“I took FSFE to court. This is my story” • Hacker News Board

Re: “I took FSFE to court. This is my story”

#61

Post by mr_woozy » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 4:20 PM UTC

dejw wrote: post #35

ognarb wrote: post #4

> we both felt secure that the free software movement is progressive, and cares about being inclusive and equal opportunities oriented. Unfortunately it has been proved very often that this is not true. This is not the first case of racism and sexisme in FOSS and probably won't.

I always thought FOSS should be about software and bringing smart people together. It is starting to look like a political movement that isn't about software at all. This post is so self centered I can't take it seriously. ''' “why do you refer to dates in this format and not in that format”, while there is no office policy on following a particular date standard '''. Date format is super important...

> Our efforts coincided with the resignation of Richard Stallman from the US-based sister organisation of FSFE due to careless revictimisation of female victims of sexual abuse- another gender discrimination issue in our community that would cause the situation in our office to deteriorate quickly.

The casual misrepresentation of this saga also makes me skeptical of the authors viewpoint.

Re: “I took FSFE to court. This is my story”

#62

Post by mr_woozy » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

tutfbhuf wrote: post #53

africanboy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the most sensible thing to do is gather all the information before taking sides. There are no names in this story, nobody can confirm or deny it and few of the claims are suspicious. For example Unfortunately, the German law foresees only monetary and no other type of compensation That's not true, most of the sentences favourable to the plaintiff not only award the worker with a monetary compensation but usua…

> I think the most sensible thing to do is gather all the information before taking sides. True, but I think this should become more known to a wider audience to start an investigation.

you're assuming "wider audience" doesn't equate to social media mob, which sadly seems to be the typical progression of such news.

Re: “I took FSFE to court. This is my story”

#63

Post by mr_woozy » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 4:26 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #32

wheybags wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because discrimination in hiring on the basis of race is illegal. It does mean the org should probably not focus its efforts on running a big public pr campaign about hiring ethnic minorities though. That's all in the general case though, unfortunately it does sound like there was some bad practice in the fsfe specifically this time. There are two sides to every story though. I'd want to hear both before making j…

Some folks think that morality and law are the same thing. That the very meaning of "ethics" is "things not on the list of illegal things". And if the law was not involved here or did not force anything to happen, then clearly everything was ethical. We call those people sociopaths.

your ethics don't agree with my ethics therefore you're a sociopath, got it.......totally concrete rational argument there.

Re: “I took FSFE to court. This is my story”

#64

Post by tutfbhuf » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

mr_woozy wrote: post #62

tutfbhuf wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the most sensible thing to do is gather all the information before taking sides. True, but I think this should become more known to a wider audience to start an investigation.

you're assuming "wider audience" doesn't equate to social media mob, which sadly seems to be the typical progression of such news.

Agreed, but how to avoid such a mob? The only way would be to be silent about this subject and not share it.

Re: “I took FSFE to court. This is my story”

#65

Post by rascul » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

This would be easier to read with spacing between paragraphs. Or reader mode.

Re: “I took FSFE to court. This is my story”

#66

Post by justtocomment » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

Without ever having heard of this case, I'd like to add two, maybe unrelated, datapoints:

* I know Matthias Kirschner personally (though not very good). This story does not fit the character I met.

* There is a campaign of disinformation, character assassination and harrassment going on against the Debian project, the FSFE, and their members (maybe other projects as well). This has been going on for multiple years now, presumably all orchestrated by the same individual, impersonating a multitude of different persons.

Edit:

I also met Malina Galina in person, she made a positive impression on me. I just found out the linked text also shows up on her twitter account.

Re: “I took FSFE to court. This is my story”

#67

Post by em-bee » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 6:12 PM UTC

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #56

em-bee wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the problem is that if women consistently get paid less then it is hard for any single woman to stand up and ask for more. and if salaries are not being discussed then they won't even know.

Hm. Why should they even know? If a person is doing a job, I'm paying for it. If a person wants more, I can either decide to raise wage, if the value I extract from work justifies a raise, or let this person go. It's only a matter of my individual agreement with the worker. Also, this 'equality' approach _reeks_ socialism to me, and, coming from a country that suffered from socialism for 70 years, I have seen with my…

while i acknolwdge your point about paying everyone the same, no matter how hard they work, this is not the issue here. senior people get paid more than juniors, and those working hard make it to senior faster.

the problem is that women get paid less even if they work as hard or harder than men.

the only way to discover this is to compare salaries.

Re: “I took FSFE to court. This is my story”

#68

Post by Brian_K_White » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

dejw wrote: post #35

ognarb wrote: post #4

> we both felt secure that the free software movement is progressive, and cares about being inclusive and equal opportunities oriented. Unfortunately it has been proved very often that this is not true. This is not the first case of racism and sexisme in FOSS and probably won't.

I always thought FOSS should be about software and bringing smart people together. It is starting to look like a political movement that isn't about software at all. This post is so self centered I can't take it seriously. ''' “why do you refer to dates in this format and not in that format”, while there is no office policy on following a particular date standard '''. Date format is super important...

This comment is so self-contradictory I can't take it seriously.

Your own exactly correct observation of the super importance of a date format (in most situations) expresses exactly one of the things that validate the overall complaint.

This means, there is some other unstated reason you dismiss the complaint. Because your stated reason actually supports it.

Re: “I took FSFE to court. This is my story”

#69

Post by Brian_K_White » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 9:57 PM UTC

justtocomment wrote: post #66

Without ever having heard of this case, I'd like to add two, maybe unrelated, datapoints: * I know Matthias Kirschner personally (though not very good). This story does not fit the character I met. * There is a campaign of disinformation, character assassination and harrassment going on against the Debian project, the FSFE, and their members (maybe other projects as well). This has been going on for multiple years no…

Yet the courts validated her assertions.

I take that as entirely trumping this attempt to deny or excuse the inexcusable.

Re: “I took FSFE to court. This is my story”

#70

Post by Andrew_nenakhov » Tue, Dec 22, 2020, 1:52 AM UTC

em-bee wrote: post #67

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm. Why should they even know? If a person is doing a job, I'm paying for it. If a person wants more, I can either decide to raise wage, if the value I extract from work justifies a raise, or let this person go. It's only a matter of my individual agreement with the worker. Also, this 'equality' approach _reeks_ socialism to me, and, coming from a country that suffered from socialism for 70 years, I have seen with my…

while i acknolwdge your point about paying everyone the same, no matter how hard they work, this is not the issue here. senior people get paid more than juniors, and those working hard make it to senior faster. the problem is that women get paid less even if they work as hard or harder than men. the only way to discover this is to compare salaries.

Working hard isn't the only factor influencing how much someone is paid. It also depends on qualification and eventual productivity.

As I started this argument, the goal of an employer is to pay as little as possible for given work. Let's turn this argument around: if male and female are equally qualified, what would make anyone pay male _more_? If a female accepts to work for less, than she's going to be hired in the first place!

So, maybe females are paid less because they are less productive on the average? It's quite plausible, because they objectively have more distractions then men (giving birth, raising children, etc) . This is a rather valid reason to compensate them with higher pay, but presenting it as 'equal pay for equal fork' is an intentional deception.