Re: glibc-2.2.4 [political]

[Bruno Haible <haible at ilog dot fr>]

Hello Ulrich,

Thanks for your big efforts, and for the narration about what happens
behind the scenes.

You wrote about RMS:
> The only difference is that Stallman now has no right to complain
> anymore since the SC he wanted acknowledged the status quo.  I hope
> he will now shut up forever.

Well, I don't think he will be silent forever. He has established the
SC for the very purpose of doing pressure anytime he wants to achieve
something. His notion of "maintainer" is rather particular; he once
explained to me (then clisp maintainer) as follows:

 @ It is fine to have a group of people working on the project
 @ technically, but there needs to be a person in charge who makes sure
 @ that the GNU Project goals and policies are not forgotten.  If we
 @ pick a bunch of people out of the community, selected for technical
 @ interest in CLISP, it's unlikely they would take responsibility for
 @ that.  So we have to appoint maintainers to be in charge, not just
 @ let people volunteer themselves.

So a "maintainer" in RMS sense is someone or an SC who "makes sure
that the GNU Project goals and policies are not forgotten."

> The most remarkable thing is that Stallman was all for this despite
> the clear motivation of commercialization.

I'm glad to know that I'm legally allowed to run non-free programs like
'acroread' on Linux. If the lawyer says the LGPL 2.1 is clearer than
the LGPL 2.0, why doubt it?

> The LGPL 2.1 issue was declared political and therefore in scope of
> the SC.  I didn't feel this was reason enough to leave the project for
> good so I tolerated the changes.

Thanks, Ulrich! Your work is a thousand times more important than the
thorn that was put into the copyright notices.

                        Bruno


PS: Soon coming: a patch which makes localedef twice as fast. Hope
you'll like it :-)