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Mozilla, Tor Join Calls to Oust Richard Stallman from Free Software Foundation

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Re: Mozilla, Tor Join Calls to Oust Richard Stallman from Free Software Foundation

#231
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not. https://mark-watson.blogspot.com/2016/01/i-will-not-vote-for...

I mean, you're technically correct in the sense that "liberal" and "leftist" have been erroneously conflated in American politics for some time. So yes, a "liberal" not voting for Clinton would be out of character. A leftist not voting for Clinton, however, seems perfectly reasonable, considering that she is not even remotely leftist. She's a neoliberal, who ran on a neoliberal platform - one that would've made no me…

Yeah, Americans don't get it.

The Republican Party in Europe would be a conservative right party while the Democrat Party would be a moderated center-right one with some liberal hints.

Re: Mozilla, Tor Join Calls to Oust Richard Stallman from Free Software Foundation

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal testimony happens in a court of law. Testimony can happen anywhere. Religious testimony for instance. Or testimonial advertising.

Lol, thus you are saying testifying in church is 'evidence'. Gotta love the mental gymnastics on HN sometimes.

Anecdotal evidence is evidence. Maybe you're thinking of proof.

Re: Mozilla, Tor Join Calls to Oust Richard Stallman from Free Software Foundation

#233
post #41

Well, there go my annual Tor donations, oh well. Let's see if they can make up for these losses by going the cancel culture/censorship route. And Mozilla has been a joke for a while with their latest CEO. He's literally trying to jump on anything currently trendy, to hold onto his seat and salary for as long as possible while he drives its projects into the bedrock.

I had some correspondence with rms while he was being hunted, and all he asked is to help the FSF by becoming a member. He was still defending the same organization that was removing him. So if we want to show support now is the time to become members, to show the FSF our support for rms and what he stands for.

Re: Mozilla, Tor Join Calls to Oust Richard Stallman from Free Software Foundation

#234
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally find the open letter a bit short on these sorts of details. I think better sources are these: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html (October 2019, by a former FSF board member and 2021 recipient of the FSF's Award for the Advancement of Free Software): > For the last two years, I had been a loud internal voice in the FSF leadership regarding RMS' Free-Software-unrelated public statements; I f…

Both of these are relevant to his removal back then, but how are they relevant now ? > assure the best outcome for the FSF, which IMO didn't include having a leader who made such statements. Ok, he's no longer leading the FSF and the recent development does not aim to change that. Why is this (reasonable-at-the-time, imo) opinion relevant now? > I've reached the conclusion that it's not that he's unable to understand…

He hasn't said anything, and moreover the FSF was awfully secretive about the fact that he was rejoining:

https://twitter.com/fsf/status/1374399897558917128

It is certainly possible that between 2019 and now that he is no longer "unwilling to change his mind." (I think that's more important than whether he "repented"/"atoned"; I'm not looking for a YouTube apology video, I'm looking for an effective leader.) But a) given that complaints about his leadership approach had been around for decades, it's a priori unlikely that anything changed in the last year and a half without further information, b) his announcement didn't say anything about reflecting on why he stepped down, he just said he's back and isn't planning on stepping down again, and c) he's continued leading the GNU Project, which the FSF provides organizational stewardship for, everything points to nothing having changed.

We don't know why the FSF put him back on the board - we don't know if the board asked or he asked. We don't know whether they took any of the above into account. We don't know what his role on the board is. The only statement the FSF made is that one tweet.

(And, in any case, being a member of the FSF board is a leadership role.)

There's a lot of concern apart from the text of the open letter about the FSF's secrecy. For instance, see this statement from the EFF https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/statement-re-election-... and this one from KDE https://ev.kde.org/2021/03/24/on-the-reappointment-of-rms-fs... .

I agree that the open letter doesn't go into full detail about why the authors of the letter believe that no meaningful change has happened, but I think they are justified in believing it.

Re: Mozilla, Tor Join Calls to Oust Richard Stallman from Free Software Foundation

#235
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me this list of people and organizations are not some silly knights of "woke activism", they are people who'd feel misrepresented by RMS due to his beliefs. I'd not be so dismissive to that. We try to make software a more inclusive place. Several of these organizations engage in woke political D&I activism, e.g. Mozilla and GNOME. The woke sense of tolerance is to be intolerant to violations of its fundamentalis…

> most expect tolerance to be a two-way street Are you aware of the tolerance paradox of Popper? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance > The woke sense of tolerance I dont think adding this "woke" word helps making your point. Or, could you please define what you mean by it? I'm intolerant of hate speech myself. I think organizations that represent people may hold even stricter "codes of conduct" in orde…

> Are you aware of the tolerance paradox of Popper?

> The woke sense of tolerance

Yes, Popper wrote the "paradox of tolerance" in 1945 as a liberal philosophical answer to the national socialists that were intolerant to violations to their fundamentalist norms.

What the paradox of intolerance says is that we should be intolerant towards totalizing belief systems that justify force and coercion against viewpoint opponent to enforce their compliance to its norms. The woke belief system is exactly the kind of belief system he warned us about. Basically, Popper says tolerance need to be a two-way street.

> I did not accuse him, I said I valued him coming around on this topic. It seems you want to paint me in a color no matter what I say.

That is not what I meant, as I’ve been responding to your request for a defense. Focus is on the accusation and how this kind of accusation found in the linked open letter is frequently used by the woke to reduce the moral standing of opponents. I demonstrated how if you respond to such an accusation, that due to its woke political activist wording demonstrably at least partially contain political activist aspects, you will still loose moral standing.

Re: Mozilla, Tor Join Calls to Oust Richard Stallman from Free Software Foundation

#236
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For heavens sake, "business or pleasure?" was the question you were asked at the border before getting a stamp in your passport once upon a time. So a business card turned into a pleasure card , which has nothing to do with sex at all, except for people who want to see things that aren't there. It's one of RMS's quaint re-namings, and people turn it into something sinister. > Women at MIT were warned away from him, t…

You downplay the sexual harassment of handing out these 'pleasure cards'. But ultimately, real women are upset by it. The unprofessional behavior discourages women from being in tech. Just because you wouldn't mind receiving such a card, doesn't mean it's not harassment. I mean, do you understand (a) the nature of consent, and (b) professional workplace environments?

Which real women? Why could they not reject such card?

Re: Mozilla, Tor Join Calls to Oust Richard Stallman from Free Software Foundation

#237

I'll be honest here, I dislike the cancel culture with passion. When an angry mob tries to cancel a person there are 3 things that bothers me: 1. The cancellers are judging the past actions of a person with today's values, and are judging the past version of the person as if such person hadn't had already the chance to reflect on their past actions, accept their mistakes and become a better person. 2. The cancellers…

Dislike with passion? There are words for that: hate, despise, disdain, detest.

"Darling, I like you with passion."

Innocent errors of diction are de minimis; tiptoeing heresy emboldens orthodox bigotry.

Re: Mozilla, Tor Join Calls to Oust Richard Stallman from Free Software Foundation

#238

> Having a bed in his office at MIT is creepy as hell. My understanding is that he slept (ie. lived) in his office, so having a bed there would be normal, not "creepy as hell." Also, many professors have beds in their labs in case of long-running experiments. I've seen them and thought it was practical. I read all of the related links about Stallman and didn't see any actual evidence. What's odd about the US left is…

Taking HN threads into religious flamewar like this is a bannable offence. Your account is already banned, of course.

The users who vouched for this comment will no longer have their vouches counted. Vouching for comments that break the site guidelines is an abuse of the feature.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Mozilla, Tor Join Calls to Oust Richard Stallman from Free Software Foundation

#239

> Having a bed in his office at MIT is creepy as hell. My understanding is that he slept (ie. lived) in his office, so having a bed there would be normal, not "creepy as hell." Also, many professors have beds in their labs in case of long-running experiments. I've seen them and thought it was practical. I read all of the related links about Stallman and didn't see any actual evidence. What's odd about the US left is…

Are you insinuating that all Muslims support child marriage? Because it certainly seems like you are. I'm a 'leftist', but also atheist, so I certainly don't support Islam. But I will tolerate people who believe in it. Same as I'll tolerate people who believe in Christianity, which has plenty of weird shit of its own. Additionally, I'm opposed to the 'cancelling' of Richard Stallman. It's fucking stupid. Maybe you sh…

Please don't take HN threads further into religious or ideological flamewar. This is just as damaging as the original post—more so, because if people just flagged these things instead of taking the bait and replying to them, then the flamewar wouldn't spread.

That's why the site guidelines include "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." a.k.a. Please don't feed the trolls.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Mozilla, Tor Join Calls to Oust Richard Stallman from Free Software Foundation

#240
post #188

> Having a bed in his office at MIT is creepy as hell. My understanding is that he slept (ie. lived) in his office, so having a bed there would be normal, not "creepy as hell." Also, many professors have beds in their labs in case of long-running experiments. I've seen them and thought it was practical. I read all of the related links about Stallman and didn't see any actual evidence. What's odd about the US left is…

[flagged]

Religious and ideological flamewar will get you banned here. No more of this, please.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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