571–580 of 580 posts
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He has said that he changed his mind.
Are you referring to this brief statement [1]? That does not pass as sincere in my book. Good luck to him in the future, I hope he gets everything sorted. [1] https://www.stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_Septe...
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At the end of the day, the FSF board had to decide what they wanted to do, either a) let RMS continue to do his usual thing without repercussions and become a less-relevant organization that people don't take seriously, or b) clean house and maintain some level of trust. Presumably they also considered a c) let RMS continue to do his thing and hope that there's no fallout. But I guess they considered (c) wasn't reali…
What makes it bad faith? Read through this thread. There's a lot of hearsay and misrepresentation and obviously some people just plain uncomfortable with RMS's persona regardless of what he did or didn't say. And that's why I think this argument: > a) let RMS continue to do his usual thing without repercussions and become a less-relevant organization that people don't take seriously doesn't hold any water. First of a…
I get that, but you're just one person (as am I). If we take all of the people who previously had some respect for the FSF, my guess would be that more than half of them will continue to respect them after this, or actually respect them more (as I will). If all of this had come to light and the FSF have done nothing, I'd respect them less and take them less seriously. I suspect that's true for a lot of other people as well.
Of course, I don't know this for sure, it's just what I think. But that's all we're doing here anyway: just throwing around our opinions.
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If you have a condition where you have trouble interacting socially with people, while also running an influential organization and acting as its figurehead, you need to be able to mitigate these issues. If this means you have an assistant who you run emails by before sending them, so be it. If your assistant also takes a look at your office (given to you as a favor by a respected educational institution) and tells y…
Allow me to substitute autism for a different handicap and see if you still agree: If you have a condition where you have trouble not swearing, while also running an influential organization and acting as its figurehead, you need to be able to mitigate these issues. If this means you have an assistant who you run emails by before sending them, so be it. If female colleagues are putting plants in their offices because…
I think your analogy is a little bit fallacious, though. We're not talking about a verbal tic here; we're talking about actual actions that make women feel unsafe in his presence.
Put another way, I would be far far more comfortable telling someone "hey, yeah, he has a verbal tic that makes him say 'fuck' a lot; it's weird, but just ignore it" than I would be telling a woman, "hey, yeah, he's [something] and that makes him inappropriately hit on you all the time in situations where he has power over you; it's weird, but just ignore it". Yeah... nope.
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You don't have to be a doctor to diagnose asshole behavior.
But you do to judge what people with any given type of mental health issue can and cannot do.
A handicap might mean that you just can't do certain things. No, it's not fair, but it's not like we expect the a quadriplegic person to be a long-distance runner... at least not with the medical technology available to us today. I hear a lot of rhetoric (that I agree with) around how a mental illness should be treated just like any other illness and not stigmatized as something to be embarrassed about. But it goes both ways: if a mental illness is just like any other illness (or handicap), then it's perfectly possible that some mental illnesses might mean that some activities aren't feasible, at least not until we understand them well enough to provide better treatments.
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> We've banned this account for using HN primarily for political and ideological battle WHAT? FSF means Free Software Foundation, Free as in Free speech, IT IS POLITICAL! What the heck are you talking about?
I'm talking about your account history. It's against the site guidelines to use HN primarily for posting in political and ideological arguments. Would you please re-read them and not create accounts to break them with? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This account was created a year and half ago, I may have written a little over 200 comments (it's one every 3 days average) and I have just posted more recently in light of the events regarding Stallman, which I admire since the middle 90s.
Is this really policing or just plain and simple censorship?
> and not create accounts to break them with?
What do you mean?
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> He doesn't hold a trademark on "Software Freedom". Has he ever claimed that? > I was there when it was reported and had confirmation from a witness. It is true because I say so it's not really an answer to the question. > I was on the board when he was fired. So you can confirm you fired him? That's interesting. Back then you wrote > This, in conjunction with his behaviour over the ZFS issue, led to him stepping do…
> Has he ever claimed that? You said that it's necessary to sue to protect trademarks. In this case, where is the necessity? > It is true because I say so it's not really an answer to the question You can choose to believe me or you can choose to believe I'm lying - entirely up to you. > So you can confirm you fired him? Eh. Asked him to resign with the understanding that he'd be fired otherwise. > And even if it was…
I understand you don't like questions.
Moglen founded SFLC and helped SFC come to the light.
He even registered SFC trademark, he asked for the cancellation of SFC, not the trademark of "Free Software".
Now it's sure that no one will try to register a trademark similar to FSLC or FSC dealing with free software.
With that move he protected both.
There's no need to double down on the false accusation line.
Facts are well know by now.
> You can choose to believe me or you can choose to believe I'm lying - entirely up to you.
I'm not a believer.
I prefer the sane way of doing things: reviewing evidence.
You are not providing any, just "believe me or not", which is not what I'd like to do when it's about my money.
You said something about Moglen that upset me, I've just asked for a clarification, that you refuse to provide.
> Eh. Asked him to resign with the understanding that he'd be fired otherwise
So you did fire him, but issued a different statement.
Good to know.
> It's not a crime, it's just inappropriate to take money from a company and provide legal opinions that serve their interests
When did this happen exactly?
Wasn't Moglen providing legal opinions to Debian, the FSF, Canonical, but not Oracle?
And What interests are you talking about?
Is Google any different from Oracle?
One of my favourite programmer ever, Alan Cox (who also kinda look like Stallman), worked for a long time on the Linux kernel but was also being paid by Intel for a few years. What's wrong about that?
> as general counsel for an organisation that strongly and publicly holds a different opinion
The different opinion was a minor difference though.
I remember the OpenZFS problem: the only difference was that Moglen believed that users can legally distribute copies of OpenZFS binary blobs as the result of the compilation of an openly licensed source code, while FSF said no.
They had the same opinion on everything else.
Even Linus said in the past “But one gray area in particular is something like a driver that was originally written for another operating system (ie clearly not a derived work of Linux in origin). At exactly what point does it become a derived work of the kernel (and thus fall under the GPL)?”
Is this enough to fire people?
BTW Canonical have been distributing OpenZFS for years now and the sky has not fallen, nor Oracle have become richer thanks to that. They still distribute the real ZFS (the proprietary one) which is a much better implementation of ZFS.
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> Has he ever claimed that? You said that it's necessary to sue to protect trademarks. In this case, where is the necessity? > It is true because I say so it's not really an answer to the question You can choose to believe me or you can choose to believe I'm lying - entirely up to you. > So you can confirm you fired him? Eh. Asked him to resign with the understanding that he'd be fired otherwise. > And even if it was…
> You said that it's necessary to sue to protect trademarks. In this case, where is the necessity? I understand you don't like questions. Moglen founded SFLC and helped SFC come to the light. He even registered SFC trademark, he asked for the cancellation of SFC, not the trademark of "Free Software". Now it's sure that no one will try to register a trademark similar to FSLC or FSC dealing with free software. With tha…
He protected the Software Freedom Conservancy by accusing it of violating the Software Freedom Law Center trademark? You're going to need to explain that more clearly.
> I've just asked for a clarification, that you refuse to provide.
I've clarified as much as I can. When there's no other public evidence available, what do you want me to do?
> The different opinion was a minor difference though.
It really wasn't.
> Is this enough to fire people?
Evidently.
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> You said that it's necessary to sue to protect trademarks. In this case, where is the necessity? I understand you don't like questions. Moglen founded SFLC and helped SFC come to the light. He even registered SFC trademark, he asked for the cancellation of SFC, not the trademark of "Free Software". Now it's sure that no one will try to register a trademark similar to FSLC or FSC dealing with free software. With tha…
> With that move he protected both. He protected the Software Freedom Conservancy by accusing it of violating the Software Freedom Law Center trademark? You're going to need to explain that more clearly. > I've just asked for a clarification, that you refuse to provide. I've clarified as much as I can. When there's no other public evidence available, what do you want me to do? > The different opinion was a minor diff…
I think you are intelligent enough to understand it on your own.
BTW, I know asking question is good, but sometimes try to answer other people's questions, it's good too!
> When there's no other public evidence available, what do you want me to do?
So we can safely assume he did not do anything you say, he's innocent until proven guilty, like any of us, right?
> It really wasn't.
It really was.
I'm with Joshua Gay (former employee of the FSF Licensing & Compliance Team) on this:
It is not clear to me that there is any contradiction between the SFLC statement and the FSF’s statement on the matter of Linux and ZFS. That is, I can’t really find how the SFLC and FSF differ in their interpretation GPLv2 and CDDL.
>> Is this enough to fire people? > Evidently
That's why it is bad, if it wasn't evident.
FSF should not act as evil corporations do.
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> With that move he protected both. He protected the Software Freedom Conservancy by accusing it of violating the Software Freedom Law Center trademark? You're going to need to explain that more clearly. > I've just asked for a clarification, that you refuse to provide. I've clarified as much as I can. When there's no other public evidence available, what do you want me to do? > The different opinion was a minor diff…
> You're going to need to explain that more clearly. I think you are intelligent enough to understand it on your own. BTW, I know asking question is good, but sometimes try to answer other people's questions, it's good too! > When there's no other public evidence available, what do you want me to do? So we can safely assume he did not do anything you say, he's innocent until proven guilty, like any of us, right? > It…
I wouldn't be asking if I could. How does "Software Freedom Conservancy" damage the "Software Freedom Law Center" trademark?
> So we can safely assume he did not do anything you say, he's innocent until proven guilty, like any of us, right?
Given the lack of independent corroboration, it's certainly reasonable for you to assume that I'm mistaken or lying.
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> You're going to need to explain that more clearly. I think you are intelligent enough to understand it on your own. BTW, I know asking question is good, but sometimes try to answer other people's questions, it's good too! > When there's no other public evidence available, what do you want me to do? So we can safely assume he did not do anything you say, he's innocent until proven guilty, like any of us, right? > It…
> I think you are intelligent enough to understand it on your own. I wouldn't be asking if I could. How does "Software Freedom Conservancy" damage the "Software Freedom Law Center" trademark? > So we can safely assume he did not do anything you say, he's innocent until proven guilty, like any of us, right? Given the lack of independent corroboration, it's certainly reasonable for you to assume that I'm mistaken or ly…
Considering the latter founded the former, I think you should ask them.
The timeline is the following
- 17-September-2005 – US Trademark First Use Date: SOFTWARE FREEDOM CONSERVANCY (by the SFLC itself)
- 3-April-2006 – SFLC Announces incorporation of Software Freedom Conservancy as an independent non-profit, with Eben Moglen, Karen Sandler, and Daniel Ravicher as Directors
Anyway, their reasons are in the petition for the cancellation of "Software Freedom Conservancy" that can be found here http://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=92066968&pty=CAN&eno=...
The trademark of "Software freedom" is never mentioned, but only "GROUNDS FOR CANCELLATION – LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION" (all uppercase as in the original document)