[evasb]

Isn't Leah the person that sold ThinkPads on behalf of Libreboot, didn't send it, then put the blame on her mental issues?

Then she abandoned the project and let the contributors take over, after some time she booted them with fake accusations, banned them from their IRC channel and took over the project. The contributors complained that she didn't even have the decency of contacting them, but she was adamant of taking the Libreboot name for her again to sell used Laptops. This was also the moment that she began to add binary blobs to Libreboot.

They founded the GNU Boot project and she, not satisfied, created another "GNU Boot" just to say that their project is "inferior" and now she complains about a "cease and desist" of a person that rightfully don't like her.

EDIT: LukeShu corrected me below. I just said here what I remembered. Upvote him.

[whstl]

That doesn't seem to be factual.

The people involved in Libreboot.at / GNU Boot are Adrien Bourmault and Denis Carikli, and the whole Libreboot.at / GNU Boot forks started in 2023.

They don't seem to be the people that were booted in 2021, which are Andrew Robbins and Sebastian Grzywna – http://andrewrobbins.info/libreboot.html

Unless Leah managed to abandon the project in 2021-2022, give it to Adrien/Denis to maintain and then made another (a third!) alleged coup, I don't see how all of this can be related.

Once again, I have no horse on this race and never heard of those people before, but I'm replying to you again because you're the one making those accusations, which I assume are either an honest mistake from you, or you're talking about things that were never published anywhere.

[evasb]

Your context is important and I said what I remembered that happened in that time. LukeShu also corrected my comment more extensively.

[torstenvl]

I don't know about past actions. But my understanding is she didn't create "another GNU Boot," she made a GNU Boot release of Libreboot to allow them to rebase their fork off something that wasn't from 2021.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not saying the C&D was wrong. Trademarks must be actively defended and I'm not offended that they did so. I just remain unconvinced that Leah Rowe was trying to create another GNU Boot project.

[teddyh]

If you look at the web page in question:

<https://web.archive.org/web/20230719185342/https://libreboot...>

then you might agree that GNU Boot may have a point that the web page is (or was) using the name “GNU Boot” confusingly. Accordingly, they asked it to be changed, albeit somewhat confrontationally and brusquely.

[evasb]

This is highly personal, and it is pretty sad that the GNU project name is being involved in this drama that doesn't have much to do with them.

They (GNU Boot) don't want her help, and I understand why they don't like her. The fact she is making more drama from it is more proof that she is not trustworthy.

EDIT: I was wrong

[whstl]

> They (GNU Boot) don't want her help, and I understand why they don't like her. The fact she is making more drama from it is more proof that she is not trustworthy.

Everyone is still free to fork GNU Boot, even if the maintainers don't "want help". Also Leah seems to be the upstream maintainer. Reusing the name for a fork is of course not the best thing to do, but it was promptly changed when requested.

And publishing a C&D is not really making drama. Transparency is important.

EDIT: Also have to point out that the sender of the C&D wasn't among those expelled from Libreboot in 2021, they merely object to the inclusion of binary blobs, as per http://libreboot.at , so there isn't "personal drama" in this.

[Lammy]

> it is pretty sad that the GNU project name is being involved in this drama

Extra sad since Leah was one of the few high-profile people willing to publicly defend RMS, a position I really respected: https://web.archive.org/web/20210826050949/https://libreboot...

And I can't blame her for not feeling that way any more:

  [lammy@emi] curl -I https://libreboot.org/news/rms.html
  HTTP/2 301 
  date: Sun, 30 Jul 2023 04:04:13 GMT
  location: https://libreboot.org/news/gnuboot.html

[LukeShu]

> Isn't Leah the person that sold ThinkPads on behalf of Libreboot

No: She sold librebooted laptops under the brand "gluglug" and later "minifree". This was never "on behalf of Libreboot"; it was always separate.

> didn't send it, then put the blame on her mental issues?

Yes, mostly: in 2020 minifree accumulated a backlog of orders that she wasn't able to fulfill. However, AFAIK, she did eventually ship all those orders, and minifree is in a good place today.

> Then she abandoned the project and let the contributors take over

Sorta: She had removed herself as a Libreboot maintainer after the 2016 drama between her and the FSF. She had already long not been a Libreboot maintainer by the time she encountered trouble in 2020.

> after some time she booted them with fake accusations, banned them from their IRC channel and took over the project. The contributors complained that she didn't even have the decency of contacting them

Yes: She did forcefully take Libreboot back over in 2021. But, in the 5 years of SwiftGeek et al. being the Libreboot maintainers, they never shipped a release. At the the time she took it back over, the last release was more than 5 years old, shipped by Leah before she stepped away in 2016. So IMO her taking it back over was the right thing, even if how she did it was shitty.

> but she was adamant of taking the Libreboot name for her again to sell used Laptops.

No: Again, her controlling the "libreboot" name has nothing to do with her selling laptops under the brand "minifree". She was adamant that libreboot start doing releases again, instead of withering away.

> This was also the moment that she began to add binary blobs to Libreboot.

No: That didn't happen until November 2022 when she merged with osboot.

When she did that, several folks (I believe with no overlap of the folks who were maintainers 2016-2021), forked libreboot.org as libreboot.at and claim to be the "true" libreboot. This libreboot.at is a snapshot of the pre-osboot-merge libreboot, and doesn't have any new releases.

Then, in June 2023, the libreboot.at folks decided to start working toward doing new releases under the "GNU Boot" name. At this time, there has not been a GNU Boot release.

> she, not satisfied, created another "GNU Boot" just to say that their project is "inferior" and now she complains about a "cease and desist" of a person that rightfully don't like her.

No: She published some GNU Boot "releases" that were clearly marked as "unofficial" incorporating work from libreboot that she thought would be useful to the GNU Boot folks. https://web.archive.org/web/20230719185342/https://libreboot... She did not create "another" GNU Boot. She did call GNU Boot "inferior", but not because her unofficial release was better, but because of the FSF's RYF and FSDG policies force it to be inferior; her unofficial GNU Boot releases are also inferior to Libreboot in the same way.

As a reminder, the GNU Boot folks are trying to take the Libreboot name from her.

[djbusby]

RYF: Respect your Freedom

FSDG: Free System Distribution Guidelines

[LukeShu]

With links:

RYF: Respects Your Freedom certification requirements: https://ryf.fsf.org/about/criteria

FSDG: Free Software Distribution Guidelines: https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guideli...

An argument from Leah/Libreboot about why the RYF/FSDG's policies about firmware and microcode are bad: https://libreboot.org/news/policy.html

[evasb]

Thanks for correcting me!

[xmonkee]

Maybe edit your original comment saying that it's not factual?

[hug]

You may wish to disclaim yourself in a similar way on the other comments you made across the thread.

[slim]

  As a reminder, the GNU Boot folks are trying to take the Libreboot name from her

to me that's not as clear cut. you can't create a new project, kill the old project and rename the new project with the old project name. it's misleading.

[LukeShu]

Leah created Libreboot, and nobody other than Leah has ever done a release of Libreboot or a Libreboot derivative.

Then, Denis and Adrien come along and decide+announce that because they don't like a change that Leah made to Libreboot, that Leah no longer gets to be the one to use the Libreboot name.

[howinteresting]

I'd like to read more about this, but I will say that https://libreboot.org/news/policy.html is right on the merits.

[analognoise]

Wow that was a great read, thank you

[amatecha]

Again. delete this post. your edit at the end is useless.

[davidgerard]

[writes a ton of slander]

guys guys sorry I was wrong! but I've left the lies up, whoops how clumsy of me

[arp242]

Being mistaken is not "lying"; there's no reason to assume malicious intent.