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Comment by jeffchien | Hacker News Reader

I must admit I didn't know who Mr. Bushnell was, so I looked him up. Finding out about his dismissal from GNU Hurd back in 2003 was quite ironic to me:

> RMS has now "dismissed" me as Hurd maintainer because I have publicly spoken against the GFDL, saying that a GNU maintainer must support and speak in favor of GNU policies. If this is really RMS's reason, then it means that he demands the right to control the speech of every GNU volunteer when it comes to GNU project policies. He wants not merely to set the direction, but also to require that each and every one of us publicly support a GNU policy when asked to.

[1] https://lists.softwarelibero.it/pipermail/discussioni/2003-N... [2] https://lwn.net/Articles/59147/

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Keep in mind that Stallman maintained that Bushnell stopped answering emails for two years, and that was the reason for firing him.

Seems like he still holds a grudge.

Interesting. Not to entirely doubt what you're saying, but the source for that statement on Wikipedia doesn't have a primary source. Do you happen to have more reading? I would love to have the complete story between them.

(Aside: Now that I look into it, Mr. Bushnell's Wikipedia page has basically been rewritten on September 22nd [1] after his article) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Bushnell&a...

One of the issues whenever this sort of cancelling occurs is of the people who come out of the woodwork to join in the calls, it turns out some of them have personal issues with the person aside from their contentious conduct. This is why these things, as others have mentioned, should be tried in official channels, not merely be executed in response to public attitudes and press releases.

What official channels? Nobody has accused RMS of anything that constitutes a crime. (But it's not surprising that the necessary qualifications for leading the FSF are stricter than the qualifications for not being in jail.)

The board could have met, deliberated, have an honest discussion, reviewed evidence. Not simply oust him a week later.

Are we sure he didn't just resign to take pressure off the FSF? Are we sure the board didn't deliberate?

It's not their job nor their responsibility to handle issues this way

So it is safe to say that at least some of the people eager to see Stallman burn have a grudge with him. In other words, they are not being objective.

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