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John Sullivan resign as executive director of the Free Software Foundation

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Re: John Sullivan resign as executive director of the Free Software Foundation

#131

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #40
rich_sasha wrote: post #8

A whole different angle, I wonder how well the FSF folk get on with RMS. For all the defenses people mount of him, no one says he's a nice guy to be around. I'm still against the Twitter mob etc., I do wonder though if RMS nuked his own organisation by joining the helm again. Life's unfair.

It does not matter if rms is a nice person or not. He didn't do anything criminal, his only offense is stoically and pedantically expressing his views, unyielding to public pressure. In other words, displaying those very qualities that helped him change software development forever. People should not be destroyed for not being nice enough to certain individuals prone to offenses, and conforming to someone else's view…

Not having a board position isn’t anything close to being destroyed. I’m totally against heavily exaggerating everything RMS did wrong but can we not swing the other way around and equivocate a highly privileged position with life and livelihood?

Re: John Sullivan resign as executive director of the Free Software Foundation

#132

Post by bitwize »

simion314 wrote: post #55

We almost Linus Torwalds because of the cancel culture, would be a big loss to lose RMS because he is no longer good PR to have him, bonus points if some big business like Google or Red Hat could grab the leadership of FSF and GNU. There was a few days back a post for people to support RMS and I admit I did not put my name on the list because i am afraid this could affect my future, cancel culture could get worse and…

Linus was confronted with his toxic behavior by peers and apologized. That is the only reason why we didn't "lose" him, or rather, he was allowed to stay.

It's high time the open source community cleaned house and made itself unwelcome to assholes.

Re: John Sullivan resign as executive director of the Free Software Foundation

#133

Post by verytrivial »

So should we eject all Austism Spectrum / Asperger's people from positions of leadership, or just this one guy?

[Edit] I've worked under at one, perhaps two ASD people, both brilliant engineers, and you're probably using some of their infra software right now -- he's been poached a few times. The one certain guy did not have a diagnosis that I knew of but would come out with the most outrageous opinions regarding world issues. Logical and anti-social. The thing is you could reason him out of these opinions because he valued logic to such an extent that he 'beliefs' were secondary. The problem was he'd share these opinions before testing the waters. He was quite rightly kept away from leadership positions that required communication on anything other than technical topics because of this.

I've not seen RMS engaged on sharing his 'troubling' opinions. Show me that and I'll change my opinion (the hint being here that many HNers are somewhere on the spectrum, including me.)

Re: John Sullivan resign as executive director of the Free Software Foundation

#134

Post by orra »

bitwize wrote: post #57
Number157 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This community is toxic and drives good but flawed people away.

A talented asshole is a net liability. An untalented, nontoxic person can become a valuable contributor with the right training and mentoring.

Additionally, an asshole can drive away multiple people.

Even if an asshole is three times as productive as your typical contributor, they can easily drive away ten people.

Not to mention the morality of pedestalling creeps.

Re: John Sullivan resign as executive director of the Free Software Foundation

#135

Post by mhh__ »

haunter wrote: post #61

Says a lot about the HN community that a lot of people need to post under throwaways because there are legit others would otherwise go after them or their employers Say whatever you want about reddit but at least it's more anonym than this site

Is there evidence that this is really the case (the "going after" rather than the throwaways)? e.g. I think Stallman is driving free software into the ground regardless of how right he is about it's value, but I'm not going to chase anyone up - beyond thinking they're stupid

Re: John Sullivan resign as executive director of the Free Software Foundation

#136

Post by Foxboron »

sparkling wrote: post #126
Jonnax wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://rms-open-letter.github.io/ The organisations that I've heard of which called for the board at the FSF to resign: - X.org Foundation - Tor Project - Mozilla - The HardenedBSD Foundation / The HardenedBSD Project - SUSE - GNOME Foundation - The FreeDOS Project - Creative Commons - OBS Project Isn't this a bit more than a vocal twitter minority?

Did these organisations ask their respective members if they agree with signing this letter? On the support letter* there are a number of GNOME contributors, so clearly there is not one single opinion within these organisations. * https://rms-support-letter.github.io/

There are two listed, both former. But there is a difference contributing to GNOME projects and being part of the GNOME foundation.

Re: John Sullivan resign as executive director of the Free Software Foundation

#137

Post by hutzlibu »

mhh__ wrote: post #81
simion314 wrote: post #55

We almost Linus Torwalds because of the cancel culture, would be a big loss to lose RMS because he is no longer good PR to have him, bonus points if some big business like Google or Red Hat could grab the leadership of FSF and GNU. There was a few days back a post for people to support RMS and I admit I did not put my name on the list because i am afraid this could affect my future, cancel culture could get worse and…

Well the difference is that Torvalds remains competent? Easy example: Stallman's idealism is why LLVM is now the academics favoured compiler to work on (i.e. no plugins for GCC) More human example: Someone I know who works in the GNU ecosystem on a reasonably major project mentioned that rms was cordial until he found out that this maintainer had children. And this was in response to someone handing already GPL code…

"Stallman's ideology is why LLVM is now the academics favoured compiler to work on"

FTFY

Re: John Sullivan resign as executive director of the Free Software Foundation

#138

Post by pjc50 »

Guthur wrote: post #79
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> Freedom of speech isn't the freedom to not be publicly judged about what you say. Thank you for putting it so clearly.

The problem is who's deciding what is and isn't acceptable, RMS has been saying clearly derogatory statements about religion, the basis of most of our shared morality, for decades without a single peep from the virtue crowd. He says a few edgy this about something else and then the pitch forks are out. The problem is that I'm not sure we have much of a shared morality any more.

I'm not sure we ever did - or, to the extent that "we" did, it came down very hard on queer people and others.

Re: John Sullivan resign as executive director of the Free Software Foundation

#139

Post by orra »

thinkingemote wrote: post #105
bitwize wrote: post #17

I've given a lot of thought to this issue and though I've wanted to give Richard Stallman the benefit of the doubt, I've come to an inescapable conclusion: The FSF board of directors really stepped in it bringing Stallman back, especially in the clandestine manner that they did. They have squandered the goodwill of the community by promoting a controversial figure known for his toxic opinions and decades of bad behav…

> open source There are many in the FSF that view the aims of "open source" as opposite to Free Software. FSF aims for the elimination of all proprietary software. Microsoft and IBM support open source and the resignation of the FSF board. Open Source has basically won. No one really gets what Free Software is anymore.

That's not the issue here. FSFE have condemned the FSF, for example.

Re: John Sullivan resign as executive director of the Free Software Foundation

#140

Post by mhh__ »

thinkingemote wrote: post #129

I think people should just create their own foundation and get on with things. It seems like the FSF is going to be doing things their way - there's no compulsion for anyone to follow them, listen to them or to agree with what they do. So why not just start your own Foundation?

Because the FSF control FSF projects and thus - regardless of steering - could (Stallman has) deter contributors to projects that desperately need them now that the industry has moved (say) from GCC to LLVM
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