Two visions for the future of sourceware.org

"was this the end goal of some of the participants all along? Transitioning from GNU-managed infrastructure run by people we know and trust to infrastructure run by minions of faceless corporations because we pay them money, with those corporations given explicit governing power over the project?"

Yes.

Not in any organised conspiracy way, but simply as an emergent property of the fact that corporations (i.e., the managers who allocate resources) want some level of control in return for the resources they allocate. And they can be _very_ ruthless about how they go about it. They will hire programmers to work on an open-source project, then work to get control - in back-room dealing kinds of ways (see my other comment on how corporate politics can work).

Just speaking as someone who was at the sharp end of this on another project. And - I'm sorry Jon - but LWN completely uncritically ran the LF press release on that one, without reference to the other side.