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Comment by arpinum | Hacker News Reader

RMS does not have the skillset needed for a leadership position today. If you care about the movement, it needs a leader people want to follow. Just because RMS is not at the top doesn't mean he is being denied chances and isn't forgiven. I'm sure he can continue writing code. He just isn't good enough as a leader of a broad movement. That isn't a slight, most of us couldn't do it.

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I think many people, especially those in this and related threads, don't really understand a difference between a visionary and a decision maker. RMS is indeed a great visionary: his vision of software freedom was basically correct and even more so today. That doesn't automatically make him a great decision maker. There might even possibly be a weak negative correlation.

By all accounts, especially for recent decades, RMS had been a not-so-much-great decision maker and his resignation from FSF should have marked the end of the era no matter how you feel about that. Instead FSF chose to bring him back. Seriously, if out of the free software movement there were no decision maker better than RMS, then it is basically doomed by now. I don't feel so.

I couldn't disagree more. To replace RMS is one thing but to replace him because of woke cancel culture is another. I'd vote for knowledge and skills, not speaking skills and a history of never having said something the woke crowed gets pissy over.

It's astounding people aren't grasping this point, even now.

>RMS does not have the skillset needed for a leadership position today.

Care to define what that skillset is? Leadership requires all sorts of skills and some of the most effective leaders I've seen share very little in common.

#1 - People want to follow you.

What you are describing is actually a popularity contest, not leadership.

I can see why you would be mistaken for confusing the two these days - it seems to be an insanely common misconception - but they are NOT the same thing and never will be.

Being a pleasant inoffensive(to corporate sponsors) mommy is just one of many possible ways to lead people.

Another way is to lead by example with unrelenting commitment and drive.

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