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> I hope that any damage I caused to the community is not permanent. While I believe Leah is honest about realizing her mistakes, I fear this part is unreasona

> I hope that any damage I caused to the community is not permanent. While I believe Leah is honest about realizing her mistakes, I fear this part is unreasonably optimistic. Libreboot as a project has clearly been tainted all across the internet, and we all know how long these things persist when they've first been given a chance to take hold. I'd love free firmware though so let's hope whatever stains remain won't be too damaging for these projects as a whole (coreboot, librecore and libreboot).

c3534l 10y ago
Meh. People have short memories, especially about internet drama. Most people probably didn't pay any attention to the drama to begin with and are only concerned with whether or not the project is stable going forward.
- tomstockmail 10y ago
  >People have short memories, especially about internet drama Hardly. Sony rootkit, Debian OpenSSL issue from 2008, Reddit CEO spez changing reddit user comments, and many more are things that I see pop up on a weekly basis here on HN, daily on reddit or /.
  - Avshalom 10y ago
    I forgot all of those. Hell I couldn't even remember if it was libreboot or openboot that had drama.
    - problems 10y ago
      Well, my own piece of annecdata, the main thing I've heard about Libreboot was the drama, so when I heard its named brought up, it was the first thing I thought of.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      What drama? I didn't even realize there was one. For better or worse, Sony, Debian and Reddit are all going strong. Internet dramas mean very little. There was a shitstorm about Uber every other month for the past few years; hell, there's one even now on the HN front page. Each time I hoped the company will finally crumble and die, but no, they're going forward as strong as ever.
  - Confiks 10y ago
    I think people, especially here on HN, recognize that humans in general are fallible, and I think the incidents you mention have been largely forgiven or forgotten, at least by the respective public of each company. Personally, I would be the least forgiving of the issues that were not accidents or were even a company policy, such as the Sony rootkit or the Lenovo Superfish rootkit. I can put the Reddit incident in the same box as this Libreboot drama; personal hardship that spirals out of control very publicly.
    - grayhatter 10y ago
      I haven't and likely wont forget Debian for their SSL mistake... security people have long memories when you mess up THAT badly.
      - jhasse 10y ago
        Debian is still one of the most used distros.
      - ersii 10y ago
        Until they fuck up themselves and might realize that even smart, hard working and careful people can fuck up.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    Some of us remember (some) of those, but how many of us have changed behaviour over it?
  - qb45 10y ago
    As far as I know places like Slashdot and Reddit, they will keep flaming Leah Rowe for decades to come but the Libreboot project itself will be spared now that they have distanced themselves from her actions.
  - HelloNurse 10y ago
    The stories you mention are remembered because they are substantial problems, hard to forgive and leaving a black marks on the respective guilty parties, while Leah Rowe severing ties with the FSF is only relatively harmless drama (civil and barely dramatic, with the final apology more intense and memorable than the initial flame).
aanm1988 10y ago
The fact that reason was able to take hold and get things back on track actually gives me more hope for this project. Hopefully this be a lesson to others as well.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- pluma 10y ago
  I think that the other contributors actually held out long enough to let her come to her senses speaks for the project. They seem to be invested enough to actually spend six months seeing the project be dragged through the mud and still come back and work with her.
  - Chaebixi 10y ago
    Didn't the other contributors leave to join a fork? https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Librecore-Formation https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Librecor... http://librecore.info/ http://librecore.info/
    - pluma 10y ago
      I was specifically referring to the contributors that didn't leave. The open letter was penned by someone other than Leah, so no matter how many have left, some of them seem to have stayed.
kstenerud 10y ago
In politics, memories are short. A year from now nobody will even care.
SwellJoe 10y ago
I didn't even know about it, and I've kinda vaguely kept an eye on Libreboot since it launched (I even used to subscribe to the LinuxBIOS dev list when it launched like two decades ago, so it's an ongoing, if only mild, interest). I certainly don't consider the project perpetually tainted. People fuck up. People deal with mental illness. People sometimes have poor interpersonal skills (this is not uncommon in technical communities...several BDFLs are widely regarded to be assholes to varying degree). All I usually want from someone is an admission of what went wrong, and a sincere effort to never repeat it and to apologize to the folks directly harmed. I don't know enough about this to say who owes who an apology or who ought to be making amends. But, really, people have been assholes on the internet since...probably the first day the internet existed. If we let that stop us from working on cool stuff, OSS and the open internet would not be what it is today (hmmm...I guess the internet being what it is today isn't exactly a bragging point or proof of my argument).
cgb223 10y ago
I'm not familiar with the issue, were other developers not able to do a hard fork of the code base and continue without her?
- timonovici 10y ago
  They did - librecore; but not much work was done on it. Libreboot is a build system more than anything else - and to be honest, that jungle of bash scripts - I'd rather see it rewriten from scratch, rather than forked. To answer your question - they kinda forked it, and kinda not.

c3534l 10y ago

Meh. People have short memories, especially about internet drama. Most people probably didn't pay any attention to the drama to begin with and are only concerned with whether or not the project is stable going forward.

tomstockmail 10y ago
>People have short memories, especially about internet drama Hardly. Sony rootkit, Debian OpenSSL issue from 2008, Reddit CEO spez changing reddit user comments, and many more are things that I see pop up on a weekly basis here on HN, daily on reddit or /.
- Avshalom 10y ago
  I forgot all of those. Hell I couldn't even remember if it was libreboot or openboot that had drama.
  - problems 10y ago
    Well, my own piece of annecdata, the main thing I've heard about Libreboot was the drama, so when I heard its named brought up, it was the first thing I thought of.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    What drama? I didn't even realize there was one. For better or worse, Sony, Debian and Reddit are all going strong. Internet dramas mean very little. There was a shitstorm about Uber every other month for the past few years; hell, there's one even now on the HN front page. Each time I hoped the company will finally crumble and die, but no, they're going forward as strong as ever.
- Confiks 10y ago
  I think people, especially here on HN, recognize that humans in general are fallible, and I think the incidents you mention have been largely forgiven or forgotten, at least by the respective public of each company. Personally, I would be the least forgiving of the issues that were not accidents or were even a company policy, such as the Sony rootkit or the Lenovo Superfish rootkit. I can put the Reddit incident in the same box as this Libreboot drama; personal hardship that spirals out of control very publicly.
  - grayhatter 10y ago
    I haven't and likely wont forget Debian for their SSL mistake... security people have long memories when you mess up THAT badly.
    - jhasse 10y ago
      Debian is still one of the most used distros.
    - ersii 10y ago
      Until they fuck up themselves and might realize that even smart, hard working and careful people can fuck up.
- vidarh 10y ago
  Some of us remember (some) of those, but how many of us have changed behaviour over it?
- qb45 10y ago
  As far as I know places like Slashdot and Reddit, they will keep flaming Leah Rowe for decades to come but the Libreboot project itself will be spared now that they have distanced themselves from her actions.
- HelloNurse 10y ago
  The stories you mention are remembered because they are substantial problems, hard to forgive and leaving a black marks on the respective guilty parties, while Leah Rowe severing ties with the FSF is only relatively harmless drama (civil and barely dramatic, with the final apology more intense and memorable than the initial flame).

aanm1988 10y ago

The fact that reason was able to take hold and get things back on track actually gives me more hope for this project. Hopefully this be a lesson to others as well.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
pluma 10y ago
I think that the other contributors actually held out long enough to let her come to her senses speaks for the project. They seem to be invested enough to actually spend six months seeing the project be dragged through the mud and still come back and work with her.
- Chaebixi 10y ago
  Didn't the other contributors leave to join a fork? https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Librecore-Formation https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Librecor... http://librecore.info/ http://librecore.info/
  - pluma 10y ago
    I was specifically referring to the contributors that didn't leave. The open letter was penned by someone other than Leah, so no matter how many have left, some of them seem to have stayed.

kstenerud 10y ago

In politics, memories are short. A year from now nobody will even care.

SwellJoe 10y ago

I didn't even know about it, and I've kinda vaguely kept an eye on Libreboot since it launched (I even used to subscribe to the LinuxBIOS dev list when it launched like two decades ago, so it's an ongoing, if only mild, interest). I certainly don't consider the project perpetually tainted. People fuck up. People deal with mental illness. People sometimes have poor interpersonal skills (this is not uncommon in technical communities...several BDFLs are widely regarded to be assholes to varying degree). All I usually want from someone is an admission of what went wrong, and a sincere effort to never repeat it and to apologize to the folks directly harmed. I don't know enough about this to say who owes who an apology or who ought to be making amends. But, really, people have been assholes on the internet since...probably the first day the internet existed. If we let that stop us from working on cool stuff, OSS and the open internet would not be what it is today (hmmm...I guess the internet being what it is today isn't exactly a bragging point or proof of my argument).

cgb223 10y ago

I'm not familiar with the issue, were other developers not able to do a hard fork of the code base and continue without her?

timonovici 10y ago
They did - librecore; but not much work was done on it. Libreboot is a build system more than anything else - and to be honest, that jungle of bash scripts - I'd rather see it rewriten from scratch, rather than forked. To answer your question - they kinda forked it, and kinda not.