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No, that's just another option when it comes to free software. Why not make an effort to cohere rather than disperse? Stronger together and all that.

RMS is pulling the authority card, which is always a dodgy thing to do, and people want an egalitarian project rather than an authoritarian one. Both sides need to learn when to pick a fight and when to let something pass.

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> some people want an egalitarian project rather than an authoritarian one

Plenty of us prefer the authoritarian model, rather than the chaotic model of arbitrary consensus.

Which is totally fair. But that’s not how this project is set up. And that’s what makes this so odd.

Because GNU has always worked that way and given us some of the best software ever written.

Worth noting that basically every Linux distro for many years used the eglibc fork, until the former glibc maintainer stepped down, and it's hardly the only GNU project that is what it is today because it managed to reabsorb a fork by admitting a mistake. GCC comes to mind.

GNU is what it is today largely because of the name recognition, and people's willingness to get stuff incorporated into GNU because of that name recognition. eglibc was very conservative about patches because it aimed for reunification eventually, but it didn't have to be.

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