X.org calls for the removal of the of the entire FSF BoD

[Peter Hutterer]

On Wed, Mar 24, 2021 at 09:29:34PM -0400, Shawn Starr wrote:
> 
> 
> On 3/24/21 8:47 PM, Peter Hutterer wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 25, 2021 at 12:02:05AM +0000, Sérgio Basto wrote:
> > > On Wed, 2021-03-24 at 20:49 +0100, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> > > > "... and defend a free and open accelerated graphics stack."
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > Defense is generally something that's done towards the outside of our
> > > > 
> > > > own community, for example by clearly distancing us from the actions
> > > > 
> > > > of the oldest free software foundation there is when they end up
> > > > 
> > > > dragging the entire free software world into a rather bad light
> > > > 
> > > > through that.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > I am strongly against this open letter, I think you have completely
> > > missed the point of the values that the X.org and freedesktop.org
> > > communities are based on.
> > 
> > Out of interest: what are those values?
> > 
> > Cheers,
> >     Peter
> > _______
> 
> It's become apparent after seeing the original poster of this thread's
> twitter account. That I would like X.org to refrain from politics and focus
> on code, just code. Not venture into what people decide is acceptable views
> and behaviors.

one of the things about the X.Org Board is that the board **does not define
the technical direction**. Sure, the members of the board are primarily
developers, but the board itself does not tell anyone what they need to
implement. The board cannot focus on code because...it doesn't write code.

The board's main contribution over the last years has been (payrolling) the
annual conference, GSoC and EVoC. One goal of those conferences is to expand
the developer community, something that has been reasonably successful if
you look at the XDC participation alone. The first XDCs I went to had around
~30 participants, I remember the excitement when we first hit 100+ on a
regular basis.

Following from that, it is well within the board's responsibility to make
sure the venues provided are welcoming and safe for anyone wanting to
attend - because that's the only way to grow or at least maintain the
community. Whether an environment is welcoming and safe is primarily
determined by public statements public statements about behaviours that are
acceptable and behaviours that arent (and the enforcement of those). The CoC
is part of that.

Where it (in)directly affects the members such as with RMS who is still a
figurehead in FOSS and whose behaviour is used as proxy for others in the
FOSS community. That his behaviour is representative of ours sucks,
personally I didn't ask for that, but it's a fact of life. 

So the board says "We reject having him as public leader of a community that
we are part of, this is not who we are". That indicates that those that
have an issue with his behaviour will not have to deal with this in our
community. That, given the implied job of growing the community, is
literally what the board is for.

> It is unacceptable for X.org to go after people that is not what Open Source
> is. We are not some political movement.

uhm, FOSS itself is a political movement.

> My values are to spreading X/Wayland to more people to use, contribute. How
> they do so and what their political views, beliefs are none of my business
> and is NOT the business of Open Source.
 
There's more nuance to that. In general, no-one cares about your interests
because usually they do not affect the community, e.g. I doubt anyone has
quit a FOSS community over someone's crocheting habits. But if someone's
habits start scaring people away it *does* affect the community and the
stewards of that community will have to make a decision on what is
acceptable and what isn't.

Cheers,
   Peter

> We are to encourage people to participate, being polite, not bashing their
> views however correct or incorrect they are.