- 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.
- 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.