The GNOME community is considering a split from the GNU Project. The proposal for the split came from senior GNOME developer Philip Van Hoof who proposed a voting in this matter. For the voting to take place, the proposal need to first get support from 10% of the members.

The whole issue started after a message from Lucas Rocha regarding Code of Conduct and Foundation Member Membership for Planet GNOME. Mandriva's Frederic Crozat brought up the issue of people, who have drifted away from the GNOME project, being still present in Planet GNOME.

This lead Richard Stallman, the founder of the GNU Project, to comment that if these people are working on product which are not free, they should not be allowed to post in Planet GNOME. Philip Van Hoof vehemently opposed Stallman and said that people from VmWare, Nokia and others post in Planet GNOME and forbidding these contributors from posting in Planet GNOME will go against the philosohpy of Planet GNOME.

Stallman replied saying,

They should not do this, unless VmWare becomes free software. GNOME should not provide proprietary software developers with a platform to present non-free software as a good or legitimate thing.

Perhaps the statement of Planet GNOME's philosophy should be interpreted differently. It should not invite people to talk about their proprietary software projects just because they are also GNOME contributors.

This is what prompted a reply from Van Hoof saying he proposes a vote on GNOME's membership in the GNU Project. To get this voting into action, the proposal needs the support of atleast 10% of the members.