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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

#281

Post by bartread »

psychiatrist24 wrote: post #254
bartread wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think asking women on dates is automatically "inappropriate behavior". In general I agree with you but in this specific instance RMS would have been about 50 years old at the time (please see my other comment in direct response to GP). 50 year old men asking out 19 year old women is very much inappropriate behaviour.

Serious question, why is it inappropriate? It is against the "Bro Code" from "How I met your mother", but other than that? Sure, we are trained to feel uneasy about it, but if you really think about it, why exactly? Because you consider 50 year old men disgusting? Shouldn't you leave that to the women to decide? Many people also feel a bit disgusted about gay sex, yet they are supposed to tolerate and even celebrate…

I consider it inappropriate because whenever I've seen it happen the female on the receiving end of the older man's attention is at best extremely uncomfortable about it. I've seen it happen first hand in an organisation I was a member of on multiple occasions. Men were asked to leave over it. Left unaddressed it becomes a barrier to female involvement.

Does that mean relationships with significant age gaps are wrong? No. And I didn't say that.

But do I think it's a bit off when a much older guy meets a girl young enough to be his daughter and the first thing he does is hit on her. I make no apology for that, because I'd bet nine times out of ten the girl's going to be really uncomfortable about it.

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

#282

Post by gimboland »

GTP wrote: post #214
orasis wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgiveness technically does NOT require those things. That’s the point. It’s fore-give-ness.

But if you forget for a moment your semantic argument, you find that is actually very hard to forgive somebody that doesn't admit to have done something wrong.

Yup — that basically requires extremely high levels of compassion and unconditional love, something we can all aspire to, but in reality and in general forgiveness tends to be conditional.

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

#283

Post by tcbawo »

the-dude wrote: post #112
minitech wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was reading comments in another HN thread, and one poster suggested that this might arise from raising kids without bullying. Like the immune system, if we don't develop a central tolerance, perhaps we start attacking everything we find unpleasant? No basis in behavioral science, of course. Forget basis in behavioral science, this has no basis in anything, and you’re deluded if you think kids aren’t still bullied…

The environment is profoundly different today than say, 40 years ago. Being different is much easier today. I was seduced by my parents to join a Judo club so I could stand up to myself ( this works wonders ). Last year, I confronted a new millenial neighbour of mine repeatedly on her behaviour of biking on the sidewalk. The biggest problem was she was doing blind corners as well. There are small children here playin…

When the police came, what happened?

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

#284

Post by astorgard »

YarickR2 wrote: post #274
astorgard wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, you are accountable for the communications you make, whether via keybord, orally, or any other way. Just for the purpose of debating let me bring up my (very unpopular) point of view. I have always thought that anyone should be able to say anything and not have legal consequences (ex: go to prison, pay a fine). Notice that this statement covers all scenarios as long as the person involved "only speaks" (or pub…

I agree with you on all points. Freedom of speech is the same as freedom of thought. Actions should be punishable, words shouldn't

You are literally the first person I find who agrees with me. Hi there! :)

Just for the shake of discussion, let me put on the table some other extreme examples people bring up:

A) Apology of "something bad" (for example, "apology of terrorism"). Is it OK for someone to appear on TV and say that he is happy about all the people killed in 11-S and that others should repeat the attack?

B) Targeted attack. Back to the neighbor example: would it be OK if he not only published a newspaper ad against me every day but also appeared on TV shows, sent propaganda to other neighbors, hired a plane to draw my name on the sky, etc...?

C) Dangerous information. Example: someone discovers that by mixing two very easy to find (and accessible to everyone) chemicals, the whole atmosphere of the earth would be modified in hours in a way that all people from ethnicity X would immediately die. Is it OK for him to publish this information?

I still think all these cases are covered... but I would like to know how others reason about them :)

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

#285

Post by DanBC »

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…

> He didn't do anything criminal,

Not breaking the law is the bare knuckle minimum standard that we expect. Imagine going to a job interview and when asked about your achievements you say "well, I didn't break any laws".

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

#286

Post by bartread »

c0l0 wrote: post #238
bartread wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 10. ‘My first interaction with RMS was at a hacker con at 19. He asked my name, I gave it, whether I went to MIT (I had an MIT shirt on), and after confirmation I did, asked me on a date. I said no. That was our entire conversation.’ corbett's twitter feed. This is but one of many reports of utterly inappropriate social interactions. Just in case anybody else picks up on this and wonders what's so wrong with asking…

When my parents met and fell in love, my father was 48 years old, and my mother was 21. I was born four years later. My father died two years ago, at the age of 86. My mother lovingly cared for him during these last and toughest months of his. I'm not even sure why I am sharing this here... I guess it just upset me that you, effectively, called him a creep. Maybe try not to judge people who seek (and sometimes even m…

Oh, come on. I don't know anything about the context in which your parents met, how they got to know eachother, or how they got together.

But I do know that on this specific occasion RMS met somebody who was young enough to be his daughter and then some, and the first thing he did is hit on her. I'd bet that nine times out of ten the girl on the receiving end of that kind of attention will feel extremely uncomfortable. I make that bet both regretfully and confidently because I was a member of an organisation where this happened on multiple occasions and I saw exactly this play out. Girls were made to feel very uncomfortable and creeped out to the point that they were reluctant to be involved. Men were asked to leave because of it.

I understand where you're coming from, and I understand why you might be upset, but I wasn't attacking you or your parents, and I do not apologise for my point of view because the vast majority of the time the behaviour I've outlined is going to come off as creepy to the girl on the receiving end of it.

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

#287

Post by daveoc64 »

illustriousbear wrote: post #279
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.

It's really not a cool way to think about this. People all around the world have state sanctioned freedom of speech but are oppressed by the majority in their country. This infantile view of freedom of speech is simply a way to pretend you care about freedom of speech while sanctioning other ways to silence/punish people. Even when that punishment is completely disproportionate too.

I'm not sure how you can solve the "problem" you describe.

Freedom of speech means just that - you are free to say what you want/think.

Others don't have to agree with you. They might leave the room/not be your friend/unfollow you/fire you/stop buying your products.

If your opinion is against the majority in any situation, you're going to have a hard time - whether it's about something important, or just whether you think pineapple should go on a pizza.

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

#288

Post by Denvercoder9 »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #271
Denvercoder9 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FSF can issue new versions of the GPL, which will automatically apply to software licensed under the GPLv2 or GPLv3 with the "or any later version" clause (which is present in the standard boilerplate). A completely non-representative grep through copyright information indicates that about two-thirds of the GPL-licensed packages on my Debian system have the "or any later version" clause.

>which will automatically apply to software licensed under the GPLv2 or GPLv3 with the "or any later version" clause (which is present in the standard boilerplate). Unless I'm missing something, the "or any later" clause means that a new GPL would cause further software releases to be dual licensed as GPL v2/3 and 4. The project could choose to go to v4 only, or continue releasing it under both. I can only imagine th…

> Unless I'm missing something, the "or any later" clause means that a new GPL would cause further software releases to be dual licensed as GPL v2/3 and 4.

It also causes past releases to be immediately and retroactively available under the GPL v4 (in addition to the GPL v2/v3 it was already available under). As such the FSF has the power to make a large amount of software available under a new license.

> I can only imagine that causing problems if they say released a non copyleft v4, and it's hard to see that surviving a legal challenge.

A hypothetical GPLv4 has to be similar in spirit to the previous GPL licenses, but the devil's in the details -- just look at the prolonged debates about GPLv3. Depending on the exact details it might not be acceptable to parts of the free software community.

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

#290

Post by bm3719 »

bitwize wrote: post #43
fen4o wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See https://rms-open-letter.github.io/ and the counter-letter https://rms-support-letter.github.io/

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

A sizeable segment of corporate-backed OSS is against Free Software for business reasons, and that mission currently aligns with the interests of the anti-rms mob. Those corporations see the FSF turning into a copy of the neutered OSI as a positive outcome.

Signatories of the support letter have all left links to their GitHub profiles or personal websites. Not comprehensive, but a quick glance of the 20 or so around my signature shows actual humans, most of whom are actively making commits to projects on GitHub in the past year or so.

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