That’s the really odd thing in this situation. The maintainers all seem to want to remove it, and the project governance says the maintainers are supposed to decide based on the quorum.
RMS just over ruled that. Because it was his joke and he felt like it.
Which seems like it goes against the whole “community“ thing.
The maintainers don't own the project though, GNU (RMS) does. If the maintainers want to control the project they are maintaining it does seem that they need to fork it and continue under a new name.
(Or at least that's what I got from this thread. Certainly it's possible that GNU/RMS/Whoever originally had rights has passed those rights to the maintainers, but it doesn't happen simply by virtue of them maintaining it.)
If you read the waiver you have to sign before contributing anything to the fsf you surrender all your copyrights to them. This is so they can keep moving software into newer GPL versions.
The maintainers are just mechanics working on someone else's car and have as much say in choosing the interior decor.
The beauty of the system is that if they get sick of that state of affairs they get an identical copy of the car for free and can then do whatever they want to it.
RMS just over ruled that. Because it was his joke and he felt like it.
Which seems like it goes against the whole “community“ thing.