[Libre-soc-dev] Notice of termination of MoU's 2022-08-107 and 2022-08-051

[Michiel Leenaars]

Dear Luke, (cc: all Libre-SOC stakeholders)


We appreciate and respect the wonderful technical work you have done before, and have come to like you as a person. However, due to alterations in your personality, your conduct has become deeply unprofessional, abusive and frankly moved beyond the acceptable. 

Despite our earlier warnings and requests, you have continued to make damaging and misleading statements, and slanderous comments about third parties (including your ex-wife, family members, former project members and maintainers of other FOSS projects) in the context of the Libre-SOC project. As we have previously informed you, we consider such behaviour to be in direct breach of the general conditions of our grants - and in particular in violation of the IEEE Code of Ethics which underpins them. On July 9th 2024, we officially informed you of our intent to terminate any remaining grants if you would not take proper corrective action by September 1st 2024. See below.

As a public benefit organisation, we have a responsibility towards society. Your actions have been and continue to be damaging to the project and in particular the people involved in it, to NLnet and the FOSS ecosystem, and to others around you. We empathise with the tough situation you have found yourself in, but also note you have deliberately chosen to defy acting on the issues we have brought to your attention. There are additional matters which we will not mention out of discretion.

We feel we have no reasonable choice other than to terminate the remaining Memoranda of Understanding led by you. This is effective immediately, and irrevocable. We would appreciate it if you inform all team members involved, we also post this message to the project mailing list to make sure everone has an opportunity to see it. Obviously, anyone is free to continue the work within Libre-SOC if they so choose - as they have always been and always will be. However, it will be outside of any active grant from us from now on.

(Former) team members which still have unclaimed donations linked to tasks completed before July 2024, can contact us directly via the following email addresses:

- for "Libre-SOC HPC": 2022-08-107 at nlnet.nl
- for "Libre-SOC OpenPOWER ISA WG: 2022-08-051 at nlnet.nl

We will deal with them directly, so that there is no need for any further contact between you and our staff. If you're reading this and are a current or former team member affected by the situation, please make sure to submit your requests by September 17th, 2024. After this date, these dossiers will be permanently closed.

Please respect our wish to disengage, and no longer send us any messages. We are very sorry that other people are affected by this unfortunate situation. This is most inconvenient and an awkward situation for all involved, we understand this. We appreciate the efforts of those who have tried over the past few months to resolve this situation more amicably, but unfortunately, it was not to be.

We wish you the best in your future endeavors and hope you will find a path that once more leads to positive and constructive engagement. As you wrote yourself, getting back to health, is key now. We wish you much strength.

Kind regards,

on behalf of NLnet foundation
Bob Goudriaan and Michiel Leenaars


>From: Bob Goudriaan <bob at nlnet.nl>
>Subject: Re: complaint and mediation
>Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2024 13:16:46 +0200
>Cc: Michiel Leenaars <michiel at nlnet.nl>
>To: Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl at lkcl.net>

>Dear Luke,
>
>I am writing to follow up on our previous correspondence regarding the
>status of the Libre-SOC project. Unfortunately, we have not yet received
>answers to the questions we posed about the outstanding RfPs. Your
>recent responses also do not indicate that we will receive any answers
>soon.
>
>Additionally, you have stated that you are unwilling to work on
>Libre-SOC as long as its directors are not "in jail". However, we have
>no reason to believe that your former colleagues will be prosecuted, let
>alone sentenced, based on the accusations you have made against them.
>
>Therefore, we do not expect you to resume working on the Libre-SOC
>project as initially anticipated when we accepted your proposals.
>
>Besides your apparent unwillingness to proceed with Libre-SOC, we are
>also uncomfortable with how you recently have fulfilled your role as
>project lead. Your behaviour towards fellow team members has been
>aggressive and dismissive. Your behaviour towards others has been
>detrimental to the ecosystem. We have asked for clarification on a prior
>claim made by you, which has been contested by one of your team members
>and seems to lack sufficient basis at present. Claiming funds for the
>work of others as your own without their consent, would be an abuse of
>power and a violation of our Code of Conduct. We have offered the
>opportunity to clarify and amend this anomaly, but we cannot allow this
>to become a risk to us during audits.
>
>Despite several requests from us, you have done nothing to mitigate this
>risk - and have instead moved to accusations of discrimination against
>us. This is not acceptable behaviour. We will therefore no longer accept
>any new payment requests from you, and have frozen all other Memoranda
>of Understanding led by you as of immediately. If you do not comply with
>our requests, these will all terminate by September 1st 2024.
>
>Without further information we cannot process any of your outstanding
>RfPs. We understand there are a number of complicating factors at your
>end, but due to the limited available time the NGI Assure programme will
>still run and the availability of staff in the holiday period you will
>need to act promptly. This is long overdue already.
>
>Beyond handling the above, we will not seek any contact with you
>anymore. We do not accept the abuse towards our staff members. Given
>your expressed feelings of discrimination by NLnet, we understand that
>you may have adverse feelings towards us as well and would also prefer
>to discontinue any relationship with our foundation. Therefore, we
>believe this is the best course of action for both parties moving
>forward.
>
>We wish you all the best for the future and regret that it has come to
>this.
>
>
>Kind regards,
>Bob Goudriaan
>Director
>
>NLnet foundation
>Science Park 400
>1098 XH  Amsterdam
>+ 31 6 15 891 997
>+ 31 20 888 4252