Sunday IT Wire counted up the number of signatories on two open letters, one opposing Richard Stallman's return to the FSF and one supporting it. - The pro-Stallman letter had 3,632 individual signers - The anti-Stallman letter had 2,812 individual signers (plus 48 companies and organizations). ...
Well said.
What’s the back-story, anyway?
Stallman is a 68 year old unpopular-with-the-ladies mansplaining type of guy that has a very crude humour and low interpersonal skills. He’s also a bit of a genius when it comes to software. He’s got a laundry list of things he’s said and done that are distasteful towards women. Nothing illegal however. He’s one of those guys that would rather be technically right than anything else.
Unfortunately he’s a victim of mob justice and cancel culture.
I don’t like Stallman, I do respect his contributions to the FOSS movement. I agree cancelling Stallman outside of due process is a really bad look for the FOSS movement.
That is essentially my point. I do not agree with RMS on a good many things and believe he was removed as President with good reason. Despite the respect I have for his four decades of service, my initial reaction to his re-appointment was “that is not a wise decision, they need to rethink it”, and if the open letter had just called for him to stand down from the FSF board, then I would have signed it without delay.
However, I was on the receiving end of an online mob myself in 2019 when I created a free software fork. I know how traumatic the experience is, and I cannot in good conscience be a part of doing that to another human being.
That said, I think it’s clear RMS’s position is now basically untenable because of this public outcry and he needs to do the right thing for the FSF. There’s nothing stopping him from holding talks and campaigning for the cause in future, and if he’s not in a leadership position then people might be reassured that he will be held accountable for any future bad behaviour.
Is that because of the
?
Or was there another reason to remove him?
(I am very out of the loop)
Correct, he allegedly had a pattern of poor behaviour towards women spanning decades, and a habit of ignoring codes of conduct at conferences. His questionable views on some topics (particularly around the age of consent and people with down’s syndrome) and his strange decision to defend a convicted sex offender were also problems.
“allegedly”.
Supposedly on his blog there is no bad attitude towards women at all, quite the opposite.
There are people who searched it.
He is uncoruptable like Sokrates. Probably the real reason.
The misstreated women is used over and over to stir up drama to remove uncorruptible people.
The uncorruptible part is clearly why every single company are against him.
They fear loosing power to good free opensource software, that does not sell people lives.
This what appears to be a storm in a glaswater drama just makes me trust him even more to be a genuine person.
And I don’t know much about him.
That makes sense. But if there really is a conspiracy, there will be evidence of it too. That’s the kind of thing anyone can research and find the evidence for … if it’s real.
Not a conspiracy, just interests aligning and politics.
Okay so it’s not that he was doing a bad job or that they found someone else who would do a better job, and it’s not that he broke any explicit FSF rules or refused to obey an FSF rule.
It’s thought-crime, essentially. He had strong and unpopular ideas, sany people disliked him, so he’s bad for the FSF’s image.
But you could argue that that kind of creativity, the inclination to ignore convention and forcefully invent and argue for your own vision of that world - that’s a requirement for the job of leading the FSF.
I haven’t had time to start doing my own research about him (given how influential he was in the course of 20th century history) but I will.
I think I’d like him. He sounds great. I must listen to his lectures (or interviews or whatever he does mostly)
Cancel culture isn’t a real thing. Look at the man… he’s not fit to look after himself, let alonr represent a movement.