Re: conflicts in the gnu project now affect guile

[Taylan Kammer]

Hello dear Guilers and Guixers,

I wholeheartedly agree with everything positive that has been said about
Guile and Guix.  Both are amazing projects led by amazing people, and
probably some of the most important components of GNU's future.  I've
been on a long hiatus due to political interests other than software
freedom stealing my focus, but I hope to return eventually.

Really, I cannot stress it enough how refreshing it is to see the levels
of rationality and kindness in the discussions here, when compared to
most other places on the Internet.

I also agree with the concerns regarding respect towards women (and
other political minorities) within the free software movement.  I'm
mostly fond of the Contributor Covenant that was adopted by Guix and
think that the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines can learn from it:

https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/1/4/code-of-conduct.html

There is only one worry that I have surrounding these topics.

It seems to have become rather widespread for people to conflate blunt
political disagreement with personal offense.  While I think there might
be a small list of political positions against which there should be a
zero-tolerance policy (such as neo-Nazism), I think it's otherwise
important to stress that adhering to a code of conduct does not require
a person to adopt political perspectives, philosophies, or worldviews
associated with the political minorities which the CoC intends to
protect from discrimination and harassment.  Expressions of disagreement
with such worldviews, as long as they are worded kindly even if bluntly,
should never be seen as an act of offense.  (Of course, discussions of
ideologies are generally off-topic, but they often arise anyway.)

The GNU Kind Communication Guidelines (GNU KCG) contain a positive
example of this.  The guidelines say that one should not use "wrong"
pronouns for a transgender person.  But a footnote then goes on to
clarify that one may, for instance, opt for gender neutral pronouns.
This effectively allows one to escape the situation of being "forced"
into using language corresponding to a worldview which one may not
personally agree with.

I think it's important to make an active effort to remain mostly
politically neutral like this, because otherwise I can only see the
community splintering.  Not only might some contributors ascribe to
worldviews that offend various political minorities; there is also
significant disagreement among groups which all consider themselves
liberal, progressive, left-wing, or whatever you want to call it.

As a concrete proposal for GNU and Guile, I would suggest to take the
Contributor Covenant, add a section about the principle of political
neutrality and that the rule-set is only concerned with discriminatory
and harassing language and not controlling people's worldviews, then
adopt it for all of GNU, or at the very least Guile and Guix.

(Oh and add "sex" to the list of things based on which one shall not
discriminate against or harass someone.  I proposed it to the upstream
author but apparently they don't believe that sex-based discrimination
is a real thing.)

Optionally, there might be a small list of ideologies which are
explicitly banned.  I would suggest: neo-Nazism, and endorsement of
child exploitation.  Although these two might as well go as unwritten
rules so I'm not sure if that's necessary.


Kind regards,

- Taylan


On 16.10.2019 15:14, Andy Wingo wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> In the last few weeks, a conversation among GNU maintainers that has
> been simmering for years burst into public.  For a while it resubmerged
> into private GNU lists, but now it has resurfaced to affect the Guile
> project.
> 
> Just for background information, I wrote about my thoughts here:
> 
>   https://wingolog.org/archives/2019/10/08/thoughts-on-rms-and-gnu
> 
> The summary is that, like many people in GNU, I have long treated
> Richard Stallman not as a hero, not as a leader, but rather a "missing
> stair" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair) that one has to
> route around.  This approach was never very inclusive -- if you don't
> have much experience in GNU, it's possible to not know about it, and to
> fall in the hole yourself.  On the other hand if you know of RMS but not
> Guile, you might think that Guile developers support RMS.
> 
> However, recent events made me realize this approach was not only unfair
> to newcomers, but unjust as well, as by continuing to work on GNU and
> not saying anything, I was both lending unmerited prestige to RMS,
> enabling his creepy behavior towards women, and additionally, enabling
> his apparent pedophilia-advocacy.
> 
> Regarding this latter point, I wasn't really aware that this was a view
> RMS was promoting, but I am ashamed to admit that I had heard rumors
> that Richard publically advocated sex between adults and teenagers,
> defended sexual harassers, and questioned the experience of victims of
> sexual assault, and I preferred not to listen.  Looking again, and I
> think Richard's web site speaks for itself:
> 
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20170612074722/http://stallman.org/archives/2017-mar-jun.html#26_May_2017_(Prudish_ignorantism)
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20180131020215/https://stallman.org/archives/2017-jul-oct.html#29_October_2017_(Pestering_women)
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20180104112431/https://www.stallman.org/archives/2017-nov-feb.html#27_November_2017_(Roy_Moore's_relationships)
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20180509120046/https://stallman.org/archives/2018-mar-jun.html#30_April_2018_(UN_peacekeepers_in_South_Sudan)
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20180911075211/https://www.stallman.org/archives/2018-jul-oct.html#17_July_2018_(The_bullshitter's_flirting)
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20180911075211/https://www.stallman.org/archives/2018-jul-oct.html#21_August_2018_(Age_and_attraction)
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20180924231708/https://stallman.org/archives/2018-jul-oct.html#23_September_2018_(Cody_Wilson)
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20181113161736/https://www.stallman.org/archives/2018-sep-dec.html#6_November_2018_(Sex_according_to_porn)
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20190325024048/https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jan-apr.html#14_February_2019_(Respecting_peoples_right_to_say_no)
>   
> https://www.stallman.org/archives/2019-may-aug.html#11_June_2019_(Stretching_meaning_of_terms)
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20190801201704/https://stallman.org/archives/2019-may-aug.html#12_June_2019_(Declining_sex_rates)
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20190801201704/https://stallman.org/archives/2019-may-aug.html#30_July_2019_(Al_Franken)
>   
> https://web.archive.org/web/20190903050208/https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#27_August_2019_(Me-too_frenzy)
> 
> Anyway.  So far, so GNU.  A couple weeks ago I thought it an opportune
> moment to declare publicly the views that I have long held privately:
> that I do not consider RMS to be the leader of GNU, and that GNU
> maintainers and other developers with a stake in the project should
> organize to fill the void.
> 
>                                *  *  *
> 
> I pause here to mention that you may not agree with this perspective and
> that is fine.  There are many ways that we can continue to work together
> while this discussion plays out.  Part of the purpose of this mail
> though is to make it clear that there are differences of opinion and
> that the GNU project is in flux.
> 
>                                *  *  *
> 
> Now we get to how this issue affects Guile.
> 
> Before the RMS/GNU/FSF conversation started, Mark Weaver left Guile, for
> essentially unrelated reasons.  He threatened to leave because he wished
> to be consulted before I landed mixed definitions and expressions and
> shipped them in the 2.9.4 release; I responded over email asking to talk
> about the issues; in response a week later I see that he resigned from
> maintainership and left the Guile group on Savannah.  It was truly a
> shame for Guile, as Mark is an excellent hacker and has done a lot of
> good work for Guile.
> 
> It's true also that, mixed with the sadness, I felt a modicum of relief.
> It has never been easy to work with Mark.  I could toil on Guile for
> weeks, taking time away from my family, and then wake up to receive a
> private mail excoriating me for my work.  It was also far from the first
> time he threatened to leave the project if he did not get his way.  I
> have never let the problems between Mark and me into the public sphere
> though, preferring to preserve his reputation, and it is only out of
> necessity that I do so now.
> 
> Yesterday, on internal project-wide GNU mailing lists, Mark brought up
> his personal grievances with me, arguing that the only reason I was
> ignoring RMS was because, in his opinion, RMS is the only person that
> could stop me from being Guile Dictator For Life; that I was attacking
> Richard out of some kind of hypocritical, tyrannical megalomania.
> 
> Naturally I don't think this is the case.  We all have our problems but
> this particular one isn't mine.  It is true that when I get home after a
> long day of work and take care of my family and maybe have a precious
> half-hour or hour here or there, I usually prefer to devote it to
> retiring items from my personal Guile 3.0 to-do list, rather than
> helping others; a failing, perhaps, but not a malicious one.  I always
> tried to enable Mark's work, supporting him becoming committer, then
> maintainer, then trying to keep him on board; but evidently that was not
> enough.  Fair enough; I can't please everybody.
> 
> Still, it was with surprise that I woke up this morning to a request
> from Mark to re-join the Guile project on Savannah, saying that RMS had
> appointed Mark to become co-maintainer, and that Mark assented -- "given
> recent events".
> 
> Now, Richard has no idea about Guile or how it works either technically
> or socially, and has not consulted with me as Guile maintainer, nor to
> my knowledge did he consult with Ludovic.  I don't know what to conclude
> about RMS's motivations -- is it retaliation?  And why would Mark
> assent, especially if he professes to be scandalized by autocratic
> behavior and messianic tendencies?  I can't say as I have no more
> information than this Savannah request.
> 
> It a test, perhaps?  Mark is already aware that I do not consider RMS to
> have a leadership role in the GNU project, but although this position is
> shared by others, it is not a consensus position, and I don't think it's
> Mark's position.  Of course it goes without saying that I don't consider
> this supposed appointment of Mark as co-maintainer of GNU Guile to be
> legitimate in the least, but who else will go along with it?
> 
> And what role is Mark looking for?  Are we to have commit wars or
> something?  I would certainly hope not but I can't tell.  I don't think
> the conditions exist currently for good collaboration between me and
> Mark, so I am not sure how this will play out in the future.
> 
>                                *  *  *
> 
> I guess I shouldn't be surprised that conversation about the future of
> GNU has now reached Guile, but it is still strange to find that the
> questions of "how much pedophilia advocacy is too much pedophilia
> advocacy" or "how much creepiness towards women is acceptable" should
> have any bearing on the development of an implementation of Scheme.
> But, here we are.  The differences of position are real and we need to
> see how to go forward with them.
> 
> Perhaps this moment is an opportunity, to see where the Guile community
> stands.  In that spirit I invite Guile community members to weigh in on
> the issue.  What do you think about Guile's continued relationship with
> GNU?  What about its relationship with RMS?  Finally, what would you
> like to see happen regarding the future of Guile?
> 
> Yours in free software,
> 
> Andy
>