Red Hat withdraws from Free Software Foundation after Stallman returns

Last week Richard M. Stallman – father of the GNU Public License that underlies Linux and a significant portion of the user software that originally came with the Linux kernel – returned to the board of the Free Software Foundation after a two-year hiatus due to his own very controversial remarks about his perception of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims as “completely consenting.”

Following the reinstatement of RMS, Red Hat, the Raleigh, NC-based open source software giant that produces Red Hat Enterprise Linux, publicly withdrew funding and support from the Free Software Foundation:

Red Hat was appalled to learn that [Stallman] had joined the FSF board of directors. Accordingly, we immediately suspend all Red Hat funding for the FSF and any event hosted by the FSF.

Red Hat’s relatively brief statement goes on to acknowledge a statement from the FSF on board governance that emerged the same day:

• We will adopt a transparent and formal process to identify candidates and appoint new board members who are wise, competent and committed to the mission of the FSF. We will establish ways for our supporters to contribute to the discussion.
• We will ask all current board members to go through this process as soon as possible, in stages, to decide which of them will stay on the board.
• We will add a staff representative to the board of directors. FSF staff will elect this person.
• Directors will consult with legal counsel about changes to the organization’s bylaws to implement those changes. We have set ourselves a 30-day deadline to make these changes.

But Red Hat says the statement gives it “no reason to believe that [the statement] signals any significant commitment to positive change. “

This sentiment seems to be widely shared by many, including at least one FSF board member – Kat Walsh – who opposite Reinstatement of RMS and resigned his position on the board on the same day as the board’s statement and Red Hat’s withdrawal.

Immediately after Walsh’s resignation, the FSF announced the creation of a new seat on the board of directors, to be filled by a member of the FSF union staff; On Sunday, he took up the new seat with Senior System Administrator Ian Kelling.

FSF President Geoffrey Knauth describes the new headquarters:

The Board and Voting Members look forward to the participation of staff through this designated seat in our future deliberations. This is an important step in the FSF’s effort to recognize and support new leadership, to connect that leadership to the community, to improve transparency and accountability, and to build trust. Much remains to be done and this work will continue.

Knauth, who started in his current role as FSF president in August 2020, said it was only a temporary gig:

I agree to resign from my duties as an officer, director and voting member of the FSF as soon as there is a clear path for new leadership ensuring the continuity of the FSF’s mission and compliance with the fiduciary requirements. .

The elephant in the room that the remaining FSF board members seem determined to ignore is the continued presence of Stallman himself – who, along with the rest of the FSF board, will soon have to submit. to its new “transparent and formal identification process. [members] who are wise, able and committed to the mission of the FSF. “

Why Stallman?

It’s probably worth re-examining the FSF’s stated mission to understand its choice to reinstate Stallman, who was widely seen as too controversial to make an effective software evangelist.

The Free Software Foundation works to ensure the freedom of computer users by promoting the development and use of free software and documentation (as in freedom) – especially the GNU operating system – and by campaigning against them. threats to the freedom of computer users such as digital restriction management (DRM) and software patents.

Although this statement leads to “promote the development and use of [free software], “he immediately turns into the weeds of Stallman-esque with an implicit statement that the GNU Toolkit is an entire” operating system. “From there, he switches to” campaigning against “the perceived enemies of freedom software rather than campaigning for that freedom itself.

The next section, “Our Basic Work”, is entirely about promotion, which we will summarize here with one bullet per paragraph:

• FSF maintains historical articles
• FSF sponsors the GNU software project
• FSF owns copyrights to large amounts of code
• FSF publishes GNU General Public License
• FSF Campaigns for Free Software Adoption and Against Proprietary Software

We suspect that careful consideration of the FSF’s own mission statements – rather than simply assuming its mission – answers many questions about RMS’s return. The FSF describes itself as an organization much more concerned with maintaining a part of history that is dear to it – and attacking its perceived enemies, whether real or not – than with discovering, raising awareness and mentoring new faces in free software.