Because I'm unfamiliar with the project, can someone provide some context as to what happened ?
Leah had exclusive control of libreboot. Leah is transgender. The FSF fired someone who happened to be transgender. Leah accused the FSF of doing it because they were transgender. Leah pulled libreboot out of the FSF, burned various bridges by calling people names and retained exclusive control of libreboot, making statements in the project's name.
Apparently she changed her mind and libreboot has transitioned into a more democratic project and she's sorry for what she did and cites personal issues which the letter spells out as gender dysphoria and substance abuse.
A quick googling shows that both the FSF and Leah have mostly refrained from naming names when talking about who got fired but Leah explicitly called out individual members of the FSF (which she apologises for in the letter, indicating she no longer thinks her accusations hold any water). There are also various posts from libreboot contributors complaining about Leah having effectively locked them out of the project and apparently the entire ordeal didn't exactly result in quality software releases (which is to be expected).
tl;dr: maintainer with exclusive access has personal problems, lashes out against FSF, takes project hostage, works personal problems out over the next six months, hands control over project to the other contributors and repents.
It doesn't excuse her childish actions but it helps understand the burden and stress transgender individuals are constantly under.
This and other limitations are located in the aptly named "Methods and Limitations" section.
The underlying facts are not controversial - being transgender puts someone at considerably higher risk of dying by suicide, of attempting suicide, and of having suicidal ideation.
One of the problems we have is that coroners refuse to gather this kind of information, and a bunch of suicide stats are still tied to coroner's decisions.
IOW "being transgender" cannot be identified as a factor putting someone at higher risk. It could be comorbid mental health issues, it could be adverse life experiences related to being transgender or gender-nonconforming.
Adverse life experiences related to being transgender is exactly what we man when we say "being transgender inceases a person's risk of death by suicide".
There's no judgement of trans people in that comment - indeed, the point is to make society more accepting of trans people.
The data simply does not support that conclusion, according to the study itself.
"Respondents who said they had received transition related health care or wanted to have it someday were more likely to report having attempted suicide than those who said they did not want it."
"The survey did not provide information about the timing of reported suicide attempts in relation to receiving transition-related health care, which precluded investigation of transition-related explanations for these patterns."
I agree that society should be more accepting of gender-nonconforming people regardless of their gender identity or approach to transition, if any. I wonder if this lack of acceptance is the cause of suicide, rather than dysphoria which in some cases is alleviated through medical intervention.
Which was weird to me because from the evidence we have they are.
The tl;dr is we don't know, so we shouldn't frame our decisions and policies as if we do know.
Specifically in this question: is a surgical/endocrinological approach or a mental health approach more likely to result in positive outcomes?
If that were true, it would be alarming and possibly grounds for involuntary commitment based on someone being trans.
Fortunately it is not true.
It would be really scary if all of those succeeded.
I wouldn't dismiss unsuccessful suicides. Someone who doesn't succeed or turn back before committing isn't cured or any happier and may very well attempt again or live under a black cloud of depression and stress.
As for your comment on involuntary commitment, it makes no sense. There is a well known "cure" for gender dysphoria and it is gender transition. "after treatment, 26 (2.4%) of the MTF subjects and 7 (1.4%) of the FTM subjects still reported depression"[1]. According to this study, only 2.4% still report depression after transition. There are more studies reporting similar results, find them yourself.
[1] http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/827713
Edit: I've reread your post and your other post. I understand that your comment on involuntary commitment was meant if my mistake was true and the successful suicide rate was indeed 45%.
This is the only thing in your summary I disagree with. From my reading of the issue and knowledge from following it I think Leah still very much believes in her accusations. She just has realized that at this point even if she's right nothing positive is going to happen and realizes she handled the whole situation awfully so is apologizing for that.
I didn't read anything that suggested that she didn't think the accusations were true anymore.
What I got was that she thinks her prior actions, although incorrectly reasoned, were still reasoned.
It's almost but importantly not identical to "Based on what I knew at the time, I was correct. Based on what I now know, I was incorrect" - except that part of the "what I knew" was how herself was functioning.
As a child, I always used to hate the phrase "that's just an excuse". I'd do something my parents didn't like, they'd ask why, I'd answer, they'd reply - that's just an excuse. It's not, it's the causal reason [that I could identify].
She saying she did things based on actual reasons. She's also saying that those reasons, in hindsight, were wrong, and that those resulting actions were wrong. She's accurately reporting the emotional states at the relevant times. This is a good thing.
Wondering exactly how she slandered those two people in particular, I tried googling her name and those two and got some archived mailinglist (and later checked an archived version of her own denounciation of the FSF on the libreboot.org page). She seems to have wanted to see those two people fired. But also another one - Stephen Mahood (who she names "the bully" on the archived page https://web.archive.org/web/20170114100921/https://libreboot... ) . On an archived mail she seems to call both Stephen and Ruben the bullies. https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreboot/2016-09/msg0005...
Given that her heaviest accusations are leveled (also) against Stephen, and that she feels she especially needs to apologise to the other two guys but NOT to Stephen, should we conclude that she still believes at least that guy was guilty of bullying the unnamend transgendered employee of the FSF?
FWIW Leah never explicitly named the employee because they didn't want her to but Leah made some changes to the libreboot website as well as the accusations made on the mailing list that make it very very obvious who the fired employee was. The changes she made to the Libreboot website actually made Google list the fired employees full name as a related search for a very simple query about the drama. It's still up to this day and searching for the employee's name will also list a related search tying her back to this.
Luckily it doesn't directly confirm that she was the fired employee but still, if some potential employer is looking into her on Google it's way too easy to tie her back to this controversy that she never wanted to be a part of.