[lfam]

It's true that RMS founded GNU and was the key leader for decades, and is basically its mascot. To many, RMS and GNU are the same. One cannot overstate his impact on the ideals and values of GNU.

I disagree with the suggestion that the group of people under discussion — who aim to distance themselves from RMS — want to "reduce the GNU project to a mere formality".

I think it's the opposite: that those people want to embolden GNU and strengthen the bonds between the various GNU softwares to create a first-class operating system made of free software, the GNU way. They ended their association with Stallman but continued with GNU because they believe in its goals. One could even say they did it because they believe that GNU is important.

It's been a very long time since RMS was able to marshall a group of people to work toward that goal. The maintainers of Guix and the other signatories of the statement against Stallman's leadership are doing that very thing.

The proof is in the pudding: the latest Guix release had 201 contributors. I think that's a lot.

GNU is internally managed on a private mailing list. Guix and other GNU maintainers coming out against Stallman may have been surprising to those who aren't privy to that list, but for the rest of us, it has been a long time coming.

For a long time, key GNU projects have either effectively quit GNU or, with great effort, wrested authority away from RMS because what goes on "behind the scenes" in GNU is not good. The only change is that now they are doing it in public.

[Fice]

> The only change is that now they are doing it in public.

They very conveniently started to do it in public when Stallman's reputation was severely damaged by the media spreading lies about him, when he lost his home, when he most needed support. And they started by publishing a vague defamatory statement against him, and they used the GNU projects website for that. And they continued to defame him on the mailing lists.

Could there really be any excuse for their actions? Was it acceptable even if they believe that they were doing it for the good of the GNU project?

[craigsmansion]

> was the key leader for decades, and is basically its mascot.

RMS was and still is the GNU project leader.

> It's been a very long time since RMS was able to marshall a group of people to work toward that goal.

He gives talks all around the world, trying to warn people about proprietary software and getting them involved in Free Software.

> GNU is internally managed on a private mailing list.

But this little kerfluffle was on a public mailing list, as was requested by the various maintainers who wanted to oust RMS. It was open for anyone to follow along on the gnu-misc-discuss list from 2019-10 and forward. The discussion doesn't really support your "it has been a long time coming" assertion.

> For a long time, key GNU projects have either effectively quit GNU

If you mean Gnome, it still has a lot of those who support GNU, or aren't even aware Gnome is not GNU. There are enough of them the Gnome leadership only raises issues when it allows them to raise their own profile and public visibility, like what happened during the MIT debacle.

> The only change is that now they are doing it in public.

Thankfully, so everyone can read for themselves how claims that what is going on in GNU is "not good" is very subjective and more of a "not how I personally would like it to be".

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-misc-discuss/2019-10/...