Two visions for the future of sourceware.org

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2022-09-22 09:30:08

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By Jonathan Corbet September 21, 2022 Cauldron Public hosting systems for free software have come and gone over the years but one of them, Sourceware, has been supporting the development of most of the GNU toolchain for nearly 25 years. Recently, an application was made to bring Sourceware under the umbrella of the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), at least for fundraising purposes. It turns out that there is a separate initiative, developed in secret until now, with a different vision for the future of Sourceware. The 2022 GNU Tools Cauldron was the site of an intense discussion on how this important community resource should be managed in the coming years.

The session in question was initially set up as a birds-of-feather gathering where Sourceware "overseer" Mark Wielaard would describe some of the new services that are being developed for that site. He did not get far before being interrupted by David Edelsohn, who questioned whether it was correct to describe Sourceware as a "software project". Wielaard tried to push on, noting that there are currently two Red Hat employees, helped by a number of volunteers, looking after the site. Carlos O'Donell repeatedly broke in to describe Sourceware as specifically a Red Hat system. The site's mission statement, he said, describes it as "a Red Hat system providing services for open-source projects for Red Hat" (which isn't quite the wording on the actual statement). The purpose of these interjections was evidently (at a minimum) to dispute the notion that Sourceware is a community resource.