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Comment by waterhouse | Hacker News Reader

Wanting the tone of the community to be a certain way, is one thing. The means of getting there—a public campaign to get someone and everyone who supported him to lose their place in their organization—is its own thing, and some would say it's below the belt, and that exercising this means has its own detrimental effect on the tone of the community, and that it harms the claimed ends more than it helps.

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I would be more inclined to agree if not for the fact that the board invited him back. Standing by him through this would have been bad enough, let alone inviting him back after his resignation. I don't have confidence in a board which believes this to be a wise decision.

They shouldn't lose their positions because of Stallman's beliefs, but because of their own unwise decision to return him to a position of greater influence.

Hmm, some have said that they think he's an ineffective public face or leader because he's connected to bad publicity, but you specified "a position of greater influence", which is interestingly different than that. For what it's worth: do you think Stallman, in his position at FSF, is going to have any influence on laws about rape and child sex, or on women deciding whether to abort Down's syndrome fetuses, or on the prevalence of what the letter writers call "transphobia" in the population, or anything else connected to the opinions that the majority of the appendix is spent discussing?

I'm more concerned about his influence on the free software community: Stallman thankfully lacks direct influence over legal matters, but he has a direct influence over the community's form and function. Essentially, I believe that he discourages valuable contributions to free software by contributing negatively to the impression of what kind of community a potential contributor would be joining. I can't remember an example offhand, but I've heard of existing contributors dissuaded from continuing because of that, as well.

I see. I have seen a few claims of that sort. I think those usually take the form "I saw him behaving badly in person, and decided to avoid him and things associated with him". I don't think I've seen anyone say "I saw his opinion about X and decided to avoid a programming community".

In that case, would you agree that the stuff about his opinions is irrelevant? In fact, given that there's some likelihood he'll remain at FSF and certainly will remain a famous programmer, wouldn't it then be best to draw as little attention as possible to his unpopular opinions? (This is not the same as "wouldn't it be best to draw as little attention as possible to his alleged bad behavior", because whereas him mistreating people would be bad no matter how many people knew about it, him having unpopular opinions that won't change anything does not harm anyone, and if people are distressed to learn about those opinions, then publicizing those opinions increases that distress.)

I think the problem with that concept is that it's not possible so long as he's actively sharing his opinions and having those opinions amplified by supporters. Ignoring that problem won't make it go away, and I don't support preventing him from using his personal resources to share his opinions. Drawing additional attention to his opinions may create more stress in the immediate term, but for the greater long-term benefit of discouraging similar attitudes from growing in prominence within the community.

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