GNUstep Developers Consider Forking The Project, Moving Away From FSF

The lead developer of GNUstep, a GPL-licensed implementation of Apple's Cocoa frameworks and toolkit, is considering a fork of the project.

GNUstep developers are currently considering switching away from the GNU Savannah code hosting, to which GitHub and other options are being explored. While GNU Savannah is considered dated to many, not everyone is in agreement of going over to GitHub considering that it's not free software.

Gregory Casamento, the lead developer of GNUstep, is in favor though of GitHub. He mentioned as well that he's been thinking of moving the project away from the Free Software Foundation over the past year. Among the reasons is uncertainty that the legal protection offered by the FSF is worthwhile/needed, no real concern about legal action by Apple against the project, etc. It's also an obstacle for new developers engaging with GNUstep currently that they need to do copyright assignment to the Free Software Foundation, which includes physically mailing the agreement to the foundation.

He concluded this mailing list post today by saying, "If I had some reasonable assurance that, if I forked the project, that the major contributors (including both of you) would come with me, I would do it."