All due respect for Leah Rowe and her work on libreboot, but this kind of drama only hurts the OpenSource (regardless of the name you like to use) initiative.
Stallman did the right thing I guess.
Stallman did the right thing I guess.
In what way?
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?
Also, more generally, I maintain that there's more nuance to the question of professional behavior than whether your communication includes common swear words.
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?
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.
In this case though it's nice that the project is detached given it's not all that important and does not worth the burden.