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Comment by CJefferson | Hacker News Reader

I, and many other people, have disconnected from the FSF and GNU projects for years because of Stallman. Go look at GCC, you will find a bunch of PRs from me, which stopped. The reason I stopped was Stallman. Most people who I personally know who are closely involved in this stuff knew about the complaints about Stallman.

This recent event seems to have been what finally pushed this to the mainstream, but I can assure you people have been complaining to get rid of him for over a decade.

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Was it controversial statements of Stallman’s that made you stop working with him, or was it because you feel he’s difficult to work with?

Unless I’ve misinterpreted the situation, it seems like he was forced to resign due to the former rather than the latter. And if the official reason is unrelated to the actual reason, that’s a rather poor case of governance.

If someone has been disliked due to poor interpersonal skills for years, it’s very weak when a politically-sensitive pretext is required to actually get rid of them. Better to take the fight head-on, and accept the outcome.

He was difficult to work with (although I never "worked with" him directly, was just in a project which he ran).

I was not bothered about this controversial public statements, but several women who I trust had very bad experiences with him in person. I'm not going to name any of these people because they (very reasonably) don't want to be in the public eye.

These two issues together caused significant issues, and I felt I could no longer support a project he ran.

I'm not sure what you mean by you should "take the fight head-on". It's easy to find many people, for years and years, who have said Stallman was actively harmful to the FSF and GNU, but they were generally ignored.

I don't get why you'd stop contributing to a software project because of the spokesperson of a related org. Was stallman a jerk to you personally? How would contributing to gcc be different with a different spokesperson for the fsf?

Stallman is the head of GNU, which in in charge of GCC. Stallman is (or was) officially "in charge" of GCC, he could (and would) veto changes to GCC he didn't want.

I didn't want to support software which was headed by Stallman.

What is your actual complaint? People have been complaining about taxes for years and years. That doesn't mean we should get rid of them.

Your analogy doesn’t work, because the general consensus is that there is no better alternative to taxation. It is a necessary evil - unlike Stallman, who, regardless of personal opinion, has others who are qualified to replace him.

How are the alternatives safer from the same complaints? I read on the internet that they beat up little old ladies.

That's not how I read your analogy. If the tax situation made him move countries, is that country better off without their contribution? Would resolving the tax situation make that country more desirable to contribute to?

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