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Joint Statement on the GNU Project

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181–190 of 310 posts

Re: Joint Statement on the GNU Project

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if that list is comprehensive. Neither Ludovic Courtes or John Wiegley are on it (and they are both signatories of the open letter).

Maybe it tells us something about the "joint" part? So mob-sad..

Wiegley has probably done more to make Emacs exciting again than anyone since the XEmacs fork.

(Which, hey, speaking of RMS driving off contributors...)

Re: Joint Statement on the GNU Project

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you will maybe have an unpopular opinion in private and is leaked to the public(like it happened with Mozilla CEO) or you used some bad words 20 years ago or made someone uncomfortable and they will remeber it tomorrow.

Private opinions of CEOs have repercussions. But in Eich's case, it went beyond "private opinion;" he contributed $1,000 to support Proposition 8. Eich didn't get forced out for having a "bad private opinion;" he got forced out for supporting something materially that would cause material harm to Mozilla staff, then making clear his opinion on the topic was unchanged. Staff that had a lack of confidence in his contin…

It is complex situation but as a CEO or project leader or random open source developer that I am not that well informed with the latest social media culture how do I know what is a controversial opinions?

I am legitimately asking this, say maybe I think that X feature is nature not nurture, and there is a discussion at an event about X , what do I Google to know if I should talk about X or not. The problem is more complicated if my opinion today would be controversial in the future.

Re: Joint Statement on the GNU Project

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

good to know that you're cool with harassment if it doesn't cross a certain numerical threshold. Clarifying.

What part of "Yeah, he fucked up in approaching those women and making them uncomfortable" and "It's still too high a number" consists being "cool with harassment"? FWIW, I will not be responding to you any further, as your comments seem to have devolved into personal attacks.

probably a good thing, since you consistently have side stepped any substantive responses to your apologia.

And anytime your rationalizing harassment by inventing "statistics" whole cloth, you're going to get push back, deserved push back, because thats obscene.

Re: Joint Statement on the GNU Project

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the nicest thing we can say about a leader of an organization is that most women were not harassed by him because they didn't get to meet him , then maybe it's time to look for a leader who is, you know, capable of actually meeting people without creeping them out.

No, the nicest thing we can say about the leader of this organization is that he lead it with principles around free software that nobody else can match. That he has been outright prescient in his outlook on what will happen as corporations disrespect the rights of users via their software. He created the free software movement, created GNU. We're standing on his shoulders, only now (after 20+ years of standing on hi…

Yes, yes, Stallman did many good things, he was right about a lot of things, and we are all indebted to him, but... "The Leader of GNU Projects" is not an award or honorary title. It's an actual role with expectations.

The question is not how much work Stallman has done in the past 20+ years (few will have an issue with that) - the question is whether having Stallman at the helm of GNU benefits GNU projects, right now.

Re: Joint Statement on the GNU Project

#185
post #126

The only joy I get from these threads is in watching a whole bunch of newbies to GNU get upset that politics, social policy, and GNU are intertwined. They have always been! You could at least have the dignity to read Stallman’s writings (a fine start is available at: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/essays-and-articles.html , a more advanced diet is available at Stallman.org ) to understand just how politically charged…

There's no one in that project that is such a fanatic and well-known personality that they'd be able to lead it. After being embraced, extended and diluted by corporations, software freedom will slide even more into irrelevance. This also doesn't seem to be a discussion, it's a statement towards Stallman to GTFO.

That may well be true. Certainly, and reserving judgement on exactly what this means, nobody who could lead it quite like Stallman.

But, I find the implication hard to accept.

It would be to say that Stallman’s continuing presence is essential to the success of free software; surely a frightening responsibility for any one mortal person to carry through their remaining years!

Free software has had success as a movement. To believe otherwise is to take away more than just Stallman’s position, but his entire contribution to our modern society!

That means there are others who will, and for a fact do already, take care for the well-being of the GNU projects. Not all of these will believe in everything Stallman has said or represents, and things would certainly change without him.

A large and successful movement lives beyond its founder, and grows to challenge the new status quo. If it fails to grow, new movements fill the vacuum.

Re: Joint Statement on the GNU Project

#186
post #141

Many people here talk about "cancel culture" which is in fact a fake culture that is completely artificially generated via paid actors, like some on this list of signatures. Most of the people taking part in the character assasination plot against Stallman running right now work in fact for Saleaforce, IBM or some other FAANG type of organization. You can look it up by yourself. Stallman is a very eccentric person wh…

> Most of the people taking part in the character assasination plot against Stallman running right now work in fact for Saleaforce, IBM or some other FAANG type of organization Maybe those corporations do a better job at providing an inclusive environment than the free software community? And those people are interested in bringing the same to the FS world. (Whether or not it was necessary to push Stallman out for th…

The FOSS community is about hobbyist recreational programming for FUN.

If you want to kill the FUN you introduce COCs, you guilt trip people of a certain gender and race (white male) for simply existing and you create artificial drama via divide and conquer like the current Stallman campagn. Congratulations, mission accomplished, the fun has been eradicated.

Inviting the corporate world into FOSS was a grave mistake. The FOSS community should generally exclude everybody who is not fun. Inclusiveness has proven itself to be counterproductive.

Re: Joint Statement on the GNU Project

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently some other non serious groups include: governments, most major corporations.

That's exactly right. Governments enforce their power through force and major corporations through money. Not groups that deserve any respect or their stance be taking seriously.

This is a huge aside, but the most disturbing part of your response is the bit about governments. Governments are _supposed_ to be responsible to the people. Responding to external pressure is literally their job. They should be respected when they are responsive to the people. They only need to "enforce their power through force" when they are not responsive to the people.

Re: Joint Statement on the GNU Project

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private opinions of CEOs have repercussions. But in Eich's case, it went beyond "private opinion;" he contributed $1,000 to support Proposition 8. Eich didn't get forced out for having a "bad private opinion;" he got forced out for supporting something materially that would cause material harm to Mozilla staff, then making clear his opinion on the topic was unchanged. Staff that had a lack of confidence in his contin…

It is complex situation but as a CEO or project leader or random open source developer that I am not that well informed with the latest social media culture how do I know what is a controversial opinions? I am legitimately asking this, say maybe I think that X feature is nature not nurture, and there is a discussion at an event about X , what do I Google to know if I should talk about X or not. The problem is more co…

I think you're looking for guarantees in the social world.

There are no such guarantees (much as there are no guarantees in the tech space... That, say, your favorite language today won't be obsolete in five years and therefore diminish the value of all the time and effort you invested in memorizing its quirks). There are some useful heuristics, such as "try and be a good person, minimize your judgement of others, avoid speculating on things that other people have concrete experience with." Also, be informed about the latest social media culture; Proposition 8 was huge in California (and around the U.S.) and it should have been self-evident to Eich that supporting it was a bad call (I'm a lot less forgiving of Eich than some people are, because it's real hard for me to see his behavior and interpret it as anything other than "He put money behind his convictions and mis-estimated how much political power homosexual people and their allies had in his company to hold him accountable to putting money behind his convictions," which isn't exactly a stellar review of his behavior).

We in tech seem to like to believe that the technical world is above politics. It's not; technology serves people, so politics is, of course, part of the story. Politics is just what happens when people interact.

Re: Joint Statement on the GNU Project

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you will maybe have an unpopular opinion in private and is leaked to the public(like it happened with Mozilla CEO) or you used some bad words 20 years ago or made someone uncomfortable and they will remeber it tomorrow.

Question is (at least in case of Brendan Eich), when does an opinion stop being an opinion and start being just harmful hate? Surely we can all agree that there is a line to draw somewhere.

The problem is can we measure and who measures what is harmful or uncomfortable. I am sure if it was just an opinion he would have shared with a group of people and then leaked would have had a similar effect. I do not agree with the guy opinion but I dislike when social media mobs put pressure on organization to fire people.

Re: Joint Statement on the GNU Project

#190
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of the people taking part in the character assasination plot against Stallman running right now work in fact for Saleaforce, IBM or some other FAANG type of organization Maybe those corporations do a better job at providing an inclusive environment than the free software community? And those people are interested in bringing the same to the FS world. (Whether or not it was necessary to push Stallman out for th…

The FOSS community is about hobbyist recreational programming for FUN. If you want to kill the FUN you introduce COCs, you guilt trip people of a certain gender and race (white male) for simply existing and you create artificial drama via divide and conquer like the current Stallman campagn. Congratulations, mission accomplished, the fun has been eradicated. Inviting the corporate world into FOSS was a grave mistake.…

> The FOSS community is about hobbyist recreational programming for FUN.

No, it was never exclusively about that, and it's become less dominantly about that over time.

> Inviting the corporate world into FOSS was a grave mistake.

The nature of “free” and “open source” is you don't get to choose who to invite.

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