Comment by dralley | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dralley | Hacker News Reader

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What significant, tangible accomplishments does Stallmann have in the past 15 years? Because even before the controversy, it seems like he:

* Presided over and actively contributed to the decline of GCC and gave up the world of compiler-based-tools and compiler research to LLVM by insisting on making it impossible to use GCC as a library. Pissed off the emacs maintainers in the process.

* Pissed off the glibc maintainers by trying to veto the removal of an abortion joke from the manual, even though he's had no involvement in glibc for years and "veto" is not a reasonable power for him to have nor one that he has ever had. On this basis a lot of other maintainers got pissed off about the level of control he was demanding over details that have nothing to do with software freedom

* Has done absolutely nothing to address any threat to free software since 2005, or otherwise adapt to the changing needs of developers to keep FSF/GNU relevant. RMS has no idea what those needs even are because the man reads his email with curl.

And now he's been back for a while, and nothing continues to happen, and the FSF is increasingly irrelevant year over year without even taking optics into consideration.

> What significant, tangible accomplishments does Stallmann have in the past 15 years?

You believe you will never grow old? Do you wish your family and friends to turn back on you because you are old and don't have the same energy as you had when you were 20? The question is how the landscape would look like today and if there even would be "open source" in the broader sense as we see it today, with permissive licenses, if it wasn't for him.

Sure, you can look at a person's mistakes only, but you could also look at all the good a person has done. Do you yourself ever do mistakes? You never made a bad decision in your entire life? C'mon. To err is human. How would world look like if everyone was thrown out from the job and the society when they do a mistake, and if everything in the world would be judged by mistakes and not by the value it adds. Reflect over yourself first, are you sure you are qualified to throw a rock?

What is more important, the mission of Free Software, or making him President for life?

President is Geoffrey Knauth; not RMS; you should have probably looked up the facts before sending unnecessary comment: https://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Knauth

Nobody claims RMS should be president for life, or anyone else, I just dislike the rhetoric the Op uses.

The FSF is a public organization with a mission to change the world. That's literally the purpose of its existence, not to be Stallman's group of friends. Also every day it fails to be effective makes fulfilling its mission harder, because the rest of the world doesn't wait for it to catch up.

Sure, we can recognize that Stallman had very significant achievements that merit recognition, and accept that not everyone can keep on producing amazing work until they keel over. But that's in the context that's outside of being an active leader. That he did a good job before doesn't mean there's not a job now that still needs doing well.

> not to be Stallman's group of friends

Nobody said that, either.

> That he did a good job before doesn't mean there's not a job now that still needs doing well.

And you personally know he can't help doing this job further on, and he is on his own entire board in FSF? You are free to nominate and show the world what you can do!

> Nobody said that, either.

I was referencing your "Do you wish your family and friends to turn back on you" part.

> And you personally know he can't help doing this job further on, and he is on his own entire board in FSF?

It looks to me like he's got an outsized influence in the FSF and even if he might be a board member among 7. But that is a good point, it may be the case that the problem is bigger than just Stallman.

> You are free to nominate and show the world what you can do!

I'm not an US citizen nor have any interest in being one, employed full time, and on a non-profit already, so my agenda is full.

That said given how things have gone the last few decades, I do think I could do a better job at this point. I don't doubt there are people far better suited than I, but I'm pretty confident I could do better than the current state.

If he’s old, and can no longer be effective in his role, why shouldn’t he retire and let someone else lead?

> You believe you will never grow old?

Part of growing old is handing things over to other people to carry on.

> Do you wish your family and friends to turn back on you because you are old and don’t have the same energy as you had when you were 20?

I don’t think the FSF is intended to be Stallman’s personal support network first and foremost, and I particularly don’t think that is the premise it has used in raising funds. To the extent that the FSF has become that, that's an even more serious problem.

> The question is how the landscape would look like today and if there even would be “open source” in the broader sense as we see it today, with permissive licenses, if it wasn’t for him.

If we were talking about “should Stallman be inducted into the (hypothetical) Free Software Hall of Fame?” sure, but that’s not the issue.

> Sure, you can look at a person’s mistakes only, but you could also look at all the good a person has done.

Leadership roles aren’t about the good you have done but about the good you can be expected to do in the role.

> handing things over to other people to carry on.

"other people" means: corporate stooges

______

not the first time in history that voices appear to demand that a leader of some project, someone with a proven track record of principles over status/power/wealth, be replaced. typically what they're really asking for is a leader that's easier to pressure, more amenable to their interests. this is even more the case if they're demanding that the replacement be selected on the basis of immutable characteristics unrelated to the project.

No, obviously it does not mean that.

> “other people” means: corporate stooges

Yes, every other person in the Free Software movement that isn’t currently on the FSF board of directors is a corporate stooge, obviously, so were he to ever leave, that’s the only possible replacement.

:eyeroll:

Nobody said we should put him out on an ice floe, dismiss his achievements, or ignore his contributions. The point parent and the essay made is to ask what his new achievements have been. We can respect the work he has done in the past while questioning whether he is contributing well to the work that needs to be done now.

In fact many accomplished leaders themselves recognize that they need to be succeeded by a new person at some point. They can retain an emeritus status and participate in the discourse while allowing the baton to pass. Since we all die at some point, this is in truth necessary for a movement or organization to continue.

I'm of the opinion that he doesn't have to be a perfect human being; sometimes it's hard to disentangle facts from all the character assassination attempts that are thrown at him, and that's why I think we should rein in our emotions and not talk so passionately.

I also think that the enemies of free and libre open source software definitely don't want us to be able to have a civil debate, so they probably send shills to derail conversations (it's an asymmetric war, after all).

If we look back at historic movements, they weren't always led by people that were perfect by every metric (source: Behind The Bastards multi-volume episodes on Clarence Thomas, where they mention that some people that advanced equality in regards to racism were at the same time misogynistic, and didn't consider it worthwhile to advance women's rights).

As long as Stallman is a steward for the things we hold dear, I'm of the opinion that it's a good thing for us... Despite his flaws as a person, but with the condition that he get with the times and improve his behavior.

I think the point is that he should have been succession planning 25 years ago and taking a back seat from 2005 onwards, certainly as phones and XAAS became important in the 2010s

He's been proven right about most things, but he can't convince people to save his life, and that's a major problem because we stand to continue to lose essential freedom.

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