GNU Social Contract Endorsement

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This page collects endorsements of version 1.0 of the GNU Social Contract by GNU maintainers. The endorsement period will end on February 24th, 2020—see the timeline below.

Endorsements

The following GNU maintainers endorse the GNU Social Contract, version 1.0:

• Frederic Y. Bois (GNU MCSim)
• Andrej Shadura (GNU Indent)
• Werner Koch (GnuPG, GNU Libgcrypt)
• Mark Galassi (GNU Scientific Library, GNU Dominion)
• Ricardo Wurmus (GNU Guix, GNU Guix Workflow Language, GNU Guile-Debbugs)
• Jean Michel Sellier (GNU Archimedes, GNU Nano-Archimedes, GNU Gneural Network)
• Christopher Webber (GNU 8sync, GNU MediaGoblin)
• Ian Jackson (GNU adns, GNU userv)
• Samuel Thibault (GNU Hurd)
• Jan Nieuwenhuizen (GNU Mes, GNU LilyPond)
• Christian Mauduit (Liquid War 6)
• Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos (GNU Libtasn1)
• Andy Wingo (GNU Guile, Guile-GNOME, Guile-OpenGL)
• Ludovic Courtès (GNU Guix, GNU Guile, GNU Shepherd, GNU Guile-RPC)
• Andreas Enge (GNU MPC)
• Mark Wielaard (GNU Classpath)
• Han-Wen Nienhuys (GNU LilyPond)
• Carlos O'Donell (GNU libc)
• Tobias Geerinckx-Rice (GNU Guix)
• Bernard Giroud (GnuCOBOL)
• Tom Tromey (GNU Source Highlight)
• Jeff Law (GCC)

GNU package developers

GNU Maintainers may approve developers to help with GNU package maintenance. The following GNU package developers endorse the GNU Social Contract, version 1.0:

• David Malcolm (GCC)

Timeline

• October 2019. Discussion on a GNU social contract starts.
• January 26th, 2020. All 400 GNU maintainers and uploaders emailed with a call for feedback and a timeline.
• February 10th, 2020. End of the previously-announced feedback period. A group of maintainers goes through the feedback received, publishes anonymized feedback and resolutions, leading to version 1.0 of the GNU Social Contract (see commit history).
• February 11th, 2020. This page is created.
• February 24th, 2020. End of endorsement period.

Background

The goal of the GNU Social Contract is to state the core values GNU maintainers who have endorsed it are committed to uphold. It is both an agreement among us, GNU contributors, and a pledge to the broader free software community.

Additionally, we think it can be a first step towards formalizing a transparent and collective governance of the GNU Project.

The process followed by this initiative is not supported by Richard Stallman. Nevertheless, we consider it a legitimate action by and for GNU maintainers to collectively define the core values we believe GNU stands for.