% Open Letter to the Free Software Community
%
% 2 Apr 2017

To the free software community:

Over the past six months, the Libreboot project has been in a state of discord.
After an issue with a transgender employee at the FSF escalated, Libreboot
publicly left GNU with little consultation from the community. Relations with
so many people were strained. Friendships broken, lines of code never written:
the chaos needs to come to an end.

A series of organisational issues with Libreboot enabled this fallout to occur.
We have since corrected them:

Previously, the libreboot repository and the website could only be modified by
the project leader, Leah Rowe. This setup created a single point of failure,
with little leeway for dissenting contributors. Since then, I have joined the
project as the sysadmin. Along with another contributor, Sebastian "Swift Geek"
Grzywna, direct access to the code and servers is shared. Though the project
cannot yet be completely decentralised, this change is a win for transparency.

Previously, most of libreboot.org, including public statements such as those
regarding GNU, were issued by Leah herself. The rest of the team and the
community were not consulted. As Damien Zammit, a former contributor noted, the
word "we" on old Libreboot notices meant "Leah". But alas, there is no room for
the "royal we" in democracy.

Finally, on a personal note, Leah was at the time struggling with gender
dysphoria and substance abuse. Since then, she has been managing these issues.
She agrees that her behaviour was rash and is determined to find a unifying
solution. 

With all of this in mind, were the allegations against the Free Software
Foundation true? Perhaps. Perhaps not. At this point, it doesn't matter.
Indeed, it is unlikely that Libreboot will ever rejoin GNU, but feuding in an
already fragmented community helps nobody. The world of free software is
shrinking and under attack. Though the FSF may make mistakes from time to time,
so do we. We do not need another divide.

Similarly, we would like to work closely with librecore, another project
working to deblob coreboot, whose team includes Damien Zammit. Once librecore
matures, libreboot plans to switch to librecore in lieu of our current
deblobbed fork. That is, there will be less duplication of effort; instead of
competing with librecore, libreboot will complement it.

As a technical update, we are currently working on a Libreboot port to
the X220. Leah and Swift are investigating ways to disable the ME on
Sandybridge hardware, which potentially means more modern Intel hardware may be
supported. Additionally, Paul Kocialkowski has been working on supporting
several new Chromebooks with ARM chips; these ports will also be available in
an upcoming release.

No more "royal we". No more notorious surprises. No more late night
"typofixes".

Transparency and collaboration are the way forward.

~Alyssa Rosenzweig

### A message from Leah, to further complement Alyssa's submission:

I acknowledge that what I did was wrong. Although I felt justified at the time,
I ended up hurting a lot of people, most of whom were uninvolved with any of
the relevant events. At the time of taking Libreboot out of GNU, I was going
through intense personal difficulty in my life, and I was highly unstable.
Presented with a similiar situation, I likely won't respond the way I did
before. I've changed a lot, and I promise this type of thing won't happen
again.

What I'd like the most, is to simply focus on Libreboot as I've always done,
and to forget about what happened in the past and move on.

I sincerely hope that the FSF, GNU project and others who I have hurt, can do
the same. My only goal at present is to continue improving Libreboot, and to do
everything in my power to make libre hardware a reality for everyone, as is the
goal of the Libreboot project.

I will remain in my place as a developer in this project, but everything that I
do from now on will be the result of open collaboration with others in the
project. I very nearly single handedly destroyed this project, and caused a lot
of damage to the entire community, damage which I now wish to repair. I love
Libreboot, Free Software and the community, and my only wish is to see it
thrive.

I wish well any and all outreach organisations that do work with the FSF; e.g.
Outreachy, who are working to do what they can to improve conditions for women,
LGBT people and other minorities in the sphere of computing and engineering
fields, related to Free Software.

I hope that any damage I caused to the community is not permanent.

I'm deeply sorry for the damage and upset that I caused. I will not repeat the
same mistakes twice. To a very specific person, who cannot be named in the
interest of their privacy, but for whom context will allow that person
to know this is for them: I'm especially sorry for the damage that I did to
you during those months, and I sincerely hope that you get what you are
currently seeking. I fully support you in your endeavour, and if I could help
you, I would. You still mean a great deal to me.

I'm especially sorry to John Sullivan and Ruben Rodriguez of the FSF, both of
whom I publicly slandered on the Libreboot website. They did not deserve any of
that. I was being highly abusive towards you both.

I would also like to express my sincerest apology to those GNU maintainers
whose emails I published on the Libreboot website, when all of that chaos was
underway.

I'm sorry to all the other Libreboot maintainers at the time, some of whom felt
like they had no choice but to quit the project because of my actions. Doubly
so for Damien Zammit and Timothy Pearson, both of whom I let down in various
ways afterwards aswell.

I would like to sincerely apologize to Timothy Pearson of Raptor Engineering
in particular, for the damage that I caused with Libreboot's exit from GNU,
while you were running your TALOS workstation campaign. Although I do not know
whether the campaign would have succeeded without all that chaos, my own
actions certainly did not help.

Finally, I would like to once again apologize to the community as a whole, for
the damage that I caused. I hope that I can prove to you all that I do wish to
make amends for the damage, and to improve, and to re-build bridges with the
community, and to once again work with the community in bringing Libreboot and
Free Software forward, into the future.

~Leah Rowe
