GNU project maintainers oppose Stallman's unilateral leadership

Following the statement released by the Free Software Foundation calling for a reevaluation of the relationship with the GNU project, Richard Stallman announced, as the current lead of the GNU project, will address the issues of building relations with the FSF (the main problem being that all GNU developers sign an agreement transferring property rights on the code to the FSF, which legally owns all GNU code). Eighteen maintainers and developers of various GNU projects responded with a joint statement, stating that Richard Stallman cannot represent the entire GNU project alone, and that maintainers need to develop a collective decision on the new organization of the project.

The signatories of the statement acknowledge Stallman's contribution to the establishment of the free software movement, but also point out that Stallman's behavior has undermined one of the main ideas of the GNU project for many years — free software for everyone using computers, as the signers believe the project cannot fulfill its mission if the leader’s behavior alienates the vast majority of those it seeks to reach. The GNU project envisioned by the signers is "a project that everyone can trust to protect their freedom."

The following maintainers and developers signed the letter:

• Tom Tromey (GCC, GDB, author of GNU Automake)
• Werner Koch (author and maintainer of GnuPG)
• Carlos O’Donell (maintainer of GNU libc)
• Mark Wielaard (maintainer of GNU Classpath)
• John Wiegley (maintainer of GNU Emacs)
• Jeff Law (maintainer of GCC, Binutils)
• Ian Lance Taylor (one of the longest-standing developers of GCC and GNU Binutils, author of Taylor UUCP and Gold linker)
• Ludovic Courtès (author of GNU Guix, GNU Guile)
• Ricardo Wurmus (one of the maintainers of GNU Guix, GNU GWL)
• Matt Lee (founder of GNU Social and GNU FM)
• Andreas Enge (main developer of GNU MPC)
• Samuel Thibault (committer of GNU Hurd, GNU libc)
• Andy Wingo (maintainer of GNU Guile)
• Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso (developer of GNU Octave)
• Daiki Ueno (maintainer of GNU gettext, GNU libiconv, GNU libunistring)
• Christopher Lemmer Webber (author of GNU MediaGoblin)
• Jan Nieuwenhuizen (GNU Mes, GNU LilyPond)
• Han-Wen Nienhuys (GNU LilyPond)

Supplement: Five more participants joined the statement:

• Joshua Gay (spokesperson for GNU and Free Software)
• Ian Jackson (GNU adns, GNU userv)
• Tobias Geerinckx-Rice (GNU Guix)
• Andrej Shadura (GNU indent)
• Zack Weinberg (developer of GCC, GNU libc, GNU Binutils)

Source: opennet.ru