How mechanically centralized is leadership in the GNU project? Does rms sign off on every change?
I'm wondering how expensive it would be (assuming he does not want to step down) for the community to fork away from him or route around him.
I'm wondering how expensive it would be (assuming he does not want to step down) for the community to fork away from him or route around him.
One of the things I hope will happen with this statement is that we will regain cohesion and we will be able to stand together again like we once did. There's lots of good people in GNU, and I think we need someone like GNU. Principled, uncompromising, and now hopefully friendlier and more helpful than we have been.
My view is that GNU should be working towards making sure we can get our software into as many people as possible by giving it an attractive interface, simple installation instructions, and a welcoming community, while at the same time refusing to collaborate with any who wish to proliferate non-free software.
"We should be friendly, unless we don't like the people using our software"
In the specific case of free software, the paradox of tolerance plays out concretely, in that failure to enforce copyleft on software can lead to the creation of software derived from that work that is itself copyrighted in such a way that the deriver could sue an original source creator deriving work from their derivations.
I don't think anyone would consider copyleft enforcement "friendly," but the alternative is "free software has no ability to protect its core tenants," so some friendliness must be abridged.
In other words - some people are going to use GNU software to take freedom from others (imagine a prison running Linux, etc) in ways that conform with the license. I do not think GNU should oppose this.