But in the meantime don't worry: he agrees with the idea of making
Magit into a GNU project in principle.

That is wonderful news! Were Magit a GNU project a few years ago, Richard would no doubt have a few less gray hairs and I would not have been the proverbial messenger whom Richard shot when trying to help him grok Git by using Magit. :-)

There are likely more than a few of us who have learned Git via Magit and for which we are grateful to Jonas and the Magit contributors.

I would implore the GNU leaders to bend over backwards to include projects like Magit which exemplify Free Software values and practices.  I would go so far as to suggest that catalogs of GNU software also include a special category of software that fails the GNU stamp of approval by virtue of only missing copyright assignment to GNU.  And I would implore these same leaders to use such software proudly.  
--
-pmr