It's really sad to see the witch hunting against RMS. A man who has committed no crime and has only shared a few honest and good faith opinions. Do we have to try to scrub people from existence when their opinions are not the same as yours?
Nobody's saying we should scrub RMS from existence. Just don't secretly put him in charge of the FSF, without warning, and announce it during Libreplanet like it was his birthday party. Nobody from the FSF even knew this would happen except the board. It was a surprise to all of the FSF staff too.
Already one board member has resigned over this. It's completely wrong to be running the FSF like your own private fan club instead of what it's supposed to be: a foundation for all of us, to defend software freedom for all of us. It should not be RMS headquarters.
He wants to keep blogging about how harmless it is to have sex with teenage girls, he can keep doing that. He doesn't have to be in the board of the FSF to do it.
>He wants to keep blogging about how harmless it is to have sex with teenage girls, he can keep doing that. He doesn't have to be in the board of the FSF to do it.
He hasn't done this since 2006 and has since published that he no longer stands behind the statement. Do we want to live in a world where a single incorrect thought made decades ago will forever tarnish your ability to participate in society?
> Do we want to live in a world where a single incorrect thought made decades ago will forever tarnish your ability to participate in society?
It seems Some of us do want to live in that world. For those who are fascinated about that, please google Culture Revolution in China from 1966 until 1976. You could learn so much about how to destroy those who had made a mistake in their lives (BTW, don't worry, if they don't have made any mistake yet, you could found some or make up some for them), and also along the way, destroy yourself.
He's done it at least as recently as 2012 (and I think he did it later than that in a side comment reacting to a political issue that some adovocates on one side had equated with pedophilia to underline how bad it was, but I can't find the quote at the moment), and didn't recant on the issue until 2019, during the furor that led to him leaving his FSF role.
He defended adults having sex with children as recently as 2013.[1] And fixed a link in an older comment in 2018 without saying his opinion changed.[2]
Turns out people don't want to do business with you when you make comments like that.
Doesn't matter how much cool software you wrote. Or how much you donate. After a certain point people would rather not be involved with your behavior if it doesn't align.
Fortunately in this specific instance we see society taking SA and r**, as serious topics.
Let's hope we have more of this. Maybe one day I'll finally meet a female colleague in the tech industry who _doesn't_ have a harrassment story to share.
Stallman wrote "the most plausible scenario is she presented herself to [Minsky] as entirely willing."
That's very different from saying she was entirely willing. Taking words out of context to change what someone said is bad, right? Perhaps you should be outraged at Vice.
> Turns out people don't want to do business with you when you make comments like that, unless it’s the music industry
FIFY
I find it weird that Michael Jackson is on the radio so often and Chris Brown is still releasing new music and selling out, yet if they were behind a keyboard rather than microphone, they would have been cancelled long ago
If this was true I would agree with you. He has since apologized for that. However, it was not only one stance and that's what prompted his "resignation"
He was trying to split hairs in what constitutes assault just because he wanted to defend a colleague.
The Epstein thing is a relatively minor incident of Stallman just being really stupid about what hill to die on and when. In the most charitable interpretation of it, he's defending Minsky as an ingenue who couldn't possibly have known that it is wrong to have underage women pimped at you just because they might be willingly pimped. Most reasonable people would recognise that making this defense, as a public figure who is supposed to be representing an entirely different political movement, is extremely bad PR for your other movement. It's a bad way to be a leader, to be sort of by proxy kind of defending Minsky's associations to Epstein. It leads to bad press, which it did, and it weakens support for your other, actual cause of software freedom.
edit: I seem to lost the ability to reply to your other statements.
Is he actually trying to make himself a better person? Other people have listed where he has made several statements over the years since 2006 that show that he hasn't changed what he thinks. Just because he was a pioneer in programming and created the idea of free software does not give him free pass the rest of his life.
HN and many online sites often go on about how unfair it is that previous criminals are locked out of work and have no path back to normal. RMS in this case is not even a criminal, simply someone who said he was skeptical of the effectiveness and need of the current laws 15 years ago.
Does this not go against the desire to help people come back from previous mistakes?
It is not fair that criminals find it hard to find work. Therefore, we should make El Chapo the next Attorney General. And OJ Simpson can be President while we're at it.
> has since published that he no longer stands behind the statement
This is true, but he's got plenty of other statements he still stands behind. I'm not sure he's said anything about how we shouldn't have sex with animals either.
They guy makes 10s of comments a day on a wide range of new articles and then publishes them publicly. Trawling over the thousands of them and presenting the the worst of them with no context what so ever, feels kind of seedy and pathetic to me.
I want to be clear - is the problem that he has any public opinions outside the realm of free software, or that they are unpopular opinions? Because it seems to me that voicing unpopular opinions is basically what Stallman has always done, and it seems... I don't know, "capricious"? to laud him for this when we agree and condemn him when we disagree - and not just condemn as "wrong", but as badly behaved and unworthy of being a public figure. Stallman hasn't changed, only society's tolerance for views outside the mainstream - which seems like the wrong direction to me.
I say this as someone with some sympathy for at least some of the things he has said in your copious list; my reluctance to specify which things indicates a problem with public discourse today, I feel. (Although even if I did not feel uncomfortable, I also would not want to sidetrack this thread into a political debate)
Not being a criminal is about the bare minimum requirement a decent person should pass.
The trouble with Stallman is that as far as I can tell he's just barely tolerated by pretty much everybody who had to interact with him in person. Yes, he did a very good thing, and that contribution should be recognized. And he's got some great ideas that I can agree with on the subject of software.
But unfortunately he's just not a good leader, whether in the area of the FSF's agenda or even software development and at this point is an active detriment to his own cause.
Yes, I'll grant that he's been unfairly criticized for some things, but even ignoring all that doesn't make him a good choice for the position.
Speaking of good faith opinions, are you arguing in good faith that the witch hunt is just because his opinion is not the same? Can we refuse to do business with people when their opinions are legitimately abhorrent? Can we distinguish between differences of opinion and abhorrent opinions?
I have not looked at the accusations claims in depth but anyway RMS has factually brought more utility to mankind (through network effects) than almost anyone else I can think of.
Hence attacking him and the FSF seems quite hypocrite and ungrateful compared to what he gave to us.
Critizing him is fine, witch hunting is not.
Why not link to Red Hat's page instead? It says just as much on this issue, and lacks the obnoxious "subscribe to our newsletter" box with a hard to find close button.
Strangely, every article on the community's rejection of this move by the FSF board has been flagged and killed, sometimes after many dozens of upvotes and comments. Free as in what now?
- Everyone should be allowed to find work, regardless of their personal beliefs and past conduct.
- Red Hat is free to spend their money however they want.
- One still should look down on Red Hat for their misguided decision.
Edit: user geofft pointed out that
> membership on the board of the FSF is not a compensated role. He wasn't hired for anything.
Which changes my position to being pretty neutral on the matter. The FSF can do whatever they want and so can Red Hat, I suppose both know what's best for them better than I do.
I'm not sure where point 1 comes into play - membership on the board of the FSF is not a compensated role. He wasn't hired for anything.
Also, the FSF staff unionized in 2004 to protect themselves from RMS [1] [2], and the only concrete action the FSF has taken since Saturday [3] - presumably because of union pressure - is to elect a union-chosen member to the board. I believe that the staff of the FSF should also be allowed to find work, and if the staff is effectively saying (and has been saying for almost 20 years), we cannot do our jobs because of this guy, then we get into a much harder problem than can be addressed by the simple principle that everyone should be allowed to find work (a principle I agree with in the abstract).
You're the second person either intentionally misconstruing or misunderstanding.
I am saying that things like personal belief shouldn't factor into the hiring decision at all. Leave those at the door.
There may be some beliefs that are relevant to the job, so they are not personal. Though you could in theory work for an organization even if you don't believe in its goals - a lot of software developers working for certain companies would probably like to claim this defense.
Nobody gives a damn about Stallman's beliefs. He got booted because of his behavior. Specifically, his Epstein apologia and general hostility towards women in open source.
Googling Stallman + Epstein will find you the whole debacle.
He was taking a literalist stance, and he did change his mind. Maybe. Not sure.
Hostile stance to women is also wrong, he's not approving of feminist "pink programming" attempts. Totally not the same thing. Can be found as well in the depths of the internet. Mostly mailing lists.
However he had some seriously hot takes on #MeToo. Taken as a whole, this points to reactionary antifeminism.
People are quick to misjudge, misattribute and bandwagon these days. This causes spillover hurting free software movement.
Because every activist must be an angel and every platform squeaky clean.
He made no apologoes for Epstein or any behavior or mistreatment of women. He merely pointed out no one had any business saying Minsky sexually assaulted anyone until proof positive rolled in.
> Googling Stallman + Epstein will find you the whole debacle.
So basically you admit you can't provide any proof of "Epstein apologia." It's actually quite sad educated people fall for media headlines and are not interested in the truth. The truth is important, we must not ignore it.
On an aside, should employers be able to talk about if someone has a criminal or sexual assault history? Because if we say people should be free of their past, it’s pretty clear that criminal history is a huge job killer for a lot of people.
> On an aside, should employers be able to talk about if someone has a criminal or sexual assault history?
It would be illegal for an employer to do that in my country. Though it's unlikely they could even find out.
You can't just go and ask the police or courts for someone's criminal past here, and newspapers don't use convict's full names.
Once you have served your sentence and paid your fines, you're supposed to be free of it.
I don't know for a fact, but I would imagine it is similar in a lot of places. The US are likely an outlier.
I should add that there are obvious exceptions, like if you are going to work with children or you will be handling a lot of money, in which case your employer is allowed to ask you for relevant criminal record - which you can only obtain yourself and in person.
In many countries they may only do that if its relevant to the job. A fraud may not get a job as a banker and a sex offender may not get a job at a school but a fraud can get a job as a teacher and a sex offender can get a job as a banker.
If these people really are too dangerous to be around others at work, why are we letting them out in the public to begin with?
Everyone should be allowed to find work, but that does not mean everyone is entitled to a highly visible leadership position of an organization that (presumably) represents a good chunk of the free software development community
> but that does not mean everyone is entitled to a highly visible leadership position
You are correct - because nobody is entitled to any specific job. In a functioning society the most competent person that will perform the work for a reasonable compensation is hired.
RMS has done some great things, and remains a tireless watchdog for certain principles-- buuuttt... in various ways, he's been alienating tons of people for decades, including some of those people I'd say were very aligned with FSF goals. That trail of alienation has long seemed counterproductive, and now has escalated.
I'd like to think that some sufficient change of behaviors, and a sort of reconciliation with those hurt or alienated, could happen. FWIW, although RMS is incredibly tenacious when he thinks he's right, in the past I've seen him change his opinion when an argument manages to persuade him. Perhaps there are some people who are intellectually up to finding arguments that persuade RMS, and who are willing to reach out to him, and invest in difficult conversations. We should be able to have dialogue, to understand, to change, to reconcile. This could be a very positive next chapter in a noteworthy history, as well as a timely example (given some current divisions in the US) that noble ideals we held about dialogue can still sometimes work.
Until that dream happens, at the moment, it seems like the current situation will cause further damage to libre software goals.
Years ago (linux-kernel 2.6 days) I found Red Hat was somewhat at odds with FSF values.
Red Hat does abide by the letter by the GPL by releasing source as legally required, but in a form that's inconvenient to work with:
https://lwn.net/Articles/430098/
Apparently you could access the individual patches through your Red Hat subscription, but the conditions of the subscription prohibited you from sharing them.
https://lwn.net/Articles/430132/ (see pzb's comment).
Red Hat/IBM is (presumably) doing what they believe will lead to continued commercial success in our current environment, I'm OK with that. But I don't really consider their condemnation of the FSF as anything of note beyond the loss of a donation.
Good. The times, they have changed, and who you associate yourself with be it personally or publicly (in this case as a foundation but the same applies to for-profit companies) matters. Engineers want to work for organizations that are increasingly socially conscious and with people that foster safe, productive work environments. So, since association, with RMS is toxic (for things he's said and stances he's taken) it makes perfect sense to me for Red Hat to take this decision. It's their money, let them vote with their wallets. If you don't like it you can fund the FSF yourself and if enough do then Red Hat's decision won't make much of a difference.
I do not see any issue with Red Hat or other companies cutting funding to FSF (for good or bad reasons). FSF and Stallman currently are just a source of bad press currently.
I personally feel that Stallman would be considered toxic by today's standards of behaviour and is overall a liability to the Free Software movement (which itself is mostly irrelevant today for the average Software Developer or end user).
Despite this I find myself extremely appalled by the overall discourse by those pushing for the FSF board's resignation. A common theme among the complaints seem to be that someone in a leadership position should be held to higher standards but I am seeing many among those who have signed the rms-open-letter along with other supporters who seem to be prominent in the Software community engaging in extremely toxic rhetoric (on Social media) towards any disagreement with their opinion such as calls for firing/not hiring those who may have different opinions, accusations of pedophilia, misogyny, transphobia and other prejudice.
Supporters who say they just want Stallman out of leadership positions seem happy to like/amplify the above positions.
I gave the linked snippets (and a bit more) on Stallman's websites a read. Stallman seems like a man completely out of touch with the state of things today especially those related to morality. But it seems to be a stretch to attribute deliberate malice.
Hey RedHat, did you take the chance of the above event with some people from the US Govt. in 2019 to say a word of two about that guy who has been heard and recorded saying about women "I can do anything to them", "I can grab them by the pussy", etc? Did you stop funding the US government as well?
I'm usually against the stupid cancelation culture, but, please, can we finally cancel Red Hat that is subtly doing so much harm to the open source community and software since a few years?
They have already taken hostage a lot of things in the open source communities thanks to they huge financial power; and now they are also trying to take hostage the Free Software Foundation...
I hope that the US tax authorities will go after them for any deduction they could have benefited following their donations, because of the rude difference between the gift of donation, and giving money to buy something.
I'm not sure if I would personally support RMS or not, but it is the duty of the FSF board to take this decision without being blackmailed by some corporation.
