Leah Rowe, Founder of the distribution Libreboot and prominent activist for the rights of minorities, a few days ago came out to publicly defend Richard Stallman against recent attacks despite past conflicts with the FOSS Foundation and Stallman.
Leah Rowe believes that the organized witch hunt is organized by people who are ideologically opposed to free software And it's directed not just at Stallman himself, but at the entire free software movement and the FSF in particular.
According to Leah, true social justice is a dignified attitude towards a person, and not when they try to eliminate it just because of their beliefs. The message also refuted critics' arguments about Stallman's sexism and transphobia, using personal communication, and suggested that all the recent attacks are nothing more than an attempt to infiltrate and subjugate the FSF organization under the control of large corporations, such as it has already happened with OSI and the Linux Foundation.
2 years ago, the well-known criminal of thought Richard M Stallman was falsely accused of defending the violation in an Orwellian smear campaign, orchestrated by the mainstream media at the behest of proprietary software providers. 36 years fighting for your digital freedom, canceled. He was so cruel that he resigned as president of the Free Software Foundation. The FSF did nothing to protect or defend him. However, you can defend it!
On March 21, 2021, the FSF board of directors reinstated Richard Stallman. In response, the media launched a new smear campaign. A petition was created, calling for the forcible removal of RMS and the entire FSF board of directors. RMS has been wrongly accused of sexism, transphobia, disability, and a whole host of other things designed to discredit him. Don't listen to any of that. Richard Stallman's political notes and articles paint the picture of a man who has campaigned staunchly against bigotry in all its forms.
In response, we, the free software movement, started our own petition. We want RMS to remain in office and for the FSF to stand firm. We ask the FSF to defend the honor of Richard Stallman and his legacy. Richard Stallman is a human being, whose right to freedom of expression was strongly suppressed. We must show our support for him to the FSF, loud and clear.
On the other hand, two other employees announced their retirement from the FOSS Foundation: John Hsieh, Deputy Director and Ruben Rodríguez, CTO. John joined the foundation in 2016 and prior to that he held leadership positions in nonprofit social welfare and social justice organizations.
Reuben, better known as the founder of the Trisquel distribution, He was hired by the Free Software Foundation in 2015 as a systems administrator, after which he assumed the position of chief technology officer. Earlier, John Sullivan, CEO of the Free Software Foundation, also announced his retirement from the Free Software Foundation.
In their joint statement, Sullivan, Shay and Rodríguez indicated that they continue to believe in the importance of the STR Foundation's mission and believe that the new team will be better able to handle the proposed governance reform.
According to them, free software and copyleft are critical issues of our time and the Free Software Foundation must continue to lead the open source movement, making it a common goal for all employees to ensure a smooth transition and support the necessary modernization of the foundation and management processes.
In addition, it can be noted that the number of those who signed the letter in support of Stallman already exceeds 4600 signatures and the letter against Stallman was already signed by more than 3000 people.
Aaron Bassett, among the activists fighting Stallman began to promote special additions to Chrome, which shows a special mark in the opening in the GitHub repository, the developers have signed the letter in support of Stallman.