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Comment by phaemon | Hacker News Reader

So, does anyone know what exactly he was banned for?

Here's a previous thread on the topic [1]. From what I can gather, Eric was arguing against allowing "ethical source" licenses from being designated as "Open Source" by the institute.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22518370

That thread is wrong. Unfortunately, for a stupid reason. The OSI removed the messages from their archive after he got banned. Because removing all evidence is totally the correct thing to do.

I support getting rid of Raymond, but they couldn't have made themselves come off worse to your average internet commentator.

The OSI removed the messages from their archive after he got banned.

Until demonstrated how it might be otherwise, I contend that to be lunacy. Without a dog in the fight, or frankly much interest, I looked at the thread to make my own conclusions. I found nothing from ESR that I consider offensive, and I have much less tolerance for ass-clown behavior than I used to (coincidentally about the time I started working on becoming less of an ass-clown myself).

So I walk away thinking, yup, some special dandruff flake got their panties in a bunch over something silly. Because the message that might have changed my mind on that, well, it's not visible anymore.

As far as I know this was a natural consequence of their moderation, not a one-off attempt to edit history.

Anyway, you can read ESR's dodgy message quoted in this post:

http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists....

Here's Coraline Ada Ehmke's response [1].

IMO the "Persona Non Grata" clause is a mistake and ESR is right to oppose it. I don't agree with ESR on a lot of things but we should all agree that licenses that support/permit/include these clauses are not "Open Source". This endorsement from OSI is important and I don't think it should apply.

[1] https://threader.app/thread/1233089062430478336

From reading the comment thread on ESR's blog, it seems that he went as far as referring to a prominent candidate to the upcoming OSI board elections as a toxic loony nutcase, and that this message was subsequently scrubbed from the email archive. Either way, this puts OSI in a bit of a bind, for obvious reasons.

The crucial question is whether anyone would be banned for calling ESR a toxic lunatic, and I think the answer clearly is no. There are no bad tactics, only bad targets, and the only thing that matters is, as Lenin said, who will overtake whom.

> The crucial question is whether anyone would be banned for calling ESR a toxic lunatic

Well, assume that ESR was running for a board seat at OSI, and that the person did so shortly before the board elections. Maybe they wouldn't be banned for it, but one could argue whether that would be the right call. It's an interesting analogy, because the "folk" perception of both E. S. Raymond and C. A. Ehmke is quite similar, in a way.

Most likely referring to someone as a "toxic loonytoon". Full quote here:

http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists....

In my experience, decisions like this don't usually turn on one specific incident, but rather a long-running pattern of behavior.

Perceived Wrongthink, or perhaps for the unforgivable crime of accidentally activating the overpowered ego defense reflex of a person or set of persons without good regulation of their amygdala.

"It's not “free speech” when it's an attempt to shout others down so that they have no voice. It's something else entirely."

Indeed.

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