An anonymous reader writes: Debian Project Secretary Kurt Roeckx has announced the results of a closely-watched vote on what statement would be made about Richard Stallman's readmission to the Free Software Foundation's board. Seven options were considered, with the Debian project's 420 voting d...
The problem is, him not being a spokesperson was something that was, in fact, asked multiple times before. But somehow, him still being “in power” get gets himself into position to become a spokesperson again. This is nothing new.
Too bad this time they decided to use insults and serious accusations rather make the argument you are making, which is somethig a lot more people would have agreed with.
99.99% of the people in a board of directors are not spokepersons. In fact, more often than not the actual people who hold the power are the ones you see the least.
A lot of people could have agreed all the years before – they didn’t. full stop.
Insults? No, accusations, sure. His behavior was more than inappropriate and that was called out. I’m baffled how one can rile up so much about the wording of the letter, but when RMS said something far more insulting that’s okay, for some reason.
And no, it matters whether he’s part of the FSF. Either he’s speaking on behalf of the FSF – or not. That he’s literally “Mr FSF” is indeed bad and part of the problem.
The signees didn’t suddenly change opinion and agreed on something they disagreed with before. Like you yourself said, “this is nothing new”, Stallman has been heavily criticized multiple times by his social behavior. I expected you’d have agreed with me in that.
The only thing that makes this time different is that they started collecting signatures and getting organizations to sign for an open letter that was created as a knee-jerk reaction to RMS being admitted in the board of directors of the FSF. A collective campaign as public and well known as this had never happened before, but people accusing Stallman in a such a way have existed for many many years. This is nothing new.
Note that I’m not saying the people who signed (or even wrote) the letter are bad, or toxic, or any other adjective. I’m saying the letter itself (not who wrote it) is misdirected and could result in toxicity. This is almost the same criticism I throw at Stallman. It’s not in me where you’ll see the contradiction.
I’m sure who wrote the letter had the best of intentions, and most likely they were motivated by a will to improve the FSF, not hurt it. I just think the approach was incorrect. Not only in the wording but also in the demands they made.
If instead of telling me “what you said is incorrect”, someone tells me that I have no intelligence, I see that as an insult. Would you not feel insulted if you were accused of being the complete opposite of the values you hold dearest?
The only way for it to not be an insult is if they came with solid evidence of the claim (ie. solid proof that I have no intelligence). Then it will just be a description of what I am, based on proof. But I’ll feel insulted if I’m a die-hard fan of “Lord Of The Rings” and someone says I hate Tolkien’s writings (even though others might have not been offended by it).
Stallman has proven more than once that he’s a person committed to the ideals he holds (and one of them is to end “racism, sexism, antisemitism, caste prejudice, and others”), and has also proven that when confronted about a topic in conversation he can change his mind (as he did about his views on child consent). So if we are to categorize him with the dehumanizing accusations the letter used, we better have solid proof that it wasn’t a mistake, that he really deserves it and that his public statements stating the opposite are a farce. Because he’s known to be misunderstood pretty frequently due to his social impairment. This is nothing new.
I’m all for criticizing him about his mistakes and confronting him, even to the extent of making him take responsibility for his social behavior. I can agree that he should not be a spokesperson for the movement, so I rather have him in a role where he can provide direction on the topics he’s good at (and that could be within a board of directors) but making it a rule to avoid using him as spokesperson in situations that could result in harm for others. That’s what the letter should have demanded, instead it demanded to remove Stallman from all directive positions (and not just him, but the entire board!) all the while throwing unfair accusations that could lead to him being dehumanized by many when done in such a public way.
I feel like we’re talking past each other here: I do agree! That is, indeed, part of my very point. He’s been criticized many times, but hardly ever changed (we come back to that later).
I never intended to insult you, by the way, if that came of as such. I very much enjoy the discussion.
However, how would you word a letter like that, when you know, from decades of experience, that the person will likely not change their behavior the same way they didn’t for years? Without implying that the person either a) lacks capacity to reason or b) is outright malicious? You ask for solid evidence, but …
The problem here is that many of the things are done, due to the nature of the org, in private. To add a personal story of my hackerspace at university: RMS was in the city and we allowed him to stay for a day in our room at university. Little did we expect him to not move out at all. The only way to get him out again was to pay for a ticket to the next conference. Sure, one can add this to the huge list, but unfortunately I hardly can provide “proof”. Nobody collects such things.
But, proof is not needed as we don’t want to judge him in front of a jury. The FSF in almost all accounts does already know what the people are talking about. This letter is not addressed to the public to hold condemnation and grudge against RMS, but addressed to those who know of the incidents. Usually this would be an “internal investigation”, however the FSF doesn’t do such thing.
Proof definitely would be nice, absolutely. But asking for proof of things that happened internally is asking for the impossible. That’s why I don’t judge people who hold him dearly, they are very much allowed to do so.
I even understand if he feels insulted or attacked. He’s confronted with the accusation that he’s not what he thinks to be. In fact, I’ve been rightly accused in the same way, and honestly, it was hard, very hard. Sometimes, I’d say, it was wrong, but sometimes the other person was indeed right. They couldn’t always provide proof, but they called out behavior in a message to me and I knew what they were talking about. The next step, though, would’ve been to call me out publicly, in case I didn’t change.
It’s not about “deserving punishment” but protecting others, and the FSF, from harmful behavior. And, while I agree that his changed view on child consent is… a good thing to say the least, it’s a very bad thing if people’s identities (e.g., trans, non-binary people) are invalidated and disregarded (despite scientific evidence!) because he’s being pedantic about words. His hybris to think that, just because “words” he has more knowledge on this topic than leading psychologists is telling. But worse is that trans or non-binary persons shouldn’t need to defend their very existence and identity at every corner in life. At some point (after decades of years) they cannot be expected to still talk and discuss with him, in very tiring and disrespecting discussions, what and who they are. Mind you, it’s great if minorities go out and tell people how it is to be X, but these people should be allowed to just live their life at some point.
And RMS with his stances in the FSF is… not exactly a nice space for most of them. Proofs would be nice, and him changing his opinion would be nice as well. But this is much work that we can, perhaps, expect of the society as a whole but not from the minorities that are already discriminated against.
And I agree that, in theory, the letter should demand just revoking him as a spokesperson. But do you seriously believe that this would stick? He basically made him member again w/o consulting with the board before … he speaks when he wants, and just not making him spokesperson won’t change that. Unfortunately.
First of all: sorry for the huge wall of text… as you can guess I also enjoy the discussion.
Oh sorry, that’s not what I meant. You’ve been very respectful.
It was an example to illustrate why I called some of the accusations of the letter “insults”, I didn’t want to imply that you insulted me. I should have said “someone” there (in fact I think I did it in a later edit but I might have been too late… ugh).
Why not just state the facts and let them speak for themselves?
Intentionally hurting people would definitely be a cause to remove him. I expect that’s actually against the FSF code.
The thing with making a public open letter like this is that you need to convince not only the FSF but also those that you are asking signatures from. Specially if they’re also being asked to boicot the FSF donations and events.
Then it shouldn’t be surprising to see a counter-reaction from those who do not have account of those incidents and who do not think the accusations are deserved.
Like you said, this should not have been about “deserving punishment” but about protecting others. Yet the letter does not talk much about the victims, the harm and what caused it. It does not really explain how removing Stallman stops him from that abuse or what mistakes the FSF itself has done that have been a consequence of Stallman being part of the board. The letter does come off as seeking punishment for his independent behavior.
Even if they really did believe that RMS is behaving like that on purpose out of malice/phobia/insanity/other, had they made the exercise of assuming that it was a reiterated and constant mistake would have gone a long way to actually get the point across. You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
It’s also ironic that when they actually try to give examples, the only thing they show are either things that have been later corrected when brought to the attention of RMS himself (like the child consent thing, but also the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines) or things that when in context are clearly misunderstandments (he isn’t saying that by law all children with down syndrome should be forcefully aborted…) or about that publicly available email thread about Minsky where he’s really not saying anything crazy when you actually read through it.
That must have been quite a thing… he also came to my University (ages ago) and I heard some things from the organizers about how particular he was. I don’t really remember the details but I can imagine there are many stories like that. He’s definitely very quirky. But I’m sure there’s more than one board of directors with a “strange” nerd on it.
Also, when he’s called to give a conference like this, normally it’s for him to talk about his philosophy and personal history in the Free Software movement, independently of whatever his position is in the FSF. Kicking him out from the FSF is not preventing that scenario.
I agree, but are you referring to this? https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html
It’s possible that he’s trying to “respect the wishes” of non-binary people without really understanding what their wishes are. And knowing how particular he is about the correct manner of saying “GNU/Linux” I can imagine how a conversation about the topic with him could be difficult…
My understanding is that seeking a gender-neutral pronoun can actually be the wrong call, even as an heterosexual male I would find it patronizing if Stallman used the gender neutral pronoun on me, so I expect the same would happen for someone who identified as “she” / “they” or any other pronoun. But is it actually transfobic?
The open letter is locked now and they even closed the issue tracker, but before they closed it there was this comment from a trans person who actually thought accusing him of being a transfobe was too much.
But asking for his removal and that of the entire board did not stick either. It’s actually a demand harder to defend.
And even if it had stuck, he still speaks when he wants. Not being in the board of directors is not gonna stop that. If his words are too loud is because of RMS popularity as independent “philosopher”, not because of his position in the FSF.
If the intention was to play poker and ask for something crazy to try and get anything at all then… well, it shouldn’t be a surprise if that craziness is called out and it results in mixed reactions that end up mudding the waters and missing the point.
Sure, in the end such poker move might actually work (if the real intention was to get some reaction from the FSF and not really what was demanded) but at what cost? I’m sure things could have gone better by playing it cool. Many portrayed this as a “witch hunt” and I don’t think those reactions were unjustified. This isn’t just bad image for RMS but also for the anti-RMS crowd, to the point that an anti-anti-RMS letter came up with 6000+ signatures, double than the original letter.
np, I’m glad this is mutual!
phew, I sometimes have the issue of coming off condescending, which I definitely do not intend :)
Those facts are difficult to state, since they are mostly related to interpersonal evens like the one I stated. Although I agree that this would’ve been preferable.
I get your point here, but that’s, to me the crux of the situation: These are internal events and often in violation of the FSF’s own code. Thus, there should’ve been an internal investigation, but that didn’t happen. The problem then though is: What now? As with allegations of (sexual) abuse, those things are hard to proof to the public. However, the FSF board very much knows of (most of) the cases they allude to, and they are the addresses.
However, as you correctly observe, it’s an open letter since they need to build pressure on the FSF. But they can’t “just state the facts” for the reasons mentioned. This is, definitely, a difficult situation.
But I don’t think everyone ought to “decide” to support one or the other letter, especially those completely outside of the circle. As they, indeed, have very little insight into what happened. It’s an ugly situation, I totally agree with that.
Absolutely, it isn’t surprising! The problem with the whole situation is that it should have been solved internally but hasn’t. Such things are predestined to go badly.
In the end, the immediate circle of people affected (including the FSF board) can really judge. But also, in our society, it is simply a fact that everyone needs to position themselves, despite not actually really being in charge.
I didn’t read the letter that way, but I can see how it can be read as punishment. I can not counter this and have to say that this shouldn’t be (wasn’t?) intended. I agree that discussing the problems the FSF had due to RMS would indeed have been a very healthy addition.
Absolutely. In the end, the letter was an act of frustration long boiling and it reads that way.
What I agree with is that they don’t properly differentiate b/w a) clear violations of other peoples personal identity or similar and b) bad PR stunts. From what I know, both things happened, while the former are usually internal issues (thus should’ve been resolved internally) and the latter, by definition, public. Taking the Minsky statement, what he said was not really crazy but uncalled-for and absolutely unnecessary pedantry. Furthermore, similar wording is also chosen in malice by those who are defending sexual abuse and belittling victims. I do think RMS wasn’t aware of what he did was basically unintentional “dog whistling” but this is very bad PR nontheless, and thus harmful to the FSF as a whole. Especially if it happens repeatedly, and no “sorry” or “correction” later can, unfortunately, fix the publicity problems that result from it.
It would have served them well if they had made a distinction b/w these two things.
Sure, but quirky becomes bad rep when it ends in inappropriate behavior like pressing students with little money to pay for (quite expensive) tickets, by simply living in their “workplace”. He was told to end this behavior multiple times, but didn’t change. And that’s kind of the issue.
Sure, but then it’s bad rep for mostly him and the Free Software movement (bad enough), but the FSF could easily do something like distancing themselves from him. This would do them very good in all such occasions.
I think the key point is “without really understanding what their wishes are”, and maybe that’s the distilled version of almost all criticism of RMS. Either he doesn’t care or he thinks he knows better what people wish for than themselves. At first, this is annoying or funny (GNU/Linux pedantry), but when it comes to people and how they’d like to be addressed it quickly leaves that area and becomes downright hurtful.
I wouldn’t count the usage of it transphobic per-se, but with many things -phobic and -ist, it comes down to the power (im-)balance. That is, in current law and society, a trans person defending themselves to be called the pronoun they want has a much harder stance to defend than a non-trans, cis, person. That is, while from RMS’ pov misgendering a cis man by referring to them as “she” or whatever is the same as misgendering a trans person by referring to them with a different pronoun than asked for – from the affected persons pov this is quite different. Most cis people would definitely feel patronized by it, but they could either shrug it off or, if in public, simply demand him to behave properly. A trans person who’s regularly attacked and invalidated (in our current society) doesn’t have this luxury/privilege, and as such, these statements are hurtful and dangerous.
Basically, what I’m trying to say is: In a perfect society this wouldn’t be much more than patronizing. In a similar way, in a perfect society “black facing” wouldn’t be any different than “white facing” – but acting as if we were in such a society is wrong and dangerous to minorities.
Now, whether this is transphobic …
… this is definitely a dividing matter. In my bubble (which, uh, contains quite some people who’re trans :p), the overwhelming opinion is that what he did, indeed, is transphobic. Obviously that’s no “proof”, but it shows that these people, who experience transphobia from other persons in the society on a day-to-day basis, have a hard time distinguishing (unintentional) dog-whistling and … patronizing behavior by Stallman from intentional attacks. Mind you, in public most transphobic people (outside of Fox News) disguise their transphobia rather well.
While similar things have been reported for RMS as well (i.e., behaving much worse to trans people in private than in public) I don’t want to dwell on it, as it’s not that much convincing. I think, in the end, it boils down to whether one counts unintentional “attacks” as transphobic or not.
To open the RMS-like jar o’ pedantry, maybe one could say that:
But then we need to ask ourselves: Does that change much? [to be continued since I reached the character limit… jeez]
EDIT: continuation below in comment to this comment :)
… Obviously it’s important to treat malice different from unintentional things when it comes to judging (and I know, you read the letter as judging and I didn’t but I see where you’re coming from and admit that it’s bad that it could be read that way). However, if you read the letter just as a demand to remove him to stop further harm (my reading) then, this is pretty much irrelevant.
That’s true, and, honestly, kinda shameful for the FSF. The FSF would/will/… have a hard time to justify it’s sense w/o RMS.
I think, in hindsight, the way the letter was worded and prepared was the wrong step forward. Unfortunately, I also don’t really see an alternative. There were more kind, more proper, discussions before, for decades. Sometimes they even resulted in change!
But where are we now, in the year 2021? The FSF has become irrelevant, for many reasons. Some can definitely be attributed to the way the Internet and corporations developed, how Open Source became a thing (ironically ESR has signed the anti-anti-RMS letter :D) etc. But also, the FSF was kind-of at the forefront of political discussion in the technology scene, with seeing the technology as someone that should revolve around human needs and society, and not vice-versa. It was refreshing, it was new, it was progressive.
And while the FSF is still radical, it feels like that’s the only thing left. Radical, senseless (to the point it becomes annoying), repeating of anti-firmware tirades etc. Obviously, many stances are still more progressive than the political climate, but they’ve lost pretty much their target group. It feels like having Rosa Luxemburg as a leader of “The Left”: While certainly progressive, not fitting for the time.
People pressed for changes, but nothing could be heard over the deafening presence of RMS. Maybe the best criticism of the FSF is that it’s just “The RMS Society”. Which isn’t necessarily bad, but it means that we have gap there, where an FSF that wouldn’t be “just RMS” would be.
All in all, I think we agree on many points of the problem(s). And perhaps even, that such an “open letter” isn’t always bad, but simply whether this was the point of time that this letter should have been written. And also, that there are certainly some things in the letter that could’ve been phrased better, to say the least.
That was a long comment, but I felt much more comfortable quote-posting as I didn’t want to write this up from memory, in order not to talk past your points or misrepresent you.
Wow… I didn’t even know there was a character limit… :P
Once again, very reasonable response(s). Honestly I think we fundamentally agree in most of the arguments, to the point that I’m running out of things to add -says as he proceeds to drop another column-
I’m sorry but in my quote-posting I’m gonna cherry-pick specific parts, not because I want to misrepresent you but because I don’t want to make it unwieldly. However, please call out at any point if I’m missing something important you said or misinterpreting something.
This is the part that still seems strange to me. If these episodes are so frequent and blatant there must be plenty of testimonials, it wouldn’t be impossible to record conversation, an email thread… or someone could prepare a public interview with him where he’s confronted about controversial behavior, maybe giving opportunity to the victims to talk (anonymously maybe even, just a recording without the face, maybe even altered voice) and see RMS reaction and response to it. Specially for things that you said were recurrent and he has not fixed for years. Confront him about the fact that those have not been fixed for years and show it to him, then show the public what he has to say.
Just having these kind of things exposed might actually spark change already, even without the need to collect signatures.
I understand that it’s still a lot of effort and it’s not as easy to prove as more public forms of abuse, but I find it hard to believe that there would be no verifiable testimonies or some form of evidence. Specially in the world of Software, where a lot of communication happens electronically, even internally. If the issue is privacy policy, RMS could be publlicly asked for permission to show his private responses in such interview… if he actually refuses then… well, that’d already look fishy and uncooperative which is something that’d be good to get exposure on.
If RMS had rejected to participating in such interview then… well, that’s something that could have been in the letter. If they cannot provide anything solid at the very least they should be convincing about why that is.
It would give good rep with those who were exposed to the proof. And at the same time it would also give bad rep with those who think that the removal was undeserved. This is why it’s important to be convincing.
Had the FSF listened to the letter, removed RMS and completelly changed the entire board, it would not be a total surprise to me if the same motivation that pushed for the anti-anti-RMS letter ended up giving birth to a new alternative movement, more welcome to RMS and the directors from the previous board. Maybe a new foundation would have been created, in a similar way as how the Open Source Initiative separated itself from the FSF. Creating more division and taking a bite of the FSF cake.
Maybe many in the OSI are secretly happy about all this drama, I wouldn’t be surprised if they got at least a small bump in supporters. After all they exist as a more pragmatic alternative to Stallman’s FSF. At least 4 Directors / Former Directors of the OSI appear in the first set of names of the letter separated from the rest, which I expect that it means they were part of the team who wrote it…
That’s sensible. I agree.
If it isn’t read as an accusation of being “misogynist, ableist, and transphobic” (although if “internalized” had been added then I’d not argue), then you are right. If I do the exercise of reading it as only a demand, that would take away most of my criticism about the “wording” of the letter, and the only thing that would remain is my criticism of whether what was demanded actually stops further harm.
I agree it would be good to see a new flow of progressive change. But the sad thing is that there has not really been any loud voice inside or outside the FSF that introduced any new strain of philosophy as groundbreaking as the initial movement was in the 90s. The thing is that we aren’t talking about a new approach, we are talking about the respect for others that already has been claimed. What we are talking is not being progressive but being consequent with values we already are meant to defend.
Are these values not being respected? That’s the issue. There’s division on this topic, and if the division is not solved and it keeps scalating then ultimatelly it could mean the FSF itself could divide, with a new organization appearing or maybe the OSI taking over the banner.
The problem here is that both sides see each other as the enemy (this is very clear when seeing twitter), one side dehumanizing the other, as in a sort of ideological warfare. Dehumanization sparks dehumanization. And it’s hard to convince someone about what in our view might be “the right thing” when they have already dehumanized us.
We will see. My hope is that RMS & the FSF will both see the mess and try and take the kind of measures that the open letter should have requested in the first place and it didn’t (things like making sure RMS controversial behavior is under leash, communicates only in written form externally or internally with those outside the board, never go to any event without some form of caretaker that knows how to deal with him, etc… or whatever measures would actually help with those problems that the letter didn’t explain). And then hopefully this whole war will slowly be forgotten.