“I am announcing my resignation from the FSF board”
twitter.com
twitter.com
I won’t jump to his defence, I think not offending people even through their misunderstandings is a key skill in public speech. I do find it terrifying though how he is lynched for what is essentially rational and permissible speech in an ugly wrapper. I don’t know if I agree with him, but I sure have some opinions of mine that are not palatable to mainstream woke Twitter mobs. The idea that I couldn’t express them for fear of being cancelled sends shivers down my spine.
[1] https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-appendix...
They've already made their point that what he said / did wasn't acceptable two years ago.
What he said in 2019 was basically the last straw for many people of behaviour that stretches back a decade or three:
* https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-appendix...
He hasn't admitted to doing anything wrong, or feeling regret for any words/actions, and so the thinking is if he won't ask for forgiveness (?) then why should he be let back in?
Apart from his unsavoury and mean things he says, most of the accusations seem to be centred around his MIT presence, and also sound like firable offences. I think a better place to start would be to enforce that, if the accusations are true (very possible, I just don’t know).
Otherwise there are some accusations hanging around, b the organisation who should first and foremost address them (apparently) doesn’t. Then a lunch mob forms.
Incidentally, I think this is the origin of the outrage society-the lack of appropriate reactions where they should be made in the first place.
Still, I prefer C+ law-based justice to a B lunch mob.
It strikes me that RMS writes a lot about sex, rape and minors. Well, we all have interests. If the article is anything to go by, it confirms my hunch that he says a lot of things that are prone to misinterpretation.
While I would think it is his fault (we have a duty to say controversial things in a way that the audience can understand), this still doesn’t seem to be a good reason to cancel him, and of all things, from the FSF. It’s not like he is on the board of the Girl Guides.
He writes quite a lot about many subjects, and there's a huge corpus of text written by him. He has written a handful of paragraphs regarding sex, rape and minors, and all of these are quoted on that website. But it does not seem that this is a subject that he's particularly interested in.
>Kat Walsh, a FSF board member and technology attorney tweeted, "for whatever it's worth, I did not support the decision to reinstate RMS. I made my arguments and placed my opposing vote; while I was glad I was able to do that I regret not being able to turn the decision the other way."
I wonder what the next step will be in the corporate takeover of free software? If they're all just gonna leave that seems like a suspiciously good outcome.
https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-pr...
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/23/outreachy-fsf/
https://rms-open-letter.github.io/
. .
Also the FSF members weren't made aware of RMS's comeback. That's shitty behaviour.
https://twitter.com/fsf/status/1374399897558917128
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Partial reasons as to why this is happening:
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21287006
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20994216
RMS is anti-corporate and pro end-user. Free software has turned out to be immensely useful for big corporations, but mostly because it's free, not because it empowers the end-user. You would expect leftists to be in favour of empowering the end-user, but evidently not. I think it's because RMS is an old-style anarchist type leftist, while these new social justice type leftists are rather authoritarian and allied to big corporations as such.
Similarly, it's laughable to think that the FOSS community members who work for Apple, IBM, Amazon, Google, or anyone else on that list would give a single shit about some socially-inept guy making awkward passes at women while they quietly endorse whatever China feels like doing to the Uyghurs or Hong Kong dissidents, and quietly cover up the endless sexual harassment scandals of their own C-suites.
It's never been about social justice. Social Justice is a convenient tool they've found to further entrench their naked power. Don't think for half a second that they wouldn't immediately ditch it to support Hitler Part Deux if their internal strategy analysis indicated that doing so would gain them more power, control, and profits.
> The idea that someone who does enough "good work" earns a pass for inappropriate behaviour is pervasive, and fosters environments where abusers can prosper. People who hold this belief shouldn't be involved in running organisations.
* https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1374093150101200896
Other folks who did a lot of philanthropy: Jeffrey Epstein, David Koch, the Sackler family (of opioid epidemic noterietay), Harvey Weinstein, Roger Ailes, Bill Cosby, Michael Pearson, Raj Rajaratnam, Bernard Madoff, Ken Lay (of Enron).
* https://www.worth.com/the-10-most-toxic-philanthropists/
* https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/harvey-weinstei...
> RMS is anti-corporate and pro end-user. Free software has turned out to be immensely useful for big corporations, but mostly because it's free, not because it empowers the end-user. You would expect leftists to be in favour of empowering the end-user, but evidently not.
"Leftists" may be for empowering the end-user, but they may not be for allowing someone a pass on certain behaviours just because they happen to share values/principles.
Walsh has integrity.
"For whatever it's worth, I did not support the decision to reinstate RMS. I made my arguments and placed my opposing vote; while I was glad I was able to do that I regret not being able to turn the decision the other way."
"FSF board members are not compensated for their board service, and are not permitted to receive any personal financial benefit from FSF funds or other assets."
https://www.fsf.org/about/the-role-of-the-fsfs-board-of-dire...
It is completely reasonable for a member of a board of directors (or advisors or trustees) of a non-profit to resign if they think the non-profit is going in the wrong direction.
I'm tired of social culture spokespeople flogging technologists over the head
Nobody can make a case that RMS is a swell guy, he's awful. Still, he's without a sliver of a doubt the single most influential activist for FOSS that there's ever been.
Getting rid of polarization happens with one instance of forgiveness+rehabilitation at a time. You cant cancel your way to better culture.
Maybe that's why it's not taken more seriously in industry.
If anyone believes that RMS is fit for that role, that says a lot about the state of FOSS.
See, for instance, https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html :
> Proprietary software developers, seeking to deny the free competition an important advantage, will try to convince authors not to contribute libraries to the GPL-covered collection. For example, they may appeal to the ego, promising “more users for this library” if we let them use the code in proprietary software products. Popularity is tempting, and it is easy for a library developer to rationalize the idea that boosting the popularity of that one library is what the community needs above all.
If the GNU philosophy were "we're here to code," then that argument would be convincing.
(And indeed there are and were many people taking a "we're here to code" view - DJB, for instance, who insisted that he didn't copyright his software and it didn't need a license and all talk of licensing was a distraction; people who put their software on GitHub without a license; people who use GitHub and other non-free services instead of taking a principled stand against them; etc. Stallman's activism stood in opposition to all of those views.)
Richard Stallman is definitely an “everything is politics” type. If he ever was on the “we’re here to code” side, it was before he ran into the issues that led him to found the FSF, which is also an everything-is-politics organization.
You might prefer an aloof, privileged “we’re here to code” attitude, but projecting that onto Richard Stallman of all people is ludicrous.
That's exactly RMS’s perennial position.
The only difference between him and the most extreme trigger-happy advocate of some specific narrow position on gender or racial politics is the subject area on which Stallman focusses.
Just think if open source activists would refuse to participate in (non-programming) political activities because invite was made with M$ Word.
Diversity was never meant to be that everyone was supposed to think the same way, as far as I recall.
People with behavioural disorders need neither be forgiven their transgressions, nor publicly berated in some infantile display of tyranny, but may/should instead be quietly levered out. Competent managers have been doing so for aeons, including with high profile folks displaying problematic habits, like RMS.
I agree with that. I don't call for forgiving RMS, just for proportionate measures to contain his behaviour while not depriving him from his life's work. I believe we went from wrist slaps ("please do not handle your cards inside the conference venue") to mob lynching ("RMS should cease to exist").
Being a member, but not a president, of the FSF board seems like an appropriate middle road to me. And it's up to the rest of the board that reinstated him to keep him contained. In the meantime, anyone else is welcome to: Not invite RMS to their conference. Refuse him registration, if he tries. Give his photo to the security, if needed. That would be proportionate and warranted measures, until RMS provenly gets his act straight. And if he's not ok with that, he's still free to willfully resign.
Compromise and bringing people together is the slow track to becoming subservient to corporate interests. Mozilla works with people and we end up with an OK browser that is strategically playing second fiddle to Google.
Brave was really quite an eye opener for me as a reminder that a web browser doesn't have to tag along on the path Chrome dictates. Which is ironic given that they use Chrome as a base and Firefox has its own rendering engine.
After that I'm not sure what it's offering. What is the eye opening factor here? In what ways has Brave really taken leadership?
If Google or Apple did the same things Brave did with their cryptocoin donation scheme it would seem incredibly abusive. Also, if Apple promoted that they used local machine learning to develop profiles for optimal ad placement on you, it would only damage their brand.
Brave is attempting to bring about a vision where the user has direct access to the advertising ecosystem. That is offering users a slice of advertising revenue. That is significant. And it is a level of radical that Mozilla/Firefox simply isn't showing.
They are basically acting like the internet is done, Chrome figured it out and they just have to provide the same again but with a different rendering engine and some configuration tweaks. Acceptable, but uninspiring and sort-of pointless. Anyone who cares about having a good web browser jumped ship to Chrome.
And if any of the major browser vendors did the same thing Brave did, it would be a scandal. In that way, Brave's innovation must be that they can fly under the radar.
Yeah, that is what I was pointing to. All that happened without the iPhone being all that different from what was on the market. Other phones made calls, other phones had software.
iPhone really just threw good design, an app store and no keyboard into the mix. We wouldn't know that was revolutionary, market upending levels of change except for being around to see the results.
Embedding crypto into the web browser is a big deal, even if you don't think much the idea. It has implications, it might change how money flows in the web which is quite drastic. It isn't obvious to me why you think the idea is a scandal but each to their own I say.
There's a difference in not compromising one's principles and not compromising in acting like boar towards other human beings.
One can be both highly principled and considerate to others. Human-to-human actions can be civil while one pursues one goals.
We're not in some ancient field of combat where no quarter is asked for, or given, by either side in battle.
Who do you think is going to give quarter on this metaphorical battlefield? Do you mean that people aren't trying to get Stallman imprisoned?
He created the role. It fits him like a glove, because he created it from his own vision. If you don't think he is fit for the role, then you don't understand what you're talking about.
RMS is a symbol and an ideological leader, traits which are very important for the role and likely much more valuable to the FSF than this person who just left (whom I've never heard of before).
Amen to that. The sentiment around seems to ultimately be "I just don't like him because he might have made people uncomfortable, make him go away".
That is a 100% reasonable and sane request that nobody should have a problem with.
The FSF is a social culture organization. The board of directors of the FSF should not be pure technologists!
Here's what RMS has to say about it: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
Open source is essentially the same set of software (technology) as free software, but the FSF specifically advocates for "values" and "ethical imperatives" that open source advocates (at the time this article was written) did not see as important.
Replacing the board of the FSF with technologists who aren't focused on social/cultural aspects would turn it into the OSI of the mid-'90s. It would go against everything RMS believes.
Personally, I want to support an organization that serves a mission of Free Software and not mired in a bunch of social issues largely irrelevant to the cause. Some of those social issues might be important, but there are plenty of other organizations dedicated to such matters. So, I'm hopeful here that FSF has a chance to emerge from this more focused.
And. This is very important.
You give forgiveness after someone repents. After they take steps to right those they have wronged.
RMS has done none of that. Nothing. Zilch.
Taking him back is not "forgiveness". It is saying you do not care that he did something wrong.
You absolutely can cancel your way to a better culture. This has been happening for a century now. As a society, we have been slowly whittling down an exact definition if what we will accept as a society.
This reads like a dystopian parody.
Please clarify.
Anyway, I think it's fine for admins to want us to give a topic a rest the day after a long and contentious thread. I don't think there's any kind of conspiracy here.
The only reason I use a different site to see the list of stories is that it's a stable list (the posts never get re-ordered) and overall just a better UX with filtering and infinite scrolling that actually works well.
Me neither. I just find stories that are pushed off more interesting than average, especially in the comments section.
Twitter is on fire with passionate debates on both sides of the issue. Lots of people asked the board to resign in protest lest they be deemed supporters of RMS, and now we're seeing the board members react publicly.
But the main controversy in the FSF right now is the reinstatement of Richard Stallman.
Here's an article about the events that led to Stallman's resignation in 2019: [1]
He has also been known to, for example, hand out "Fuck Me" cards to women he deems attractive at software conferences.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/richard-stallman...
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EEWlJXRWsAASHJw?format=jpg&name=...
It seems pretty clearly 1A here. People love to bring up the mechanics of 1A ("Congress shall pass no law, etc.") and say that 1A hasn't been violated, but that really misses the point of it - namely that people can freely discuss the government and the laws.
In the cancel-rms petition everyone was posting under their real names. Being on that list probably has positive consequences for your career at Google or Microsoft.
The keep-rms petition was full of pseudonyms, only people from Eastern Europe dared to post under their real names.
Maybe these people should get together and form their own authoritarian-left software foundation. Call it the People's Software Foundation or something. No Dang, I'm not being snarky. This is a legitimate suggestion.
The authoritarianism is in the community, and the opinion held by many within it that one cannot be a member of the Free Software community and oppose the leadership of Richard Stallman or be critical of his behavior. Everyone who does so is regarded as a traitor, a shill working for the interests of the proprietary software establishment or a SJW spreading lies and false claims. I've already seen several comments calling for the removal of "the SJWs" from the movement, and praise for the community's intolerance of any view outside of its political orthodoxy.
But that's beside the point. I'm not saying anyone is unwelcome or should leave. In fact, I think it would be best if people could coexist in the same organization while agreeing to disagree.
But the fact of the matter is that these people already resigning. So instead of just doing nothing after they resign or working for some company, they should create their own group that's more in line with their ideals.