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:

>> Cc: Mark Wielaard <mark@klomp.org>, Andrew Pinski <pinskia@gmail.com>,
>> Adhemerval Zanella Netto <adhemerval.zanella@linaro.org>, glibc
>> developers <libc-alpha@sourceware.org>, gdb developers <gdb@sourceware.org>
>> Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2026 13:28:57 -0300
>> From: Alexandre Oliva via Gdb <gdb@sourceware.org>
>> 
>> Now, if it was another mailing list member forwarding spam that
>> advertised a 30-days-gratis bait for a service entirely misaligned with
>> the purposes of GNU in general and of GNU libc specifically, to the
>> point of opposing those purposes, would you still be favorable to it?

> That's a significant exaggeration

It's not.

The offer is promotional, for a short time, to attract new users.
Indeed, it fits the pattern that companies use with influencers
nowadays, offering them gratis access to a product for them to publish
their use of the product/service and thereby promote the product/service
to an even broader public.  Companies usually pay for that.

Now, maybe you're not disputing that it was advertisement.

Maybe you're disputing that it's misaligned with GNU.

Surely you're aware that the advertised service, being a service rather
than software you can install and run on your computer to do your
computing, is SaaSS, that denies users the freedoms they deserve.

GNU's prime purpose is to give users a certain set of user freedoms that
are essential for users to have control over their computing, so that
users have the control that the service provider intentionally denies.

I know you value those services regardless.  That's irrelevant for the
assessment.  My argument stands solely on the facts that it's
advertisement of a service that denies users the freedoms they deserve.

It would be no worse if I were very fond of Windows or AIX and got an
request from their providers to get them new influential users through a
similar promotional stunt.

Both amount to promoting freedom-denying "generous" bait in a forum that
exists for the primary purpose of giving users those very freedoms.

> P.S. that "This is not an endorsement of Anthropic, Claude or LLMs".

"It's not what you're thinking"

> Not relevant.  Blocking spam and bots, regardless of the content of
> those messages, is the job of the list moderators and they generally
> do their job just fine so far.

They seem to have missed the post that started this thread, and the
other twin thread in GCC and binutils, otherwise we wouldn't be having
this discussion.

> you don't have to volunteer
> nor respond if you don't like the proposal).

You seem to have missed my response in which I volunteered.  Because the
offer is so harmful that I feel a moral duty to take up a slot so that
it doesn't end up harming anyone.

> if we cannot talk between ourselves in a kinder manner

Being kind encompasses not extending dangerous and harmful offers onto
your colleagues.  Smoke your crack if you must, but please don't try to
"help" others get hooked through "generous" offers in here.  It's not
kind.  It's not cool.  It's detrimental.  It's divisive.  The offer is
an attack on the freedoms we stand for.  Why are we even debating it?

-- 
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/