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by torstenvl 1055 days ago
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.

2 comments

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.

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

> 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.

> 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