Comment by prepend | Hacker News Reader

Comment by prepend | Hacker News Reader

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I think this comes down to people having differences of opinion on what is important.

I read these complaints and don’t think they are very important. Especially over a period of decades. If this is the worse that people can bring up, then I just don’t get it.

In the future will we have two kinds of organizations, one where people file complaints about “ such as taking over sessions through loud disruptions” and one where people don’t care?

I suppose that people care about different things, but then for people who don’t care will we all end up being in one end, and everyone who wants “ Safe Space Policy” I partially applied in other orgs.

The challenge I face is that I don’t want the Postel’s law group full of only jerks. But I also don’t want to be part of an org that spends so much time on what I see as administrative bikeshedding.

Of course people are free to do whatever they like, but I certainly won’t donate to FSF if they go the way I disagree with. And I don’t think a safe FSF will further free software in the best way.

I think it’s reasonable for people who care about free software to dislike their figurehead being the brash, toe lint eating RMS. I met him in person once and he was rude to serving staff and he stank.

Does this make him a bad person, or imply he has bad technical judgement? No. I don’t think someone less opinionated could have started the free software movement like he did. I’m glad I met him and I have appreciation for the work he did.

But I don’t want him to represent me or the work I do. Most software engineers in the opensource / free software world are polite, well read, practical and shower from time to time. And, especially in leadership we accept that at the end of the day it’s critically important that we follow our own rules and decision processes, no matter our own opinions.

To me it’s not about cancelling rms. (I hate cancel culture). I just think the FSF (and opensource as a whole) would be more successful with someone other than RMS as the figurehead. He’s a bad role model. And claiming he’s above the rules undermines the very organisation he’s trying to run. If the federal government wants to call up the “leaders” of the opensource community to decide if Linux is good fit, I don’t want RMS to be the person they talk to. He’s a great visionary type person. But the FSF needs dependable, stable and mature. RMS just isn’t that guy.

> I just think the FSF (and opensource as a whole) would be more successful with someone other than RMS as the figurehead.

I appreciate the moderation you show in your comment. That's why I'm going to answer that here rather than on a less thoughtful comment: free software and open source are not the same. Open source is a movement that today is trying to increase rentability and profits via information and code sharing. The rules that apply make it completely straightforward for a company to share only the part of code that they feel won't diminish profits, or even will increase them.

On the other hand, free software is a militant movement and ideology that is seeking to destroy a large part of the proprietary software that exists. While you would expect an open source proponent to shower, and even wear a tie, because he has to be entreprise friendly, the same codes don't necessarily apply to militantism. Going further, what you seek as the figurehead of some kind of consensual vision of open source will probably not be the same as for a militant organization.

I'm of course exaggerating a bit, but this is at the core of a lot of misguided arguments I see here and there. RMS is basically being accused of being shocking in his viewpoints and in who he is. Well, the very idea of free software was extremely shocking 30 years ago, so maybe it's no coincidence. I'm not condoning all he did or all he said, but I certainly wouldn't like some watered down open source ideologist as the head of the FSF, which has so far been a necessary uncompromising force in the ideological landscape of open source software.

Thanks; this is an insightful perspective and I appreciate the thoughtful reply.

My question then is this: would the FSF be more or less effective in their political goals with someone else at the helm?

My worry is that RMS’s prickliness and generally poor social skills harm the free software movement more than they help it. Every story about RMS from people who actually interact with him seems to be really cringe inducing. And that’s not what I want from a leader. And I don’t see how abandoning respectability outside the software/political arena helps them campaign for their goals.

What they need to do is to set out a clear vision for the future, make useful code and inspire young engineers to carry the flame. Reading comments here shows me that some people find RMS inspiring, which is good. And maybe the FSF doesn’t have anyone better suited for the job. But in any case, the FSF as it stands now isn’t an organisation I’ll ever want to be involved with.

Often the visionary is the wrong person to carry the vision beyond some point.

I know people who are serial doers of things - be it starting a business, an organization, a whatever, but are lousy at running and shepherding their creations, if they're lucky, they're aware of these limitations, if not, well... I think RMS is in the not category - and while he can and should continue as the spiritual leader of the movement, he probably should not be the one doing the day to day leader for the future, beyond that, what of succession planning, the man is 68.

Most of the complaints I've seen about RMS are.. well.. pretty normal among geeky people, he's socially clueless, applies logic instead of empathy, etc. He has no doubt, said many problematic things but the paucity of actual harms from these things is notable.

In short, I agree with the sentiments here, FSF needs an effective leader, and whatever annoying/clueless things RMS has said, isn't really relevant to that discussion.

I don't think his behavior towards women should be so easily dismissed as "not actual harms".

That behavior makes women uncomfortable. I suspect he feels like "I made an offer, you said no, and it's done." It doesn't work that way. The best analogy I can draw is if a stranger came up to you before a meeting and asked you to give him your watch. That's going to feel uncomfortable and weird, for the rest of the day and longer.

Even if neurodivergence makes it difficult to discover that for himself, it's surely been explained to him. That means he knows he's making people uncomfortable and doing it anyway.

That is relevant to the discussion. He's driving off half the potential population of people to work on things. That half is under-represented -- and part of the reason they're under-represented is that the community keeps making excuses for people who behave like that. Then they wonder why nobody has ever explained women to them -- and why women keep being upset.

The "problematic" things seem to me like the least of it. He's rude to people whose help he needs -- not just women, but to women in a way that's specific to women in addition to all of the other ones. That's exactly the opposite of what a leader does. Leaders get people to work together, especially when the worker are volunteering.

The free software movement is only militant to a degree. They're not the Black Panthers or the Weather Underground. They're not going to destroy proprietary software by mailing nail bombs to Microsoft or beheading Larry Ellison on video. The war they're fighting is a war of ideas and their ammunition is argument. Having as your figurehead a man who doesn't shower, eats his own skin tags, constantly creeps women out and has, let's say, "controversial" views makes the free software movement look ridiculous, hurts recruiting, and gives ammunition to the enemy.

I would ask you to consider the possibility that one can be an idealist about free software, even a militant extremist, while not being a viscerally offensive human being. You're trying to ascribe nobility and necessity to traits in Richard Stallman which bring no benefits to the cause free software, and which often work to its detriment. And a truly militant organization would recognize when their leader has become a hindrance to the cause and put them out to pasture.

I’m not sure he represents you, or even free software. He represents, in this instance, the FSF, an organisation he himself set up. It’s now one of many promotors of open software (broadly speaking), and frankly quite a fringe one. I’m an Emacs user, and despite that, FSF’s articles fill me with cringe.

I think your argument would apply in its entirety if he was representing some kind of umbrella organisation for FOSS, but that’s not the case. It would also then be reasonable for members of such an umbrella to pressure the FSF into who should be on its board. But it is not the case.

Perhaps this argument shows that we need such an organisation, with RMS not heading it.

It seems like the obvious strategy there is to just make someone else the figurehead, and I'd argue that's largely already happened. When I first learned about the free software movement, I was taught that Linus Torvalds is the spiritual figurehead because he wrote the Linux operating system we all use; it was only years after that that I learned about rms and the whole GNU/Linux argument.

I don’t think we’ll see an (even) split. It’s more likely that all (most) orgs will have safe spaces. Like how all fruit juice is kosher: it makes no difference to people who don’t keep kosher.

> Like how all fruit juice is kosher: it makes no difference to people who don’t keep kosher

I don't believe this approach has only positive outcomes. Taleb wrote[0] "It suffices for an intransigent minority –a certain type of intransigent minorities –to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences"

To say this leaves me feeling deeply uncomfortable would be putting it mildly.

[0] The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

This rule only applies when the majority don't care about the outcome, though. Halal meat: small minority cares deeply, majority doesn't care or even notice; therefore it's easiest for all meat to be halal. If the minority preference actually impinged on something the majority wanted, like "no meat at all", then the minority would certainly not have this influence (and there might be conflict). Notice that vegans, a small and passionate minority, have not imposed their preference on society at large.

If it's a "dictatorship", it's a very, very soft one.

> This rule only applies when the majority don't care about the outcome

"Don't care" or "aren't told" ?

> Halal meat: small minority cares deeply, majority doesn't care or even notice

I suspect this - as in so many cases - comes down to a labelling issue. Are consumers able to make an informed judgement if they're unable to see what product they're buying?

"Leading [UK] supermarkets [said] some of the meat they sell could qualify as halal but is not labelled as such"[0]

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-27402428

"Don't care."

If there is a large constituency that refuses to eat halal meat, it's just out of hostility towards the minority, not because of any quality of the meat. Your quote is evidence for this.

Not really. What if people thought the method used for slaughtering was inhumane and they preferred a different method. Then the motivation is not based on hostility towards a minority.

This is exactly the point. If no-one even notices without being explicitly told, then it's a completely innocuous distinction from the point of view of the non-halal majority.

> If no-one even notices without being explicitly told

Two thought experiments:

Would one notice if meat was or wasn't halal if one wasn't explicitly told?

Would one notice if fruit juice was or wasn't kosher if one wasn't explicitly told?

But one key reason all fruit juice is kosher is that it's pretty easy to get it certified as kosher. You don't have to use any special ingredients or add any special processing steps, and the rabbi won't insist that you personally keep kosher convert to Judaism. That isn't true in this context, where most advocates of "safe spaces" are quite open about the fact that they expect everyone to follow their cultural practices, and that the purpose of a safe space is to help them coordinate this. So pillarization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillarisation) seems like a more likely outcome.

Interesting——we’ll find out. So far I see evidence in e.g. the much-discussed switch from “master” to “main” on GitHub and the now omnipresent community codes of conduct. To my mind this is a cheap kosher certification that the vast majority of organizations comply with. Do you have contrary examples of pillarization to date?

I'd point to the Coinbase kerfluffle as a clear example, where the CEO explicitly staked out a position as a "mission focused company" that wouldn't deal with "societal issues" or "political causes". Whether it's a trend or an outlier... yeah, I'm less sure as I think about it.

I think that will lead to ineffectual orgs as these safe spaces seem to be in conflict with stuff like ejecting RMS.

I don’t see myself stop supporting free software, but I’ll want some way to participate to fill that FSF shaped community hole.

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