Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Free Software Advocates Seek Removal of Richard Stallman and Entire FSF Board

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday March 25 2021, @08:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the geek-drama dept.

Freeman writes:

Free software advocates seek removal of Richard Stallman and entire FSF board:

Richard Stallman's return to the Free Software Foundation's board of directors has drawn condemnation from many people in the free software community. An open letter signed by hundreds of people today called for Stallman to be removed again and for the FSF's entire board to resign.

The open letter said:

        Richard M. Stallman, frequently known as RMS, has been a dangerous force in the free software community for a long time. He has shown himself to be misogynist, ableist, and transphobic, among other serious accusations of impropriety. These sorts of beliefs have no place in the free software, digital rights, and tech communities. With his recent reinstatement to the Board of Directors of the Free Software Foundation, we call for the entire Board of the FSF to step down and for RMS to be removed from all leadership positions.

Previously:
Richard Stallman Rejoins Free Software Foundation Board of Directors
Richard M. Stallman Resigns
Richard Stallman Deserved to be Fired, Says Fired GNU Hurd Maintainer

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Free Software Advocates Seek Removal of Richard Stallman and Entire FSF Board | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 221 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @02:47AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @02:47AM (#1129742)
    Only the holder of the copyright to the code has standing to enforce any licence terms. So this has nothing to do with attacking the GPL. You’ve been exposed to too many conspiracy theories this last few years, but the laws regarding copyright and licenses haven’t changed.

  • (Score: 2) by Pav on Saturday March 27 2021, @07:50AM (2 children)

    by Pav (114) on Saturday March 27 2021, @07:50AM (#1129822)

    Look up "Why the FSF gets copyright assignments from contributors" on their site. The FSF has copyrights on quite a bit of software quite central to the stack.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @10:41PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @10:41PM (#1130063)

      With major parts like gcc already being replaced by software that doesn’t use the GPL, it’s only a matter of time before the only essential GPL software is the kernel, and that already has its own lawyers. So the FSF and gnu will be irrelevant. And seriously, who gives a shit about busybox nowadays when even a cheapie router has more than enough ram to do without it? The FSF “major victory “ was rendered obsolete by advances in hardware.

      Seriously, what have either Stallman or the FSF done in the last 20 years that matters any more? The FSF is now best known for lame attempts at generating self-serving publicity that just raises e awareness of their bad publicity campaigns. Stallman? Now that he’s old enough to collect Social Security, who knows - maybe he got himself a permanent address? That may be why he felt he could quit the FSF and not have to mooch for shelter any more.

      • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday March 29 2021, @11:43PM

        by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday March 29 2021, @11:43PM (#1130975) Journal

        I really, really hope you're right about that. Because we can survive so long as the kernel is safe; as mentioned above it's more or less userland-agnostic. I just hate that it could come to this, uuuugh.

        --
        I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...