GNU Advisory Committee

Overview

The GNU Advisory Committee exists to facilitate coordination within the GNU project. RMS (Richard Stallman), the founder of GNU and the FSF, remains the Chief GNUisance with overall responsibility for and authority over the GNU Project.

The committee's responsibilities deal with the project as a whole. It provides an initial point of contact for questions from maintainers, FSF and others. Members of the committee are appointed by RMS and meet by phone each month to discuss current issues.

The committee can be contacted directly at <gnu-advisory@gnu.org>.

Current committee members

• Alexandre Oliva
• Christian Grothoff
• Jason Self
• Jim Meyering
• Jose Marchesi
• Mike Gerwitz
• Simon Josefsson

Responsibilities

The main responsibilities of the committee are to:

• monitor the health of the project, identifying problems and possible solutions on behalf of RMS.
• improve communication within the project, by taking an active role in talking to maintainers, FSF and others.
• be an initial contact point for issues concerning the whole project, both internally and externally.
• work with the FSF on maintaining the High Priority Projects list.
• review GNU-related activities regularly, to avoid duplicate efforts and promote existing ones, and to discuss the adoption of prospective GNU packages.
• be available to RMS to discuss the content of public announcements as needed.

For GNU maintainers

More information about the Advisory Committee, intended for GNU software maintainers, is in the Getting Help section of the GNU Maintainers' Information document.

History

The committee held its first meeting in December 2009.

Brian Gough was a member until January 2012.

John Sullivan was a member until April 2021.