Obviously we don't have the full context of prior communication, but the message screenshot is super passive aggressive ("just a little reminder you're not a maintainer" when obviously both parties are aware, "you're welcome to send us patches that we will review if we want to" very implying that the patches might just be ignored). It's possible the libreboot author also wasn't communicating professionally either, but I don't think that really warrants a response like that either. If you actually want to convince someone to cease doing something, it seems better to just to stick to cold, formal language; writing something like this makes it seem more like an attempt to rile someone up rather than an attempt at legal enforcement.
I have to remind myself not to read too much into such things, for three reasons that we all know, but which may bear repeating to ourselves:
1. Open source is global, and not everyone is a native speaker of English.
2. Among English speakers, not everyone has the same cultural conventions and nuances. Even within US cities, you can drive 15 minutes, and find very different conventions. And culture in Boston isn't the same as in the Bay Area, isn't the same as in Bolivia.
3. Even within the same culture, not everyone picks up on signals in language to the same degree (whether perceiving or sending). And some people who think they're picking up on signals are conflating with biases more than some others do.
I say I have to remind myself, because this still hits me. For example, when I'm searching certain bug databases, trying to solve an annoying problem, and some prolific volunteer commenting on a bug report there speaks in a manner that comes off as brusque or dismissive. Where they're from (across the Atlantic from me), maybe it's interpreted as professional or capable, and is even reassuring.
I've had to referee disagreements between East Coast USians and Germans a few times before now, mostly in terms of acting as a protocol translation layer until they were both sufficiently calmed down to underail themselves and focus on the technical side again rather than being distracted by their differing communication styles.
Generally once I'd helped them unpick that they collaborated happily and came up with something good that they both liked, it's just once people are locked in to talking past each other it's often non-trivial to break out of that.
That's an essential point. At the same time the interpretation isn't completely random or unpredictable; we're all humans, with the same emotions, the same physiological expressions of them, and the same internal responses to others' emotions. If you yell at someone anywhere, you can expect a certain range of emotional responses.
> some prolific volunteer commenting on a bug report there speaks in a manner that comes off as brusque or dismissive
Maybe they are being brusque and dismissive. Maybe they're allowed to. I know I use a somewhat different tone when I'm filing bugs against a project I've been submitting bug reports and patches to for ten years, run by a developer who I've known personally for 20 ;-)
> Who are we? Denis ‘GNUtoo’ Carikli and Adrien ‘neox’ Bourmault. We created this and maintain it.
> take a stand for fully free software is to change URLs across the web from <libreboot.org> to <libreboot.at>, and to let people know that no other version of Libreboot is reliably free software
I hadn't heard about this drama before, but as I can piece things together, Leah has been maintaining Libreboot and another boot system for years. Denis and Adrien disagreed with Leah's decision to include binaries, created their own version of Libreboot without those binaries and published it under the same name on a very similar domain trying to claim the existing Libreboot name for their version.
Then I suspect Leah disagreed with that fork both on technical merits (it's based on old code) and with the stealing of the name, but she agreed with the need for a version without the binaries, so she made that and published it under the name GNUboot, intended for Denis and Adrien to base their work on, and now Denis and Adrien are complaining that she's misusing the GNU name.
Is that roughly a correct summary?
Because if it is, it sounds to me like both sides do have valid points, but handled the disagreement very poorly. Denis and Adrien complaining that Leah stole the GNU name when they just stole the Libreboot name, sounds very hypocritical. The whole thing would be a lot better if both sides stopped the drama and powergames and just worked together to create the best possible boot systems; one with the binaries and one without.
I'm not up to date on these events yet, but GNUtoo is a Guix contributor I see around a fair bit on the mailing list and IRC, which makes this seem more interesting. It's not just a random person who got mad about stuff, but someone very involved in other official GNU stuff. Not familiar with neox, but wouldn't surprise me if they're similarly involved in free software stuff elsewhere.
But this isn't really a C&D letter. It's just a request to stop using their name. Feels like Rowe is assigning it the C&D label, probably since it makes things sound more dramatic, when it really isn't.
Did I miss something? Over the past 7 years the Libreboot project has been extremely aggressive towards the FSF. Going so far as to say the GNU project shouldn't exist and throwing insults at individuals in the organization.
The emphasis on the whole, "I did this release for them" honestly doesn't pass the sniff test and kind of feels like they're intentionally trying to create drama. The "why didn't they contact me" has a completely obvious answer based on past interactions.
So here's a better question, why didn't Libreboot contact GNU before trying to publish their own GNU Boot release? Why did they try to impersonate them?
Libreboot use to be part of the GNU project, but I'm not aware of any collaboration after the fact. I just know the primary author/maintainer of Libreboot had a falling out with the FSF and GNU project. I don't think they ever reconciled (and I'm not sure they will at this point).
As for the cause of their falling out, this happened around 2016 when the FSF let go of a transgender employee. It appears the original statements by the Libreboot maintainer was deleted off of their site, but they are archived[0][1] and the original email sent out declaring themselves no longer part of the GNU project[2]
Just to be clear, I am not sure if an actual reason was given out for why they were fired. The FSF had declined giving an actual reason, and Richard Stallman himself stated "The dismissal of the staff person was not because of her gender. Her gender now is the same as it was when we hired her. It was not an issue then, and it is not an issue now."[3]
Those articles and emails are the only primary sources that I'm aware of. There might be more information somewhere else, but unfortunately I don't really know of anything further.
There was more drama later on. Something about the author leaving the project and then forcibly taking it back a few years later down the line against other contributor's wishes. But I think the reason for that was a bit more nuanced and I didn't keep up with that. I'm not even sure it had anything to do with the FSF or GNU project anyways.
No. The better question is, why didn't FSF contact Leah before trying to publish their own Libreboot releases at libreboot.at? Why did they try to impersonate Libreboot?
Whatever you may think of Leah publishing an unofficial GNU Boot release for them to rebase off of, she didn't try to impersonate them by buying a confusingly similar domain.
Compare her single reference to an "unofficial GNUBoot release" to this: https://libreboot.at/
> No. The better question is, why didn't FSF contact Leah before trying to publish their own Libreboot releases at libreboot.at? Why did they try to impersonate Libreboot?
That's not a better question at all. They list out their explicit reasoning for their attempted name takeover. I definitely don't agree with it, but I have no reason to believe that they're lying about their own beliefs.
I absolutely do have reason to doubt Leah's words of releasing GNU Boot as being in good faith though. Their history of drama with them is the reason for my doubt.
In terms of practicality, I feel like a better reaction would have been to either trademark their project name or maintain a separate fork of Libreboot that would include the binary blobs. Why resort to trademark infringement?
Completely pointless drama, but there is a real issue here in that people (phoronix) mistook the unofficial one for the real one (https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNU-Boot-20230717). This is their way of interjecting.
So we have Libreboot (pronounce 'LibreBoot'), and we have an unofficial GNU Boot (pronounce 'NewBoot') both by Leah Rowe (from UK, good coder, also a drama magnet). With the unofficial GNU Boot being more up to par with Libreboot, and being 'completely FOSS' whereas the other one made concessions.
Then we have Coreboot (formerly known as LinuxBIOS) on which Libreboot is based, and we have an unofficial Libreboot, and an official GNU Boot. What is the purpose of the unofficial Libreboot and official GNU Boot? They're both lagging behind the other versions by Leah Rowe. I'm all for forks but why do we have these people who seemingly unable to collaborate with each other, and then create all this drama?
I used LinuxBIOS once. On an old ThinkPad T61. I replaced the proprietary BIOS with LinuxBIOS, and my goodness it was fast compared to the slow, proprietary BIOS. But it was also risky to replace the BIOS if I didn't want to physically touch the device, fiddling with soldering and the like. So for too long, I did not dare to.
Which is why Leah offers this service to other people: second hand, physically clean and proprietary firmware stripped devices. Old devices. Which require various microcode fixes but once these are active (and an up-to-date Linux distribution takes care of that) they should be secure.
In the end I brought my ThinkPad T61 to the dump. The battery and backup battery were both dead, the SSD was dying, the case was a bit damaged and some screws were missing, and I couldn't bother to update the slow machine. That I could've sold it or have someone patch it up and resell it didn't tilt in my mind. I was relocating and needed to get rid of a lot of stuff so it is hindsight 20/20 that would've been the best option.
This highlights why trademarks exist, to avoid confusion. I don't know the history of the project but once somebody starts calling some software Libreboot anybody else should stay clear of that name.
GNU Boot seems to have sent it not for anything in Libreboot itself, but to adress a web page with self-proclaimed “unofficial” GNU Boot releases. They wanted it to stop proclaiming to be “unofficial GNU Boot” releases. Understandable, if a bit antagonistic.
EDIT: Courtesy of user jbit¹, this is the aforementioned web page:
Haha, I can't deny that I love the catty drama that happens around the free software community. While I do wish people would get along better for the health of the project, I also suspect that these strong characters are why the movement hasn't been completedo taken over by corporate interests.
Look at the who's who of the Linux foundation and it's all the big tech lackeys deciding everything. Even very questionable companies like Huawei are highly represented. I don't call that anti-corporate.
Anti-corporate licenses would be the Peer Production License, Anti-Capitalist Software License, etc. whereas GPL/MIT/Apache etc. are all extremely corporate-friendly as can be plainly seen by the companies that have adopted them.
However GPL software being corporate-friendly can be a good thing if it leads to "exvestments" into public goods that create alternatives to corporate software (such as with Linux) in ways that are not direct investments into corporate aims
One can't help but wonder if the corporate interests are actually responsible for creating this drama as an attempt to derail or impede these projects.
The way I see it is there's office drama just like this, difference is that open source is transparent for everyone to see, and global. It's like a global office that we all get glimpses into.
And in this particular case, it reminds me of Red Hat and CentOS actually. Because one project just wants to ensure that people who download <name brand> are actually getting <name brand> and not something else. That concern is just as valid in open source as it is in big enterprise.
> I also suspect that these strong characters are why the movement hasn't been completedo taken over by corporate interests
They already serve 99% of corporate interests. A "takeover" would sacrifice the veil of what the propagandized "open source community" interprets as corporate egalitarianism.
If you make no distinction between free software and open source, sure. But the free software community, centered around fsf, is known to be hard to work with.
Libreboot is one of those projects I have a tough time following because there’s always some toes they are stepping on. I don’t understand why this project has so many people problems.
Seems like the type of project that, originating out of defending against user-hostility or user-negligence, would have some (possibly overly?) passionate people behind it.
Readit News
1. Open source is global, and not everyone is a native speaker of English.
2. Among English speakers, not everyone has the same cultural conventions and nuances. Even within US cities, you can drive 15 minutes, and find very different conventions. And culture in Boston isn't the same as in the Bay Area, isn't the same as in Bolivia.
3. Even within the same culture, not everyone picks up on signals in language to the same degree (whether perceiving or sending). And some people who think they're picking up on signals are conflating with biases more than some others do.
I say I have to remind myself, because this still hits me. For example, when I'm searching certain bug databases, trying to solve an annoying problem, and some prolific volunteer commenting on a bug report there speaks in a manner that comes off as brusque or dismissive. Where they're from (across the Atlantic from me), maybe it's interpreted as professional or capable, and is even reassuring.
Generally once I'd helped them unpick that they collaborated happily and came up with something good that they both liked, it's just once people are locked in to talking past each other it's often non-trivial to break out of that.
Maybe they are being brusque and dismissive. Maybe they're allowed to. I know I use a somewhat different tone when I'm filing bugs against a project I've been submitting bug reports and patches to for ten years, run by a developer who I've known personally for 20 ;-)
Dead Comment
I found this: https://libreboot.at
> Who are we? Denis ‘GNUtoo’ Carikli and Adrien ‘neox’ Bourmault. We created this and maintain it.
> take a stand for fully free software is to change URLs across the web from <libreboot.org> to <libreboot.at>, and to let people know that no other version of Libreboot is reliably free software
Then I suspect Leah disagreed with that fork both on technical merits (it's based on old code) and with the stealing of the name, but she agreed with the need for a version without the binaries, so she made that and published it under the name GNUboot, intended for Denis and Adrien to base their work on, and now Denis and Adrien are complaining that she's misusing the GNU name.
Is that roughly a correct summary?
Because if it is, it sounds to me like both sides do have valid points, but handled the disagreement very poorly. Denis and Adrien complaining that Leah stole the GNU name when they just stole the Libreboot name, sounds very hypocritical. The whole thing would be a lot better if both sides stopped the drama and powergames and just worked together to create the best possible boot systems; one with the binaries and one without.
Dead Comment
GNU will probably back pedal
Did I miss something? Over the past 7 years the Libreboot project has been extremely aggressive towards the FSF. Going so far as to say the GNU project shouldn't exist and throwing insults at individuals in the organization.
The emphasis on the whole, "I did this release for them" honestly doesn't pass the sniff test and kind of feels like they're intentionally trying to create drama. The "why didn't they contact me" has a completely obvious answer based on past interactions.
So here's a better question, why didn't Libreboot contact GNU before trying to publish their own GNU Boot release? Why did they try to impersonate them?
Libreboot use to be part of the GNU project, but I'm not aware of any collaboration after the fact. I just know the primary author/maintainer of Libreboot had a falling out with the FSF and GNU project. I don't think they ever reconciled (and I'm not sure they will at this point).
As for the cause of their falling out, this happened around 2016 when the FSF let go of a transgender employee. It appears the original statements by the Libreboot maintainer was deleted off of their site, but they are archived[0][1] and the original email sent out declaring themselves no longer part of the GNU project[2]
Just to be clear, I am not sure if an actual reason was given out for why they were fired. The FSF had declined giving an actual reason, and Richard Stallman himself stated "The dismissal of the staff person was not because of her gender. Her gender now is the same as it was when we hired her. It was not an issue then, and it is not an issue now."[3]
Those articles and emails are the only primary sources that I'm aware of. There might be more information somewhere else, but unfortunately I don't really know of anything further.
There was more drama later on. Something about the author leaving the project and then forcibly taking it back a few years later down the line against other contributor's wishes. But I think the reason for that was a bit more nuanced and I didn't keep up with that. I'm not even sure it had anything to do with the FSF or GNU project anyways.
[0] https://archive.is/T8BBA
[1] https://archive.is/q5uod
[2] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreboot/2016-09/msg0003...
[3] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreboot/2016-09/msg0005...
Whatever you may think of Leah publishing an unofficial GNU Boot release for them to rebase off of, she didn't try to impersonate them by buying a confusingly similar domain.
Compare her single reference to an "unofficial GNUBoot release" to this: https://libreboot.at/
That's not a better question at all. They list out their explicit reasoning for their attempted name takeover. I definitely don't agree with it, but I have no reason to believe that they're lying about their own beliefs.
I absolutely do have reason to doubt Leah's words of releasing GNU Boot as being in good faith though. Their history of drama with them is the reason for my doubt.
In terms of practicality, I feel like a better reaction would have been to either trademark their project name or maintain a separate fork of Libreboot that would include the binary blobs. Why resort to trademark infringement?
Dead Comment
So we have Libreboot (pronounce 'LibreBoot'), and we have an unofficial GNU Boot (pronounce 'NewBoot') both by Leah Rowe (from UK, good coder, also a drama magnet). With the unofficial GNU Boot being more up to par with Libreboot, and being 'completely FOSS' whereas the other one made concessions.
Then we have Coreboot (formerly known as LinuxBIOS) on which Libreboot is based, and we have an unofficial Libreboot, and an official GNU Boot. What is the purpose of the unofficial Libreboot and official GNU Boot? They're both lagging behind the other versions by Leah Rowe. I'm all for forks but why do we have these people who seemingly unable to collaborate with each other, and then create all this drama?
I used LinuxBIOS once. On an old ThinkPad T61. I replaced the proprietary BIOS with LinuxBIOS, and my goodness it was fast compared to the slow, proprietary BIOS. But it was also risky to replace the BIOS if I didn't want to physically touch the device, fiddling with soldering and the like. So for too long, I did not dare to.
Which is why Leah offers this service to other people: second hand, physically clean and proprietary firmware stripped devices. Old devices. Which require various microcode fixes but once these are active (and an up-to-date Linux distribution takes care of that) they should be secure.
In the end I brought my ThinkPad T61 to the dump. The battery and backup battery were both dead, the SSD was dying, the case was a bit damaged and some screws were missing, and I couldn't bother to update the slow machine. That I could've sold it or have someone patch it up and resell it didn't tilt in my mind. I was relocating and needed to get rid of a lot of stuff so it is hindsight 20/20 that would've been the best option.
I wish this were higher up. I can see why the situation is very confusing to somebody who doesn't know this.
I'm struggling to see how there's an argument either party are in the right here for trying to squat on each other's names.
EDIT: Courtesy of user jbit¹, this is the aforementioned web page:
<https://web.archive.org/web/20230719185342/https://libreboot...>
1. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36927233>
Anyone with a real job in a moderately Big Co. can tell you that.
Look at the who's who of the Linux foundation and it's all the big tech lackeys deciding everything. Even very questionable companies like Huawei are highly represented. I don't call that anti-corporate.
However GPL software being corporate-friendly can be a good thing if it leads to "exvestments" into public goods that create alternatives to corporate software (such as with Linux) in ways that are not direct investments into corporate aims
I think in fact the corporate interests already get 99% of everything they want and they simply don't care for a cohesive desktop OS.
What would that look like, then?
And in this particular case, it reminds me of Red Hat and CentOS actually. Because one project just wants to ensure that people who download <name brand> are actually getting <name brand> and not something else. That concern is just as valid in open source as it is in big enterprise.
They already serve 99% of corporate interests. A "takeover" would sacrifice the veil of what the propagandized "open source community" interprets as corporate egalitarianism.
Seems like the type of project that, originating out of defending against user-hostility or user-negligence, would have some (possibly overly?) passionate people behind it.
For context, this is the page the cease and desist was referring to.