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Comment by DoofusOfDeath | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why the identity of the guidelines' author matters.

I would think their suitability is independent of that.

A common criticism I've seen of him is that he wrote these guidelines, doesn't follow them, and isn't held accountable. I don't follow much of what he says these days, so I wouldn't weigh in on the veracity of all that, but if it's true then the document doesn't carry much weight.

The ideas can be good even if the author doesn't follow them perfectly.

When the rules apply differently to some members of the community and not others, it's toxic and the community suffers. I'm not saying anything about the quality of the document.

I hear you on that, you stated:

> ""and isn't held accountable""

But, isn't RMS currently in the process of being "cancelled" (as the awake kids say). Isn't that some accountability (even if it's not the specific type one would like to see)?

Did you see where I said that I'm not weighing in on those particulars? That's because I don't consider myself well-informed of the particulars, and I'm trying to address points of genuine curiosity without wading into the minefield. Sorry if that's unsatisfactory

We're good. RMS is a total hot button. I'm also not well informed and coming at it from curiosity, if a bit inarticulate and missing context.

This is the behavior that the open letter is referring to. [0]

My personal opinion is that about 85% of this is overblown, and comes from people not only not assuming good faith when reading RMS' writings, but purposefully looking for anything to nitpick and deem "controversial". That said, his comments regarding Epstein are a bit concerning.

It's not that I like RMS or anything, but I find this crusade to oust him from his own board a bit ridiculous. Clearly, RMS is very very particular about words (more specifically, the names of things) to the point of being obtuse and or insensitive in some cases. This is the guy who argues that one shouldn't use terminology like "pirating" or "content creators" for various reasons.

[0]: https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix

If this page was written in 2018, do you have examples from then until now of him not following these guidelines?

Regardless, these are good guidelines. We're all human and even if RMS doesn't always follow them, that doesn't mean they're not good guidelines anymore.

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