Red Hat Suspends Funding to the Free Software Foundation

https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-statement-about-richa...

- Everyone should be allowed to find work, regardless of their personal beliefs and past conduct.

- Red Hat is free to spend their money however they want.

- One still should look down on Red Hat for their misguided decision.

Edit: user geofft pointed out that

> membership on the board of the FSF is not a compensated role. He wasn't hired for anything.

Which changes my position to being pretty neutral on the matter. The FSF can do whatever they want and so can Red Hat, I suppose both know what's best for them better than I do.

I'd like to think that some sufficient change of behaviors, and a sort of reconciliation with those hurt or alienated, could happen. FWIW, although RMS is incredibly tenacious when he thinks he's right, in the past I've seen him change his opinion when an argument manages to persuade him. Perhaps there are some people who are intellectually up to finding arguments that persuade RMS, and who are willing to reach out to him, and invest in difficult conversations. We should be able to have dialogue, to understand, to change, to reconcile. This could be a very positive next chapter in a noteworthy history, as well as a timely example (given some current divisions in the US) that noble ideals we held about dialogue can still sometimes work.

Until that dream happens, at the moment, it seems like the current situation will cause further damage to libre software goals.

Red Hat does abide by the letter by the GPL by releasing source as legally required, but in a form that's inconvenient to work with: https://lwn.net/Articles/430098/

Apparently you could access the individual patches through your Red Hat subscription, but the conditions of the subscription prohibited you from sharing them. https://lwn.net/Articles/430132/ (see pzb's comment).

Red Hat/IBM is (presumably) doing what they believe will lead to continued commercial success in our current environment, I'm OK with that. But I don't really consider their condemnation of the FSF as anything of note beyond the loss of a donation.

If they really want to show they are serious why not remove all GNU software from their distro.

An RMS free ethical Linux distro would that not say far more than cutting a bit of funding.

I personally feel that Stallman would be considered toxic by today's standards of behaviour and is overall a liability to the Free Software movement (which itself is mostly irrelevant today for the average Software Developer or end user).

Despite this I find myself extremely appalled by the overall discourse by those pushing for the FSF board's resignation. A common theme among the complaints seem to be that someone in a leadership position should be held to higher standards but I am seeing many among those who have signed the rms-open-letter along with other supporters who seem to be prominent in the Software community engaging in extremely toxic rhetoric (on Social media) towards any disagreement with their opinion such as calls for firing/not hiring those who may have different opinions, accusations of pedophilia, misogyny, transphobia and other prejudice.

Supporters who say they just want Stallman out of leadership positions seem happy to like/amplify the above positions.

I gave the linked snippets (and a bit more) on Stallman's websites a read. Stallman seems like a man completely out of touch with the state of things today especially those related to morality. But it seems to be a stretch to attribute deliberate malice.

Hey RedHat, did you take the chance of the above event with some people from the US Govt. in 2019 to say a word of two about that guy who has been heard and recorded saying about women "I can do anything to them", "I can grab them by the pussy", etc? Did you stop funding the US government as well?

What a wonderful example of double standard.

None of this should be surprising or cause any kind of alarm.

They have already taken hostage a lot of things in the open source communities thanks to they huge financial power; and now they are also trying to take hostage the Free Software Foundation...

I hope that the US tax authorities will go after them for any deduction they could have benefited following their donations, because of the rude difference between the gift of donation, and giving money to buy something.

I'm not sure if I would personally support RMS or not, but it is the duty of the FSF board to take this decision without being blackmailed by some corporation.

https://time.com/1861/charity-doing-good-is-bad/