Shortly After Richard Stallman Says He's Head of GNU He Writes “I Hereby Step Down as Head of the GNU Project, Effective Immediately” (Updated)

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2019-09-29 00:59:56 UTC
Modified: 2019-10-03 03:45:11 UTC

What happened?

Update (16:00 GMT): turns out his site got defaced

Update (03/10/2019): Richard Stallman has since then stated he wants people to support the FSF.

Very confused

Summary: Very confusing times; it looks like Richard Stallman is being forcibly separated from everything he ever created as well as the place of those creations (MIT)

TORVALDS and Stallman are both being besieged, albeit in somewhat different ways; both are also at different stages of the apparently staged 'phaseout'.

It's all happening so quickly. MIT, FSF, now GNU. He's being 'canceled'.

"It's all happening so quickly. MIT, FSF, now GNU."As reported by Phoronix, Stallman sought to clarify that he had remained in charge of GNU, but posted a short time ago was this odd (contradictory) update:

"I hereby step down as head of the GNU Project, effective immediately.

"Richard Stallman"

Only two days earlier Stallman wrote (as a formal statement, not a reply to anything):

From: Richard Stallman Subject: GNU Project Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2019 13:20:25 -0400

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

On September 16 I resigned as president of the Free Software Foundation, but the GNU Project and the FSF are not the same. I am still the head of the GNU Project (the Chief GNUisance), and I intend to continue as such.

-- Dr Richard Stallman Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

It's very clear that something then happened; someone contacted him. One can guess.

"It's very clear that something then happened; someone contacted him. One can guess."No further details given. As DarwinElf put it in our IRC channel, "first RMS said he's remaining as head of GNU Project because it's not the same as FSF... now a few days later he said he stepped down as head of GNU... is the theory he was pressured/ordered by bad actors? It's on stallman.org... his news (political?) section..."

"I don't want it to be taken over by a Lennart/Red Hat/IBM yesman..."

RMS "turned into that anyway," MinceR joked.

"Either way, Richard Stallman seems to have been incapacitated."He was referring to Stallman's reluctance to say something negative about systemd.

Either way, Richard Stallman, the legendary "RMS", seems to have been incapacitated.

What a major, catastrophic loss for the Free software movement. ⬆

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Shortly After Richard Stallman Says He's Head of GNU He Writes “I Hereby Step Down as Head of the GNU Project, Effective Immediately” (Updated)

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