Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

John Sullivan resign as executive director of the Free Software Foundation

social.librem.one

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 431 posts

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

#421

Post by p_l »

zvr wrote: post #316
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Richard Stallman single-handedly created the free software movement The "Free Software" movement (cap F, cap S), yes. > and he's the reason we all have jobs No. There was a sizeable movement for public domain software before Stallman. Stallman brought along a particular ideology and one which resonated with a lot of people, as well as coding a bunch of software himself. But it is an incredible reach to say that, wi…

It might be the case that Open Source would have been created without RMS. However, you can't deny that Copyleft (the legal hack that guarantees that source code will stay open) was his invention. I am not aware of anyone else thinking this way in the timeframe he first put his idea in public.

One can even say that open source organizations started 30 years before RMS started FSF in wake of losing a copyright trial. SHARE is, after all, from 1955, 16 years before a certain first year Harvard physics student took a job at MIT AI Lab and was told to work on text editor, because that's what they are paying him for.

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

#422

Post by p_l »

prepend wrote: post #354
Scuds wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? Though he's an philosophical founder, the FSF has stagnated under his leadership over the decades. It's like you're more in love with the Idea of the FSF than the FSF as it stands today, reflexively self-protecting its old guard and completely inhibited by the my-way-or-the-high-way attitude of RMS.

> stagnated under his leadership over the decades. I disagree. I think FSF is/was until recently the strongest ever. Free Software has advanced greatly in the past 20 years, that’s not entirely due to FSF, but in part. I don’t think RMS is the singular force behind FSF but I don’t think it’s correct to say that FSF sucks or that it’s sucked because of RMS.

The big advances in last decade all seemed to me to be in spite of RMS, not because. But then I look from pretty afar.

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

#423

Post by toolz »

533474 wrote: post #86
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…

If you really want to give him the benefit of doubt, I suggest reading this [1] [1] https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web

great read, I learned a lot and I especially enjoyed the writings from Nadine Strossen, she seems to touch on what may be a core reason for a lot of my frustration with todays political landscape.

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

#424

Post by kosinus »

tspiteri wrote: post #60
kosinus wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> American freedom of speech This specifically is such a weird expression. Other than that, just because Stallman did a good thing once, doesn’t excuse him from other mistakes. And making mistakes is not itself a problem, you can always own up to them and learn. But what I gather from the discussion is that there is a _pattern_ of bad behaviour.

> did a good thing once Discounting something as "a good thing once" sounds weird to me: many things require a huge amount of work to carry off, so "once" here can encompass dedicating someone's life work for decades, just for that one thing. (Sorry for going off topic, as I'm not commenting either way on your point, just on this phrase.)

I wouldn't say it's off topic. I've been thinking about this, because I do agree with you that I likely underestimate his contributions. I wasn't following the movement back then, and only know of his reputation. (I was probably too young.)

But I also don't feel like this moves me at all, and I think that's because his past contributions aren't being erased here. What matters is the person he is now, how that doesn't fit this role they're assigning to him, and how it doesn't align with what the free software movement has become (pushing diversification).

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

#425

Post by user-the-name »

incrudible wrote: post #419
user-the-name wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are you saying that those who accuse rms of abusive and harassing behaviour are lying?

No, I'm accusing you specifically of being dishonest.

And what does that achieve? Who the fuck cares about me?

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

#428

Post by bitwize »

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…

Russian sounding names, many with little GitHub activity and most are certainly not major contributors to major projects. So already pretty sus.

Then there's this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26618253

Even assuming that each and every one of those signatures has a human behind it, it smells more like a brigading attempt than it does an outpouring of genuine good will toward Stallman from members of the community in good standing.

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

#429

Post by enriquto »

QuesnayJr wrote: post #393
QuesnayJr wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your last sentence perfectly captures something I think all the time, but could never articulate pithily.

I know that you're not "supposed" to comment on voting here, but I feel the need to call out the fundamentally broken culture here around voting. I said something mildly nice about some else's writing, and I've gotten 3 downvotes? Really? I think the people running the site really needs to consider consequences for excessive downvoting. Having a discussion here is really unpleasant, because of the random drive-by vot…

Don't worry too much about the upvotes and downvotes, it's not a big deal :) Some of the best comments on this site are completely greyed out!

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

#430

Post by moistbar »

azangru wrote: post #94
aboringusername wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't want to live in a world without American freedom of speech - where we can't be blunt and speak our minds. I take issue with this. I'm not hugely adept at history but from my understanding there has never been a time where you can just blurt out a communication and have it be "accepted" by society - this seems to me very American and appears very detached from reality and real world experience. Yes, you are…

> Yes, you are accountable for the communications you make... > Yes, you can be killed for the communications you make... > Yes, you will be cancelled if your joke is taken out of context... I guess the question here is whether anything can be done to change this. After all, the society has progressed to the point where it has proclaimed freedom of thought / conscience to be an important value, and, ostensibly, has s…

> the society has progressed to the point where it has proclaimed freedom of thought / conscience to be an important value

And then regressed over the course of about 10 years until people started screaming from the rooftops that freedom of speech is a cancer and needs to be outlawed.

Post reply on HN