My thoughts on the RMS situation

So, if you haven't been keeping up with FOSS news lately, or haven't heard the members of the FOSS community talking, then you might have missed that Richard M Stallman (or RMS for short) was recently re-instated to the Free Software Foundation's (FSF's) board of directors. Now I'll admit, I missed the original news saying that he resigned back in 2019 (or I at least forgot about it until now) so I wasn't sure why he left in the first place. I won't get into it much here, but if you are in the same boat I was, I'd recommend DuckDuckGoing it to learn a bit more about it. Fair warning though, its not pretty stuff.
 
I personally don't think it was the right move to re-instate RMS to the board for a few reasons. One of which being the controversy, but its a bit more than that. Thinking along the same line, I don't like the idea that something as great and important as the FOSS movement should be represented by someone who has had a history of mistreating women, transphobia, and more.

I also think it shows the FSF's unwillingness to change. I feel that they are clinging too much to the past not just by re-instating RMS, but in a lot of the things they do. For example, they couldn't make a simple announcement video to announce the reinstatement, which seems a bit ridiculous in today's day and age, where video's have been an important PR tool for over a decade. The entire foundation feels a little antiquated and irrelevant at this point, which is a shame since they advocate for something as great as the Free Software Movement. In fact, I almost keep forgetting they exist until they do something that makes the news.

Now, don't get me wrong, RMS did some great things for the FOSS movement, like the creation of the FSF and the FSM, as well as creating the GNU software suite, and the GNU Public License. And I'm thankful for all of that. But I think that RMS's time has passed. His views on certain things don't fly in today's world, and his reinstatement (among other things) kind of feels like the FSF clinging to the past. I know not everyone will agree with me on this, and that's okay. This is just my opinion about the whole situation.

This is post #20 of #100daystooffload