Richard Stallman Removed from the GCC Steering Committee (opens in new tab)

please explain to us where it stops. For instance lets say I find it toxic to use comma in sentences. how many people do I need to find that agree with me on this before I can ban you from hacker news for toxicity?

The Paradox of Tolerance is mentioned every time when an intolerant hypocrite wants to paint himself as a tolerant person.

Isn't the problem with RMS that he is too tolerant? He is tolerant of people we find bad.

Popper would not have approved anything that happened in that cancel discussion.

Popper knew things like forgiveness, not taking single statements out of context, not reading too much into statements, not misquoting people and much more.

Please do not associate Popper with mob justice. He would have despised the mob.

Written in 1945, literally as a reaction to actual Nazism.

Now used as a cudgel to intimidate and harass everyone who does not follow the party line.

Often the harassers profit financially from their bigotry, which makes them gigantic hypocrites.

There is a lengthy discussion among top contributors and steering committee members on the GCC mailing list and none of it favored retaining Stallman. Not one GCC participant on the "remove Stallman" thread spoke of him as an asset, and many described him as the opposite. From my reading, every single proponent of Stallman on that list was an outsider.

When was this? Twenty years ago? And they will "continue better without him" now?

Per https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235091.html , Stallman's last code contribution to GCC was in 2003, and before that 1997.

> The stated reason for removing Stallman is the belief that he is "toxic".

A very similar pursuit of ideological purity (in name only; it was a power game) was a characteristic of daily life in the Soviet Union.

Even until the very end, things like the fact that your grandfather used to own more than 10 cows before the revolution (a wealthy oppressor!) or that your family celebrates Christmas (unloyal to the party!) were used to morally judge you and deny things like an apartment allocation (there was no real estate market) or a permit to buy a car. The government had massive databases of personal histories of people (several generations deep, going back many decades) to assess their "morals", supplemented with characterizations people had to write about each other. Almost every hiring, foreign trip, university application etc was checked against these databases. Every organization of had a committee for this. All companies too (because they were all state-owned).

Instead of "toxic", they used the phrase "ideologically unsound", and once you had been deemed as such, many doors in life remained closed for you.

Kinda strange to see the free world slowly re-inventing this.

yeah. you will see the first time you get fired from a job. they will surely give you a valid reason that make sense without any hidden agenda. Or maybe they will ask your colleagues and investigate to find anything they can use against you to remove you, call you toxic and make it a day

I don't know him (only ever saw him speak once at a Wordpress conference 10 years ago or so, where he was a caricature of himself), and I can easily believe he is hard to work with. That said, I believe he was diagnosed as having Asperger's syndrome, which could explain his many personality quirks, and that makes the mention of "neurodiversity" as one of the many aspects of diversity they claim to protect rather disingenuous.

"The GCC Steering Committee is committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all, regardless of gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disabilities, neurodiversity, physical appearance, body size, ethnicity, nationality, race, age, religion, or similar personal characteristics."

That's correct; what I mean is that in cases like these you are not allowed to sit on the fence. Orgs like FSF, Red Hat/IBM, GCC SC are under enormous pressure. They are being told that if they do nothing then it basically means they are supporting Stallman ("the defender of Epstein!" "pedophile apologist!"). So in a way they have no choice, they have to give in.

Frankly, I've seen in my life several "coups" like this. There is a great rage, people feel fed up and overthrow the leader. There is a moment of excitement, then the dust settles and what remains is a bland void. The enthusiasm disappears, it turns out that charisma is not easy to replace, and the whole projects slowly withers into total insignificance.

The accusations that Stallman is a 'serial abuser' are strictly innuendo at this point. The flow of his detractors is one of wilful misinterpretation and unreasonableness.

Removing Stallman isn't an economic decision, true enough. But it is the same hubris of believing that someone's political trappings and status should determine their influence on technical matters. The Free Software community can survive without Stallman. But it is extremely worrying if the Free Software community feels Stallman is so at odds with their mission that they want to cast him out.

Stallman has flaws, but his commitment to that cause is really beyond question. It is appropriate to give him a voice in deciding how these projects are run. He is a reliable lighthouse for working out what is and isn't free about software.

it signals in-group membership to others. it doesnt actually mean anything.

>hello, i too am one of "us" *wink wink*. lets mutually support each other in conflicts with people from the out-group.

In some ways, it doesn't get longer. I've never seen a list that was well-aligned with US employment anti-discrimination law. There's always a handful of categories that are missing.

>It reminds me when those people raise their hand in a talk and say “what about security” and aren’t happy until you add the word “security.”

Haha true, my mind always translate it to "but what about the children's".

this is a very ignorant misrepresentation of what popper said btw.

he would disagree heavily.

Unanimous? As always in 2021, only one side can speak up publicly.

The SC itself only removed Stallman from the web page, stating that he was really not a member anyway.

The message was pretty diplomatic and crafted to appease the fanatics while not actually doing much.