> > The GCC maintainers work on behalf of the FSF and in some matters defer > > to the FSF. It's that simple. > > Yes, but it's not written anywhere that release and especially branching > policies are one of this matters.
The matters to which we defer to the FSF are any matters that they *ask* us to! They own the code. If RMS, for some reason, decides that he doesn't like the phrasing of a comment somewhere, we have to either convince RMS he's wrong or change the comment. As a practical matter, the FSF *delegates* most of their responsibilities to the maintainer of the package, but they can undo that delegation as to any matter any time they want.
