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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

#131

Post by sildur »

As I said in another post, hopefully this will help clean the free software movement from all those people who think no non-neurotypical person should be in a position of power.

Whose number may seem unusually high, but it isn't if we consider recent history. People is quick to discard all those who think different. And the holier-than-thou mentality is deeply rooted in the American mind.

Hopefully all those people will leave to form their "pure" and "exclusive" community where they could endlessly discuss about how many pricks can dance in a forum's thread, or something like that, so people who really want to work can advance the movement unimpeded.

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

#132

Post by whimsicalism »

datavirtue wrote: post #89
orra wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stallman seems to have a history of being manipulative and sexually harassing women. https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-appendix... He also has some troubling views that at best make him an inappropriate spokesperson. https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix

I read through as many specific quotes as I could find and it all looked like your typical tenured male professor running his mouth. Is Stallman kind of creepy? I think so. Is it a good idea to explore the philosophical points of under age sex in an academic setting or in public? No, but thank the gods you are allowed to...sort of. Has he DONE anything wrong? If so, someone should notify the police. That blog post ca…

> I think so. Is it a good idea to explore the philosophical points of under age sex in an academic setting or in public? No, but thank the gods you are allowed to...sort of.

Uh? No, I don't think you should be allowed to advocate for the morality of statutory rape in a university mailing list on an entirely unrelated topic. I was on some csail mailing lists and I certainly wouldn't want to get that.

And we wonder why this field is so gender lopsided.

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

#133

Post by throw0101a »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #30

As a very liberal person, I have to say that I am disgusted by cancel culture. Disgusted. This is so harmful to society, and is a dark path that the left has taken in my country. To put it plainly, my political party has turned into whinny little people. People should lose their jobs over things like sexual or any type of harassment but when I read Stallman's actual comments last year, I thought that it was very clea…

> People should lose their jobs over things like sexual or any type of harassment but when I read Stallman's actual comments last year, I thought that it was very clear that he was only defending his friend, who was dead and couldn't defend himself.

RMS seems to have a long history:

> The stories of thirty years of MIT women alumni.

* https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-appendix...

Also:

* https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix

The 2019 comments appear to just the latest in a long string of incidents that people are no longer willing to tolerate.

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

#134

Post by throw0101a »

geofft wrote: post #53
jrm4 wrote: post #39

I'm trying to weigh this very carefully and it's hard to get a complete picture (which is part of the problem,) but I think the thing that rubs me most the wrong way is the general flimsiness of the arguments against RMS. It's very clear that he has words and actions in the past that must be addressed and atoned for (and perhaps has) -- but it is not at all clear to me that these words and ideas justify removing the…

Quoting from their website, "The FSF is a charity with a worldwide mission to advance software freedom." The question for the FSF Board isn't whether Stallman deserves to be punished, or anything - they're not a court of law. The question for the FSF Board is whether adding Stallman to the board accomplishes their mission of advancing software freedom. The FSF is not the Stallman Foundation (the way that there's a Ga…

> The FSF is not the Stallman Foundation (the way that there's a Gates Foundation or a Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative or whatever), whose goal would be to support Stallman in his works and in making the changes he wants to see in the world.

I once heard the folks at Penny Arcade say that they specifically made Child's Play an independent organization so that even if they happen to do something stupid that ruins their own reputation(s), that the charity could continue on doing good regardless.

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

#135

Post by yellowapple »

dragonwriter wrote: post #87
mark_l_watson wrote: post #30

As a very liberal person, I have to say that I am disgusted by cancel culture. Disgusted. This is so harmful to society, and is a dark path that the left has taken in my country. To put it plainly, my political party has turned into whinny little people. People should lose their jobs over things like sexual or any type of harassment but when I read Stallman's actual comments last year, I thought that it was very clea…

> As a very liberal person, I have to say that I am disgusted by cancel culture. Are you using the non-American and leftist American definition of “liberal” (center-to-center-right capitalist) or the American center-right-to-right definition of “liberal” (anything left of the center-right) when you say “very liberal”? > when I read Stallman's actual comments last year, I thought that it was very clear that he was onl…

> Are you using the non-American and leftist American definition of “liberal” (center-to-center-right capitalist) or the American center-right-to-right definition of “liberal” (anything left of the center-right) when you say “very liberal”?

Not sure if it matters, since in both cases it's applicable:

1. From a true liberal (moderate capitalist) standpoint, RMS has every right to his views, and the FSF has every right to associate with RMS. If Mozilla doesn't like it, they can pound sand.

2. From a leftist perspective, RMS is pretty unambiguously leftist and libertarian (as is the FSF), whereas Mozilla is a for-profit corporation. Siding with Mozilla against RMS and the FSF is pretty hard to reconcile with being a leftist; yeah, there's plenty of room for nuanced opinion (no matter what extremists want to believe), but considering the interested parties it's pretty easy to interpret this whole controversy as a bunch of capitalists and their sympathizers making McCarthy proud in their demonization of socialists.

> including the separate general endorsement of “voluntary” child sex

Which he publicly recanted.

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

#137

Post by MauranKilom »

orra wrote: post #83
quineoa wrote: post #10

Comments in this thread represent what’s wrong with the industry. The article references sexual harassment, the commenters care about market share. Did you know it’s important to hold people accountable more, the more power they have? It’s one thing if you disagree, but making it about “winners” and “losers” and not about victims is how we ended up creating toxic workplaces.

> Comments in this thread represent what’s wrong with the industry. It's incredibly troubling. It shows that a hell of a lot of men will excuse incredibly shitty behaviour, because they think 'they're next'. Not unless they're also being incredibly shitty. Nobody's getting 'cancelled' for bad social skills. I am pleasantly surprised by the number of people speaking out against harassment these days. The open letter h…

> Nobody's getting 'cancelled' for bad social skills.

People have been cancelled for less.

Here's a guy facing a closed door tribunal for jokingly saying in a keynote that someone was wrong on technical points:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24926214

Here is someone getting character-assassinated because... We don't know why. This guy made others uncomfortable, or so the organizers said. Other examples of similar stories in there too:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422420

The discussion of whether what RMS has done in the past (and still does? I don't know? Did he repent?) crosses a line in the sand that you (and others) see between bad social skills and actual harassment needs more nuance than "people don't get cancelled for the wrong reasons".

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

#138

Post by crtasm »

throwawaysea wrote: post #125
vlsmaker wrote: post #116

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…

Thank you for the explanation of the "business or pleasure" connection. That's how I read it as well but with everyone pulling out their torches and scythes for a witch hunt, I was starting to second guess my own opinion and perception of all this. I'm not sure if there's a word for that phenomenon...

For reference here's one of the cards (I don't know if he made other versions): https://fossforce.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/RMSleisure....

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

#139

Post by MauranKilom »

geofft wrote: post #93
orra wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> autism is now a treatable disease? I didn't say cure. But there are therapies for autism: therapy, for a start. > Is LGBTQ++ also treatable according to you? That's a crass straw man. Being LGBT+ is not a disorder. Indeed, being trans was recently removed as a disorder from DSM.

Perhaps a better way of putting this is that while autism doesn't need a "cure," being an asshole is absolutely a thing that - if it is indeed caused by a medical condition - a medical professional can help with. (And if it is not caused by a medical condition, then it is simply a character flaw, and should be judged like a willful character flaw and not like a medical condition.) There are plenty of autistic people…

> figure out when he's alienating people and figure out how to stop

I read through the appendix in the open letter and find no discussion of this. If he did stop, would you agree that this entire letter was baseless?

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

#140

Post by zarkov99 »

endisneigh wrote: post #51

I don’t have a particular opinion of Stallman since I don’t have all of the facts but I wish Mozilla put more effort in making themselves more sustainable. From a cursory search it doesn’t appear that Stallman has every physically or sexually harassed anyone. Perhaps he has said questionable things but nothing substantial turned up on a search. Hundreds of millions from Google and basically nothing to show for it oth…

What they have to show for are giant bumps in the salaries of the top executives. The Mozilla foundation is a disgrace.
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