John Sullivan resign as executive director of the Free Software Foundation • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by Taniwha » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 10:54 AM UTC

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #228

Taniwha wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, long before I ever heard of Stallman we were passing around mag tapes full of software to share - people brought stuff to conferences and conference tapes were a thing

This is called pirating, now. I think Stallman contributed a lot to keep the sharing economy legal.

No it's not, sharing the source code of stuff you create yourself with others is not 'pirating', it basn't then and it isn't now (we're talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9_track_tape here)

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

#242

Post by prepend » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 10:55 AM UTC

orra wrote: post #153

2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't comment on most of the accusations, I have never met rms in person. But what really shocked me was that the authors of the anti rms letter label him as "transphobe", as a source for that claim they link to his GNU Kind Communications Guidelines [1], which to me spell the exact opposite. Why put such a claim in there? I find it really disturbing that so many people willingly accept that it's ok to mix legitima…

The footnote of that policy allows you to persistently call a trans man "they", even if his preferred pronoun is he. That is, the policy endorses you misgendering. Calling a he/him person a "they" is a way of saying that you don't think they're a real man. It's really not much better than calling a trans man "her". Finally, the previous version of the said guidelines used to reject singular they. Singular they is a g…

They explicitly call out ways to respect and accommodate all pronouns. This footnote describes methods of using pronouns so that they don’t conflict in situations where a pronoun may not be known or understood.

The previous item says that gender identity should be respected and so purposely using the wrong pronoun would be in conflict here.

Interpreting this footnote that seems to provide more detail on how to work with diverse pronouned people as a transphobic issue is not a good piece of evidence to label RMS as a transphobe.

Especially since it seems to be pro trans and pro inclusivity.

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

#243

Post by toomim » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 10:55 AM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #240

toomim wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom of speech is about the freedom to make political opinions while retaining your place in society as a citizen. None of the public judgements about RMS are about anything technical, anything about free software, or anything that touch on him running the FSF. He voiced an unfashionable opinion on sex and the laws about sex. This is a political act to blacklist a man for his political opinions from work in a prof…

> or anything that touch on him running the FSF. Can't you see that a position that requires public speaking requires someone who is good at public speaking? Someone who doesn't continually cause misunderstanding because they're so poor at communicating?

He's pretty good at communicating. The problem is just that people don't like what he says.

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

#244

Post by foobar33333 » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 10:55 AM UTC

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…

I also support RMS but I would not sign that letter with my real name. If I did not support him, I would feel no hesitation to sign the other one.

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

#245

Post by gjulianm » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 10:57 AM UTC

the-dude wrote: post #217

minitech wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting aside the issue of whether inconsiderate use of vehicles is a newly millennial phenomenon for the moment and considering what this is in reply to: are you saying that the situation could have been avoided if your neighbour had been bullied enough as a child?

No, I am saying it seems like some millenials seem unaware of the possible consequences of their behaviour to others and to themselves. And if there is a confrontation, they'll report you to their teacher ( police ). While when I grew up, when I misbehaved in traffic, say concerning a taxi(cab), the driver would stop, make his opinion loudly heard, perhaps accompanied by a threat of violence ( this actually happened…

I think everyone here is better off by not drawing broad conclusions about behavior based on anecdotes. I am sure that a lot of people born in the 50s and 60s would have called the police in the same situation you describe.

> No, I am saying it seems like some millenials seem unaware of the possible consequences of their behaviour to others and to themselves.

Yes, this happens with every generation. Now what does that have to do with the idea that "bullying made society better"? I mean, you know that quite a lot of people have serious psychological consequences from bullying, some people have even killed themselves, right? It's not something to joke about, and if (and that's a big if) the price to pay to stop bullying is having someone call the police on a discussion, I would gladly pay it a hundred times over.

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

#246

Post by Qwertious » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 10:57 AM UTC

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #210

Qwertious wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It does not matter if rms is a nice person or not. If it impacts his effectiveness in leading the FSF, then it absolutely does matter. If he's abrasive, then nobody will want to work with him, and by extension people won't want to work with the FSF. We shouldn't have to play this politically-correct bullshit game of tiptoe: Richard Stallman's social skills are shit, and saying that he's not well suited to a people-f…

> If it impacts his effectiveness in leading the FSF, then it absolutely does matter. He founded the damn thing. Let him lead the way he likes it. So far, he was quite successful in carrying with the organization's mission. If you don't like the way he runs FSF, you can start your own foundation right now. No?

>He founded the damn thing. Let him lead the way he likes it. So far, he was quite successful in carrying with the organization's mission.

My mistake, I missed the part where he declared himself dictator for life. Or the part where I declared I'd support him even if I thought he wasn't a good choice for the job.

Yes, he did such wonderful work on GCC direction or that abortion joke he banned people from removing from documentation.

Anyways, what FSF-approved distro has successfully gained notable market share in any consumer market? Ubuntu is more open-source than Free Software, considering e.g. people like to play Steam games on their AMD cards with nonfree microcode (actually 55% of gamers use Nvidia-proprietary IIRC).

The Free Software community did a whole lot of good work, and I'm sure you've read the paper that proves it was literally all due to Richard Stallman, who by the way was the sole inventor of the concept of sharing software.

>If you don't like the way he runs FSF, you can start your own foundation right now. No?

Aw shit, that'd be a mess - we'd have to replace the GPLv3 with a license that gives someone else stewardship over GPL3'd (or whatever we call the new license) IP.

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

#247

Post by DanBC » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 10:58 AM UTC

verytrivial wrote: post #133

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 wor…

Let's pretend for a moment that he is autistic, and it's the autism that causes him to say stupid stuff.

This means he has a disability, and when people with disabilities are at work we provide a reasonable adjustment for them to allow them to continue doing the job. For RMS this might be an assistant to check his comms before release.

He's had many years to put this in place. Why hasn't he?

Maybe he doesn't understand that he causes work for other people when he sends out unchecked comms. Other people have to spend their time, and money, responding.

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

#248

Post by psychiatrist24 » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 10:58 AM UTC

mhh__ wrote: post #201

psychiatrist24 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously the age of consent can be discussed, it even varies from country to country. I don't understand the EMACS virgin joke? I don't think asking women on dates is automatically "inappropriate behavior". How are men and women supposed to get together? Even in a "professional setting", because the feminist claim that it is demeaning to women if somebody is attracted to them is simply wrong. I can't claim RMS is "o…

> I don't understand the EMACS virgin joke? The "joke" is that they are virgins and thus have to have said honour taken away from them. Bad taste aside, the issue is really that he specifically singles out women when reciting it. More detail: https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/EMACS_virgins_joke > I don't think asking women on dates is automatically "inappropriate behavior". There's a time and a place. Ultimately it…

"The "joke" is that they are virgins and thus have to have said honour taken away from them. "

According to the article, the "virginity" of never having used EMACS before. I dunno - doesn't really move my "hate RMS" meter, tbh. Not that I think it is a joke that is necessary to be made, but not the end of the world, either.

"Ultimately it's highly dependent on context, but if women are made uncomfortable by it in this case I don't think it's unreasonable to try and stop."

According to the story, he asked her for a date, and that was it. So he did stop?

It is a nice thought to avoid things that make women uncomfortable, but it is not actually a practical rule. Sometimes you can not know beforehand what makes them uncomfortable. It also seems unfair to simply demand unattractive men should never attempt to get dates. And you should not simply give a group of people to rule over other people at their whim - if you establish that rule, women can just control everything, because anything else would make them uncomfortable. For sure they can control who gets to be made the boss of companies or organisations.

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

#249

Post by mpol » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 10:58 AM UTC

willeh wrote: post #157

bitwize wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One is signed by the directors of major open-source projects and initiatives. The other is mainly signed by Russian bots.

I hope that I'm wrong here and there is evidence of actual bots, but as far as I can tell you're making this judgement based on the fact the people signing the RMS support letter have Russian sounding names. First off, yes I don't doubt that the totalitarian oppressive and oppressive governments are using this type of technique, in fact they are probably using it a lot because it is highly effective. However, it seem…

"in my experience Russians tend to be slightly technocratic valuing pragmatism over ideology"

Strange, I always experienced the FSF as ideological and Linux as pragmatical with their grey areas of closed drivers. This reads like the world upside-down :) Is Copyleft Free Software suddenly pragmatic? No offense, mostly just curious.

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

#250

Post by orra » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 11:01 AM UTC

jhugo wrote: post #226

orra wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guideline argues "they" is gender neutral, so it does not conflict with anybody's gender identity. This misses the point. "they" is indeed gender neutral. But when we talk about specific individuals, we almost always use gendered pronouns. Hence, as I said, persistently using "they" for a binary trans person is a veiled insult. Again, it's like saying 'You're not a real man, but I am not allowed to call you she,…

Knowing very little about this issue, this seems like a minefield. I have met many people whose native language doesn't have gendered pronouns, who make mistakes constantly when trying to use them in English and eventually learn to use "they" consistently to avoid getting it wrong. According to this standard, they would be being disrespectful whenever they meet someone with a strong preference about their pronoun, ev…

> According to this standard, they would be being disrespectful whenever they meet someone with a strong preference about their pronoun, even if they had no knowledge of the preference.

No, the point is to use somebody's preferred pronouns once you know them.

My complaint is the GNU guidelines explicitly allow you to not correctly pronoun/gender somebody, once you know their gender identity.

Re non-native speakers, etc, all I am criticising is transphobic intent. People are, of course, allowed to slip up. Hence my use of the word "persistent" in some of my posts: I mean persistent and deliberate.