[kwlug-disc] Richard Stallman announcing his return to the FSF's Board of Directors

[Andrew Sullivan Cant]

TL;DR I am disappointed that the FSF has re-instated RMS, and
particularly in this way. I will be dropping my FSF membership for the
moment.

I will be emailing the FSF to explain why I am dropping the membership.
I still support Free Software so I will be increasing my donation to
Software Freedom Conservancy, since they support similar ideals.

For anyone else who feels similarly there is also a petition/open letter
which you can sign.

https://rms-open-letter.github.io/



And for anyone who would like to keep reading...

I greatly appreciate the work that RMS has done. When he is talking
about software freedom he says things that are true and useful and
important.

I appreciate that he created the GPL and started the free software movement.

But that does not make it necessary to tolerate bad behaviour.
Particularly when it is behaviour that has been explained to him many
times over the years, by friends and allies, and he has specifically
chosen not to make any change.

> https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1373904938376466433/pu/vid/1280x720/9h9mG0K-qpfh8XFj.mp4?tag=12

His return announcement only emphasizes a continued lack of judgement,
both on the part of RMS and the rest of the FSF leadership.

He says that he is back and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
No acknowledgement of the problems or anything that he might change.
And neither he nor the FSF seem to have put in the time and effort to
craft either the process or messaging around this return.

I am left disappointed in the behaviour of people whose work and ideals
I value. And I think RMS and FSF are making it more difficult to promote
those ideals.


Andrew