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Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

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Re: Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

#81

Post by cryptoz »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #77
cryptoz wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been anti Eich since I heard about all this. I dis-recommend Brave to everyone I know and will never support another Brendan Eich product again. I'm frequently surprised that the HN crowd largely seems to give him a pass on his hateful opinions towards LGBT people. He's also an anti-masker and thinks a lot of what Dr Fauci says is actually lies. He is not somebody I look up to or see as a leader, especially in…

It may be a dumb question, but if the product is good, why should I care about personal views of whoever created it? When people go to the market, are they supposed to ask "okay, I see your eggs are free range, but do you guys support gay marriage?"

The 'personal views' isn't even what this is about. He has demonstrated severe lack of understanding of the current world - he is spreading hatred and lies about people. He donates his money specifically to causes that actively make oppressed people suffer even further. It's not 'simply' a matter of personal views here. I think he does real, physical damage to the world and I don't personally want to support that.

I don't care about your personal views if they are not hateful or actively causing harm to people. But if your 'views' are spreading hatred and also harming people (even killing people by being anti-mask) then I think it's pretty clear that caring about it makes sense.

> When people go to the market, are they supposed to ask "okay, I see your eggs are free range, but do you guys support gay marriage?"

Obviously we cannot discover everything about everyone we deal with. We have to prioritize and live life, and yes it is awful to accidentally do business with hateful people, I do understand it cannot be avoided fully. We have to live life somehow if we want progress.

If it becomes known that the egg people are anti-gay-marriage then certainly I wouldn't buy from them any more.

Re: Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

#82

Post by pseudalopex »

tzs wrote: post #73
semitones wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the point that RMS is trying to make. His argument (iirc) is that "rape" might be an incorrect word used to describe what happened (was it proved to be rape? The only part proved iirc were the ages), and that immediately because the person was 17 instead of 18, that word is used to describe the situation without second thought. I don't think he was saying that there should be zero repercussions, or that we sh…

> The only part proved iirc were the ages), and that immediately because the person was 17 instead of 18, that word is used to describe the situation without second thought. The age of consent there at the time was 16. It was later raised to 18 by the Child Protection Act of 2002. This will probably come as a surprise to many people, but 16 is also the current age of consent in a majority of US states. It is 16 in 33…

Federal law applies when crossing state lines and in cases of trafficking.

Re: Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

#83

Post by kmeisthax »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #74
kmeisthax wrote: post #23

This past month has completely destroyed my confidence in FSF leadership. I hope they can earn it back. Say what you want about the open letter - and it is an inaccurate open letter - the fact is that most people who had legitimate criticisms of RMS's leadership decided to sign onto it anyway. You might argue that this is malice. I'd argue that the open letter's ultimate conclusion - wipe the FSF management slate cle…

> They ignored the fact that people within the community had significant problems with his conduct, completely unrelated to the Epstein thing. Then you should have hounded him for those things, and not twisted the words he actually wrote (which was even more blatant since both what rms said and what Vice said is there in the public) and then tried to pin it onto him. Do you really think everyone is going to have a sh…

Well, the entire point of the FSF is to be an advocacy organization, which means that "making a show of things" is part of their job. They need to explain to people why Free Software is a thing people should value. Related to this is the need to defend why they themselves are worthwhile figureheads to continue the fight (as opposed to other organizations with similar stated goals, such as the EFF, Mozilla Foundation, or hell even the OSI).

This isn't "just a show", I specifically stated that you also have to actually follow through with changing your character to match. If Linus had merely said "I'm too toxic, it's blocking work, I need to change" and then a week later put someone on blast and insulted them for PRing something that broke userspace, that would be the extremely superficial and infantile thing you're railing against. But if he had also just said nothing and quietly stopped being toxic, people would still be mad about his prior behavior. You need both messaging and action, and the FSF has been lax on both with the RMS reinstatement.

Re: Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

#84

Post by danpalmer »

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #67
danpalmer wrote: post #4

> He has sincere regrets, especially at how anger toward him personally has negatively impacted the reputation and mission of FSF In my opinion, "I'm sorry you were offended enough to stop supporting me" is not a sincere apology. In fact this whole announcement is one big "I'm sorry you were offended" statement. It doesn't apologise for the problem, it "apologises" for not managing to sneak the announcements past peo…

Am I the only one who simply doesn't care? The purpose of the FSF isn't protecting children. It's the promotion of free software. Some tone-deaf words by RMS are only even relevant because of the prevalence of cancel culture and the cult of wokeism. Software will still need to be free after the fad cult of wokeism has been left behind. What the media claimed was Stallman defended Epstein. That isn't true. The whole t…

The point isn't that the FSF should have a political stance on topics outside of free software, the point is that to do their best job of promoting the free software movement they need to create an inclusive organisation that runs safe events, otherwise most people won't want to join, go to their events, or invite their representatives to give talks.

Unfortunately this point is very easy to miss for those of us who are not typically discriminated against, excluded, or made to feel unwelcome. I'll guess from your inappropriate username that you're a guy, maybe you should read some of what women have said about working with RMS? I wonder how much better the FSF would be if he hadn't systematically made certain groups feel unwelcome?

I have my own feelings about all sorts of political issues, and I don't expect those to always align with organisations such as the FSF. I do however expect to not shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to getting their message out.

Re: Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

#85

Post by angry_octet »

ghaff wrote: post #26
DasIch wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if, RMS is hit by a bus tomorrow? The FSF is not a new organization. That it cannot function without RMS means it's failing to stand on its own. That may be acceptable for a new organization but in case of the FSF that's just a massive failure to build a sustainable organization. If you care about the work the FSF is doing (I don't), this announcement should be extremely worrying.

Exactly. So this >30 year old organization spends a paragraph to basically say they're crippled as an organization without RMS. Imagine a company welcoming back a founder who was forced out for some sort of highly questionable behavior and public statements--and the company to come out with a statement a year later that they just couldn't go on without their founder's wisdom. We would rightly say the board and senior…

I can't even imagine Uber inviting Kalanick back, and they are near the bottom of the pile in terms of reputation.

Re: Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

#86

Post by danpalmer »

cryptoz wrote: post #68
danpalmer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that it's binary. Brendan Eich seems to be doing pretty well running Brave after being "cancelled" for donating for anti-gay-marriage causes. I think people remember that but have mostly let him get on with his life because he a) apologised, and b) no longer runs something as visible as Mozilla.

I have been anti Eich since I heard about all this. I dis-recommend Brave to everyone I know and will never support another Brendan Eich product again. I'm frequently surprised that the HN crowd largely seems to give him a pass on his hateful opinions towards LGBT people. He's also an anti-masker and thinks a lot of what Dr Fauci says is actually lies. He is not somebody I look up to or see as a leader, especially in…

Yeah I think that's all pretty stupid. For me these are good reasons not to work for Brave, but less good reasons not to use Brave. I think Mozilla is a bit different because of their leadership in the community. I know the Mozilla Foundation is separate, but it's part of that community and I think it was inappropriate for Eich to be in a position of leadership in that community.

I think Steve Jobs is a good similar example here. He was an asshole. I don't think I'd have wanted to work for him directly, and I don't think he should have been running a charity or a company where the community engagement was important, but I still bought an iPhone.

Re: Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

#88

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

seoaeu wrote: post #76
wrs wrote: post #47

Don’t miss the followup post by RMS [0]. [0] https://www.fsf.org/news/rms-addresses-the-free-software-com...

It took him weeks to make a public statement and that is what he came up with?!

Sounds like his priorities are in order. This woke-cult witch hunt doesn't deserve the attention its already been given.

Re: Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

#89

Post by pwdisswordfish8 »

danpalmer wrote: post #49
brobdingnagians wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engaging with criticism is different than bowing to pressure (and I think he is engaging, just not in the way his detractors want). You can be nice, but you still have to stand strong on your principles. I don't like a lot of the stuff RMS says and think a lot of it is downright disgraceful, and I'm mostly indifferent to his cause, but I think he has a right to disagree with his detractors. I'd rather defend the righ…

I see your point, although I'd suggest that there's a difference between changing the conversation and ignoring the conversation. I think RMS is ignoring the claims of toxic behaviour and/or claiming them to be fake news, rather than, say, owning and apologising or showing why those claims are wrong.

This is a statement by the board. RMS's own statement (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26780192) looks like it does what you say you want to see.

Re: Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

#90

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

cryptoz wrote: post #81
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be a dumb question, but if the product is good, why should I care about personal views of whoever created it? When people go to the market, are they supposed to ask "okay, I see your eggs are free range, but do you guys support gay marriage?"

The 'personal views' isn't even what this is about. He has demonstrated severe lack of understanding of the current world - he is spreading hatred and lies about people. He donates his money specifically to causes that actively make oppressed people suffer even further. It's not 'simply' a matter of personal views here. I think he does real, physical damage to the world and I don't personally want to support that. I…

Do you happen to have details of the story?

Looking around I see he has donated $1000 to banning gay marriage. This whole opposition looks kinda dumb to me, but qualifying it as hatred is definitely an overkill.

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