Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman | Hacker News Reader

Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

fsf.org

105 pointstjr128 comments

One can't deny, sadly, that a software freedom geek with consistency and integrity as applied to that philosophy and insight therein of RMS's caliber doesn't yet exist.

I'm afraid, for this reason alone quite a few people get to think that if you consistently apply software freedom principles in all parts of your life where you use or produce software, it must come with the baggage of all other flaws of RMS's character, complete with questionable hygiene habits and abrasive personality.

As if you just can't have the same principles, but bring in flaws of your own.

I mean for years it has been an open secret that organizations and also people are okay with certain degrees of problematic behaviours. I cannot remember how often I read blog articles linked on HN about HR departments ignoring reasonable complaints. At some point it is then also necessary to have direct words every now and then. Otherwise this system is just passed on and never improved.

I also have serious doubts that toxic behaviour is supposed to be particularly bad in IT orgs. (What about investment banks or construction businesses?) At the same time the sentiment towards IT is "traditionally" really bad.

That said, as long as RMS didn't do anything outside of the law, it might be positive to give him another chance in the FSF world. This would set also an example for a possible way out for other orgs beyond canceling. Although I still think they should put a new person on the top and put RMS next to that person. Also to make the FSF as open as it wants to appear.

> That said, as long as RMS didn't do anything outside of the law.

I always balk at the introduction of "the law" into these discussions. Inherently there are all kinds of behavior that is legal but can and should get you fired. Talking about the law here is just setting the bar unreasonably high.

> I always balk at the introduction of "the law" into these discussions.

Me too, but

> Inherently there are all kinds of behavior that is legal but can and should get you fired.

The thing is, employers are typically not acceptable judges of morality and legitimacy of actions. They have inherent biases in general, and specific ones have a bunch of specific interests of the specific company owners or NGO factions.

Which is why it is problematic to move from a moral judgement of someone's actions to a n expectation of them getting fired.

... regardless, Stallman is not being hired as an employee, but elected to be a board member, which is something very different.

> The thing is, employers are typically not acceptable judges of morality and legitimacy of actions.

Nice goalpost moving. “Morality” is not the same as “you get to keep your job”. If I stand on the counter and flick every single customer off and tell them that they should <explicatives deleted>, I should be fired. This isn’t making a moral judgement at all, it’s making a judgement about whether or not I’m still fit for the job.

> Stallman is not being hired as an employee, but elected to be a board member, which is something very different.

The bar for being elected to the board is arguably higher than being hired as an employee.

> One can't deny, sadly, that a software freedom geek with consistency and integrity as applied to that philosophy and insight therein of RMS's caliber doesn't yet exist.

I can name at least 10 people that I find more suitable than RMS, including: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Sandler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_M._Kuhn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bdale_Garbee

Garbee looks like he could be it (he's a programmer, not just an activist), but I'm wondering if he could continue the philosophical work of free software with the same kind of vigor, like the commentary on new tech trends through the freedom lens that RMS has been doing.

If there was one single reason RMS should remain in any function at FSF at all, it would be his writing as a philosopher (being a jerk is actually a plus in this case, cf Diogenes).

I myself probably would wish RMS to retire honorably in time and contribute with writing. Would end well for everyone involved. Doesn't make the smear campaign any more justified, against fucking anyone.

> One can't deny, sadly, that a software freedom geek with consistency and integrity as applied to that philosophy and insight therein of RMS's caliber doesn't yet exist.

All of these statements are arguably orthogonal to actually leading the FSF. I would in fact argue that such rigid consistency is actually a serious detriment, as it explicitly lets the perfect become the enemy of the good.

> I'm afraid, for this reason alone quite a few people get to think that if you consistently apply software freedom principles in all parts of your life where you use or produce software, it must come with the baggage of all other flaws of RMS's character, complete with questionable hygiene habits and abrasive personality.

Well said.

RMS is only consistent in that his opinions are, consistently, where they were in the 80s, and have remained unchanged for the past 40 years. They are outdated and entirely self-inconsistent with the world in 2021, and at odds with true freedom for users.

This applies to women and inclusivity, which has been written about ad nauseam. But it also applies to their own philosophy and software freedom.

Here's a meta-thread on just how bad the FSF's and RMS's policies around software and hardware freedom are:

https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1377899929209774081

They promote making hardware less introspectable and more expensive for precisely zero benefit to users' freedom, only to the illusion of freedom. They promote hardware with giant proprietary ROMs as "respects your freedom", because you can't see them. They promote crippling hardware (a la Intel product segmentation), to permanently destroy parts which may "lure" users into using non-free software. They promote sabotaging efforts to inform users about security flaws, if fixing those flaws would require applying non-free patches to non-free software they are already running, because the patches would make that non-free software's existence evident. Their entire philosophy isn't based about the freedom to inspect, modify, and understand your software and your devices; it's based around not having any obvious binary blobs in your filesystem. In addition, some of their licenses are so utterly bad as to be completely broken (and legally untested). Their own guidance about their own licenses is bad and negligent at times. They have at least once abused their "or any later version" powers to backdoor in a relicensing exception, that was so poorly written as to have a vastly wider scope than intended.

Don't believe me? Read the above thread, the sources and explanations are all there.

RMS and the FSF do not have the slightest clue how to promote an ideology in supports of users' rights in 2021. They are an ossified organization based on outdated principles, which no longer serve users' interests. The world has moved on past the FSF.

Old thread, apologies, but if you were curious: the origin of the proprietary blob exception was in Stallman's policy that "if the software can't be modified at all, software freedom is irrelevant". As he wanted to be able to use, say, a microwave that had a proprietary ROM for a timer without needing the source code.

I'd argue that there's a gigantic gulf between a microwave and the baseband firmware of a cellular modem that governs all communications into and out of the device, but apparently they don't see it that way.

This past month has completely destroyed my confidence in FSF leadership. I hope they can earn it back.

Say what you want about the open letter - and it is an inaccurate open letter - the fact is that most people who had legitimate criticisms of RMS's leadership decided to sign onto it anyway. You might argue that this is malice. I'd argue that the open letter's ultimate conclusion - wipe the FSF management slate clean - was still warranted. Remember: the FSF did not attempt to defend, explain, or rehabilitate Stallman's behavior or character. That was individuals within the community doing that - and themselves making the mistake of, say, ignoring other, better criticisms of RMS's behavior than misreading his personal quirks as inherently sexist.

I find it hard not to read the FSF's conduct as anything but "let's just quietly bring RMS back once the mainstream media gets off our case". They ignored the fact that people within the community had significant problems with his conduct, completely unrelated to the Epstein thing. The Minsky e-mail was just a catalyst, like putting a spoon in superheated water. If they had handled this the way Linus Torvalds did - i.e. making a show out of toning down his toxic behavior, and then actually toning it down, this could have worked. It's possible for the FSF to actually still do this, despite having been apparently(!?) caught on the backfoot... but that's going to be far harder than if they had actually messaged this properly.

Since nobody's head is actually going to roll for this terrible PR nightmare, I can only hope that the organization tries to tone down RMS's toxic behavior, and maybe we'll get something useful out of deliberately reopening year-old (or for some, decade-old) wounds. Still, I feel like this is akin to Mozilla's crippling Google dependency - it's not like RMS is going to live forever, he's pushing 70. His number will come up sooner or later. His remaining tenure with the FSF should be wholly dedicated towards making the organization relevant to those who aren't already "in the know" so that we have suitable replacements when we lose RMS.

> They ignored the fact that people within the community had significant problems with his conduct, completely unrelated to the Epstein thing.

Then you should have hounded him for those things, and not twisted the words he actually wrote (which was even more blatant since both what rms said and what Vice said is there in the public) and then tried to pin it onto him. Do you really think everyone is going to have a short memory about how this all was handled? Regardless of whether you like rms or not, would you like to have this kind of due diligence to be applied to you one day?

> If they had handled this the way Linus Torvalds did - i.e. making a show out of toning down his toxic behavior, and then actually toning it down, this could have worked.

So, what you're saying is... people expect a show. It doesn't have to be sincere, it just has to be the right kind of a show, maybe jerking a tear or two. And they know full well it's just a show. But they still are going to make a decision based on the quality of that show. Right?

"Extremely superficial" and "infantile" are words that immediately come to mind to describe this kind of behavior, and frankly speaking, this is not the kind of people that should be let within a mile of any kind of decision making.

Well, the entire point of the FSF is to be an advocacy organization, which means that "making a show of things" is part of their job. They need to explain to people why Free Software is a thing people should value. Related to this is the need to defend why they themselves are worthwhile figureheads to continue the fight (as opposed to other organizations with similar stated goals, such as the EFF, Mozilla Foundation, or hell even the OSI).

This isn't "just a show", I specifically stated that you also have to actually follow through with changing your character to match. If Linus had merely said "I'm too toxic, it's blocking work, I need to change" and then a week later put someone on blast and insulted them for PRing something that broke userspace, that would be the extremely superficial and infantile thing you're railing against. But if he had also just said nothing and quietly stopped being toxic, people would still be mad about his prior behavior. You need both messaging and action, and the FSF has been lax on both with the RMS reinstatement.

> But if he had also just said nothing and quietly stopped being toxic, people would still be mad about his prior behavior. You need both messaging and action

Well, I thought we as humankind had spent almost a whole century to get wiser about these things, learn to read between the lines, to stop being overly judgmental and prejudiced, and oftentimes we the software developers consider ourselves to be somewhat wiser and intellectually advanced than the common folk, being able to reason on topics reaching way beyond our own field of expertise, as can be witnessed here on HN as well.

Guess these bits about wisdom and intellectual advancement are blatantly false. We're centuries away from being insightful by default.

> He has sincere regrets, especially at how anger toward him personally has negatively impacted the reputation and mission of FSF

In my opinion, "I'm sorry you were offended enough to stop supporting me" is not a sincere apology.

In fact this whole announcement is one big "I'm sorry you were offended" statement. It doesn't apologise for the problem, it "apologises" for not managing to sneak the announcements past people without them realising.

Whether you support RMS or not, this is a poor statement from the FSF, and a poor statement from RMS, and speaks to why so many feel that the FSF no longer represent them.

Which is frustrating, because this really should be a circumstance where a genuinely sincere apology should be... acceptable. RMS isn't accused of trafficking here, after all. He jumped in to a heated discussion to defend Minsky (one of his heroes[1] who had been fingered as a john in the Epstein affair). And in the process he deployed a line of argument[2] that probably sounded reasonable to a spectrum personality working in an nearly-all-male tech environment but that REALLY grates to modern ears in a more cosmopolitan world.

All that needed to happen was RMS coming out with something along the lines "I'm sorry. I let criticism of my hero cloud my judgement and found myself defending something that shouldn't ever be defended. I should have known better, and know now how much rhetoric like this hurts people. Please forgive me." And that really should have been enough for a community consensus to form around forgiveness. This isn't a Bill Cosby situation, at all.

But... I guess he wouldn't. And the FSF couldn't or didn't want to make him. Which is deeply frustrating.

[1] And mine, FWIW.

[2] To wit: "Engaging with extremely young, presumptively-trafficked prostitutes isn't TECHNICALLY assault". It's... logically arguable, but in context it ends up defending a practice we've all finally decided to abhor.

I agree in principle. I think someone in RMS's postition could have apologised far better and been more effective at changing their behaviour. However I'm not sure that RMS himself could do this and at this point I think it's probably too late for the FSF to get him back without backlash because it has gone too far.

Honestly, the fact that a quick apology would have solved this entire problem is the main reason why I think he should go away. The entire situation reeks of extremely poor judgement on his part and the FSF's board, and to my eye seems emblematic of the poor leadership that he and the board have displayed for most of my lifetime.

Or more succinctly; if you manage to turn a minor snafu worthy of one apology into a massive scandal that's splitting up your org, maybe you shouldn't be in charge?

Yeah, when your role has a large public relations component, botching things this badly really undermines undermines the argument that you're the best person for the job.

Who cares what he thinks about Minsky paying for sex? It’s hard to imagine something less relevant to his job.

I think people care more about the child sex trafficking than the paying for sex.

Also your job doesn't have to be about child safety for it to be an issue if you excuse child sex trafficking.

His job is entirely ideological, so his ideology receives due scrutiny, even if this were an entirely unrelated field.

But, given that Minsky is a significant name in the compiter science communities, and that Stallman continues to deny that Minsky's behavior (having sex with a 17 year-old unwilling sex worker while he was 70? 80?, even though he may have thought she was an 18-year old willinh sex worker) is not emtorely unrelated to questions of women's treatment in the computer science and opem source community.

When did you stop beating your wife?

Minsky did not have sex with an underage sex worker. Allegedly Epstein directed that woman to offer sex to Minsky, but that didn't occur. It is mind boggling how readily some people throw mud here.

We don't know that it didn't happen either. My understanding is that the relevant section of the deposition in question (which was part of a civil suit, not a criminal matter) is redacted. The unredacted contents were reported via a leak to a journalist. And it's not clear if Giuffre was even asked if sex occurred, as it wasn't relevant to this particular suit and the attorneys present weren't law enforcement or prosecutors with a mandate to chase the kind of evidence.

A reasonable guess is that Minsky probably did have sex, he just wasn't ever actually accused by anyone (being dead by the time this blew up).

Could that be wrong? Sure. But jumping in to argue that the absence of evidence proves innocence while failing to recognize the gravity of the crime involved is EXACTLY the rake that RMS stepped on.

How fucking far we've fallen from "innocent until proven guilty".

Innocent until proven guilty is the standard for a trial, not for public opinion.

I'm literally responding to this line -

>But jumping in to argue that the absence of evidence proves innocence

That line is a fucking disaster philosophy. "I can't prove he did anything, and no one has accused him, but I hereby declare him not-innocent"

---

Next up we can debate how the child should pay for the crimes of his father.

"The prohibition on corruption of blood only applies to the government. Private corporations can and should punish the children and grandchildren of racists."

How did you get onto this tangent? Minsky isn't on trial here. He's dead. The point wasn't to determine whether or not the accusation against him merits a conviction, but to point out that this isn't a license to (1) make excuses for the crime of which he was accused or (2) (from upthread) declare that the crime definitely didn't even happen, when it's pretty clear that it probably did.

Nor does it excuse a descent to mob justice (from either side).

Our law is based on procedural justice because it turns out that societies run on mob justice are fucking terrible.

Basically - I'm on this tangent because I find your line of reasoning distasteful. The answer right now is that we don't know.

Unlike both you and those you disagree with, I don't think it's appropriate to make any judgement on this from our armchairs on the internet.

At best, we're in the "trust, but verify" stage of this with regards to a single accusation with no confirmed time or location (or any other detail, as far as I'm aware) - Yet I see a whole lot of folks happy to be judge, jury, and executioner (again, on both sides). With basically no one suggesting that maybe we should do our due diligence first.

He might be dead, but his wife isn't, his friends aren't, his memory isn't. And while I sure agree that RMS is one tonedeaf motherfucker, I have at least some empathy for the impulse to defend a close friend (although lord knows I wouldn't have gone about it the same way...). Particularly given it happened when the friend wasn't around to defend himself.

Now - having said that, I chose to comment here because while I fault both sides for jumping to conclusions, I find it MUCH more ethically troubling to jump to a conclusion of guilt. Mobs don't lynch people they've decided are innocent, they lynch the ones they've decided are guilty. I judge that much more harshly.

Exactly.

https://stallmansupport.org/

This website does not acknowledge the harm he has done to the free software movement and therefore cannot heal any issues that he has caused.

If he made a sincere apology things might be different, but as long as he and his supporters refuse to engage with criticism they won't reach a resolution.

Engaging with criticism is different than bowing to pressure (and I think he is engaging, just not in the way his detractors want). You can be nice, but you still have to stand strong on your principles. I don't like a lot of the stuff RMS says and think a lot of it is downright disgraceful, and I'm mostly indifferent to his cause, but I think he has a right to disagree with his detractors. I'd rather defend the rights of the people I disagree with, than to wake up one day without rights myself.

I see your point, although I'd suggest that there's a difference between changing the conversation and ignoring the conversation.

I think RMS is ignoring the claims of toxic behaviour and/or claiming them to be fake news, rather than, say, owning and apologising or showing why those claims are wrong.

Good point; I do agree it would be much better for him to do that.

This is a statement by the board. RMS's own statement (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26780192) looks like it does what you say you want to see.

Am I the only one who simply doesn't care? The purpose of the FSF isn't protecting children. It's the promotion of free software. Some tone-deaf words by RMS are only even relevant because of the prevalence of cancel culture and the cult of wokeism. Software will still need to be free after the fad cult of wokeism has been left behind.

What the media claimed was Stallman defended Epstein. That isn't true. The whole thing should be a non-story.

Ideological movements like free software require uncompromising people like RMS in it because it's an ideology. If the ideology of free software bows to people who aren't even involved in software then it will bow to anyone and thus serves no one. People's feelings don't make software and they certainly don't make it free.

RMS is an icon in a field that is still brand new, letting this fad of woke cultism cancel him would be a tragedy would rightfully look back on I think as foolish as the chemical castration of Alan Turing for being gay.

So what if RMS hurts the feelings of fragile people? He's done more good for software than most people ever will. This whole thing is a storm in a teacup and people getting upset about it are clearly seeking to be offended. And people who seek to be offended always succeed. So taking their offense seriously is literally a waste of time.

The purpose of the FSF is free software. Not people's feelings. That they even acknowledged this storm in a teacup is disappointing. It's not their job.

Nope - I'm right there with you.

This creeping worldview where everything is black and white is starting to get very annoying.

Personally - I'm not an infant and I can recognize that nearly every person (actually - every person) I interact with on a daily basis holds viewpoints that I would agree with, and viewpoints that I would disagree with.

There is no paragon of virtue, and there is no paragon of evil. Everyone will do good and bad (and god help you if you try to get us all to agree which is which).

I still somehow manage to interact productively with most folks.

People who fixate on this type of social judgement are mentally unwell.

The point isn't that the FSF should have a political stance on topics outside of free software, the point is that to do their best job of promoting the free software movement they need to create an inclusive organisation that runs safe events, otherwise most people won't want to join, go to their events, or invite their representatives to give talks.

Unfortunately this point is very easy to miss for those of us who are not typically discriminated against, excluded, or made to feel unwelcome. I'll guess from your inappropriate username that you're a guy, maybe you should read some of what women have said about working with RMS? I wonder how much better the FSF would be if he hadn't systematically made certain groups feel unwelcome?

I have my own feelings about all sorts of political issues, and I don't expect those to always align with organisations such as the FSF. I do however expect to not shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to getting their message out.

>It's the promotion of free software.

Don't you think Free Software is best promoted by a guy who doesn't give women the creeps, and who has a modicum of social graces?

Politics is an inherently social arena; perhaps if the FSF wants to stop being a joke and actually succeed in its outreach they should pick someone who doesn't eat his toejam on live camera.

> The purpose of the FSF isn't protecting children

The purpose of FSF and RMS as a spokeperson/leader is to represent a movement and the people behind it.

You cannot represent *me* if you:

- make all sort of "weird" remarks about age of consent

- brush off any sincere question or constructive criticism for decades

- systematically walk up to every young woman in a conference to ask her out

- throw temper tantrums for being offered a can of coke at a conference

- show up at conferences improperly dressed, barefoot, pick from your feet and eat some bits

- show up at public dinner with a strong body odor

> The purpose of the FSF is free software. Not people's feelings.

The behavior as a PUBLIC speaker affect the credibility of the WHOLE movement in the eyes of the world.

It's only rational not to support a bad public speaker.

Stallman did not show up barefoot. He took his shoes off in the middle of his speech.

> You cannot represent me if you:

He represents me, and many more. You can go fund another movement, if you feel attacked.

> You can go fund another movement

We do. Plenty of developers fund FSFE, Conservancy, EFF and so on.

That does not take away the validity of the complains about RMS as a spokeperson.

He admits it himself: https://www.fsf.org/news/rms-addresses-the-free-software-com...

> if you are so sensitive.

No need for snark. It's not a matter of my personal taste.

Being a public speaker requires understanding how to fit the expectation of the majority of the audience, including politicians, companies (managers and businessman), IP lawyers, journalists, and all sort of non-technical people.

It is difficult to support FLOSS in the workplace and in society when people associate it with RMS: "that's the stuff that weird guy talks about".

> We do. Plenty of developers fund FSFE, Conservancy, EFF and so on.

Then carry on. Obviously the Free Software movement is not your cup of tea. You will probably feel more comfortable in the OSS movement. More business oriented.

> No need for snark. It's not a matter of my personal taste.

But it is. He offends your sensibilities. Not mine. Not other people's.

> It is difficult to support FLOSS in the workplace and in society when people associate it with RMS: "that's the stuff that weird guy talks about".

As it should be. The fact you are mixing open source with free software, and then complain it's not business friendly shows you are missing the point. Free software doesn't have to be business friendly. The final objective of the free software movement is that eventually everything becomes free software. All software. That is something current business doesn't find very friendly. Which is their problem. They will have to adapt or disappear.

>> We do. Plenty of developers fund FSFE, Conservancy, EFF and so on.

> Then carry on. Obviously the Free Software movement is not your cup of tea. You will probably feel more comfortable in the OSS movement. More business oriented.

I find it interesting that you consider FSFE and SFC as irelevant to Free Software and sugest OSS.

Goodpoint did not suggest the OSI. Why do you bring forwared the whole free vs open source discussion?

I would say in recent times SFC has done a lot more for free software than the FSF. Name one thing of note that the FSF has done in the last decade.

About that:

> We do. Plenty of developers fund FSFE, Conservancy, EFF and so on.

This is FSFE's response:

https://fsfe.org/news/2021/news-20210324-01.en.html

> We disapprove of this step that came without any message of remorse or willingness to change.

> Therefore, in the current situation we see ourselves unable to collaborate both with the FSF and any other organisation in which Richard Stallman has a leading position.

> The purpose of FSF and RMS as a spokeperson/leader is to represent a movement and the people behind it.

You mean purpose of FSF and RMS as a spokeperson/leader is to represent a movement and the the views of the people behind it in regards to software.

This is a subtle but important distinction.

> In my opinion, "I'm sorry you were offended enough to stop supporting me" is not a sincere apology.

I'm surprised at the lack of empathy towards what seems a pretty genuine attempt at introspection.

To me it seems obvious that RMS is a person with a handicap and deserves at least a little understanding and support, especially since he is openly acknowledging his difference.

He always said he was different. His statement doesn't evince any new understanding.

He portrays himself as willing to learn. People who worked with him have different stories.[1]

[1] http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html

This is a pretty callous and uncharitable dismissal of rms' message. Everybody can better themselves despite what their peers might believe.

His peers don't say he can't better himself. They say he resists it extraordinarily strongly.

Feeling more empathy for people who deal with him isn't callous.

I am not supporting RMS. However after what I have read from him and FSF I just accept what they say. Because I try understand what happened and not to be distracted by outrage. After all outrage is just words.

I think:

- RMS did or said something neurotypical people tend to avoid.

- There was no malice in what RMS did or said.

- People either don't understand, have a beef with RMS, or are riding the bandwagon of outrage and cancel culture.

I have family members on the spectrum so I understand that people are often clumsy, boneheaded and annoying, and so is RMS. I also learned that narcisstic people like to exploit the ineptitude of people on the spectrum. One way is to raise a ruckus about something unimportant but exploitable to raise outrage.

Please suck it up as a mistake and forgive them.

And! It's not about the real evil wrongdoings of certain other people!

To those playing catch up and wanting to form an opinion outside of editorialized content, here is the original leak on RMS's comments about Epstein, Minsky, and the definition of rape/assault:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-091320191420...

I realize he has been accused of a lot of other controversial behavior - would love to see more unedited source material of RMS's behavior.

That is a really well written statement in my humble opinion. It’s almost like they’re trying to tell people

“look we need this guy, and yeah for many it sucks, but for the betterment of the mission and the future of free software, we have to come together because he is simply too valuable to ignore“

I was intrigued at “ The announcement by RMS at LibrePlanet was a complete surprise to staff, all those who worked so hard to organize a great event,” This sounds like RMS almost torpedoed his own board seat by announcing it on his own.

I think compared with the totality of the evidence, the history of FSF, The importance of knowledge, and the betterment for the group as a whole, bringing RMS was the right decision. It’s great they’ve implemented changes, maybe this will be a roadmap for others canceled but still needed to atone and renter the public square.

I could not disagree more. This whole statement is "sorry, not sorry".

If someone is known to be a toxic person (and currently still is), you do not let them on to your team. Ever.

Toxicity isn't a binary thing - there's levels to it. If the benefits one can bring to a team outweigh their negative attributes, then you should let them on your team. As far as how to determine whether the good outweighs the bad, that's a different topic.

He brings a lot to the table, and I don't think he should have his work and life "cancelled" because some people disagree with his opinions...

Cancellation isn't a binary thing either, and I'm not sure anyone is suggesting that RMS's past contributions to the FSF be dismantled or that no one should employ him, I don't think anyone seriously want's to cancel his life's work.

The suggestions are that he shouldn't hold a leadership position in a community when he's shown an inability to lead a community safely.

Alas, cancellation is binary. It's akin to bullying: once started things begin to go downhill really quick.

There are always enough people willing to raise there self-esteem by kicking a dead lion.

I disagree that it's binary. Brendan Eich seems to be doing pretty well running Brave after being "cancelled" for donating for anti-gay-marriage causes. I think people remember that but have mostly let him get on with his life because he a) apologised, and b) no longer runs something as visible as Mozilla.

Eich didn't apologize. He expressed "sorrow at having caused pain" not remorse for what he did.[1] He wouldn't say he wouldn't do it again.[2] And he argued it wasn't discriminatory since then.

I don't think it's even about visibility. People didn't want to have to choose between leaving Mozilla and following Eich.

[1] https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/inclusiveness-at-mozilla/

[2] https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-ceo-gay-marriage-firestorm...

I have been anti Eich since I heard about all this. I dis-recommend Brave to everyone I know and will never support another Brendan Eich product again. I'm frequently surprised that the HN crowd largely seems to give him a pass on his hateful opinions towards LGBT people.

He's also an anti-masker and thinks a lot of what Dr Fauci says is actually lies. He is not somebody I look up to or see as a leader, especially in recent years.

Not sure how to define 'cancelled' globally but I will not support Eich for the future.

It may be a dumb question, but if the product is good, why should I care about personal views of whoever created it?

When people go to the market, are they supposed to ask "okay, I see your eggs are free range, but do you guys support gay marriage?"

The 'personal views' isn't even what this is about. He has demonstrated severe lack of understanding of the current world - he is spreading hatred and lies about people. He donates his money specifically to causes that actively make oppressed people suffer even further. It's not 'simply' a matter of personal views here. I think he does real, physical damage to the world and I don't personally want to support that.

I don't care about your personal views if they are not hateful or actively causing harm to people. But if your 'views' are spreading hatred and also harming people (even killing people by being anti-mask) then I think it's pretty clear that caring about it makes sense.

> When people go to the market, are they supposed to ask "okay, I see your eggs are free range, but do you guys support gay marriage?"

Obviously we cannot discover everything about everyone we deal with. We have to prioritize and live life, and yes it is awful to accidentally do business with hateful people, I do understand it cannot be avoided fully. We have to live life somehow if we want progress.

If it becomes known that the egg people are anti-gay-marriage then certainly I wouldn't buy from them any more.

Do you happen to have details of the story?

Looking around I see he has donated $1000 to banning gay marriage. This whole opposition looks kinda dumb to me, but qualifying it as hatred is definitely an overkill.

With that phrasing, this is a loaded question.

Instead, imagine you are facing court and ask your lawyer:

"okay, I see you are a lawyer, but do you make highly controversial statements in public?"

This is a legitimate concern. The public credibility of your lawyer affects the outcome.

On top of that our "lawyer" RMS walks barefoot in court and wears dirty clothes.

Good point (and the username stands out too).

Imagine though you're asking "okay, I see you're a lawyer, but you're a black lawyer and I'm afraid that your public credibility in this part of the country may (alas!) be compromised"?

We DO NOT choose our ethnicity, nationality, natural hair color, food allergy so we SHOULD NOT be discriminated for that.

We DO choose how to act, like engaging in public speaking or not, showing up to court/convention poorly dressed or barefoot, or being rude to people and so on.

With choice comes accountability.

With public presence comes public accountability. Very simple.

> We DO choose how to act, like engaging in public speaking or not, showing up to court/convention poorly dressed or barefoot, or being rude to people and so on.

Hey, you solved Asperger, depression, and all mental issues. Quick, someone give this guy a Nobel prize!

Yeah I think that's all pretty stupid. For me these are good reasons not to work for Brave, but less good reasons not to use Brave. I think Mozilla is a bit different because of their leadership in the community. I know the Mozilla Foundation is separate, but it's part of that community and I think it was inappropriate for Eich to be in a position of leadership in that community.

I think Steve Jobs is a good similar example here. He was an asshole. I don't think I'd have wanted to work for him directly, and I don't think he should have been running a charity or a company where the community engagement was important, but I still bought an iPhone.

Good points except for the gratuitous insult.

To add on: cancellation === accountability. Which many people seem to forget.

I'll give you that things are hardly ever binary. But toxicity is something that can be determined. They are the people do not care about others. They do not listen, no matter how many times you've talked to them. They see themselves as correct in their attitude, and others wrong. They do not change, or at least not in the short term (and definitely if they never suffer consequences). I've worked with these kind of people. We all have.

This whole "good outweighs the bad" is wrong.

1. Toxic people damage the company in general. Whether that be the reputation or culture. The consequences of their actions and words waste company resources.

2. They damage the productivity of others. Either indirectly or directly.

3. Most importantly: they hurt others. Nothing can outweigh the hurt they cause others.

Indeed we all have met them, they are usually to be found in Steering Councils while pretending to be noble and good.

What exactly does he bring to the table, other than creating drama? What is the FSF doing these days? Because literally all I see it doing is trying to clean up after RMS' messes.

> have his work and life "cancelled"

Nobody is erasing history. Nobody is deleting the wikipedia page on RMS.

Nobody is preventing RMS to write blogs, emails, show up to conferences and give speeches.

The letter is merely ASKING not to give him a position as public speaker after his countless blunders.

Spoken like a toxic person. There are many ways to be toxic in a team, and most of them are tolerated and encouraged by the moral guardians.

There is no team without him, you are aware of that, right? The core purpose of the FSF is to defend his achievements and to follow the path he laid out decades ago. He is not accused to be a toxic person, he is attacked on various angles by a mismatch of FUD, puritan toxicity and simple hate against unconventional people.

Sure, you can opt to distance from that, but what do you stand for then? Giving up against an irrational mob is not a legacy under which the FSF can prosper.

> There is no team without him, you are aware of that, right?

I certainly hope this is not true. Stallman will die one day. I doubt that anyone in FSF simply intends to just pack it in when that happens.

I also do hope that. It doesn't have to mean that without him at the helm or at the board the organization can not survive. But it can not survive without his philosophy. And for that it's important to create a path that defends him against the baseless reputational assaults, or it will be damaged as well. This statement does it, that way they can continue also after him - hopefully.

FSF could disappear today and FSFE, Conservancy, EFF and many other (saner) organizations would thrive.

What if, RMS is hit by a bus tomorrow?

The FSF is not a new organization. That it cannot function without RMS means it's failing to stand on its own. That may be acceptable for a new organization but in case of the FSF that's just a massive failure to build a sustainable organization.

If you care about the work the FSF is doing (I don't), this announcement should be extremely worrying.

>this announcement should be extremely worrying.

I agree it's slightly worrying, there's currently no replacement for RMS. The libre software movement risks falling apart if he is no longer there. FSF and RMS should make quick work of finding someone valuable.

One person is not a movement. It's not enough to find someone else. The organization, the entire group of people it consists of, needs to be able to its job.

I'm not even sure what this libre software movement even is that would fall apart in the absence of RMS and the FSF.

Yes.. please God someone tell me, which parts of the sky would fall if the entire FSF org disappeared tomorrow?

Exactly. So this >30 year old organization spends a paragraph to basically say they're crippled as an organization without RMS.

Imagine a company welcoming back a founder who was forced out for some sort of highly questionable behavior and public statements--and the company to come out with a statement a year later that they just couldn't go on without their founder's wisdom. We would rightly say the board and senior management of that company wasn't doing their job.

I can't even imagine Uber inviting Kalanick back, and they are near the bottom of the pile in terms of reputation.

I can live without bacon.

But with bacon my life is better, fuller and more pleasant in all aspects.

>look we need this guy, and yeah for many it sucks, but for the betterment of the mission and the future of free software, we have to come together because he is simply too valuable to ignore

But he's not valuable any more, that's the thing. He hasn't written code in like 30 years and to the best of my knowledge all he does is go around giving the same tired lecture over and over.

This pretend apology does nothing to address the very real concerns expressed by the people who have had to work with RMS. The guy is just generally an asshole, with the charisma of a wet towel.

We give some assholes some slack if they continue to make valuable contributions (Torvalds, de Raadt), but RMS makes no valuable contributions.

Writing code isn't that valuable. Many people contribute to coreutils (& other GNU projects) but there is only one RMS. His position is an ideological one.

To a first approximation, zero people at the global scale are proponents of Stallman's FSF.

Free Software deserves a better figurehead.

What political successes did the FSF have in the last 20 years and what role did RMS play in those?

> look we need this guy

The apocryphal Charles de Gaulle quote that applies here is "graveyards are full of indispensable men".

RMS is one man, the FSF is an organization that is supposed to have aims that are bigger and larger reaching than one single person, which is why it's an org in the first place. If the FSF cannot get by without RMS now, they will not survive RMS himself in the long run.

> This sounds like RMS almost torpedoed his own board seat by announcing it on his own.

Again, RMS is really bad at this stuff. I genuinely have no idea why anyone wants to keep him. Especially having met him personally, he seems unpleasant to deal with on a constant basis.

> I think compared with the totality of the evidence, the history of FSF, The importance of knowledge, and the betterment for the group as a whole, bringing RMS was the right decision.

I'd argue that you are probably overweighting the early history of the FSF. In my professional lifetime it has been a complete non-entity, and all I've ever seen RMS do publicly is get into slap fights over "GNU/Linux" and create drama out of thin air. What has that org been doing for 20 years other than slowly lose ground to Apache and CNCF?

Mostly I'll grant the GNU Project and the GPL and associated philosophical underpinning. Whether you favor copyleft or not, it has almost certainly been useful to have that basis for FOSS--given that the permissive licenses were mostly about pragmatism. Having said that, one of my lawyer friends has pondered whether the FSF's focus on licensing as the primary software freedom tool hasn't led to some of the licensing debates going on today.

That's all well and good, but it is completely orthogonal to whether or not he should be on the FSF board. The GPL was an important contribution he made to the community ... 30 years ago. The FSF has been fighting for the GPL over more permissive licenses for a while, and losing badly. Maybe it was a doomed fight from the get go, but it is certainly clear that he has not been successful.

Obviously without him the FSF and GNU as we know it would not exist, but leadership is all about what you will do in the future, not what you did in the past. So the question is, why is he indispensable to the FSF today?

He's not. And I'm not convinced the FSF as a whole is needed, certainly not with the current leadership.

I was mostly responding to "I'd argue that you are probably overweighting the early history of the FSF." I'm just saying there were some important things in that early history but I agree much less since.

> This sounds like RMS almost torpedoed his own board seat by announcing it on his own.

> bringing RMS was the right decision

The idea that he has such severe problems with social interactions that he almost torpedoed his chance at getting back his board seat suggests that he is not, in fact, the right person to be leading a large organization.

I get the hacker ethos that this is "his" organization but if the guy can't even hold it together for a week without nearly blowing it, he's not going to be an effective advocate for his views and isn't the right person to lead a large organization.

Long-term the organization needs to move past him anyway: he's 70, if the movement can't survive without him then it'd better figure out how that's going to work damned quickly because statistically they don't have that many more years.

An organization in which one man is indispensable dies with that man.

If FSF can't see a way to exist without Stallman at the helm, I wouldn't make any long-term bets on them sticking around as an organization of relevance.

Don’t miss the followup post by RMS [0].

[0] https://www.fsf.org/news/rms-addresses-the-free-software-com...

It took him weeks to make a public statement and that is what he came up with?!

This basically refuses to acknowledge the problem.

It links RMS' statement

> Occasionally I learned something about relationships and social skills, so over the years I've found ways to get better at these situations. When people help me understand an aspect of what went wrong, and that shows me a way of treating people better, I teach myself to recognize when I should act that way. I keep making this effort, and over time, I improve.

This, alas, is not true. This has been refuted by FSF staff: he has been saying and doing sexist shit over the decades. A report was made about the sexism at MIT CSAIL in 1983. If that's not enough time to change, nothing is.

He has been defending raping of children for, I do not even know how long. https://archive.is/P0Rvb 2003? at least that's the earliest this article dug up.

The very problem is that he does not improve over more than thirty years.

He changed his mind eventually about children being able to consent to sex. But he does make himself sound more receptive to feedback than Bradley Kuhn and other people who worked with him say.[1]

[1] http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html

I read this and RMS's statement. I've been saying Stallman needs to go for adecade or more, I believe his fanaticism holds back the organization and movement.

However, after reading his statement, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt IF he not only sees now that he's been ofensive, but is more willing to listen to criticism in the future. If he TRULY recognizes he's got social issues and communication problems, then he MUST be more willing to give and take, and not be so rigid. I can truly believe he didn't understand the allegations against Minsky because I truly believe RMS frequently takes stances on issues where he has minimal knowledge of the facts.

The problem is I don't see that concession in his apology or the FSF statement. I think this is preobably a bad move. I think RMS is not only not-irreplaceble, I think there people who could be much more effective in that role.

> he not only sees now that he's been ofensive, but is more willing to listen to criticism in the future.

Spoiler alert: He won't. He's been problematic for decades, and it's extremely difficult for someone like him to change at the drop of a hat.

He's been willing to listen to criticism for 30 years alright. He just doesn't change or learn anything as a result.

When you're a star, you can get away with anything. That's basically it. Zero surprise.

Same reason Linus got away with bullying for so long. Some people are just born-followers, NPCs, and will lie to themselves to block away the shame.

If it was me who did this same shit, I'd be exiled. No one would be there to defend me. Where's all the brave white knights then?

Aka “We missed his wisdom”, forgot that other things matter, and invited toxicity to poison our organization and refuse to admit how wrong we were regardless of community outrage and boycotts of us

My frustration is for the stupid people in the GCC mailing list who think that those individuals are bigger than the ideological cause.

They even started contemplating that GCC should fork away from FSF.

I'm sure you mean "stupid people who believe in equality" so it is hilarious that you think one individual, RMS, is more important than the ideas of copyleft.

The best compliment that you can pay RMS is to say that his ideas were greater than the man, and they they deserve to outlive him.

GCC is already separate from RMS/FSF, effectively from the late 1990s with the EGCS fork, and officially now. I expect they will move further away due to the recent debacle.

I have not named RMS. FSF and the cause is bigger than RMS.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com