Remove RMS from the GCC Steering Committee
gcc.gnu.org
gcc.gnu.org
Is this paranoia on my part? Or maybe I'm valuing freedom more than inclusivity because, as a white male, I don't feel the need for inclusivity as much as other people? I'm not sure of the answer, but I feel that there's a tradeoff that is made by removing RMS that isn't explicit and calculated.
I'd like to hear other views on that and what people think.
This isn't a new problem, with only a small number of issues, people in the community have found RMS to be unhelpful and blocking for over 20 years -- I myself used to commit to GCC (not a lot, maybe 60 commits). I left to help with early clang partially because of irriation with how RMS's direction was ruining GCC.
People in GCC haven't loved having him around for the last 20 years, they tolerated him as it was considered too much work to get rid of him.
That's incorrect, there are many people who can and do vigorously support free software but because of RMS they are not able to get a seat at the table (or don't want it, because of RMS's well-known bad behavior).
Remove one person and you open the door to many other equally or more capable people.
> The socialist collective angry bullshit will go on rising from the dead. > Richard Stallman executed a truly extraordinary feat that has never been accomplished by anyone before. > Christopher Dimech > General Administrator - Naiad Informatics - GNU Project (Geocomputation)
You are definitely right, even aside from RMS's personal conduct, the level of personal worship around him is extremely concerning and unhealthy. Its understandable that they want to keep their distance from many of the more corporate-aligned people, but this kind of focus on RMS is just too far. His "St. Ignucius" routine, business card that would not be acceptable in literally any other professional setting, and absurd speaking contract thing all show how this has been enabled for far too long.
There was a fascinating thread here the other day about how LLVM was offered to the FSF, copyright assignment and all, and that it was rejected: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26535789
LLVM differs from GCC in two major ways. First, nontechnically, it's under a weak copyleft instead of a strong one. Second, technically, it has a modular architecture. There's a libLLVM that you can use to parse programs and do all sorts of transformations on them.
RMS refused to create an equivalent libGCC and even to structure GCC in such a way where maintaining a private fork with a libGCC would be easy, because he feared that proprietary software developers would use GCC's code to handle the hard part of compilation and not free their proprietary extensions. He thought he scored an early victory on this front when he got NeXT to release their Objective-C frontend for GCC publicly and contribute it back. But it was, of all companies, Apple themselves (the effective successor of NeXT) that invested into LLVM.
It turned out that not only is developing a compiler within reach for a proprietary software company, developing a better compiler was easily within reach when freed from the artificial constraint of making it non-modular. LLVM was able to compete with GCC because it had a technically better design that GCC rejected for political reasons. And, ultimately, that technical excellence is now threatening GCC's dominance.
It also turns out that many software projects are willing to license their code freely anyway, without the requirement of strong copyleft. Rust probably would not have been anywhere near as successful if it didn't have libLLVM to build on top of and had to start from scratch. And Rust is under no license obligation from LLVM to be free software, but it is nonetheless free software. Apple continues to contribute many things (though not everything) to LLVM not because they have to, as they did with GCC, but because it's technically better for them to work with the public project.
So RMS's political constraints on GCC were ultimately ineffective for the free software movement, because the very proprietary developers he was worried about found an alternative, and they're releasing code anyway.
RMS being "uncompromising" would be a virtue if he were effective and talented in his choices of where he's uncompromising. But he's not.
(There are other examples of this: the lack of free software strategy for the web because he has an uncompromising refusal to use the web and therefore to learn anything about it; the failure of Ogg Vorbis as a format because of the strong copyleft of its reference implementation, which the GNU website now mentions as a lesson to learn from and avoid; the relative lack of uptake of the AGPL, and the users who would have wanted it like MongoDB and Elastic instead choosing a non-free license; etc.)
Apple didn’t develop LLVM. It was developed at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Yet again, Apple had taken something invented somewhere else and made a killing off it.
RMS has a strong political stance and the result is software that has benefited billions in one way or another.
Lack of faults is the worst measure of strength, but it’s cheap for people who have done nothing to throw shade and feel superior.
I'm enjoying rustc very much, thank you! I hope that gcc-rs will catch up soon, but until then, I'm thrilled that the Linux kernel compiles just fine with Clang and there are millions of people running Clang-built kernels, because it means adding rustc into the mix is straightforward.
I'm also enjoying using libLLVM in projects from Numba to llvmpipe. Numba is helping us speed up some serious research computations at my current job, and llvmpipe solved a major practical problem with GNU/Linux on the desktop at a previous job. Those projects could not have been built on top of GCC.
I'm also enjoying all sorts of analysis tools that use libLLVM and libclang (include-what-you-use being a very simple example) even on code that I compile with GCC for legacy reasons. If you look at the linked threads, RMS wants such tools to not exist, or at least to be hard to write and buggy.
> Apple didn’t develop LLVM. It was developed at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Not disputing this. Apple didn't develop GCC either. They contributed to both.
Stallman was worried that if he made GCC either permissively-licensed or modular, companies like Apple would privately fork the compiler and not contribute back. He thought it was a vindication when NeXT contributed back their Objective-C frontend, which they were going to keep private until he threatened them with legal action. But UIUC made LLVM both permissively-licensed and modular, and Apple contributes back to it nonetheless, with not even the slightest legal obligation to do so, making a killing while also producing a free software compiler that is superior to GCC.
Everything GNU tried to do by technically hobbling GCC, UIUC actually did by producing a superior product in LLVM. My whole point is that Apple didn't develop LLVM, but that they contributed back to it because they saw a financial advantage in doing so.
> RMS has a strong political stance and the result is software that has benefited billions in one way or another.
Correlation is not causation. I'm not claiming that GCC was unsuccessful; I'm claiming that RMS's strong political stance did not make it so.
And RMS would be the first to argue that mere popularity is not the sign of a software product's success. GCC is supposed to protect a user's freedoms more strongly than LLVM, yet a user is practically more free with LLVM; for instance, I am free to get the AST of my own software. For those of us who believe in the ideals of free software - which includes both me and RMS - this is a sign of a strategy that failed, somewhere, that should prompt some reflection.
Sure, but then that should be used as the argument for removal and the argument should have been made 10 years ago and not now when it is very convenient.
If you look in the linked threads, RMS himself acknowledged in 2015 that not accepting LLVM was a mistake - https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg00... (and he says he didn't even know about the offer, but he doesn't address why he didn't know about the offer). In a functioning organization that cared about its mission, that ought to have triggered, at the least, a "blameless postmortem" about what failed, because allowing a non-free-software-friendly tech company to develop a serious free software competitor to GCC is just about the biggest strategic mistake the FSF (let alone GCC) could have made. (The HURD does work now, but it lost to Linux long ago. So that leaves GNU's flagship projects as just glibc - which is under the LGPL - and emacs, which is hardly core and which many hackers don't even use. The GNU System is at existential risk.)
Why didn't it happen? Why did RMS just say, literally, "Oh well," and that was the end of it?
Who - if anyone - is responsible for making sure that GNU is not extinguished because the world has changed since 1988 and a then-excellent plan did not survive contact with reality? Is it RMS, and why does it seem like asking that question is equivalent to questioning RMS as a person?
There's a really good thread by Luis Villa on the general subject of the FSF's organizational failures here, and typing it to the "founder effect": https://twitter.com/luis_in_brief/status/1374038577059827714
Anyway, you ask about arguments from ten years ago. Ten years ago, as someone new to the free software community who attended in-person events and got drinks with people, I absolutely heard people deeply involved with the movement question particular facets of RMS's leadership (and not just his personal habits) in private. But they didn't say anything publicly, because they knew that criticizing RMS in public would make people see them as no better than a Microsoft shill or an "open source" sellout. If you dared to question whether RMS's leadership of the free software movement or even of any individual GNU project was effective, you'd be the person trying to compromise RMS's uncompromising views.
So that leaves the current argument - that RMS's attitude is harming the project, as opposed to his specific technical or political decisions. Were it not for his attitude, those decisions could have been corrected by people better-equipped to analyze the specific situation than RMS. And were those decisions corrected, there would be no need to remove him. The need to remove him is the inability to safely criticize his decisions, i.e., his attitude and leadership style, which is what's at issue now.
That's not why everyone wants him gone right now, and whether the eventual outcome would be the same, reasons matter, and the precedents we as a civilization set through processes and outcomes we allow to be seen as a legitimate way to do things matters.
https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/
None of the issues brought up in connection with the controversy that came to a head with Minsky were grounded in truth, at all. The FSF would lose massive credibility by abandoning a visionary founder who did nothing wrong. For heaven sake, if you've already have a slam dunk case, you don't need to descend to the level of making up excuses or slandering someone to get them out. Speak up to authority, but be truthful, honest, and right. Don't wait until the backstabbing is good, and turn them into pincushions. Doing that taints the movement, because no one wants to work with a group of people who get rid of someone like that. It's cowardly, and wrong, in every way imaginable.
I think precedents matter, and being truthful, honest, and right is important. That's why I think that the GCC Steering Committee should evaluate this request on its own merits, and not by saying, well, some journalists wanted to cancel Stallman for other reasons, and they're wrong, so we will refuse any argument about Stallman. Each argument should stand or fall on its own.
You seem to have misunderstood the goals of RMS, GCC, and the GNU project. It was never about creating "the best" compiler (if there can ever be a "best" of everything). The goal was and is to create the "best" Free Software compiler.
It's great that the currently openly released version of LLVM is of great quality. However, exactly because this project does not have "RMS's political constraints" (as you write), there is no guarantee that this will continue to be so.
I'm not claiming the goal is to produce the best compiler. In fact, I do believe it's a danger that LLVM is not copyleft, because there's no guarantee of people contributing back improvements. But I'm worried that because of GCC's design choices, people won't contribute improvements to it either, the way Apple stopped contributing to GCC. And I'm concerned that the free software philosophy has no explanation for why Apple is contributing to LLVM despite LLVM making all the "wrong" choices. I do still believe in the philosophy, but it is making me wonder if I should, because we have 30+ years of data that seemingly don't line up with its predictions.
LLVM is still free software, despite not being copyleft, and if at all one can define the "best" free software compiler, there's a serious argument that LLVM is already there. And it works: it's already being used to compile the Linux kernel on a bunch of Android phones, and http://clang.debian.net can compile 96% of the dostro. It's entirely possible that a major GNU distribution will switch to LLVM in the next few years, because there's no reason not to (it's still free software) and some advantages from it.
Copyleft is a means to an end - gaining contributions and preserving user freedom - not an end in and of itself. The GNU Operating System would be of no value if it did not work, for instance, which is why the project set out to build a coherent system instead of just a bunch of interesting code. I agree with you that, in principle, the lack of copyleft on LLVM means we have no guarantee that it will remain a world-class compiler into the future.
But GCC has the copyleft, and it has the non-modular architecture, and we also have no guarantee, empirically, that it will remain a world-class compiler. Its lead is slipping. There are already plenty of things LLVM can do that GCC can't. New languages are being built on top of LLVM, not GCC. The pressure that existed on NeXT to build an Objective-C compiler on top of GCC and release it is gone - and Mozilla built a Rust compiler on top of LLVM and released it without that pressure. So what is the copyleft actually accomplishing?
And if it is accomplishing something important, does GCC have a plan to overtake LLVM and become the compiler of choice for new projects?
No. If he wants to continue to defend Free Software, that's his decision. What this is about is how the FSF reinstated him in secret and how that, ignoring his past behavior and his half-hearted apologies, damages the reputation of the Foundation and the movement.
Moreover, they did so with no announcement - the only source was Stallman's own statement at LibrePlanet, and the FSF had to issue a clarification that nobody involved with LibrePlanet knew that he was returning. https://twitter.com/fsf/status/1374399897558917128 It took them a few days to update their website. They still haven't said why he returned (did he ask? did they ask?), what he plans to do on the board, etc.
Nobody was paying attention until he rejoined. He never stepped down as leader of the GNU Project, nor did the FSF ever suspend its relationship with the GNU Project. They could have just not added him, and maybe some weird people like me (https://twitter.com/geofft/status/1207131726176227330) would have thought less of them for it, but it's pretty clear they were continuing to exist as an organization, continuing to run events, etc.
Which I guess brings up your last point, about who will champion his good ideas. First, the man is 68 years old, and the challenges facing free software and the importance of the cause are both greater than ever. He won't live forever, despite his prophetic appearance, and the FSF ought to have been figuring out who will champion the cause in the future. And he can't be everywhere at once and championing everything at once. Second, he did leave (at least on paper) in 2019. They've had over a year to actually figure out that answer. If the FSF has no answer for how to advocate for free software without the person of Richard Stallman, and that's why they brought him back, I really have no idea what they're doing at all.
(And if you're wondering if there's anyone else who can be as uncompromising about free software, without being an un-asset, I want you to watch the acceptance speech of the Free Software Award from last weekend: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2021/mar/22/fsf-award-bkuhn/)
Embrace. Extend. And now, extinguish.
Do you have some proof of that? That's a pretty big claim. I wasn't able to find anything.
- RMS doesn't contribute code to GCC - RMS scares off other people from contributing to GCC - RMS has made questionable decisions in treating women - RMS does not fully condemn everything we call pedophilia.
Hence, according to the argument, there is little to no upside to having him in there, and quite some upside to removing him.
He does currently:
https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...
To those reporting this due to it being critical of RMS, is "free as in speech" just a fun tagline vs. a guiding principal?
Various justifications will be applied -- it's a "divisive topic" or its "political" -- but it's just different types of denial.
It just highlights why women have a problem in tech.
Can this mob at least try or be intellectually honest? If RMS is a nuisance and you don't like him, just say so. Vote him off the board, don't organize a mob and collect a series of false accusations.
Just another RMS hot take. It was stupid, like a lot of his statements. Not worth canning him IMO.
I don't think the part about giving him the benefit of the doubt is stupid, especially because it's never been clarified whether he did have sex with her, or if Epstein just suggested it to her. I just find his explanation unconvincing.
Why do Foundations have so much imaginary power?
RMS did indeed start a lot of great projects, but that doesn't give him the right to continue to rule over them now, after thousands of other people have contributed more lines of codes than him in the last 20 years.
Like I'm not sure what your argument is. Are you saying one should not take board members of the FSF seriously, and one should ignore people whose contribution to the free software movement is more political than technical? Then you've already made the argument against RMS having a role on the GCC steering committee.
Yes, I think foundation members' influence is overrated. The Kuhn story looks like any plain vanilla internal power struggle. Why hasn't he spoken up 10 years ago? It is hypocritical to do so when everyone else is piling on.
The same applies to old guard RedHat and SuSE people. They have known RMS for decades and suddenly he needs to be removed.
Foundations in OSS in general attract the wrong kind of people. RMS, for all his flaws, did pretty well overall compared to others.
Don't get me wrong, I've attempted to book him for a conference, and experienced the two-page long list of "requests" to be fulfilled, but he's basically being cancelled for having a dissenting opinion from the current culture war going on.
edit: to the downvoters, plenty of slim handsome socially-skillful celebrities have done worth than RMS and got away with a slap on their wrist.
(You can be plenty of other sorts of weird and not be cancelled, of course, making the whole thing quite arbitrary....)
... and you just summarized everything wrong with the current bs going on. You've got to be the right kind of weird to fit in their narrative, everybody else is gonna be cancelled. "The pot calling the kettle black" they used to say... Today's puritans are no better than yesterday's.
And FWIW, I think he's cute and I've never been on a second date with a guy who wasn't socially awkward.
He should know better.
I am bad with social cues. I put myself in awkward situations. But I know better. And, more important, if someone tells me I need to change, I'll work on that.
Btw, this is the same as Chomsky having been cancelled in France in the early 80's. Just because Chomsky made an argument against historical truth being set by law doesn't make him a supporter of Robert Faurisson's theories.
I've never seen anyone advocate genital surgery at 6. The standard of care for 6 year olds is just treating them like the gender they say they are.
Admittedly his ideas around sex are out there, but no more so than many of the type of people trying to ostracize him.
So yeah, that "positive move towards more inclusivity and diversity, is not in a court of law, but could be if implemented due to that letter.
If they want him out for technical reasons, then say so and don't do it now of all times.
But like this they are just good foot soldiers for their corporate masters. How about examining everything Zuckerberg has said and done on this mailing list?
To me, it doesn't make sense how the pipeline couldn't be a major issue. I took an intro to programming class in 9th grade (1999), and there was literally one girl and 29 boys. How can you ever overcome that and hope for a 50/50 split at the end when, for whatever reason, 14 year olds choose such drastically different paths based on their genders. And I know for a fact that no one took the class or didn't take the class because of the demographics of the GCC steering committee.
Bold claims, not much explanation. If the amount of privileged, white, male, socially awkward people in a project would clearly correlate with its popularity or success I am sure people like the author would have shouted it from the rooftops long ago. I wonder if the author talked to one of the minorities he finds too underrepresented to see what they think of RMS, and what their real reasons and motivations are. Because, as much as he likes to throw all "privileged white males" into the same bucket and all the minorities into another one(both with the usual obvious connotations), opinions differ and reality usually disagrees with this binary good vs. evil thinking.
Meanwhile the obvious explanation, that a decades old complex project written in a language with decreasing popularity might not attract many contributors in general, is ignored.
> This is not a court of law. So many are pointing in the same direction that you cannot ignore the implication.
Yes, the majority is always right! Let's just get rid of the guy who sometimes didn't know when to shut up, and maybe later consider why the court of law's principles were introduced in the first place. Flawless reasoning.