If I believed for a second that any successor candidate to lead the GNU project gave as much of a fuck about software and personal freedom as Stallman did/does, I might support them. My confidence that this will transpire, however, is not high.
Lest you think this is a niggling distinction, Sage Sharp pronounced Linus guilty of inciting violence by making a humorous comment about his friend Greg Kroah-Hartman's height. (Something like: "Greg is a giant; watch out or he might squish you.")
That's how they operate. They go digging to find the six words that will hang you, and if you don't capitulate they go to your boss (read: corporate sponsors if you have your own project).
* Coraline Ada Ehmke
* Sage Sharp
* Aurynn Shaw
* Valerie Aurora
* Sarah Mei
* Matthew J. Garrett
* Steve Klabnik
These are some of the loudest voices calling for the removal and systematic reputational destruction of key free-software developers based on behavior which ranges from bad but not worth a purge to downright innocuous.
The list signatories, near as I can tell, are doing damage control on the optics of being affiliated with Stallman and are, to my knowledge, not themselves calling for purges the way the above named individuals and their fellow travellers are.
(Edited to include Klabnik. He expressed the need for a "tech antifa" and approved of the use of violence by the same. I think he counts.)
* Former GitHub Community Management senior developer
* Linux kernel contributor
* Eiara Limited founder
* ext2 dirty bit, ChunkFS developer
* Chief consultant at DevMynd
* Linux contributor and winner of the FSF Free Software Award
* Frequent Hacker News contributor, author of "The Rust Programming Language," member of Rust core team.
Seems like some solid contributors to the ecosystem and people who have earned a seat at the table defining what the community looks like; not sure why we're singling them out. Or should we also disapprove of the time rms founded an entire Free Software Foundation for the purposes of putting political pressure on various institutions, organizations, and people to respect the Four Freedoms?
Are you sure you disagree with the methods of the people you listed? Or do you merely disagree on what behaviors someone's reputation should suffer for?
the downside to revolutions is that sometimes the revolution gets away from the control of those who start it. ;)
Here's Sarah Mei declaring her intent to character-assassinate Uncle Bob and have him written out of programming history. And for what? Well, apparently Uncle Bob made some remarks that "C++ is like testosterone", meaning that C++ programmers take an overly "macho" attitude to their work and look down on other programmers. Sarah interpreted this as toxic masculinity.
This is where we are today. The old standards of discourse between speaker and audience have passed away. Instead, you must now assume that your statements will be interpreted in the least charitable way by the least reasonable person on earth -- and that person has the phone number of your current employer and every future employer you might apply to.
This is how Bolsheviks operate. The means of production (in this case, open source and the discipline of programming in general) belongs to the proletarian vanguard party (the social-justice left purporting to speak on behalf of women, PoC, LGBTQ, etc.) and any kulaks (old-time hackers, overrepresented by straight white males) still clinging to their piece of it must be crushed without mercy.
"But silly bitwize," you may counter, "You are comparing losing your reputation in open source with being killed or sent to the gulag. Surely a ridiculous comparison." Apparently Jon Sterling, one of the other thought leaders you admire so much, was "only 30% kidding" about sending his political opponents to real actual gulags: https://i.imgur.com/rlqa73W.png?1
Eich didn't get forced out for having a "bad private opinion;" he got forced out for supporting something materially that would cause material harm to Mozilla staff, then making clear his opinion on the topic was unchanged. Staff that had a lack of confidence in his continued leadership were entirely justified.
I am legitimately asking this, say maybe I think that X feature is nature not nurture, and there is a discussion at an event about X , what do I Google to know if I should talk about X or not. The problem is more complicated if my opinion today would be controversial in the future.
There are no such guarantees (much as there are no guarantees in the tech space... That, say, your favorite language today won't be obsolete in five years and therefore diminish the value of all the time and effort you invested in memorizing its quirks). There are some useful heuristics, such as "try and be a good person, minimize your judgement of others, avoid speculating on things that other people have concrete experience with." Also, be informed about the latest social media culture; Proposition 8 was huge in California (and around the U.S.) and it should have been self-evident to Eich that supporting it was a bad call (I'm a lot less forgiving of Eich than some people are, because it's real hard for me to see his behavior and interpret it as anything other than "He put money behind his convictions and mis-estimated how much political power homosexual people and their allies had in his company to hold him accountable to putting money behind his convictions," which isn't exactly a stellar review of his behavior).
We in tech seem to like to believe that the technical world is above politics. It's not; technology serves people, so politics is, of course, part of the story. Politics is just what happens when people interact.
"I should always speak in an uncensored fashion" is, honestly, one of the poison memes of the modern internet. It's never been wise in any human interaction, and moving to the Internet didn't change that fact. It did, for a brief time (until de-anonymization and search caught up with the technology available) let people obfuscate opinion origins behind a sea of anonymity and momentarily disrupt the words from the responsibility of having reputation tied to them. But when you go looking at the most anonymity-enabling communications channels on the Internet, you don't exactly find humanity at its best. Words divorced from reputation have yet to be proven as a net positive. Hell, even on Hacker News, our handles have karma points attached.
We social creatures developed concepts like "reputation" and tools like "memory" for a reason, and it wasn't a bad reason. Like any tools, they can be abused or over-applied, but no; saying exactly what you think all the time isn't virtuous (it is yet another tool, which can be abused or over-applied).
The internet is not just a place for meeting people and discussing opinions.
For many, many people, the internet is a socially supportive space, and an activity space, and those things don't work if challenging discussions are constantly taking place in them.
For what you've just asked for, specifically about making arguments that might change your mind, may I suggest you might enjoy: https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/ and https://changemyview.net/subreddit/ (I haven't used them myself, just read about them.)
I think the fact it occurred to you to ask, suggests an answer. If you would feel safer testing the water with a different account, then I'd recommend you do that.
People have an annoying habit of attributing expressed thoughts to a person long after the person has openly changed their mind, as well as misunderstanding the intended meaning of a stated view anyway. Same if the person was just constructing an argument for the purpose of thinking things through (for example as in devil's advocate).
Personally, I would also recommend a "listen first" approach.
I don't see it very critical when society puts pressure on an organization to fire a high-profile leader (and decision maker!) who publicly does something harmful. But I do acknowledge that this could generate a dangerous dynamic if spun in the wrong direction. It's a tradeoff: Either you allow cancel culture or you allow bad actors in powerful/influental positions.
What Stallman's dirty laundry is has been thoroughly discussed.
What is so wrong about being asked by a man for a date? I (a man) have been asked lots of times for a date by women I worked with, some of them my superiors. Mostly I said "no", because I generally don't like mixing love life with work life, but the best relationship I've ever had was the time I said "yes". I don't see why RMS couldn't look for such a relationship.
If Stallman looked like Chris Hemsworth, women would join the GNU Project for the opportunity to ask him on a date.
the standard is not "care", it's "gave as much of a fuck about software and personal freedom as Stallman did/does".
RMS used an absolute garbage computer because it was, in his words:
> the only laptop one could buy that could run a free initialization program and a free operating system.
i'm certainly not taking it on some contributor's word that these 20 or so odd people are as principled as RMS that i trust the project to be led by them. my guess is a large fraction are pragmatists (like most normal people) who use a nonfree BIOS setup for productivity, or have an iPhone/android because "normal", etc.
so, while certainly more like normal people, they aren't as principled. and what you want in a position like RMS's is someone so principled that they basically are immune to attack and inspire others to take on those principles. nobody's taking RMS seriously if he's giving talks from his macbook air.
as far as i can tell, RMS is so principled that it actually hindered the long term success of GCC. it would have behooved the long term strategic goals to make GCC the best/"only" compiler by making a BSD/MIT style version, so as to accept more liberal contributions, but he didn't.
he seems to be principled to a fault. is this group of 20 or so people as consistent as he was? i sincerely doubt it.
The entryists have a response for this too: call for the removal and replacement of all the leadership of relevant organizations, as they have already done with the FSF.
Open Source would never be where it is now without the Free Software movement (which is an ideological one). Maybe some corporations would still promote the OSS approach due to its economic benefits, but probably not. It likely wouldn't have the same midshare among developers that it has today.
You have already failed. I, for one, feel extremely alienated by your "joint statement".