Rethinking the governance of the GNU Project
The GNU Project was created by Richard Stallman in 1983 to further his goal of developing an entirely free operating system — a goal that seemed impossibly ambitious at the time. Stallman has recently resigned from some of his roles, but as of this writing his personal site still leads off with this proclamation: "I continue to be the Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project. I do not intend to stop any time soon". Within the project itself, though, it has become clear that this intention lacks universal support. We appear to be seeing the beginning of a governance transition for this venerable project.
To many, Stallman's departure from the Free Software Foundation and MIT appears to be an abrupt development based on behavior outside of the technical or project-management areas. Those reasons are mostly out of scope for this article (and for any comments), but there is one thing that is worth pointing out: the concerns that led to these changes have existed for many years. As is often the case, they came to a climax quickly, but the situation had been developing for years.
While these concerns certainly play into why there is pressure for change from within the GNU Project, there is more to it than that. Some recent events highlight the fact that some maintainers feel that change is needed; they have more to do with Stallman's leadership within the project than his behavior outside of it.
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