Mozilla, Tor Join Calls to Oust Richard Stallman from Free Software Foundation
fastcompany.com
fastcompany.com
"We know that Giuffre was being coerced into sex – by Epstein. She was being harmed,"
"Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm her psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that,"
and
"Nothing could be further from the truth. I've called [Jeffrey Epstein] a 'serial rapist,' and said he deserved to be imprisoned. But many people now believe I defended him—and other inaccurate claims—and feel a real hurt because of what they believe I said. I'm sorry for that hurt. I wish I could have prevented the misunderstanding."
[0] https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=has%20richard%20stallm...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Personal_life
Sorry? What chilling effect?
People are coming out of the woodwork to defend him. Most of the comments on most threads on Hacker News defend him. I can't think of anyone more vigorously and vociferously defended by the tech community except maybe Aaron Swartz.
If there's any chilling effect at all, it's in the other direction. It's impossible to disagree with the countrvailing narrative that Stallman Did Nothing Wrong without being called a bigot who hates neurdivergent people, a witch-hunting SJW and a traitor to free software. No one is even willing to concede the possibility of disagreeing with Stallman or his positions in good faith.
Meanwhile, only thing anyone suffers from defending Stallman is surplus karma.
Edit - yep.
It's possible being critical both ways, without seeking harm.
You're looking at the football stadium, he's commenting on the sports riot in progress.
I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader as to which is which.
A substantial disagreement I have with him over the GPL is whether we can call propeietary licenses "immoral".
Taking the libertarian view, I would offer that two people sharing a proprietary licensing agreement is as much my business as them consensually sharing bodily fluids.
The FSF tends toward intolerance as it gazes out from its "monastic" abode.
These sudden "woke" attacks on RMS are not part of a broader anti-freedom assault, are they? Sure would be a shame if there was a pattern of silencing in play.
RMS may be an abrasive, challenging personality, but all of those cheering for his ouster had better hope not to wind up in a Martin Niemöller[1] situation.
sure lets go full tinfoil hat ^^
I agree with your ideal of the freedom of contract in principle, but that only exists between equals. Wage slaves sign away exclusive rights to megacorporations and those do not negotiate licensing contracts with individual human consumers either. The contracts on both ends of the value chain are dictated by the corporation. Take it or leave it. Between the workers and the consumers a "right to reverse engineer" or a "right to repair" could be agreeable, but business is not going to let that happen. It will instead pressure any workers union to sign away all intellectual property rights the law allows and agree with denying the consumers every right that can be denied, arguing only then slave wages can match bread prices and every bit of idealism is going to take away from that.
So this is big tech trying to get rid of all the counter-culture ideologues so the FOSS communities can be ruled by docile councils of pushovers that offer no resistance against turning FOSS into feature incomplete community editions packed with telemetry and designed to harvest free work from young people eager to raise the value of their curriculum vitae. And even better all those undergrad engineers learn to keep their mouth shut, fall in line and never dare to argue against the social contract. Perfect mindset to get into negotiations for a wage slave position with corporate. Their ideal "community edition community" is not lead by radical free thinkers and it is not inclusive but instead managed by people who studied social science and are willing to sell out for scraps, the power to shush others and an idiotic believe that they in some way are helping to improve humanity by furthering the gleichschaltung of all aspects of culture and community into one big gamified social scoring system, when in truth all they do is crack the whip on the galley of totalitarian surveillance capitalism.
This isn't about some technicality about what he said, but a culmination of 30 years of horrible behavior.
It takes trivial research (check Twitter) for the many personal accounts from women who will never get close to him, and have been driven from the industry by both him and the people who have protected him.
https://mobile.twitter.com/bella_velo/status/117252486419394...
Later he couch bummed on the professors couch instead of staying at a hotel and the horrible experience of having him as a “guest” is still the key story at every Christmas party.
I don’t want to defend him. I think he’s an idiot, but I also don’t think he’s pro-pedo. I mean, you have to be an absolute fool to write what he did, but his point was clearly just to say “maybe mr scumbag didn’t know the 17 year old hooker was forced”. As autistic and unnecessary as that is, it’s not exactly being a pro-pedo.
When an angry mob tries to cancel a person there are 3 things that bothers me:
1. The cancellers are judging the past actions of a person with today's values, and are judging the past version of the person as if such person hadn't had already the chance to reflect on their past actions, accept their mistakes and become a better person.
2. The cancellers are becoming paradoxically the epitome of the paradox of tolerance by destroying the ability of others to be tolerant: Agree with us or we'll cancel you.
3. The cancellers are hidden behind the anonymity that their numbers provide, so they can destroy other people's lives with impunity. Cancellers should be held accountable for their actions.
"Darling, I like you with passion."
Innocent errors of diction are de minimis; tiptoeing heresy emboldens orthodox bigotry.
Example:
82 percent of Americans agree that hate speech is a problem in America today
but 80 percent also view political correctness as an issue.
The argument from consensus is particularly weak when not averaged historically across the lives of the present generation, much less historically.
That would make sense for someone judging the Mongols for conquering half of Eurasia. For someone judging sexual harassment and/or rape, when would you draw the line when "today's values" weren't applicable with regards to sexual harassment and/or rape? Like, take Andrew Cuomo or Harvey Weinstein. Is what many people are alleging they did fine because it was some time ago?
And of course there are "cancellings" ( i hate that terminology...) for current actions, like LGBTQ-phobia, or the Q lunatics.
I absolutely agree that "doing blackface" at a college party 30 years ago isn't really relevant to who a person is today.
It's very clear that he has words and actions in the past that must be addressed and atoned for (and perhaps has) -- but it is not at all clear to me that these words and ideas justify removing the guy that essentially started all of this, without further discussion or investigation.
The question for the FSF Board isn't whether Stallman deserves to be punished, or anything - they're not a court of law. The question for the FSF Board is whether adding Stallman to the board accomplishes their mission of advancing software freedom.
The FSF is not the Stallman Foundation (the way that there's a Gates Foundation or a Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative or whatever), whose goal would be to support Stallman in his works and in making the changes he wants to see in the world. It has a specific mission, and the question isn't whether Stallman is so bad that he deserves to be excluded, it's whether associating themselves with Stallman helps them achieve that goal.
Given how much of the free software movement he has alienated, including past FSF staff, past FSF board members, and a number of present and former GNU contributors, as well as other organizations like Software Freedom Conservancy that work closely with the FSF and defend the GPL and software freedom, it seems very unlikely that it does.
It hasn't been since 2004, when the FSF staff unionized to protect themselves from Stallman (https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1374532930400227328).
It hasn't been since whenever Stallman's rider started including explicit instructions that his speaking fees should be sent to his personal mailing address and made out to his personal bank account, not the FSF treasury, not even to his personal assistant employed by the FSF. https://github.com/ddol/rre-rms/blob/master/rider.txt#L725-L...
And maybe it is in practice despite all that, but should it be? That's not their mission statement, and I think, for instance, that very few software authors would have been willing to say "or, at your option, any later version published by the Stallman Foundation" - let alone transfer their copyrights to the Stallman Foundation. Free software developers including myself entrusted the FSF with the ability to control our work precisely because the FSF was not just one guy, it was an organization that claimed to represent the entire free software movement.
You can't take it back. Once it's out there, it's out there. That was the point! Nor does it at all Change that Stallman has done absolutely nothing to deserve ousting, nor does his reinstatement detract from FSF or it's mission.
Looked into the rider; good for him; he's bringing it in, he should get a choice in where it goes. Also, makes me wonder why. Given Stallman's dedication, I have to wonder what the Foundation has been up to that's got him feeling like he's got to take care of himself first, but heck, maybe he just got tired of having to rely on the charity of others? I know in his position, (particularly nowadays) I'd not feel a great degree of trust in the face of my peers.
I'm just in awe of the fact he's even gone back, and throughout the entire thing kept advocating for FSF. That's commitment.
After thumbing through the Twitter thread, came across this gem:
>I worked at the FSF from 2015-2018 & was shop steward for a while. I recall having a months (MONTHS) long conversation with ED John Sullivan about why racist & sexist 'hacker humor' from the 90s needed to be removed from http://gnu.org. rms didn't get why it was harmful.
So... Someone had a subculture clash, and totally failed to attain enlightenment? Or to even appreciate the importance of maintaining a historical record to change and develop over time?
Seriously, this sounds like the kind of person who'd advocate having all old periodicals available in libraries re-written to the moral standards of today to protect the sensibilities of the youth.
The problem I have sympathizing with all of this is that if these same exact circumstances happened to any other member of the FSF, I'd be in the same uproar. You don't hang someone out to dry because people got hysterical because someone couldn't read, or because other people don't like that someone else is using their right to speak their mind.
I once heard the folks at Penny Arcade say that they specifically made Child's Play an independent organization so that even if they happen to do something stupid that ruins their own reputation(s), that the charity could continue on doing good regardless.
Hundreds of millions from Google and basically nothing to show for it other then Firefox. Firefox is cool, don’t get me wrong, but literally every year we have startups from Ycombinator come out with impressive, sustainable projects for less than half a million.
As for Stallman, is there an exhaustive list of so-called unacceptable behavior that he has done?
The best I could determine is that his treatment of chosen pronouns got him labeled transphobic, the abort joke is him being misogynistic (that was him preserving historical/cultural context) in addition to a rather unfortunate lapse of character when coming onto a student once. Most everything I've found tends to map back to stuff dredged up while he was under fire for the Minsky stuff.
Got a thorough write up of the debunking of lies though!
https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/
Enjoy!
This is what he is being called transphobic over.
I thought this was funny, in an article defending Stallman:
"I have had 3 lunches, 1 free software event, and 1 long car ride with Richard Stallman... In that span of time he managed to confront and berate me countless times. He is by far the most disagreeable person I’ve ever met."
And Mozilla has been a joke for a while with their latest CEO. He's literally trying to jump on anything currently trendy, to hold onto his seat and salary for as long as possible while he drives its projects into the bedrock.
Slightly off topic, I have been hammering my friends when they start spouting off cancel culture. I am considerably to the left of most of my friends who are democrats so I don't think it is political. Too many people judge written or spoken words based on who said them, rather than the content.
*She's, FYI: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker
Free software is built on volunteers doing what is often a thankless job, and all this drama is going to make a lot of people to consider doing something else than contributing.
And, IIRC, if you donate money to Mozilla, none of it will go into Firefox development.
This is so harmful to society, and is a dark path that the left has taken in my country. To put it plainly, my political party has turned into whinny little people.
People should lose their jobs over things like sexual or any type of harassment but when I read Stallman's actual comments last year, I thought that it was very clear that he was only defending his friend, who was dead and couldn't defend himself.
EDIT: for what it is worth, I just uninstalled Firefox.
EDIT #2: I just rejoined the FSF (well, I was still a member, I just started donating again).
This isn't just about him describing a "sex trafficking victim" as "entirely willing", and hence not a victim of "sexual assault". This is wrong on so many levels.
If it is true then that was bad, and I am sure that gave him a reputation that on a campus likely burned like a wild fire (it sure would do that on my university if anyone said something like that), but what is an appropriate reaction be now several decades later?
The second thing the appendix listed was a mattress in his office whose primary user were most likely RMS himself since he kind of had a reputation of living in the university.
Living in an office doesn't excuse having topless people on a mattress in your office.
The 80's was a different time, but not that different. Unless the "topless people" were RMS himself sleeping on it, I have a hard time believing it. In theory I can imagine (but I doubt it) a warm summer where a team of emacs collaborators were all living and sleeping in the university office room, but I strongly doubt the implication sex went on there.
Gotta love the mental gymnastics on HN sometimes.
> He's not. https://mark-watson.blogspot.com/2016/01/i-will-not-vote-for...
Walk me through how that shows that he's not "a very liberal person."
A leftist not voting for Clinton, however, seems perfectly reasonable, considering that she is not even remotely leftist. She's a neoliberal, who ran on a neoliberal platform - one that would've made no meaningful effort to advance actual leftism in this country. It would've been, at best, appeasement.
The Republican Party in Europe would be a conservative right party while the Democrat Party would be a moderated center-right one with some liberal hints.
Are you using the non-American and leftist American definition of “liberal” (center-to-center-right capitalist) or the American center-right-to-right definition of “liberal” (anything left of the center-right) when you say “very liberal”?
> when I read Stallman's actual comments last year, I thought that it was very clear that he was only defending his friend, who was dead and couldn't defend himself.
A lot of the comments and actions at issue, including the separate general endorsement of “voluntary” child sex, had nothing to do with Minsky.
Not sure if it matters, since in both cases it's applicable:
1. From a true liberal (moderate capitalist) standpoint, RMS has every right to his views, and the FSF has every right to associate with RMS. If Mozilla doesn't like it, they can pound sand.
2. From a leftist perspective, RMS is pretty unambiguously leftist and libertarian (as is the FSF), whereas Mozilla is a for-profit corporation. Siding with Mozilla against RMS and the FSF is pretty hard to reconcile with being a leftist; yeah, there's plenty of room for nuanced opinion (no matter what extremists want to believe), but considering the interested parties it's pretty easy to interpret this whole controversy as a bunch of capitalists and their sympathizers making McCarthy proud in their demonization of socialists.
> including the separate general endorsement of “voluntary” child sex
Which he publicly recanted.
FYI libertarians nowadays, especially in the US, are basically anarcho-capitalists, and considered right on the political spectrum.
> Left-libertarian[14][15][16][17][18] ideologies include anarchist schools of thought, alongside many other anti-paternalist and New Left schools of thought centered around economic egalitarianism as well as geolibertarianism, green politics, market-oriented left-libertarianism and the Steiner–Vallentyne school.[14][17][19][20][21] In the mid-20th century, right-libertarian[15][18][22][23] proponents of anarcho-capitalism and minarchism co-opted[8][24] the term libertarian to advocate laissez-faire capitalism and strong private property rights such as in land, infrastructure and natural resources.[25] The latter is the dominant form of libertarianism in the United States,[23] where it advocates civil liberties,[26] natural law,[27] free-market capitalism[28][29] and a major reversal of the modern welfare state.[30]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism
RMS himself is very anti-libertarians in their US form ( right-libertarian in the Wiki article):
RMS seems to have a long history:
> The stories of thirty years of MIT women alumni.
* https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-appendix...
Also:
* https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix
The 2019 comments appear to just the latest in a long string of incidents that people are no longer willing to tolerate.
https://github.com/rms-support-letter/rms-support-letter.git... and the open letter in support of RMS more generally: https://rms-support-letter.github.io
and, quoting the former president of the ACLU and civil rights activist Nadine Strossen on the Stallman matter:
That being said, there are people who are going too far, and this feels very much like that. I don't think people trying to oust RMS much appreciate the sheer weight of what they are up against, and that uphill fights like this are going to bring in "extremists" and just plain weirdos.
You're (at least at times) fighting literally the richest and most powerful people in the world, and only a tiny number of people even much understand what the whole thing is about, much less are on your side.
I'm a black person in tech, I'm well aware of both what it's like to have to deal with boorish powerful people, but I'm also close enough to older folks who've also been in real serious underdog type fights to understand that - you don't always get your choice of co-fighters when you're in the minority -- at the risk of being dramatic, it's darn near war.
May be this is the easiest thing people can do?
What are some alternatives to Firefox on GNU/Linux?
I find your remark on 'where society is heading to' very odd. You say you don't live in the west so might not have a full picture, but overall I wouldn't see any negative trend. Some things are sometimes taken to an extreme, but I would prefer excess caution around sexual harassment over, say, a culture which treats women as sub-human, as less than men, or as the property of men, as is sadly still the case in far too many countries.
It's not just the Minsky issue that makes people don't want RMS to be in power. It's also a pattern of sexual harassment towards women, since long back, in conferences and MIT. They can be found online, idk whether there is an article that details everything. I think most just want him not to be in a position of power. Just copying another comment from a flagged HN post below:
Here's some readings on why many don't want RMS in a leadership position.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21287006
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20994216
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26545420
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26535789
[5] https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-pr...
. .
Some well-regarded papers on sexism in CS, which are still relevant.
[1] Why are There so Few Female Computer Scientists (Ellen Spertus, 1991)
https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7040
[2] How to Encourage Women in Linux (Val Henson, 2002)
https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/
[3] What Happens to Us Does Not Happen to Most of You (Kathryn S. McKinley, 2018)
https://www.sigarch.org/what-happens-to-us-does-not-happen-t...
[4] Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing (Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher, 2001)
https://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Clubhouse-Women-Computing-P...
[5] The Elephant in the Valley (by Michele Madansky and Trae Vassallo, 2015)
I also recommend the treatment here: https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web
He also has some troubling views that at best make him an inappropriate spokesperson.
> I expect that Sudanese law defines "rape" to exclude rape by the husband. That's comparable to US laws that define "rape" to include voluntary sex with under N years of age (where N varies). Both laws falsify the meaning of "rape".
https://stallman.org/archives/2018-may-aug.html#14_May_2018_...
I'm a gay man who is into older men.
When I was in highschool I intentionally sought out men in their 20s and 30s.
Cross generational relationships are a sexual preference and can be just as fulfilling and last just as long as any other.
Sometimes the younger person has more money and is the one paying for everything. Really. I should know. I've been that younger person. It's really just like any other relationship. We laugh, love, and have deep meaningful emotional connections.
These antiquated stereotypes of a mustache twirling abusive old pervert preying on the naive country bumpkin has to go.
The vast majority simply aren't like that. There's creeps, sure, but there's creepy people everywhere.
A 17 year old in love with a 30 year old shouldn't come with secrecy, shame and judgemental speculation. I had enough of that when I was young.
Let us emerge from the shadows. We've been here all along.
RMS is saying there shouldn't be prison sentences for love. Abuse is a relationship dynamic, not a function of the age of the participants.
Hit me up if you want to have me fired over my sexual orientation as well, email info is on my contact page. I'll mail you my manager's info.
I agree those implications sound shocking, but please read on:
When it comes to criminality, we need to stay focused on the abuse and manipulation and not be distracted by ages or any other correlative relationship. Going over the line of consent is the trespass we all agree upon.
Such hyper-vigilance will permit us to pursue the true sentiments and goals of metoo and cancel culture, to rout out systems and institutions of abuse. All kinds.
For instance, a 10 year old with a 40 year old late at night at a park sounds like a major red flag, something we should all find unacceptable.
What if it's a basketball coach waiting for a parent who's running late?
The point of that redirection story is that abuse and manipulation is what needs to be demonstrated, not just the mere existence of a relationship. Abuse can happen without sex at all.
Our immense paranoia of child sex predators has robbed people of their natural desires to nurture children. By assuming the worst is inevitable we have made the best impossible.
I know it's a high standard so let us all aim high.
On the main theme, yes, the US is paranoid, and a lot of people exploiting the average fear from the American: the market and the consumering society.
It seems he said some things that one might disagree with which is fair enough but saying it’s sexual harassment seems like a stretch IMO.
He threatened suicide if a woman wouldn't date him. That's abusive manipulation.
He, unsolicitedly hands out 'pleasure cards' to women at conferences. That's harassment: Conferences are a interest and professional environment; they're not Tinder.
Having a bed in his office at MIT is creepy as hell. Inviting woman at MIT into his office would hence be harassment.
Women at MIT had to keep plants in their offices to ward him off. Ward off his persistent, unwanted, sexual advances. That's him causing harassment.
I will also require your taste in literature, boxers or briefs, tube socks with/without the colored stripes or those ankle socks, and toilets or bidets to make a final determination.
That blog post calling for his removal was way overblown and quite childish.
I worked in a college setting for years and tenured professors were found in possession of pornography on school grounds and on school equipment. We in tech, who discovered and reported it,thought it was a big deal. Academic freedom policy and union protection gave it the big shrug. That didn't protect their reputation but it did protect their freedom.
I came to hold dear the notion of academic and intellectual freedom from my years working there. Web filtering and monitoring were completely off the table. Not because it might protect some creepy dudes from exposure but because it protects us all in ways that most people don't even fathom.
I predict that the author of that post will deeply regret their actions one day when they grow up.
Uh? No, I don't think you should be allowed to advocate for the morality of statutory rape in a university mailing list on an entirely unrelated topic. I was on some csail mailing lists and I certainly wouldn't want to get that.
And we wonder why this field is so gender lopsided.
The original signers of that letter are:
* Molly de Blanc (Debian Project, GNOME Foundation)
* Nathan Freitas
* Matthew Garrett (Former member of the FSF board of directors). See: https://twitter.com/mjg59
* Shauna Gordon-McKeon
* Elana Hashman (Debian Technical Committee Member, Open Source Initiative Director, Kubernetes SIG Instrumentation Chair)
* Faidon Liambotis (Open Source Initiative Director)
* Katherine Maher
* Tom Marble (Software Freedom Conservancy, Evaluation Committee Chair)
* Neil McGovern (GNOME Foundation Executive Director, Former Debian Project Leader)
* Deb Nicholson (OSI General Manager, SeaGL Co-Founder)
* Nadya Peek
* Julia Reda
* Eric Schultz
* Joan Touzet (Apache CouchDB PMC, Former Apache Software Foundation Director)
* Luis Villa (Former Director of the Open Source Initiative and the GNOME Foundation; contributor to the GPL v3 drafting process)
* Stefano Zacchiroli (Former Debian Project Leader and Former Director of the Open Source Initiative)
See:
http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html
https://wingolog.org/archives/2019/10/08/thoughts-on-rms-and...
https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25193674
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21000374
The immediate pressure for him to resign was a media firestorm over his Epstein comments, but that wouldn't have done anything had he not already lost the support of the free software community by then.
(BTW, the answer to why it's so hard: every single reply giving you an answer has been downvoted, and the only reply that's staying up is the one that implies people want to be vague. I've been getting downvoted for providing actual answers often enough that HN blocks me for commenting for a bit. So if you are having trouble finding answers, remember the reason is censorship.)
Lets build a premium water fountain exclusively for people of colour to fight racism too?
The article references sexual harassment, the commenters care about market share.
Did you know it’s important to hold people accountable more, the more power they have?
It’s one thing if you disagree, but making it about “winners” and “losers” and not about victims is how we ended up creating toxic workplaces.
Women at MIT were warned away from him, told to keep plants to ward him off.
And one of the most troubling things he has done is psychological manipulation. Many jurisdictions rightly recognise as domestic abuse. In particular, he told one woman he would kill himself if she didn't date him.
Depressed people should seek treatment. Being depressed doesn't excuse manipulation.
>Depressed people should seek treatment. Being depressed doesn't excuse manipulation.
I've been on the receiving end of that same situation; and yet, I don't think inciting an internet hate mob to banish that person from their life's work indefinitely is the proper "treatment" I'd recommend to give that person.
So a business card turned into a pleasure card, which has nothing to do with sex at all, except for people who want to see things that aren't there.
It's one of RMS's quaint re-namings, and people turn it into something sinister.
> Women at MIT were warned away from him, told to keep plants to ward him off.
That may have been a joke or they didn't want to listen to his preaching. Anecdotal hearsay anyway.
> he told one woman he would kill himself if she didn't date him.
How did he say that? Most likely as a joke, which millions of people have done.
But hey, let's focus on Stallman who wasn't even involved with Epstein himself instead of the people that Epstein collected dossiers about. Those would be the interesting ones, but perhaps some corporate or political interests don't allow it.
But ultimately, real women are upset by it. The unprofessional behavior discourages women from being in tech.
Just because you wouldn't mind receiving such a card, doesn't mean it's not harassment. I mean, do you understand (a) the nature of consent, and (b) professional workplace environments?
I wouldn't call anyone (woman or man) that can't handle being upset "real". In fact it is the opposite of it. It shows a distinct lack of skills in dealing with reality, that is if you accept that real life is not just rainbows and sunshine, no matter how much we desire so.
Alleged sexual harassment. Granted I don't know the whole story, but it doesn't seem like there has been anything more than accusations. I don't think its right to fire someone based on heresay. Once he is proven to have crossed the lines, then I'm all for holding him accountable. Until then, I think people should keep the pitchfork in the shed.
Also I'm not defending his commentary, but people are entitled to their own opinions.
The sexual harassment is hearsay, and one making accusations (Mozilla) is so deep in bed with Google, if they sneezed Alphabet would come out.
The market share is people way if saying, really, that's what you want to focus on?
It's incredibly troubling. It shows that a hell of a lot of men will excuse incredibly shitty behaviour, because they think 'they're next'.
Not unless they're also being incredibly shitty. Nobody's getting 'cancelled' for bad social skills.
I am pleasantly surprised by the number of people speaking out against harassment these days. The open letter has a lot of signatories, many prominent figures. Sadly, of course, the open letter is necessary.
People have been cancelled for less.
Here's a guy facing a closed door tribunal for jokingly saying in a keynote that someone was wrong on technical points:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24926214
Here is someone getting character-assassinated because... We don't know why. This guy made others uncomfortable, or so the organizers said. Other examples of similar stories in there too:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422420
The discussion of whether what RMS has done in the past (and still does? I don't know? Did he repent?) crosses a line in the sand that you (and others) see between bad social skills and actual harassment needs more nuance than "people don't get cancelled for the wrong reasons".
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/statement-re-election-...
See the Open Letter / Petition here for more details:
Which organizations have signed the petition in support of Stallman?
Or even just looking at individuals, which GNU project members or FSF staffers have signed it?
Best to ignore despicable people.
and this petition: https://rms-open-letter.github.io/
Netsurf/Lynx and i2p should be the freedom supporting trend against right wing and left wing extremist wackos.
But the Mozilla foundation just taints it. Every time they come out with one of their sanctimonious PR releases they make me want to have less to do with them. I think they've completely lost their focus.
I end up bouncing between Chrome, Firefox, and Brave. Brave makes me the happiest, but it's a minor player, and I'm worried about it's long-term prospects.
Is there some non-Mozilla Foundation fork of Firefox?
(/s, because on the Internet nobody knows you're a dog^W^Wbeing sarcastic)
...like, I ain't saying I like the guy or anything - he definitely seems like someone I wouldn't enjoy interacting with day-to-day - but I'm skeptical of the idea that having heterodox opinions or being a bit of a stubborn ass should be a fireable offense. If he was outright sexually assaulting people, or abusing a position of power for sex, or something like that, then sure, villainize the guy (and - better yet - pursue criminal charges), but as it stands, it seems like his worst actual offense was being a stereotypical socially awkward nerd.
But hey, if Mozilla doesn't want to associate with the FSF for whatever reason, then that's their perogative. I'm sure they'll stop using GNU and its components company-wide any day now.
It's more of an issue when someone is part of the leadership for a group though, as they are seen as representing the whole group.
Like, should we consider the emtire organization developing the Brave web browser to be implicitly homophobic because its founder and CEO once donated to an anti-gay-marriage campaign? Should we have considered Mozilla itself to have been at one point implicitly homophobic in its brief appointment of that same person as CEO? Was Netscape homophobic for that reason?
Or do you think that maybe people can have views that ain't representative of their employers?
Here are a number of instances where they revealed their political biases and their anti-free-speech stance:
Firefox rejects free speech, bans free speech commenting plugin Dissenter from its extensions gallery https://reclaimthenet.org/firefox-rejects-free-speech-bans-f...
Mozilla turns its attention to censoring decentralized tech https://reclaimthenet.org/mozilla-turns-its-attention-to-cen...
Firefox maker Mozilla calls for “more than” deplatforming https://reclaimthenet.org/firefox-maker-mozilla-calls-for-mo...
Firefox introduces extension that automatically censors “hate speech” https://reclaimthenet.org/firefox-introduces-extension-that-...
Whose number may seem unusually high, but it isn't if we consider recent history. People is quick to discard all those who think different. And the holier-than-thou mentality is deeply rooted in the American mind.
Hopefully all those people will leave to form their "pure" and "exclusive" community where they could endlessly discuss about how many pricks can dance in a forum's thread, or something like that, so people who really want to work can advance the movement unimpeded.
Also change the title to "Petition to oust RMS from FSF board"
https://rms-open-letter.github.io/
It's an impressive list of names, of whom I know a few personally and hold in high regards.
At this point I'm VERY curious to how RMS and the folks that requested him to come back to the FSF have to say in his defense.
I'm not fully aware of what he did, and to what extend he holds on to being a "misogynist, ableist, and transphobic, among other serious accusations of impropriety". Hence I look fwd to a defense.
You don’t know what he did. But you look forward to seeing his defence...?
One of the large problems of cancel culture is people, like you, who jump on the bandwagon without really knowing the context or what the person actually did.
Nah. I believe the people signing the petition know to some extend that this is serious. The petition respects him by not linking all expressions directly. Now it's up to him to defend himself if he likes. If he came around (like he came around before) that is a good defense in these cases. I know him as a very principled person: he'll not come around just for show :)
And yes, that list of people is impressive. I know some of 'm and hold m in high regard. That does not say it's true, but it does make me believe there's actually something going on here -- although I dont any evidence presented. And nowadays even with links to "evidence": what do we truly know?
Hence the defense'd be my proof of the pudding.
Has he actually ever said anything that constitutes harassment to a single individual or physically harassed anyone?
Normally I’d agree that holding certain views is enough but the views he hold are pretty controversial, idk.
The accusation uses political activist wording that most of us are familiar with at this point, indicating that woke activism of the signatories and the organizations they work for have at least had some influence. Do you think an expectation of a response should be tempered by this concern about political activism of the accusers?
Socially extremely competent innocent people regularly fail in defending themselves, or get cancelled even after proven innocent. Asking a borderline autistic person like RMS to defend himself while navigating the complex woke activism in the accusation seems like a big ask.
To me this list of people and organizations are not some silly knights of "woke activism", they are people who'd feel misrepresented by RMS due to his beliefs. I'd not be so dismissive to that. We try to make software a more inclusive place. We being: people organizing conferences, the companies that create software and the FLOSS movement as well. Having someone in a position believing what he is accused of is a real problem.
I just want to know if he can come around to his beliefs, or if he sticks to them. He came around with beliefs concerning the "age of sexual consent" and how that should not matter. I find people's ability to come around when presented with evidence a good thing.
Hence, I hope he responds with a defense.
Several of these organizations engage in woke political D&I activism, e.g. Mozilla and GNOME.
The woke sense of tolerance is to be intolerant to violations of its fundamentalist norms, while most expect tolerance to be a two-way street. Serious accusations put into political activist wording, like in this petition, is a commonly used woke tool to remove viewpoint opponents from positions of influence. How are we supposed to judge what part of their reasoning stems from political activism, and what stems from evidence of malfeasance?
> I just want to know if he can come around to his beliefs, or if he sticks to them. He came around with beliefs concerning the "age of sexual consent" and how that should not matter. I find people's ability to come around when presented with evidence a good thing.
On top of the accusation of "misogynist, ableist, and transphobic, among other serious accusations of impropriety", this is another serious accusation.
An old political trick often used by the woke is to reduce the opponents moral standing by having them answer an accusation of bad things, true or not. "Sir, how do you respond to those that accuse you of pedophilia?". Even if one answered "Absolutely not; I just argued that a 19 year old is not a pedophile for engaging with one two years younger", the association sticks in peoples minds. How can you retain your moral standing by answering such a question?
Are you aware of the tolerance paradox of Popper?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
> The woke sense of tolerance
I dont think adding this "woke" word helps making your point. Or, could you please define what you mean by it?
I'm intolerant of hate speech myself. I think organizations that represent people may hold even stricter "codes of conduct" in order to ensure a maximum of people feels represented/welcomed by the organization.
> this is another serious accusation.
I did not accuse him, I said I valued him coming around on this topic. It seems you want to paint me in a color no matter what I say. An why did I say this about the age of consent? Because here I actually did go and look for the evidence, and here he did come around. Good stuff, not bad stuff. I hope he can come around IFF he really hold the beliefs people signing the petition find intolerable. I hope for a defense, or a statement of coming around.
> The woke sense of tolerance
Yes, Popper wrote the "paradox of tolerance" in 1945 as a liberal philosophical answer to the national socialists that were intolerant to violations to their fundamentalist norms.
What the paradox of intolerance says is that we should be intolerant towards totalizing belief systems that justify force and coercion against viewpoint opponent to enforce their compliance to its norms. The woke belief system is exactly the kind of belief system he warned us about. Basically, Popper says tolerance need to be a two-way street.
> I did not accuse him, I said I valued him coming around on this topic. It seems you want to paint me in a color no matter what I say.
That is not what I meant, as I’ve been responding to your request for a defense. Focus is on the accusation and how this kind of accusation found in the linked open letter is frequently used by the woke to reduce the moral standing of opponents. I demonstrated how if you respond to such an accusation, that due to its woke political activist wording demonstrably at least partially contain political activist aspects, you will still loose moral standing.