Richard Stallman single-handedly created the free software movement, and he's the reason we all have jobs. Google and Facebook might not have been possible in a world where you couldn't spin up a server for free and compile code without paying a license.
Richard Stallman has said some sexist and edgy things. He also has Asperger's, which poses challenges many of us do not face. He hasn't, as far as I know, committed any crimes.
Do we destroy the pillar we've built our entire livelihoods upon to satisfy a mob?
Have all of us been truly without blame? Who hasn't said something they shouldn't have? Or done something that marginalized someone at some point in time (even if it wasn't on the basis of sex, gender, race, etc.)?
I don't want to live in a world without American freedom of speech - where we can't be blunt and speak our minds.
I don't want to live in a world where we can't be forgiven.
I was reading comments in another HN thread, and one poster suggested that this might arise from raising kids without bullying. Like the immune system, if we don't develop a central tolerance, perhaps we start attacking everything we find unpleasant? No basis in behavioral science, of course.
And then there's the engagement-driven social media monster. Twitter, in particular. It's destroying careers.
We're badgering the members of the FSF. We're denying Richard Stallman any chances.
This isn't good. It's horrific.
What do we do about this?
I take issue with this. I'm not hugely adept at history but from my understanding there has never been a time where you can just blurt out a communication and have it be "accepted" by society - this seems to me very American and appears very detached from reality and real world experience.
Yes, you are accountable for the communications you make, whether via keybord, orally, or any other way.
Yes, you can be killed for the communications you make - this is not new, neither shocking and has been a staple of humanity from the beginning.
Yes, you will be cancelled if your joke is taken out of context, or if some journalist finds a tweet and somebody is on an airplane and at the center of a multi-national storm [0].
Textareas like the one you typed in to make your comment give you a lot of freedom, but also a lot of power, and humans are learning with great power wields responsibility. People will take offense at your crass jokes and delete you for it, perhaps it's best to step away and not click "reply" afterall. Your conversation with a friend may be recorded or overheard, perhaps somebody is stalking you and waiting for a golden opportunity to "get" you, perhaps it's possible to form a narrative the media can use that's pieced together just to convince a group then let it spread like wildfire.
None of these things are new to humanity, and sometimes there's just nothing within your power you can do to stop it if somebody is motivated enough to want to inflict harm upon you.
That's what the world has taught us lately, more people would be wise to learn and take notes.
I agree that you are accountable for the things you say. Unfortunately, people are attempting to hold RMS accountable for things he did not say. This situation is the result of willful misinterpretation and dishonest and sensationalist media reporting.
The principle of charity must be applied, particularly with people on the Autism spectrum, who aren't necessarily tuned to the sensibilities of society around them.
This is censorship. It's why I'm posting anonymously for the first time in a long time.
> there has never been a time where you can just blurt out a communication and have it be "accepted" by society
We're in a new era where algorithms amplify rage and "mobs" are a composite of real people, anonymous users, and bots. You can't fight against it, and there's no due process or forgiveness.
> Yes, you can be killed for the communications you make...
> Yes, you will be cancelled if your joke is taken out of context...
I guess the question here is whether anything can be done to change this. After all, the society has progressed to the point where it has proclaimed freedom of thought / conscience to be an important value, and, ostensibly, has stopped discriminating on religious grounds. There's no significant difference, in my opinion, between writing something in a textarea and collectively praying to a god or proselytizing on the streets.
The speed and the scale at which “a random throwaway comment to a friend” can be taken out of context and used to ruin a person’s life are pretty new
We don't let internet mobs run courts yet we allow them to ruin people's lives for some reason.
Or do click "reply", because there are billions of people out there and some may take offense, but who cares? Billions of people don't. You can delete them right back, and billions of people will keep not caring.
That textarea only gives you a tiny bit of power and it gives everyone else the same tiny bit of power, so why should you fear their power more than they should fear yours?
Just for the purpose of debating let me bring up my (very unpopular) point of view.
I have always thought that anyone should be able to say anything and not have legal consequences (ex: go to prison, pay a fine).
Notice that this statement covers all scenarios as long as the person involved "only speaks" (or publishes). In other words, the moment he does something illegal, then he should (in my opinion) be judged according to the rules of the society he lives in.
Now... I have never in my live encountered one single person that agrees 100% with me in that regard. They always come up with exceptions, such as these ones:
1) An author writes a book about having sex with minors.
2) A general tells one of his soldiers to shoot a prisoner.
3) My neighbor starts publishing ads on the local newspaper falsely accusing me of being a drug dealer.
These are my responses:
1) As long as we don't catch him having sex with minors, that's ok with me. We should encourage all types of debates, even those (specially those!) we are not comfortable with. In the worst case, each one will walk home thinking the other side is wrong; in the best case, maybe we will learn something from each other (maybe we can better understand how the brain of that author works and how we can help him). Simply banning a taboo topic won't make it disappear from society... openly discussing the topic will (in my opinion) be a better long term solution for all.
2) In this case the general is not just "saying" something. Due to the chain of command, the soldier can end up imprisoned or dead if he doesn't comply. I would still defend the right for some random person to publicly state that "we should kill all xxx", not because I agree with him, but because we should be able to discuss the reasons and try to convince him to do otherwise.
3) This is the most tricky one. I still think my neighbor should be able to do that because I expect others who read the newspaper ad to fact check his claims instead of blindly believe them. No one I have ever met agrees with me on this one... and I think that is because people always consider others to be "dumber" than themselves and thus need to be protected from non curated news in case they end up believing them. I really think this is not the case: I never believe anything I read on the newspaper (or online) until I get confirmation from several places and I know most people do the same, no matter how others like to "look down" at "average Joe".
I enjoy discussing the limits of "freedom of speech/ideas". Let me know what you (or any other) think :)
This specifically is such a weird expression.
Other than that, just because Stallman did a good thing once, doesn’t excuse him from other mistakes. And making mistakes is not itself a problem, you can always own up to them and learn. But what I gather from the discussion is that there is a _pattern_ of bad behaviour.
Discounting something as "a good thing once" sounds weird to me: many things require a huge amount of work to carry off, so "once" here can encompass dedicating someone's life work for decades, just for that one thing. (Sorry for going off topic, as I'm not commenting either way on your point, just on this phrase.)
Come on: this is a massive trivialisation of RMS's achievements. I have often disagreed with him but his contributions to OSS, and to the wider foundations of modern software and software development, are huge and are the product of decades of devotion - of consistent, motivated effort - from him.
Like it or not, all of us who work in software - even those of us who aren't necessarily strong advocates of free software - benefit from RMS's work.
I've also got bad news for you: we all exhibit _patterns_ of bad behaviour. Fortunately, we are all equipped with the capacity to change even long ingrained habits and patterns.
(To be clear: I am in no way defending any bad behaviour from RMS towards other people, or suggesting that he shouldn't change that behaviour.)
This is such bullshit. There is no pattern of bad behaviour. There are some opinions that are considered controversial by mere fact of containing his actual thoughts on sensitive subjects rather than phrases repeated verbatim from the "currently allowed viewpoints" book. His views are not even contrary, they are just phrased in a way that allows dialogue of the subject. This is enough for the pure evil villains like Sarah Mei to build up her online persona by misattribution, lying and fabricating information crafted in a way that directs a mindless mob to online-lynch the man that in his life has done more for the freedom of that mob's members than anyone else alive. It is despicable. If anything deserves to be "cancelled" it is Sarah Mei's opinions on the subject.
The collective stupidity of the mob in question is completely beside the point as well as the actual content of Stallman's opinions which seem not to matter to anyone. This story really has one villain only and that person is not Richard Stallman.
I disagree, it's all very much overblown.
[edit] this is a genuine question. I've seen him write edgy things but am not aware of any harm he's done to others.
This is one glaring trivialization. RMS had "once" spent decades of hard work from which we all benefit greatly.
Forget basis in behavioral science, this has no basis in anything, and you’re deluded if you think kids aren’t still bullied today. What a trash take.
I was seduced by my parents to join a Judo club so I could stand up to myself ( this works wonders ).
Last year, I confronted a new millenial neighbour of mine repeatedly on her behaviour of biking on the sidewalk. The biggest problem was she was doing blind corners as well. There are small children here playing, we have elderly with walking aids. It was dangerous.
She called the police on me.
You can disagree without coming down to this.
Freedom of speech isn't the freedom to not be publicly judged about what you say.
This is not just about being judged, it's about being judged and executed for your opinions. The judges and the juries have already handed out their verdict and will personally hand out the punishment, and if you dare question it you'll likely be next on the list. For example, I've seen that those who sided against RMS create a script to block those who signed the petition in his support. It's infuriating, it's a childish behavior that doesn't help anyone, it serves only to further polarize and radicalize the two sides, and further reduces the room for discussion. If there even was room left, that is. [1]
This is not an ecosystem where people are able to express their ideas. There is either black or white. You are either with us or against us. And if you express moderate opinions you risk angering both sides, and good luck with that.
You have to carefully weight every single word, because all it takes is for a single person to take issue with your comment enough to signal it to the cancel culture mob on Twitter to mobilize a horde of vocal complainers with plenty of spare time that will do everything they can to make you regret ever typing it out, either now or in the future. It's outright barbaric behavior from both sides that has been seen time and time again in the last years.
Do you honestly consider this "freedom of speech"?
---
[1] As another commenter points out, this kind of stuff comes from both sides. The given example was just fresh in my mind.
None of the public judgements about RMS are about anything technical, anything about free software, or anything that touch on him running the FSF. He voiced an unfashionable opinion on sex and the laws about sex.
This is a political act to blacklist a man for his political opinions from work in a profession that he is qualified for.
Thank you for putting it so clearly.
You know who else thinks this way? Many repressive countries such as those who control how women / minorities / etc behave in public. It's essentially mob pressure and destroys genuine freedom of speech.
You're basically expressing a threat that will be used against people who openly do not agree with the majority.
The "Free Software" movement (cap F, cap S), yes.
> and he's the reason we all have jobs
No.
There was a sizeable movement for public domain software before Stallman. Stallman brought along a particular ideology and one which resonated with a lot of people, as well as coding a bunch of software himself. But it is an incredible reach to say that, without Stallman, there wouldn't have been the option to "spin up a server for free and compile code without paying a license". How do you know that?
I ran a "public domain library" back in the 8-bit days, as did many others. It was code you could distribute freely, and where you could play around and build upon the source. You could argue that Stallman's Free Software was another descendant of the early '80s public domain software culture, but you cannot presume that public domain software would have withered and died without Stallman. I think it's vanishingly unlikely, in fact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_free_and_open-sourc... is worth reading.
However, you can't deny that Copyleft (the legal hack that guarantees that source code will stay open) was his invention. I am not aware of anyone else thinking this way in the timeframe he first put his idea in public.
But this is a fantasy you made up. We've never lived in a society where you are free to say whatever you want and are isolated from all consequences of that.
In fact, you will almost certainly have some lines yourself. There are things that Stallman could have said, or actions that he could have taken, that you personally would agree made it untenable for him to keep his position. I'm unsure why you feel that your position is the only reasonable one to hold, and that anybody who has a different level of tolerance constitutes a "mob".
It feels like we're in the midst of a moral panic, but I don't think it's coming from who you seem to think it is.
Why so much speculation? He's actually saying the opposite.
This is an ideal held by many that we should strive toward. We may never achieve it in our lifetimes, but it’s still healthy to have a common goal we all work toward.
It’s disheartening if I just say “fuck it, we’re hosed, so what’s the point.”
It's like you're more in love with the Idea of the FSF than the FSF as it stands today, reflexively self-protecting its old guard and completely inhibited by the my-way-or-the-high-way attitude of RMS.
If we accept this process as valid just because we agree with the outcome, it is going to blow up right in our face.
I disagree. I think FSF is/was until recently the strongest ever.
Free Software has advanced greatly in the past 20 years, that’s not entirely due to FSF, but in part. I don’t think RMS is the singular force behind FSF but I don’t think it’s correct to say that FSF sucks or that it’s sucked because of RMS.
I completely support Stallman's right to say that he believes children can consent to sex. It's not sexist or edgy -- it's repulsive and sounds like the stuff Epstein used to say. But he still deserves to have friends and rights.
What he doesn't deserve is coworkers or teammates who are forced to pretend he didn't say that stuff. He said it and there are consequences.
Could any of the rest of us tweet about our theoretical support for statutory rape and still have jobs?
And the things he said that denigrated parents who raise children with Down's syndrome is arguably worse.
Twitter is not destroying careers. People are destroying their own careers.
The idea is they ask someone whether they want to do it, they say yes, and they do it. And they don't really see the harm there. Everyone's happy, right?
But, children lack the knowledge to understand what it is they are asking. Children might also agree to things they shouldn't because they want attention, even if it is bad for them, and hurts them.
Teenagers might be better off but they're hormone propelled and may make mistakes they really shouldn't. There are power imbalances too where someone feels they should do something they really don't want to do.
To be clear, I'm not for criminalizing sex where a small age gap is involved. Throwing teenagers in prison for having sex with each other is counter-productive and harmful. There are better ways to tackle that. The same applies to sexting.
But, the burden which would have to be met for an adult to be involved is so high, so risky, and so convoluted that it isn't worth it in practice. Can a judge really make the right call all the time there? Is it worth it?
By the way, he has never tweeted his theoretical support for statutory rape. I don't think he even has a twitter account. He made some comments on an obscure personal blog over a couple of decades. Someone went out of their way to dig it out after he appeared in the news.
Besides much of what RMS is saying and doing that makes him stick out and he gets harassed over is because of him being neuroatypical.
While I agree with most of your points on RMS: Freedom of speech exists and is enforced in other countries. Its dawn can be traced back to ancient Greece passing through renaissance and the French revolution. And ironically, the SJW cancel-culture is a US phenomenon only, it's nonexistent in the EU at least. Don't want to rub anyone the wrong way, but from an external standpoint, I would not want American freedom of speech right now, if this is what gets you.
In Germany for one, there is no such thing as freedom of speech, but rather "freedom of opinion". Practically that means that if you want to say something that someone else is not going to like, you have to a) take care not to bring up any facts (e.g. say that someone touched you inappropriately), because as soon as you do that you have to either provide a proof or face slander suit b) still not to cross the line when your opinion can be considered offensive. This doesn't leave a lot of space for free speech. This is not to mention a list of forbidden opinions and symbols for which you will face repercussions from the state itself.
Don't want to argue which is the right way, I just mean that "American freedom of speech" is a real thing.
WTF? I had a job long before RMS came on the scene, and I still have one. Whatever my feelings about Stallman, he doesn't get credit for that.
And I was giving away source code way before FSF existed. We didn't have fancy names or licenses back in those days, we just called it "public domain".
By all means, defend Stallman's right to say thoughtless and sexist things, but also spend some time defending those who have been fired for trying to unionize their workplace, those who can't get a job because they have publicly campaigned for a political party, and for victims of workplace sexual harassment who can't speak up about it because they would be effectively blacklisted.
done some sexist and edgy things. On stage, spoken directly at women.
Also, Stallman is a totally incompetent leader - the project is sufficiently niche that I won't name it, but the maintainer mentioned to me that he entered rms's bad book merely by virtue of having children.
Also, now we know that rms has 'bad book' where he puts people with children.
1. 'skeptical that voluntarily pedophilia harms children.’ stallman's own archives 2006-mar-jun I note that children are incapable of consenting. That’s what the age of consent means.
2. 'end censorship of “child pornography”’. Stallman's archives 2012-jul-oct.html Notice use of “quotes” to down play what is actually being requested.
3. 'gentle expressions of attraction’ Stallman's archives 2012-jul-oct.html Condoning a variant of the wolf-whistle. Unless one’s talking to one’s lover, ‘gentle invitations for sex’ by a stranger is grooming (be it child or of-age).
4. Defends someone charged with ‘"sexual assault" on a "child" after a session with a sex worker of age 16.’ stallman's archives 2018-jul-oct Notice the quoting here, implying the child is not a child. ‘The article refers to the sex worker as a "child", but that is not so. Elsewhere it has been published that she is 16 years old. That is late adolescence, not childhood.’ No, they are a child, that’s what the ages of majority and consent mean.
5. The ‘St Ignatius’ ‘EMACS virgins’ non-joke. ‘The commenter writes about seeing the routine when she was only 15, and how RMS singled her out several times during that performance: He actually pointed to me in the back and proclaimed, into the mic, "A GIRL!" causing the audience to turn and look. Mortifying. Then he proceeded to gesture toward me every time he referred to "EMACS Virgins." (I cannot believe that he is still doing the same talk 10+ years later.)’ No wonder women want nothing to do with him.
6. A business card that is completely repelling image on oreilly
7. He knows those cards are inappropriate. He broke the code of conduct he helped author. wiredferret's twitter feed.
8. I understand he’s tried to circumvent such codes of conduct by asking women to meet him outside of the conference venue. _sagesharp_'s twitter feed.
9. He doesn’t acknowledge the few women he has worked with ‘I don’t have any experience working with women in programming projects; I don’t think that any volunteered to work on Emacs or GCC.’ Completely ignoring Sandra Loosemore, who is a coauthor, with him, of the Glibc manual. Sandra was involved with LISP standardization, so I would be surprised if he was unaware of her involvement there. As you well know, she has worked significantly on GCC, GCC has several other women contributors, but too few for complacency.
10. ‘My first interaction with RMS was at a hacker con at 19. He asked my name, I gave it, whether I went to MIT (I had an MIT shirt on), and after confirmation I did, asked me on a date. I said no. That was our entire conversation.’ corbett's twitter feed. This is but one of many reports of utterly inappropriate social interactions.
Forgiveness requires accountability and commitment to change, neither of which have been forthcoming.
And this is over - and I can't BELIEVE this still has to be said even here - his words being twisted COMPLETELY out of context.
Smh at this community for tolerating comments like yours.
But for some reason people online can't stop themselves from diagnosing him with it.
Nevertheless, he clearly and obviously displays so many symptoms from that spectrum that it would only be charitable to treat his communications under the assumptions that there's something there.
And I agree that nobody other than a professional personally evaluating him should diagnose him with ASD (or anything), but he displays obvious traits of BAP (broad autism phenotype, subclinical ASD) – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26537443 – and that's not a "diagnosis" because BAP is by definition not a diagnosis.
Doing so makes it easier to excuse Stallman's behavior and demonize his critics by implying their only motivation is hatred of conventionally unattractive and neurodivergent people - an argument designed to strongly resonate emotionally with the tech community and serve as a thought terminating cliche.
It's ironically exactly the sort of bad faith strategy they constantly accuse "the SJWs" of partaking in.
By all accounts, especially for recent decades, RMS had been a not-so-much-great decision maker and his resignation from FSF should have marked the end of the era no matter how you feel about that. Instead FSF chose to bring him back. Seriously, if out of the free software movement there were no decision maker better than RMS, then it is basically doomed by now. I don't feel so.
Care to define what that skillset is? Leadership requires all sorts of skills and some of the most effective leaders I've seen share very little in common.
Another way is to lead by example with unrelenting commitment and drive.
Given this, we can't use an "end justify the means" argument, which means we have to hold people accountable in isolation from any positive impact they may have had.
I would start with having debates based in reality and not ideology, like this:
"Richard Stallman single-handedly created the free software movement, and he's the reason we all have jobs. "
Without it, I would still be using Solaris, HP-UX, Tru64, Aix, BSD, ....
Obviously he's most famous for his dedication to Free Software. But in recent years, he's made it very clear that Free Software isn't actually the most important principle in his life: his freedom to act abusively is more important.
When Stallman was asked to choose between Free Software and abusive behaviour, he chose abusive behaviour. And what we're seeing now is the fallout from the decision he made. It's cost him a lot, yes, but that's his choice. Would that it were less costly for those who have suffered at his hands.
You've always lived in this world and this is the America you grew up in. You were lied to.
The government has stayed very professional in this, and by that I mean complete absence, which is American freedom of speech.
Step 1 would be to groom people to leadership positions. How is it that an organization of 35+ years doesn't have a good rank next generation who will take the baton from the old guard? I bet you can't name another member of the FSF. For Linux kernel, I can think of GHK, for Ruby I know quite a few people, but for FSF, the bus factor seems to be 1.
Even without all the accusations, FSF should have a leadership they can fallback to. I feared for FSF after Stallman (before the controversy), now I fear for FSF, full stop.
Because if he keeps saying upsetting things and never apologises or tries to learn then he's driving people away. And that makes him a bad fit for a leadership position.
And it's not that we "live in a world where we can't be forgiven", but there is little to suggest that there is any meaningful commitment to change, instead RMS is just back somehow for some reason, without warning (i.e. nobody at LibrePlanet apparently knew that was coming, including the organizers and participants that had explicitly requested to not be involved with him). Not surprising that doesn't satisfy people.
>suggested that this might arise from raising kids without
>bullying. Like the immune system, if we don't develop a
>central tolerance, perhaps we start attacking everything we
>find unpleasant? No basis in behavioral science, of course.
I'm not sure I understood what are you trying to say here, are you suggesting that a "small dose" of bullying is beneficial to a child's development?
bullying is being exposed to the mob, not exposing kids to mobs creates mobs seems somehow counterintuitive.
Social Media, HN included, does a fine job of presenting tenth grade problems to second graders everyday.
As if that isnt misguided enough (no org or edu system ever does that and produces good outcomes), it creates a rallying point for all the second graders in world to show up and discuss the tenth grade problem on the board.
Its a waste of time. Thats all it is. There are second graders who understand that, and there are second graders who will get carried away by the numbers at the rallying point and go storm the capitol or whatever bullshit a second grade herd can come up with.
Any time anyone starts getting anxious over problems the internet happily plants in their head, thats a clear signal they are dealing with problems above their paygrade.
There is only one valid move to make, shrug it off and head back to the second grade classroom. There is no evidence social media or hn debates have ever contributed to solutions to anything extremely complex. And there is enough evidence they just increase the complexity of the problem.
I tried to google a bit and since no immediately damning statements by RSM came up, he doesn't bother me with regard to that. Yes, he wrote about paedophilia, but afaik he didn't demand it should be legaized, he just pointed out that it has created some absurd issues, like teens sexting each other being criminalized (afaik - I only googled a bit, and couldn't find damning quotes, so I assume they don't exist).
I am more concerned about the anecdotes of his icky behavior (read someone claiming he licked a womans arm, another that he picked flakes from his feet during a lecture). But I have no way to verify if they are true, so I am also holding back judgement.
Who says we are? Is Free Software being thrown out of the bus with this? No
The question here is RMS re-joining the FSF board. That's it. People are questioning him rejoining a privileged position.
It's not a prison sentence. He's not being prevented to earn a living.
Yes, nobody is free of blame, everybody has controversial opinions. But at the same time, it's not the right job for him.
American freedom of speech in the 1st Amendment states that the US Government can't restrict what you're able to say.
It does not state that you're entitled to say what you want without real world consequences.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences.
We forgive those who show remorse and make amends. Not those who continue their bad behaviour.
reading weekly cancel of somebody because they said something in the past doesn't convince me about this "freedom of speech" stuff
He is abusive against everyone around him. He has sexually harassed numerous women near him, to the point that people lock themselves in their offices when he visits.
He is incredibly, incredibly toxic. He has had a huge crowd of people trying, again and again, to tell him to stop acting like this, and to be a decent human being. He refuses.
He is a massive burden on any institution he is part of. Kicking him out is the correct decision in every case, no matter what he has achieved in the past.
Then why didn't these women report him to the whoever competent authorities at MIT? Or to the police if the crime is serious enough? Why are they signing an open letter on the internet instead?
Please don't parrot unfounded heresy.
There's not much we can do about that; the world is a horrible, unfair place. If Socrates was born again, we would kill him again.
There was a few days back a post for people to support RMS and I admit I did not put my name on the list because i am afraid this could affect my future, cancel culture could get worse and my actions could be misinterpreted as the worse things possible(like I must support pedos if I support RMS).
This is not what happened and I don't know why you would say "it's cancel culture". The issue with Torvalds was not about PR. It was a push by maintainers of the kernel, aka his peers. Torvalds was not criticized because of his opinions, but because of his behavior towards others. As he said in his own email [1] "My flippant attacks in emails have been both unprofessional and uncalled for [...] I know now this was not OK and I am truly sorry". Saying it's "cancel culture" is as if get fired from my company because I'm constantly lashing out at my colleagues and say "they fired me because of my opinions!".
A lot of times people conflate "cancel culture" with "people being responsible for what they say and do". In this case, Stallman replied to a protest that called for a review of MIT donor policies and association with people like Epstein with nitpicking about whether Minsky's actions (who was dead by that time already) were or not "technically sexual assault". That also helped surface a lot of actions and words by Stallman that were, at the very least, inadequate. Maybe that's not the kind of actions that one expects from the president of the FSF.
1: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1809.2/00117.html?... 2: https://www.facebook.com/events/687098025098336/
RMS has been unrepentantly stubborn, famously intolerant of differing views and has not demonstrated a desire to change.
The other difference between Linus and RMS is that RMS is the GPL guy and many people on HN hate GPL with a passion and will spread FUD about the license any chance they get, I think this RMS controversy is fueled by the GPL/free software hate.
Easy example: Stallman's idealism is why LLVM is now the academics favoured compiler to work on (i.e. no plugins for GCC)
More human example: Someone I know who works in the GNU ecosystem on a reasonably major project mentioned that rms was cordial until he found out that this maintainer had children. And this was in response to someone handing already GPL code over to the FSF
Why not credit GPL or RMS for the Linux success over BSD ? There are many projects using BSD but still a giant number of companies and projects still use the "evil, cancerous" GPL project when they could use BSD and be selfish.
Maybe open source will win over free software but that this will not prove the free software movement wrong, will prove that money and greed will win as always.
FTFY
For what specific issue RMS did not apologized yet? Let us know the issue, why does he need to apologize for that specific one and why if there is no apology for that issue should he be canceled from his own project?
It's high time the open source community cleaned house and made itself unwelcome to assholes.
The FSF board of directors really stepped in it bringing Stallman back, especially in the clandestine manner that they did. They have squandered the goodwill of the community by promoting a controversial figure known for his toxic opinions and decades of bad behavior to a leadership position. The FSF is at grave risk of losing its funding and its reputation, both of which it needs to carry out its mission.
As such, it is appropriate for Stallman and the entire FSF board to resign. John Sullivan has made the right decision. He will doubtless be followed by others -- and hopefully, if Stallman refuses to resign, he will be ousted by the new board.
All of the leadership in open source does not want Stallman in a leadership role because of the toxic effect he has on the community, in particular driving women -- and more recently, those repulsed by pedophilia -- away. There are times to fight social pressure; this is not one of them.
There are many in the FSF that view the aims of "open source" as opposite to Free Software. FSF aims for the elimination of all proprietary software. Microsoft and IBM support open source and the resignation of the FSF board.
Open Source has basically won. No one really gets what Free Software is anymore.
Can you name one person who was driven away from contributing to free software because of Stallman? Sarah Mei? Lol. I believe that it is unlikely for someone _really_ willing to contribute to society to abandon this idea simply because some person he's never met being an unpleasant person. If that really turned someone off, the desire to participate was weaker than mild.
lol
I'm still against the Twitter mob etc., I do wonder though if RMS nuked his own organisation by joining the helm again. Life's unfair.
If it impacts his effectiveness in leading the FSF, then it absolutely does matter.
If he's abrasive, then nobody will want to work with him, and by extension people won't want to work with the FSF.
We shouldn't have to play this politically-correct bullshit game of tiptoe: Richard Stallman's social skills are shit, and saying that he's not well suited to a people-facing role is not some attack on him.
>conforming to someone else's views should not be a necessity to work in your chosen field.
It sounds like you don't know the difference between bootlicking and subtlety. While the face of the FSF being unyielding on Free Software is generally good, the face of the FSF being unyielding on,say, nosefucking with plants is less so.
Sometimes we don’t have pretty choices, and doing something we are fully entitled to do has adverse consequences regardless. I’m wondering if RMS, while being in his right, ended up avoidably sabotaging his own cause.
Not breaking the law is the bare knuckle minimum standard that we expect. Imagine going to a job interview and when asked about your achievements you say "well, I didn't break any laws".
[1] https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1374499598853545986
[2] https://twitter.com/NovalisDMT/status/1172573166956437505
[3] https://twitter.com/georgialyle/status/1374504389155508232
But it also answers my question, and it sounds like perhaps FSF is itself not stoked to have him back.
Edit: it seems some people are not interested in this data
Different companies would choose which list to use according to their own politics and culture.
Totally hypothetical: Coinbase and Google will probably turn rms-open-letter into a denylist. Twitter will do the opposite.
This is all conjecture, but I could see it happening. It's why I feel I shouldn't sign.
[0] https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235091.html
1. 'skeptical that voluntarily pedophilia harms children.’ stallman's own archives 2006-mar-jun I note that children are incapable of consenting. That’s what the age of consent means.
2. 'end censorship of “child pornography”’. Stallman's archives 2012-jul-oct.html Notice use of “quotes” to down play what is actually being requested.
3. 'gentle expressions of attraction’ Stallman's archives 2012-jul-oct.html Condoning a variant of the wolf-whistle. Unless one’s talking to one’s lover, ‘gentle invitations for sex’ by a stranger is grooming (be it child or of-age).
4. Defends someone charged with ‘"sexual assault" on a "child" after a session with a sex worker of age 16.’ stallman's archives 2018-jul-oct Notice the quoting here, implying the child is not a child. ‘The article refers to the sex worker as a "child", but that is not so. Elsewhere it has been published that she is 16 years old. That is late adolescence, not childhood.’ No, they are a child, that’s what the ages of majority and consent mean.
5. The ‘St Ignatius’ ‘EMACS virgins’ non-joke. ‘The commenter writes about seeing the routine when she was only 15, and how RMS singled her out several times during that performance: He actually pointed to me in the back and proclaimed, into the mic, "A GIRL!" causing the audience to turn and look. Mortifying. Then he proceeded to gesture toward me every time he referred to "EMACS Virgins." (I cannot believe that he is still doing the same talk 10+ years later.)’ No wonder women want nothing to do with him.
6. A business card that is completely repelling image on oreilly
7. He knows those cards are inappropriate. He broke the code of conduct he helped author. wiredferret's twitter feed.
8. I understand he’s tried to circumvent such codes of conduct by asking women to meet him outside of the conference venue. _sagesharp_'s twitter feed.
9. He doesn’t acknowledge the few women he has worked with ‘I don’t have any experience working with women in programming projects; I don’t think that any volunteered to work on Emacs or GCC.’ Completely ignoring Sandra Loosemore, who is a coauthor, with him, of the Glibc manual. Sandra was involved with LISP standardization, so I would be surprised if he was unaware of her involvement there. As you well know, she has worked significantly on GCC, GCC has several other women contributors, but too few for complacency.
10. ‘My first interaction with RMS was at a hacker con at 19. He asked my name, I gave it, whether I went to MIT (I had an MIT shirt on), and after confirmation I did, asked me on a date. I said no. That was our entire conversation.’ corbett's twitter feed. This is but one of many reports of utterly inappropriate social interactions.
This also ignores that GCC seems to remain relevant despite Stallman rather than because of him.
[Edit] I've worked under at one, perhaps two ASD people, both brilliant engineers, and you're probably using some of their infra software right now -- he's been poached a few times. The one certain guy did not have a diagnosis that I knew of but would come out with the most outrageous opinions regarding world issues. Logical and anti-social. The thing is you could reason him out of these opinions because he valued logic to such an extent that he 'beliefs' were secondary. The problem was he'd share these opinions before testing the waters. He was quite rightly kept away from leadership positions that required communication on anything other than technical topics because of this.
I've not seen RMS engaged on sharing his 'troubling' opinions. Show me that and I'll change my opinion (the hint being here that many HNers are somewhere on the spectrum, including me.)
Because no one ever made that claim. It was always about sexism and co. Or is sexism related to asperger in your opinion?
Conversely, plenty of people who do manage not to behave in the way he has.
This means he has a disability, and when people with disabilities are at work we provide a reasonable adjustment for them to allow them to continue doing the job. For RMS this might be an assistant to check his comms before release.
He's had many years to put this in place. Why hasn't he?
Maybe he doesn't understand that he causes work for other people when he sends out unchecked comms. Other people have to spend their time, and money, responding.
I know a couple of autistic people. The main difference between them and RMS is that they give a shit about what other people think of their behaviour.
He's an incredibly intelligent man, who is quite capable of understanding that people don't want him to act like a creep. Many different people, at many different times, have explained it to him, and have asked him to stop. He's already been given far more patience and leniency and second and third and fifth chances in this respect than any other person would have. Even if he is incapable of understanding why his behavior is wrong, he is an adult that is capable of understanding that he should stop it.
He just doesn't care.
When you want to lead a public organisation you give up certain freedoms in order to serve the interests of the organisation you lead.
I also think it's quite funny seeing the letter from the people who are being accused of being a mob. It's a relatively unemotional statement of their case with citations pointing to the underlying issues they're referring to. Where the reponse, which is meant to be the balanced rational people supporting an unfairly attacked man is highly emotive, poorly argued and doesn't actually address half the issues RMS is being criticised for. Some of the most obvious arguments against RMS leader the FSF actually come from the letter defending him.
>His words need to be interpreted in this context and taking into account that more often than not, he is not looking to put things diplomatically.
Well maybe that's not a good trait for the leader of the FSF.
What does this even mean? As Linux staying on v2 shows, the FSF doesn't have any real control over GPL licenses. And I'm fairly sure the only limitation on modifying the GPL myself is I couldn't use the word "GNU."
A completely non-representative grep through copyright information indicates that about two-thirds of the GPL-licensed packages on my Debian system have the "or any later version" clause.
current state of internet is pretty sad,
I bet you'd just need 30 people/twitter(or reddit) accounts
in order to create drama of significant size
The organisations that I've heard of which called for the board at the FSF to resign:
- X.org Foundation - Tor Project - Mozilla - The HardenedBSD Foundation / The HardenedBSD Project - SUSE - GNOME Foundation - The FreeDOS Project - Creative Commons - OBS Project
Isn't this a bit more than a vocal twitter minority?
There is still hope at some organization level, if they have strong constitutions, for example Debian has called for a vote among their members and is not threatening, officially, "dissident" people of being ostracized. Maybe "individually" some members will fall in that trap against others (in quote because the individual aspect will often not just be them avoiding intetaction, but them actively trying by openly or covertly pressuring everybody to prevent interactions between others, like we see here)
The sad part is that this guerilla is highly assymetrical. Benevolent and correctly functioning adults won't even try to cancel the cancellers, or to make transitive lists of who can not be talked to anymore, because how would that be better than what they are doing? Of course some declaring support for cancelled people will attempt a counter boycott but their stance is not reasonable and they should be ignored as well on this point.
I hope you do the same if you want to support him.
I was born in mainland China and these attacks on rms remind me of the Cultural Revolution.
Like others have said here, my daily life is substantively better thanks to rms. I use GNU Emacs all day and of course benefit from the vast infrastructure that GNU and other GPL-ed software provides. There's probably no one many of us (including many in the anti-rms crowd) owes more to than rms in the context of technology.
Once it's clear FSF won't be bending the knee, I'll be adding an FSF membership to help counter some of the corporate sponsorship pullouts. I wish there were more I could do to give back.
Could you please share a link to the Twitter talk about "what to do with the list of signatories"?
Say whatever you want about reddit but at least it's more anonym than this site
I think a lot of it is echo: someone creates an anonymous account to say something because they think they're at risk, people see it and think that they're at risk too and repeat that and in the end you have a lot of people worrying about something that practically does not happen.
Oops
I would hope that any contributor to a community would have this level of activity to right a wrong, not just the famous people.
On utilitarian grounds, I don’t think this individual person is “worth all this effort,” but I think trying to establish community norms is worthwhile if our goal is a healthy community with strong contributions going forward. If a member can be expelled based on a blog post then that’s bad and will detract from people’s willingness to participate, I think.
FSF has high ideals, and fundamentally needs buy in from people on a lot of levels for them to succeed. It needs community. They could be really thankful to RMS’s getting things going but I don’t really understand why, now, they would add him back to the board. Is he saying new things that aren’t linear from the creation of FSF where his continued high level involvement is more helpful to the end goals than the community upset I would hope the board was aware of as a possibility?
In FSF's case, Stallman might be a good fit to contribute his software freedom ideas. As long as there are other people who can focus on PR.
Yet, there are many examples of software projects with "BDFLs", the Linux Kernel being the most prominent one I can think of. I suspect there are people just waiting, biding their time until Linus retires - who takes over him? How does the governance structure change? Who takes over David M's net stack? Greg's stable trees?
I find it fascinating to think about and I am very curious when known figures step down and to watch what happens next, how things change. Are they subtle? Are they more obvious? How does this play out in 5 years?
To me it's one of the more interesting aspects of communities since one person can really make a huge difference (for example, Ballmer/Satya at MS).
Details: https://jorgemorais.gitlab.io/justice-for-rms/ https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/index.html
About the "cancel" approach: https://quillette.com/2021/01/27/beating-back-cancel-culture...
