steering
committee, which were infrequent, was that he would ask us to do
something, and we would explain why we were not going to do that.
The appearance is that the SC did. Another event that I've now
remembered concerns powerpc floating point. My understanding is that
RMS vetoed something, and an SC member reached out to me, as if the
personal interactions of another SC member was something I could
control. If RMS had no power, that conversation need not have happened.
Sorry, I don't quite understand this one. It's not clear to me how
the committee misled anyone.
by observable behaviour, including the listing on the web page -- who
other than the SC could tell it was incorrect? (perhaps you're
associating intent with 'misled'? I'm associating 'impact')
You're quite likely right about the timing of the C++ change, but the
earlier interaction caused damage.
2) Last year, I asked for libcody to be added as a subcomponent, with
its Apachev2 license intact. AFAICT RMS was involved in that licensing
discussion, /for which I never received a response/. He was not at the
FSF then, so he could not render any FSF licensing opinion. Why was he
involved? If he was not involved, how did he learn of it in order to
ask me questions about C++ modules? I only emailed the SC and the
timing is too coincidental to draw a different conclusion.
Yes, we definitely dropped the ball on that. Sorry. If that ever
happens again I would encourage you to ping.
I checked the mailing list archives. Jeff and I expressed support for
using libcody. Nobody else said anything. Certainly RMS didn't say
anything, and it would have been astonishing if he had. But, yes, he
was CC'ed.
I've realized what happened was that I very quickly received an email
saying just 'looks good to me'. Which didn't read like an SC blessing
at all. I thought it was just personal comment. You're right, I
should have pinged, but one reason I didn't was because I was concerned
RMS would veto the whole shebang. Don't poke the sleeping bear. Fault
all round.
nathan
--
Nathan Sidwell
