Re: Nominations for Anthropic’s Claude for Open Source program

[Alexandre Oliva via Gdb <gdb@sourceware.org>]

On Jun 18, 2026, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

> That's plausibly Anthropic's motivation, but you accused David in
> advertising, not Anthropic.

Yeah, just like the TV or influencer's channel (or radio, magazine,
newspaper, website, etc) who advertises someone else's product, what
they're doing is advertising.  Is this a language issue, maybe?

> I do care what you say about David and other members of
> our community here.

FWIW, David didn't even participate in this thread.  This one was
initiated by Carlos.  David started a twin thread elsewhere.  Yeah, that
confused me too.  Of course I raised the issue in David's thread too, as
soon as I noticed the duplication.

> David is not a company, nor is he (AFAIK) in any way related to
> Anthropic.

It's almost as if you were arguing that getting someone else to post
your unsolicited commercial email makes it no longer be spam.  I really
don't think this is the case.

> I'm disputing your uncalled-for attack on David

Erhm.  What attack?  There's no attack on David, or on Carlos, for that
matter.  What I'm doing is call out the initiation of the threads as
spam, and insisting that we shouldn't normalize or repeat that kind of
post, because it would be detrimental to our shared goals.

If I'm attacking anything, it's an idea, not a person.  But I really
don't feel that it's an attack, it's just a civil debate, even when I
use strong words.  It's clear that some people feel strongly about this
divisive issue, myself included, which might possibly twist some
perceptions.

> No, because it was a legitimate post that doesn't qualify as spam or
> anything near it.  You may think otherwise, but you are very wrong.

Oh, how kind of you to let me know the ultimate truth that emanates from
wherever you get it.  I'm not that privileged, I just happen to hold my
own opinions, and sometimes I try to express them to try to come to
agreement with others who don't seem to share them.  Because these are
shared media, the alternative to coming to an agreement is for either
opinion to be imposed on other participants, which, as you seem to
suggest, is not cool.


And I haven't even raised yet the issue of David and Carlos legitimacy
to pick who gets assigned slots.  Shouldn't that choice be for the
community to make democratically, as you say?  As the choice on whether
to pass the "generous offer"?  Or is this democracy you call for only
desirable when someone with access to the ultimate truth finds it
favorable?

-- 
Alexandre Oliva, happy hacker            https://blog.lx.oliva.nom.br/
Free Software Activist     FSFLA co-founder     GNU Toolchain Engineer
Learn the truth about Richard Stallman at https://stallmansupport.org/