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What are you talking about? FSF handled it 100% examplary from the get go.

Leah Rowe however was the toxic and crazy drama queen who couldn't keep a civil tone, and even her initial email included the word "fuck".

To top it off, she had zero proof for her allegations, and the person she claimed to represent specifically didn't want her to raise those allegations in her name.

In the rest of the world, we refer that as slander and libel. She should be happy nobody bothered to sue her. On either end.

Given Leah's behavior, I cannot see how on earth the FSF could have acted more level headed, reasonable and professional.

Seriously... what did they not do right?



I don't have much to add to this discussion... but historically the FOSS community loves sharing Linus' nastygrams... I find people having a problem with this developer's tone somewhat sexist and irrelevant.


If the FSF thought that minimizing drama was a priority, they could have accepted that the maintainer wanted to take libreboot out of the GNU project without prolonging the whole thing. Like, basically this submission, but a couple of months earlier.

Also, more generally, I maintain that there's more nuance to the question of professional behavior than whether your communication includes common swear words.


> could have accepted that the maintainer wanted to take libreboot out of the GNU project without prolonging the whole thing

If I read the FSF statements correctly, there were very good reasons for taking some time, which I found quite convincing.

For instance, they were looking for a new maintainer of this GNU project, especially since GNU projects belong to GNU/FSF, not to the individual maintainers. The maintainers are free to step down and let other maintainers continue a project.

Would it have been more professional if they had thrown away their management process for GNU projects in this single case?


GNU projects belong to GNU/FSF

The only documentation that I see[0] about this just says "The program remains a GNU package unless/until the GNU project decides to decommission it.", but that's not a legal document. Assigning the copyright to the FSF would be a good indicator, but is not actually required to be a GNU package. So unless they have some other document to sign, then this seems to be a mutual contract which can be terminated by either party at any time. I don't know if that document exists (if it does, you'd think they'd link it on that page so people could review it), but if it doesn't, then I don't see any reason why the original submitter can't revoke GNU package status, like any other business relationship.

[0] - https://www.gnu.org/help/evaluation.en.html




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