Free Software Foundation—FSF reinstated Richard Stallman to board despite misconduct allegations, triggering mass backlash
In March 2021, the FSF quietly reinstated Richard Stallman to its board of directors, announced without prior notice to staff or the community at the LibrePlanet 2021 conference. Stallman had resigned in 2019 after making controversial comments defending Marvin Minsky in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. The reinstatement triggered massive backlash: an open letter with 3000+ signatures demanded removal of Stallman and the entire board. Over 41 organizations including Red Hat, Mozilla, GNOME Foundation, EFF, SUSE, and Software Freedom Conservancy condemned the decision. Red Hat suspended all FSF funding. Three senior staff (executive director, deputy director, CTO) and board member Kat Walsh resigned in protest. The FSF board doubled down in April 2021, defending the decision.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corporate Governance | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Corporate Transparency | -against | secondary | -0.50 |
| DEI Programs | -against | secondary | -0.50 |
| Overall incident score = | -1.027 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (critical ×2) × confidence (0.77)
Evidence (3 signals)
FSF executive director, deputy director, and CTO resigned after Stallman reinstatement
Three key FSF staff members - executive director John Sullivan, deputy director John Hsieh, and chief technology officer Ruben Rodriguez - all resigned following the decision to reinstate Stallman to the board. Board member Kat Walsh also resigned, having voted against the reinstatement.
EFF expressed profound disappointment at Stallman re-election to FSF board
The Electronic Frontier Foundation issued a statement saying they were profoundly disappointed to hear of the re-election of Richard Stallman to a leadership position at the FSF, noting no discernible steps had been taken by him to be accountable for his past actions. The EFF was also disturbed by the secretive process of his re-election.
Open letter with 3000+ signatures called for removal of Stallman and entire FSF board
An open letter published on GitHub demanded the removal of Richard Stallman from all leadership positions and removal of the entire FSF board. Over 3000 individuals and 41+ organizations signed, including Red Hat, Mozilla, GNOME Foundation, Software Freedom Conservancy, Outreachy, Tor, X.org, and FreeDOS.