Red Hat withdraws from the Free Software Foundation after Stallman’s return

Enlarge / The Free Software Foundation might be happy to have RMS back on its board, but much of the Free Software world feels otherwise.

Last week, Richard M. Stallman—father of the GNU Public License that underpins Linux and a significant part of the user-facing software that initially accompanied the Linux kernel—returned to the board of the Free Software Foundation after a two-year hiatus due to his own highly controversial remarks about his perception of Jeffrey Epstein's victims as "entirely willing."

As a result of RMS' reinstatement, Red Hat—the Raleigh, North Carolina-based open source software giant that produces Red Hat Enterprise Linux—has publicly withdrawn funding and support from the Free Software Foundation:

Red Hat was appalled to learn that [Stallman] had rejoined the FSF board of directors. As a result, we are immediately suspending all Red Hat funding of the FSF and any FSF-hosted events.

Red Hat's relatively brief statement goes on to acknowledge an FSF statement on board governance that appeared on the same day:

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

from Tech – Ars Technica https://ift.tt/3tZdyy0