Few days ago in his LibrePlanet 2021 speech, Richard Stallman (founder of the Free Software Movement, the GNU Project, the Free Software Foundation and the League for Free Programming, author of the GPL and creator of projects such as GCC, GDB and Emacs), announced his return to the Board of Directors of Free BY. Jeffrey Knout, who was elected in 2020, remains the president of the Free Open Source Foundation.
This announcement of his return to the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation has provoked backlash from some organizations and developers, as Richard Stallman is officially on the list of directors and this information is now reflected on the Free Software Foundation website.
In particular, the human rights organization Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), whose director was recently awarded the award for his contributions to the development of free software, announced the severance of all relations with the Free Software Foundation and the cessation of any activity that cross over with this organization, including the Open Source Fund to fund the Outreachy program participant's work (the SFC will allocate the required $ 6500 from its own funds).
Remember that Richard Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation in 1985, one year after the founding of the GNU Project. The organization was formed to protect itself against companies dubious trapped in code misappropriation and trying to sell some of the early GNU Project tools developed by Stallman and his associates. Three years later, Stallman wrote the first version of the GPL, defining the legal framework for the free software distribution model.
In September 2019, Richard Stallman resigned as president of the Free Software Foundation and resigned from the board of directors of this organization, as he was accused and convicted of sexual harassment.
An MIT graduate published an article on Medium talking about this and the title was "RemoveRichard Stallman»Pressuring to be removed from office. Why? Well, for some emails that Stallman wrote making some comments about that case of harassment of Marvin Minsky, the MIT professor accused of sexual assault and a network of minors that happened in the Epstein complex.
Stallman said in those post that "the term 'sexual assault' is somewhat vague and slippery" and "appeared before Minsky fully prepared." It is true that he should not have said that, but Richard Stallman himself has defended himself saying that his words were taken out of context and misinterpreted: "a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations." But he has assumed the complaints and pressures to end up resigning and so this does not splash the world of free software and the FSF.
After that Stallman entered into a debate on the definition of the concepts of "sexual violence" and if they apply to Minsky. He also suggested that the victims voluntarily engage in prostitution.
On a note, Stallman He also mentioned that raping someone who is not 18 yet is no less disgusting than someone who is already 18 (In the initial discussion, Stallman pointed out the absurdity that the degree of guilt in rape depends on the country and the inconsequential age differences.)
Later, after a resonance in the press, Stallman also wrote that in his earlier statements he was wrong and that sexual contacts between adults and minors, even with the consent of the minor, are unacceptable.
Because of this, the decision was made after accusations of unworthy behavior from the leader of the FOSS movement and threats to sever relations with the FOSS movement of some communities and organizations. Subsequently, attempts were made to reduce Stallman's influence over the GNU Project, in which he maintained leadership, but this initiative was unsuccessful.
Finally, if you are interested in knowing more about it About Richard Stallman's announcement, you can see the details in the speech he gave In the following link.