Re: rust-build-system from antioxidant

[Felix Lechner]

Hi Vagrant,

On Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 8:09 AM Vagrant Cascadian <vagrant@debian.org> wrote:
>
> everything kind of has a social component!

Thank you for pointing that out! Many technical discussions about
project governance claim high moral ground but remain incomplete.

Maxime possibly felt some righteous indignation because Maxim's
well-intended reference to consensus does not actually apply in Guix
that often. (I have to be careful to keep both your names in order.)
It would be ignorant to claim that there are no power structures.

Not all of them are official, but they are there. [1] Hierarchies are
human, and they are not always bad.

During the past year, I made some ambitious proposals that did not
resonate with the general public or any of the folks in power. (I am a
member of the general public.) Some committers told me privately that
nothing big happens without the maintainer collective.

Someone in the maintainer collective told me that nothing truly
important (like legal stuff) happens without Ludo'.

Of course, that expectation places an extraordinary burden on Ludo',
who already works very hard. I don't think he (or maybe "they") even
wants all that responsibility. Personally, I find Ludo' measured and
generous.

That being said, everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes, words are
misunderstood. At other times, the merit of an argument is overlooked.
Maybe that's what happened in the bug Maxime cited. Or maybe Maxime
made a mistake with that narrow, unfavorable and critical assessment.
Either way, it's important to have goodwill toward one another.

I know a little bit about how large groups can work together. For the
past nine years, I have been a minor city official in a bustling
community of 230,000 immigrants—mostly from India and China, with 158
languages spoken at home. The key is to keep solving the community's
problems and also, to solve other people's problems in addition to my
own.

In Jewish mysticism, there is an old story about a giant vessel that
once existed when the world was made. Unfortunately, it broke into a
gazillion pieces, and we each ended up with a little shard. We spend
the remainder of our lives looking for other pieces that fit.

Let's be proud of our large and diverse community. Let's focus on the
pieces that fit together. Thank you all for being here!

Kind regards
Felix

[1] https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2022/gnu-guix-maintainer-rotation/