The truth is that FSF is primarily a political organization. It is more of a political organization than any other open source foundation, eg they do things like refuse to endorse any OS that distributes any piece of non-free (read: GPL) software. They advocate against non-GPL open source as harmful. They guide their projects to be technically worse if it supports the political mission.
There is confusion here about what Stallmans role even is since he isn't an active technical contributor: his role to make sure the political vision is being enforced in the projects under FSF/GNU stewardship and that is exactly what he is doing here.
Basically, if something is not advancing the goals of the FSF then it shouldn't be a part of the FSF. It isn't news that the goal of the FSF isn't to make high quality software and they just think free software is the pragmatically best model to achieve that:
> The truth is that FSF is primarily a political organization.
So what? That doesn't matter. What part of the FSF[0] or GNU[1] project suggests that abortion is an issue relevant to their mission or goals? Why is abortion a software freedom issue? How about we say RMS does adopt it. Does that benefit the other stated goals of the organizations? How?
What happens when the FSF runs a fund raiser, and they hear, "I'd love to give to your organization because I support free software ideals, but I can't because I disagree with your stance on abortion." Does that benefit free software? What happens when they're working with legislators on bills to re-enforce net neutrality, and the legislator says, "I'd love to help you on net neutrality, but I can't. My constituents are overwhelmingly pro-life, and I've gotten hundreds of voters contacting me since Fox News ran a piece on how your organization is pushing this bill to promote pro-choice laws. The National Right to Life and National Pro-Life Alliance have been calling to lobby against this bill as well. I'm sorry, but it seems that people think net neutrality is a pro-choice issue." Does that benefit free software?
So, is the FSF and GNU willing to sacrifice their software freedom goals in order to further pro-choice goals? Should they be?
The truth is that FSF is primarily a political organization. It is more of a political organization than any other open source foundation, eg they do things like refuse to endorse any OS that distributes any piece of non-free (read: GPL) software. They advocate against non-GPL open source as harmful. They guide their projects to be technically worse if it supports the political mission.
There is confusion here about what Stallmans role even is since he isn't an active technical contributor: his role to make sure the political vision is being enforced in the projects under FSF/GNU stewardship and that is exactly what he is doing here.
Basically, if something is not advancing the goals of the FSF then it shouldn't be a part of the FSF. It isn't news that the goal of the FSF isn't to make high quality software and they just think free software is the pragmatically best model to achieve that:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/compromise.en.html
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/when-free-software-isnt-pract...