[craigsmansion]

> Here's the lead developer of the HURD

Bushnell hasn't been working on HURD for a long time. He joined a religious order and works for google.

> Here's someone who spent about two decades of his life at the FSF

Kuhn is now the president of a competing organisation to the FSF that doesn't mind promoting Facebook or Google for their outreach.

> Here's a whole bunch of GNU project maintainers

Guix has been in disagreement with rms since he didn't want to adopt a CoC for GNU because it was "too punitive" in intent, and suggested using GNU's Kind Communications Guidelines instead.

> Here's a couple of high-profile GCC contributors

Nathan Sidwell is a Facebook engineer who instigated the removal of rms from the gcc steering committee. After the committee did so for technical reasons, he accused them of not being punitive enough towards rms and proceeded to tally various personal suspicions against rms.

https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-April/235267.html

[geofft]

Right, the question was whether there are people who have meaningfully contributed to GNU who disagree with RMS, or the only complainers are internet randos. Obviously the answer to that question is a list of people who have previously been active FSF or GNU contributors and now are either inactive or have public disagreements with RMS.

(By the way, Kuhn was on the board of the FSF while he was leading this "competing organization." The fact that this was not seen as a conflict of interest, and that the FSF has awarded him for his work at this "competing organization," implies that they are not actually competitors.)

Who, then, has the right to criticize RMS, if they don't? It sort of seems like anyone who raises a criticism of RMS can have that criticism dismissed because they've become a critic of RMS.

Who is a legitimate part of the free software movement other than RMS himself?

[dragonwriter]

> Who, then, has the right to criticize RMS, if they don't?

Only people who are pure, demonstrated by worship of RMS, are free to criticize him. Of course, if they do so, they are no longer pure, and lose that license.

[craigsmansion]

I only provided background information on the people you mentioned, not that their criticism should be dismissed because of it.

> Who, then, has the right to criticize RMS

I doubt there is a collective answer, but I encourage everyone to look into the various affiliations of both proponents and detractors of rms' reinstatement and make their own decisions on whom they should trust.

[enriquto]

> Nathan Sidwell is a Facebook engineer who instigated the removal of rms from the gcc steering committee.

> https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-April/235267.html

Today I learned the name of one of the first toxic people who seriously suggested to write gcc in C++. And they are admitting it themselves! What a tragedy. Of course, RMS was, rightfully again, the main opposing force. We live in sad, sad times.

Quoting this person's message:

> Interactions I've had with the SC, beyond maintainer appointment, seem to run into RMS.

Sounds like a feature to me! The main purpose of RMS's presence is precisely to keep away idiotic proposals like those of Nathan Sidwell.

[geofft]

What is your reason for believing that the proposal to write gcc in C++ is idiotic?

[enriquto]

Paraphrasing Torvalds, to keep people like Nathan out.

Being serious, the world needs an easily bootstrappable C compiler. It's a crucial pillar of our society, and we lost it a few years ago. That is a shame.