Hi again,

I've thought a lot about this email.

The proposed replacements look OK for GNU Boot as it's in the same
ballpark than Coreboot (or Linux) where commits still need to respect
copyright laws. With that, I see no issue with sending patches to
Guix, or pushing people to do that. I didn't ask my co-maintainer
though.

The biggest problem that remains for me is what we both meant by
having bigger impact together. This affect patch reviews.

You had Guix in mind and I had something broader: community practices
within FLOSS. And I always care about the practical to not be
manipulated (eyes on the prize).

If we end up with rules incompatible with GNU, I think it would be
cleaner to just have a GCD dedicated to leaving GNU and not bundle such
changes in a GCD about LLMs.

And most importantly even if we try to not follow GNU rules on LLMs
while staying GNU, this would lead to tensions that accumulate over
time and we'd end up not being able to use GNU's resources for
dealing with LLMs either.

So if that happens, how am I supposed to help review a commit made with
the help of an LLM without *any* guidance? I assume that GNU will
provide that guidance at some point. I am not a lawyer, and I also
admit that I didn't follow lawsuits about LLMs.

If the goal is to leave GNU, would Conservancy provide custom
guidance tailored to the rules made by Guix instead? Or do they have
rules that come with guidance?

Or should I just not review commits made with LLMs? That would
probably go against the decision taken if this GCD passes (and so also
divide people in practice).

And note that I don't agree with everything GNU or the FSF does
either. In the past I even proposed in the gnu-linux-libre mailing
list to just have the FSDG distributions self-manage the FSDG and let
the FSF deal with the fait accompli, but this was for practical
reasons as well (distributions should have a say, it looked
unmaintained, etc). But nobody was interested in doing the work.

For this GCD, I would vote to keep being compatible with GNU for
practical reasons.

Though I'll still ask GNU (in the gnu-prog-discuss mailing list) for
input on the rules chosen by Guix as they may have some feedback that
could be useful.

Also, all these tensions (between the democracy of a project and a
bigger umbrella that isn't completely democratic) is not new.

For people care about democracy / anarchy / consensus, there are
sometimes tensions between having a perfect ideological frame with a
perfect process to take decisions and so on and not getting anything
done, and the opposite (a far from ideal framework and getting things
done).

And personally I'm more for getting things done and having the rest
help that goal as much as possible, while also not making compromises
that makes the end result not better than if nothing was done.

And for the record I'm also aware that exact opposites also exist:
people who abuse power which then stands in the way of getting things
done, situations where everything fits nicely (things are done and the
decision taking process is good enough), etc.

Denis.

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