Honorary Doctor Richard Stallman will remain the head of the GNU Project

From LinuxReviews
Jump to navigationJump to search
Black-and-white-gnu-head.png

The founder of the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project has announced that he will remain Chief GNUisance of the GNU project in an e-mail to the info-gnu mailing list on September 26th, 2019.

Rare Stallman waving hands Concordia.jpg

Richard Stallman resigned from his position as president of the FSF on September 16th after slander and misquotations in large corporate-founded blogs. This does not mean that his campaign for freedom has come to an end. Stallman has clarified that he will remain the head of the GNU Project as "Chief GNUisance" in an e-mail to the "info-GNU" mailing list:

"On September 16 I resigned as president of the Free Software Foundation, but the GNU Project and the FSF are not the same. I am still the head of the GNU Project (the Chief GNUisance), and I intend to continue as such."

Richard Stallman in a message to info-GNU on September 26th, 2019

The message indicates that Stallman will continue to hold interesting lectures and share his infinite wisdom for a few more years. There is, of course, a limit to how long he will remain Chief GNUisance - he is not a young man anymore.

Stallman also remains on the FSF's board. Alexandre Oliva is currently acting president of the FSF.

Has Stallman lost control of his personal website?

Stallman's personal website stallman.org has been vandalized and filled with some odd statements the last few days. A short statement saying "I hereby step down as head of the GNU Project, effective immediately." was posted on stallman.org on both September 27th and September 28th. This is contradictory to Stallman's own statements and wishes. His website has also had links to YouTube and Medium - sites that Stallman himself would never link to. It could be that whoever he trusted to manage his website is not worthy of that trust. However, it is also quite possible that this is a result of Stallman's reluctance to password-protect things; he does not believe in passwords.

You can learn more about the GNU Project at gnu.org.

We recommend watching Stallmans lecture "Freedom in your computer and in the net" if you are unfamiliar with him and the free software movement which he started back in 1984. A lot of the computer-related freedoms as well as a lot of software which we take for granted today would not exist if it were not for him.