the ability for women to be able to contribute and simply be a part of the free software community without harrassment does not fall under "no real bearing on the project", just so we're clear here.
Yeah, he fucked up in approaching those women and making them uncomfortable. However, a couple of data points do not a trend make.
In November of 2010, 4,600 people contributed to GNU.
If we follow the 1-9-90 rule of speaking out, for every 1 woman who went to the authorities, 9 women have spoken out publicly, and, 90 others have not. I'm aware of 6-7 who have gone public with their accusations, and none who went to the authorities. As such, it seems safe (if likely excessive) to say that less than 100 women have been actively harassed via awkward romantic advances over the last 20 years.
So, in this scenario, not even 2% of the contributors from one month were harassed by Stallman. If we consider GNU to be on par with other software projects and say that about 30% of the total contributors for that month were women, then about 7% of the woman contributors from one month were harassed by Stallman over 20 years.
It's still too high a number, but it's not exactly a vast majority.
He created the free software movement, created GNU. We're standing on his shoulders, only now (after 20+ years of standing on his shoulders) caring that yeah, he's not a perfect person we had hoped for.
The question is not how much work Stallman has done in the past 20+ years (few will have an issue with that) - the question is whether having Stallman at the helm of GNU benefits GNU projects, right now.
This is extremely unfair statement, completely misrepresenting the issue.
If you rephrased it as "one of bad things we can say about a leader is he allegedly tried to push somebody into relationship in 1985" you'd be closer to the mark.
I've been in attendance at an RMS talk (HOPE 2016) when he opened by asking the organizers to turn the house lights back up so he could see if there was anyone in the crowd he might want to have sex with. I saw how many women immediately got up and left in response to that, and I don't blame them for doing so. I would've done the same, if I'd felt myself to be one of the people Stallman made a joke about maybe wanting to fuck. (And, if I hadn't thought it might be worth sticking around for the Q&A and a chance at a callout. Some goober ended up yanking the mike cord, which was fine. A lot of people thanked me for saying what I did before he got to me.)
How likely do you think it is that those women had any inclination to contribute to free software after an experience like that? How likely do you think it is that I did - knowing that to do so would associate me with people who had no problem with a figurehead whose behavior was so completely out of step with modern mores, and so discouraging to such a wide segment of the community?
Since then, I've corresponded with others more familiar than I with RMS, and from that correspondence I've learned that this kind of thing was in no way out of character for him - I don't know firsthand, because that was the last RMS talk I chose to attend or will attend in future, and decided no longer to donate my time, money, or support to any FSF project for as long as he remained chairman. I don't want to be associated with behavior like that, and I most certainly don't want to enable it - both for its own sake, and because where the culture tolerates something like that, there's reason to suspect it will tolerate worse, besides.
I'm glad that so many people who have such a strong hand in making FSF and the GNU Project what it is today - far more of a hand than RMS has had in many years now - have chosen to speak so well on the subject. I know their statement has elicited a torrent of garbage. I hope they won't let it distract them from the fact that they're doing the right thing.
Why am I not hearing about these encounters? These are the voices I want to hear. Why have these stories gained no traction until now? Why does it take a scandal to bring these issues to light? Am I just living under a rock, or is there an overarching issue with OSS culture that extends far beyond Stallman? I’m incredibly disappointed that I’m only discovering this deep in HN comments.
But view the video linked to in child comments to the one you're replying to, and draw your own conclusion about what RMS actually said and the context in which it was said.
My view is that the comment you're replying to describes an incident that grossly mischaracterises what actually occurred. There were problems, and there was an inadvisable sexual joke, and probably some women were probably put off contributing to OSS, and it echoed some aspects of misogyny taking place in the rest of their lives - workplace, home, everywhere.
Consider, at the same event, the person you replied to admits that someone thought what they were saying was problematic too (thus the yanking of the mic from their hand). So, at very least, there were strongly differing views at the time.
I think it's good that people, on occasions of heightened awareness like this, feel able to share their presumably long history of traumatic and unwelcoming experiences, in OSS and in society elsewhere.
The shit women (among others) have had to endure, and still do, continues to be awful, both in OSS and elsewhere.
But it's terrible that the same phenomenon involves people empowering themselves in groups by gathering to destroy other people from more or less the same "side", when the social errors being committed by each person are not that different from each other, and what I'd call the "real criminals" (rapists, abusive partners, abusive bosses etc) are strangely not targetted in the debate.
For a movement that is supposed to be based on high principles of inclusion, empowerment, and social justice, it's tragic to those principles made weak and breaking down, because people don't know how to apply them in situations like this.
That was what got my mic cord yanked. That was what the people who thanked me after, were thanking me for saying. I understand why that happened, and I understand why you might not want to talk about it, but don't you think it's a little inconsistent to complain about tendentious interpretations in the same breath in which you utter one?
Wherever do you come by that idea? It's certainly an odd one. In any case, we're not talking about those people here; those conversations are taking place, even now, elsewhere, and thanks to the Internet, you can find them if you so choose. This conversation is about Richard Stallman, and the fashion in which much of his recent behavior (and not so recent, I gather) has affected both people involved with and adjacent to the GNU project, and the prospects of that project itself. Please don't use matters irrelevant to the topic at hand to try to steer this conversation away from its purpose.
What I mean it looks to me like RMS made social errors such as the one shown in the video, which are indeed problematic and need to be dealt with. But many people now villifying him are almost certainly guilty of plenty of social errors of a similar magnitude of harm to others themselves (thought not all the same kind of harm), and they are being hypocritical in focusing on grouping him with the "real criminals" in public perception, while said hypocrits aren't really all that perfect themselves, could in many cases find the same thing happens to them someday, and are quietly benefiting right now from the spotlight not being in their direction, and safety in group dynamics.
The debate is to determine what is right, just, fair, and proportionate.
Fairness in justice does, in fact, depend on the character and behaviour of the assasinators and wider social group, not just the target in isolation from them.
If you want to argue against those principles, that's fine obviously, but argumentum ad hominem fallacy does not apply where the character and behaviour of the debators is properly relevant.
(Character and behaviour are also relevant to the question of estimating how much to believe, when people are acting as witnesses rather than debators.)
I wouldn't find that a terribly comfortable place to stand. That you seem to find it congenial gives me to wonder about the quality of your own character. Ordinarily, of course, such doubts would be unworthy of this sort of discussion. But since you've found it meet to broach the subject, why shouldn't we start the inspection of character with you? Clearly you feel yourself above reproach in this regard, so I'm not sure what reason you could possibly have to demur, when I require that you prove, to my satisfaction, your standing to argue as you do on this subject.
Edit: About the 6:20 mark.
There's video. This alleged event occurs at about 6:11 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uckLT7mPPIw
I think your words mean the opposite of what RMS actually said. So much for justice.
Your words:
"so he could see if there was anyone in the crowd he might want to have sex with."
RMS's actual words (speaking to a darkened room where he can't see anyone & conference organisers are having trouble getting their projector working, so he has to improvise to fill the time):
"And I always like to be able to see the people I'm talking to but it's so dark in here I can't see you. Now, I mean, I might conceivably enjoy sleeping with some of you but that's not what we're here for. Uh, so if it's possible to increase the light on the audience please?"
That's poorly judged joke/banter: If there's one lesson we're learning from all this, it is avoid jokes that are likely to be misunderstood. I don't doubt that some women got up and left, and were put off contributing. Someone should have had a word with him about how it was received.
My guess is RMS would be mortified if he thought people, such as yourself, were misunderstanding his words to that gross extent.
Frankly, given the severity of the accusations, what you have called him out for on this occasion looks to me like a brazen outright lie on your part, as evidenced by the video to correct the record.
You're welcome, of course, to maintain whatever interpretation you like of the events under discussion. But the video doesn't show the 20 or so women who got up and left immediately after he said that. You've yet to offer a compelling argument for why I, or anyone, should rely on your interpretation rather than theirs.
However the moment I found the video with the actual quote and the extent of your mischaracterization of the situation I reverted back to my former opinion on the whole issue (which is very close to "this is witchhunt").
Nevertheless I feel grateful to you for reinforcing me in the belief one should never ever trust any accusation without a concrete proof. I'm deeply indebted to you for this important lesson.
As I also previously mentioned, the video does not show the people who immediately got up and left in response to that remark. It seems I'm not alone, either, in being more concerned about their opinions than about yours. Judging by the content of the statement here under discussion, many of those who have in recent years, by volume of code and effort invested, been the actual leaders of the GNU project, incline to a reading of the situation which rather more resembles mine than yours.
I doubt you will find it easy, with intellectually honest arguments, to convince anyone that these people are engaged in a "witchhunt" which, if it were so, would critically endanger the reputation of the project in which they've invested so much.
But, again, that's your problem, not mine.
That doesn't necessarily support your interpretation.
If you think they are lying about that, or can't be trusted for some other reason, here's your opportunity to explain your reasoning on that.
I don't doubt that. And you're right to point that out.
You'd be even more right if you didn't exaggerate the words he said while paraphrasing because your version changes the story from "poor taste in jokes alienating women" to basically accusations of sexual harrassment.
And a lot of us don't like to see exaggerated accusations toward anybody, but especially given the recent scandal where RMS suffered a lot of misrepresentation and emotional overreactions all over the Internet.
Now, the change in leadership (or, to start with, decentralization) might ultimately be a good thing for the GNU project, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't treat the reputation of the outgoing FSF president with at least some respect.
So let's be correct and factual, this will really help discussions like this be more constructive from all sides.
Now, of course, a conference speaker does not typically employ his audience, and I don't argue that RMS is eligible for the civil penalties which, per that statute, may attach to the comment he made. I would nonetheless, in light of this information, find myself somewhat embarrassed to have chosen "it's just a joke, not sexual harassment" as the hill on which I wished to die.
I have a great deal of respect for RMS's legacy. For example, had he not invested the effort to bring GNU Emacs into existence, I would almost certainly not now be at the point in my profession and my career where I am; I have found Emacs an invaluable tool for something like a decade, and have no intention of ever replacing it at any time in the future. I own a signed copy of the Emacs 24 manual - bought at that same conference, and signed by RMS himself just a few hours after those events took place. I have no plans to destroy it, as I gather some have done. I was honored, and remain so, that he was willing to sign my book at all.
But the respect I cherish for the technical work RMS has done, does not extend to excusing his failures of respectful behavior, or the fashion in which they hinder rather than advance the goals of the GNU Project and the FSF as a whole. Nor does that respect extend to any longer keeping quiet about what he said or about the effect it had. Indeed, I should've spoken up long before now.
I understand the grievances of those who would hear no ill of their idol. I hope they'll someday learn to understand that facts don't care about their feelings.
[1] http://library.amlegal.com/nxt/gateway.dll/New%20York/admin/...
[2] https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/cchr/downloads/pdf/materials/Sex...
[3] https://www1.nyc.gov/site/cchr/media/sexual-harassment-campa...
Sorry, I couldn't find the definition for "sexual harrassment" in the first document. And I'm not from US, so maybe we have different expectations for the term.
Could you clarify which of the 6 examples in the second document you found pertinent to the story?
> had he not invested the effort to bring GNU Emacs into existence, I would almost certainly not now be at the point in my profession and my career where I am
Cheers to you from one of the current Emacs developers, then!
> Nor does that respect extend to any longer keeping quiet about what he said or about the effect it had. Indeed, I should've spoken up long before now.
Maybe you should have. Hopefully not in the way that the current Twitter mob has organized, though.
The way the scandal broke out, there's little opportunity now for the stories like this to have an ultimate positive impact, unfortunately. I doubt Richard is going to get a lot of speaking engagements in the near future.
Maybe you think that's an unworthy bit of lawyerly ratiocination, but even so, consider that a comment like that would get anyone who made it fired from any tech company with an HR department and an employee base the size of that talk's audience, and for the same reason around which the GNU maintainers' statement revolves.
To your last point, I don't think it is unreasonable to hope for some positive impact out of all this, or I wouldn't have said anything even now. I'm not here to try to dogpile the guy; I'm here to talk about how, no matter from whom they originate, comments like this aren't "just jokes", that they aren't harmless, and that there's nothing honorable or worthwhile in defending them or the people who, as in this case, persist in making them past all reasonable expectation or effort of curtailment.
I feel like that's worth talking about, if for no other reason than because the man's been regarded as a hero by many, some of whom may really need to be told that there are some aspects of his behavior which are not acceptable, and which they cannot expect to get away with.
I'd prefer it if someone like that were to understand why this is the case, and agree that it should be. But I'll settle for someone like that getting the idea that, whatever he may think of this whole idea, he'd better learn to keep his mouth shut instead of saying things that hurt marginalized groups, or else expect to be made sorry.
Maybe that sounds harsh to you, I don't know. It sounds harsh to me. Being made fun of for being a woman, or gay, or a person of color, or Jewish, or trans, or disabled, or... - that's a hell of a lot harsher, and it normalizes and, as is amply exemplified in history both recent and otherwise, encourages behavior that's far harsher still - discrimination, exclusion, robberies, beatings, rapes, murders. That sort of behavior, I'm absolutely fine with being harsh in an effort to dissuade.
Nobody gets to choose to be - or not to be - a woman, or gay, or of color, or Jewish, or trans, or disabled, or part of any of the other axes of marginalization in our societies. Everyone, though, has the power to choose what they say. I want people to choose wisely. If their native empathy doesn't suffice them as cause to do so, I have no problem in principle or in practice with the fear of punishment taking its place.
That, after all, is the tool societies ultimately use to discourage behaviors they regard as unacceptable. What our societies find acceptable is changing. I understand that some people really don't care for that. But, again, facts don't care about their feelings. And when we have the US Supreme Court considering whether to explicitly exclude LGBTQ people from civil rights protections, and Germany's AfD frightening Jewish people into hiding their ethnicity - when those aren't even the worst examples you can find, just the first two that came off the top of my head - it's getting awfully late in the day to take a softly-softly approach.
Aren't sexist remarks statements like "a woman couldn't manage to do xxx as well as a man could", or "make me a sandwich"? The statement was (one might say, carefully) gender-neutral, and even if you can infer a gender it might have been referring to, what negative thing would it have been implying about said gender?
> consider that a comment like that would get anyone who made it fired from any tech company with an HR department and an employee base the size of that talk's audience
It could have, but I hope nobody would call it "sexual harrassment". "Inappropriate language at the workplace", maybe? It might not (since there's no single person it targeted, to report it to HR). It probably wouldn't cause any firing at any of the places I've worked, though. shrug
> I don't think it is unreasonable to hope for some positive impact out of all this
Let's hope so. And let's hope your comments don't end up drowning in people arguing about details, like a lot of us nerds like to do.
> there's nothing honorable or worthwhile in defending them or the people who, as in this case, persist in making them past all reasonable expectation or effort of curtailment
I hope you can see that, given the unfortunate circumstances, there really is something honorable in defending the person, at least to make sure that the accusations are valid and not overblown.
> I'd prefer it if someone like that were to understand why this is the case, and agree that it should be
BTW, you know you could email him directly, right? Before that all happened, or even now.
> he'd better learn to keep his mouth shut instead of saying things that hurt marginalized groups
Again this language of emotional escalation. It's manipulative.
Making someone uncomfortable doesn't always imply hurting them. Even if they're feeling entirely disgusted by a speech, like some of the women in the audience might have been.
You don't have to equate X with Hitler to prove to people that X is bad. X can be bad on its own rights.
> If their native empathy doesn't suffice them as cause to do so, I have no problem in principle or in practice with the fear of punishment taking its place
There is still such a thing as disproportionate punishment.
That's harm, but it's not the only harm. It's not all that easy for someone to start a career in this industry, if they don't already "look like us" - the concept is typically treated under the name "culture fit": white, male, straight or at least nonthreateningly upper-middle-class gay, went to college for a degree in CS or a nearby discipline or else started programming at minus three years of age, laughs at our jokes and tells ones like them, drinks the same kind of beer we do, stuff like that. People who don't check those boxes, who don't exude the same ant smell, have a harder time. A higher standard is imposed. One way to meet it is to demonstrate both technical skill and ability to work with others via contributions to well-known projects - such as, for example, those that constitute the GNU project.
So it doesn't just hurt the project, when people are discouraged from trying to make such contributions by leaders making comments that, yeah, to people who look like us it's easy to mistake for just a joke, what's the big deal. It's easy for us not to see the problem, because people who look like us aren't accustomed to being the butt of jokes. For people who are, of course it's not "just a joke". It's the latest in a lifetime of "jokes" which, with enough experience of the sort that people who look like us are not likely to have, you learn are warning signs of a defect in the culture where such "jokes" are accepted. You learn that such a culture will not be kind to you, in the way it is to people who look like us. You learn you won't be welcome, that it'll be a constant fight to even try to establish and maintain yourself there. You learn there are better ways to spend your time, that piling that extra bullshit on top of the concerns that come with just trying to live a life in the world of the future is something best approached with great care and vast effort at self-defense, or maybe not at all.
So the project loses contributions, and you lose a chance to prove yourself to the higher standard imposed on you than on people who look like us, and our industry and our field of endeavor lose people who had the potential to be great engineers and, being not superhuman, needed encouragement and support to realize that potential - encouragement and support that people who look like us failed to provide, all while asking why's there all this fuss, anyway, over what was just a dumb joke, honestly, who even cares.
You're welcome to go on not seeing this as a problem, if you like. I don't know what more I can do to convince you. If you won't believe the stories women tell about experiences like this and the effect they have, if you won't listen when someone who looks like us corroborates those stories and says, yes, this happened, things like this happen every day, and they really do run people out of projects, out of jobs, out of careers, that if you take even a moment and look around just a little, you'll see it too - past that, I don't see what more I can do to convince you that this matters.
It's enough to make me understand why those who bear the brunt of this problem are getting past the point of trying to convince anyone of anything. It's enough to make me want to get behind them and push. If that means adding my voice to those demanding RMS, having so misused his platform for so long, now have that platform taken from him, then so be it. His work will stand forever as a legacy of what one person can do, and inspire others to do. That should be enough for anyone. And if the manner of his departure from that role inspires even one young engineer who looks like us to think twice about making some "dumb joke" that'll force whatever women or PoC or queers like me who hear it to consider whether they really want to spend their whole working life around people who act this way and worse toward them - well, there's a kind of legacy worth respecting in that, too.
Again, I understand that you regard this statement of RMS's - and the many similar statements attested by others - as innocuous, and any interpretation otherwise to be false and motivated by a witch-hunting desire to tear down a great man for no better reason than because his greatness makes others feel small. You've been quite clear about that.
You haven't done a good job arguing for it, though. You reiterate the same unsupported assertions that you've already made, and in between times you sling accusations at people who disagree with you - all the while hiding behind anonymity, lest you risk having your behavior reflect poorly on you - in the hopes that those following along will be suckered into mistaking such personal attacks and unsubstantiated claims for an argument.
You're welcome to do that, of course, if it doesn't embarrass you. I'd hope that it would, but I suppose the concealment of anonymity helps with that, too.
Edit: fix unclear wording, add question
All that remains is to argue over whether or not that exception was merited, and "it was just a joke, god, why are you being so emotional, jeez" - another uncharitable but accurate paraphrase - doesn't strike me as much of an argument. Neither does, again, claiming that I must be lying about what people did, or how many, in response to that comment of his.
Would you please step up your game? Answering the same tired objections over and over again, as they're reiterated in slightly different ways, grows dull, and it's difficult to distinguish one's interlocutors from one another when they're all saying the same things.
Except it's not.
You're misinterpreting his joke.
It is a joke, but he's saying that:
1 - keeping the lights off is conducive to having sex
2 - although he might enjoy sleeping with some of the people in the room, that's not what they're there for
3 - instead, he would prefer to see the audience
4 - so he's asking for the lights to be turned on
Are you really sure that's a place you care to stand? Because, whatever you may think you're saying, that's how you're being heard - and how your audience hears what you say is not a phenomenon subject to your control, or RMS's.
Did female harassment get solved in society at large? No. You can't solve it in online communities, you're only building bubbles of false-safety which will pop once the pressure from the real world becomes high enough.
America in particular is under so much political and social tension that it's starting to show cracks and online lynch mobs are a part of the problem.
And people will know what's fair and when they're being bullied. The change has to work towards equality, not revenge and entrapping others.
Currently the exact opposite is happening: the changes are forced by small online groups, mostly associated with software development. Which bully others into submission.
You've probably noticed how in the real world, society is quite divided, with basic civil rights being questioned. This is what happens when people "win" in their little software bubbles.
We wouldn't tolerate sexual harassment, etc., in the workplace or in civil society. I don't see why we wouldn't expect a basic level of decorum in respectable online communities.
But what we can do is strongly oppose any harassment. Clearly tell off anyone whe participates in harassment.
Of course, the leaders of any community should be a role model in not supporting harassment.