GNOME relationship with GNU and the FSF
On Saturday, I wrote an email to the FSF asking them to cancel my membership. Other people who I greatly respect are doing the same. This came after the president of the FSF made some pretty reprehensible remarks saying that the “most plausible scenario is that [one of Epstein’s underage victims] presented themselves as entirely willing” while being trafficked. This isn’t the only incident, but it is the straw that broke the camel’s back.
In my capacity as the Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation, I have also written to the FSF. One of the most important parts of my role is to think of the well being of our community and the GNOME mission. One of the GNOME Foundation’s strategic goals is to be an exemplary community in terms of diversity and inclusion. I feel we can’t continue to have a formal association with the FSF or the GNU project when its main voice in the world is saying things that hurt this aim.
I greatly admire the work of FSF staffers and volunteers, but have now reached the point of concluding that the greatest service to the mission of software freedom is for Richard to step down from FSF and GNU and let others continue in his stead. Should this not happen in a timely manner, then I believe that severing the historical ties between GNOME, GNU and the FSF is the only path forward.
Edit: I’ve also cross-posted this to the GNOME discourse instance.
As a GNOME Foundation member, I would have preferred this to be an official GNOME communication rather than something on your blog.
For many years RMS has been an embarrassment at best, a toxic bigot at worst, and it is high time we got rid of him from our community.
Nevertheless, thank you for acting on this. I hope GNOME officially follows through.
If the FSF board don’t act, then that will be an official communication. At the moment, the relationship hasn’t officially changed. I wanted to have the official project news left for that eventuality.
Understood.
I’m any case, I hope you know the community is behind you on this.
Tough decisions like these are what make GNOME such an important project and community. 👏
This is an unfortunate move on the behalf of GNOME.
RMS has been a stalwart advocate for justice, fairness, and tolerance of all types. This recent event is a part of legacy establishment campaign to drive a wedge in the unity of the FOSS community. Issues like this hurt the FOSS cause and benefit large corporations who have a track record of being oppressive to all types of freedom, despite their recent re-branding as tolerant and inclusive, in cooperation with establishment media.
I implore GNOME to reconsider and take into consideration the totality of RMS four decade long commitment to the betterment of his fellow man.
The point of having a standard for acceptable behaviour is to ensure that everyone, no matter their historical contributions, is held to that. I genuinely believe that the FOSS cause is now better served by rms standing down.
The president of the FSF made some pretty reprehensible remarks saying that the “most plausible scenario is that [one of Epstein’s underage victims] presented themselves as entirely willing” while being trafficked.
This is plainly false, please do some fact checking and read the email chain. Gnome can think whatever you want about what Stallman actually said, but this is just a misrepresentation perpetuated by dozens of media outlets. Stallman said that Epstein coerced the victim into acting as if she was not a sex slave to have a relationship with Marvin Minsky and blackmail him.
That is literally a direct quote from the email chain.
And now I’m receiving far too much abuse in the comments (which I’m trashing). Closing the comments.