content: Of course it is, and ESR knows it! Consider ESR's position and influence. This is an act of diplomacy, not the expression of a private opinion. He is acting in his position as a leader here. As he states at the beginning of the essay:  I’m going to try to keep my personal feelings about this dispute off the table, not because I don’t have any but because I think I serve us all better by speaking as neutrally as I can.  And the reason he has chosen to write in this way is because he sees this conflict as posing a grave danger not only to the open source movement, but to the businesses and infrastructure that depends on it if developers withdraw their consent to use their code.  First, let me confirm that this threat has teeth. I researched the relevant law when I was founding the Open Source Initiative.