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Mozilla, Tor Join Calls to Oust Richard Stallman from Free Software Foundation (fastcompany.com)
91 points by CharlesW on March 24, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 221 comments



I believe there is a significant chilling effect in regards to speaking out in the defense of Richard Stallman, a man who has never been convicted of a crime, and who in response to the allegations in the open letter has said things such as:

"We know that Giuffre was being coerced into sex – by Epstein. She was being harmed,"

"Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm her psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that,"

and

"Nothing could be further from the truth. I've called [Jeffrey Epstein] a 'serial rapist,' and said he deserved to be imprisoned. But many people now believe I defended him—and other inaccurate claims—and feel a real hurt because of what they believe I said. I'm sorry for that hurt. I wish I could have prevented the misunderstanding."

[0] https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=has%20richard%20stallm...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Personal_life


What about all the women who have come forward, talking about what a massive creep he is?

This isn't about some technicality about what he said, but a culmination of 30 years of horrible behavior.

It takes trivial research (check Twitter) for the many personal accounts from women who will never get close to him, and have been driven from the industry by both him and the people who have protected him.


I recommend that you try with a swimming test first. Strip, bind and throw him in the water and if he stays afloat he is guilty, if he sinks to the bottom, you can still try the fire test next.


We can try to build a wooden bridge made from him. If we succeeded it would be a proof he is a wood, therefore he floats, so basically he is a witch.


What are the criteria for being a "massive creep"? Future board members, start taking notes!



A vanity business card from 1988 that uses the phrase "tender embraces," which was intended to be self-deprecating as he has never been "conventionally attractive," is very, very, very weak evidence that predicates he's a "serial harasser" of women.


He’s a massive creep. I saw him speak in Copenhagen once, and he was eating his toenails during the talk.

Later he couch bummed on the professors couch instead of staying at a hotel and the horrible experience of having him as a “guest” is still the key story at every Christmas party.

I don’t want to defend him. I think he’s an idiot, but I also don’t think he’s pro-pedo. I mean, you have to be an absolute fool to write what he did, but his point was clearly just to say “maybe mr scumbag didn’t know the 17 year old hooker was forced”. As autistic and unnecessary as that is, it’s not exactly being a pro-pedo.


>I believe there is a significant chilling effect in regards to speaking out in the defense of Richard Stallman

Sorry? What chilling effect?

People are coming out of the woodwork to defend him. Most of the comments on most threads on Hacker News defend him. I can't think of anyone more vigorously and vociferously defended by the tech community except maybe Aaron Swartz.

If there's any chilling effect at all, it's in the other direction. It's impossible to disagree with the countrvailing narrative that Stallman Did Nothing Wrong without being called a bigot who hates neurdivergent people, a witch-hunting SJW and a traitor to free software. No one is even willing to concede the possibility of disagreeing with Stallman or his positions in good faith.

Meanwhile, only thing anyone suffers from defending Stallman is surplus karma.

Edit - yep.


Show me a good faith disagreement with Stallman, and I'll show you something so minor as to not justify ousting a man from his job, let alone an entire Board. In fact, in most cases I'll show you one side that doesn't try to actively foist their viewpoint on others, but instead invites the other side to come to their own conclusion.

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader as to which is which.


I support RMS and have been an FSF member for north of a decade.

A substantial disagreement I have with him over the GPL is whether we can call propeietary licenses "immoral".

Taking the libertarian view, I would offer that two people sharing a proprietary licensing agreement is as much my business as them consensually sharing bodily fluids.

The FSF tends toward intolerance as it gazes out from its "monastic" abode.

These sudden "woke" attacks on RMS are not part of a broader anti-freedom assault, are they? Sure would be a shame if there was a pattern of silencing in play.

RMS may be an abrasive, challenging personality, but all of those cheering for his ouster had better hope not to wind up in a Martin Niemöller[1] situation.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...


> proprietary licensing agreements + a broader anti-freedom assault

sure lets go full tinfoil hat ^^

I agree with your ideal of the freedom of contract in principle, but that only exists between equals. Wage slaves sign away exclusive rights to megacorporations and those do not negotiate licensing contracts with individual human consumers either. The contracts on both ends of the value chain are dictated by the corporation. Take it or leave it. Between the workers and the consumers a "right to reverse engineer" or a "right to repair" could be agreeable, but business is not going to let that happen. It will instead pressure any workers union to sign away all intellectual property rights the law allows and agree with denying the consumers every right that can be denied, arguing only then slave wages can match bread prices and every bit of idealism is going to take away from that.

So this is big tech trying to get rid of all the counter-culture ideologues so the FOSS communities can be ruled by docile councils of pushovers that offer no resistance against turning FOSS into feature incomplete community editions packed with telemetry and designed to harvest free work from young people eager to raise the value of their curriculum vitae. And even better all those undergrad engineers learn to keep their mouth shut, fall in line and never dare to argue against the social contract. Perfect mindset to get into negotiations for a wage slave position with corporate. Their ideal "community edition community" is not lead by radical free thinkers and it is not inclusive but instead managed by people who studied social science and are willing to sell out for scraps, the power to shush others and an idiotic believe that they in some way are helping to improve humanity by furthering the gleichschaltung of all aspects of culture and community into one big gamified social scoring system, when in truth all they do is crack the whip on the galley of totalitarian surveillance capitalism.


But enough about "Social Credit" systems...


Defend him against what? Not sure what he need defending from, really.

It's possible being critical both ways, without seeking harm.


They're seeking to "oust" him, so if you think he doesn't deserve it, then he needs to be defended.


[flagged]


Creating a sarcastic straw man does not help you make your point...


Edit: I don’t want to comment


OK, but we're talking about Free Software culture and whether there's a chilling effect for defending Richard Stallman versus criticizing him. That specifically is the subject of the comment I replied to.


The poster you're replying to is making the point tge Stallman hysteria is just another symptom of a general trend; likely characterized by extreme levels of tribalism leading to frequent and destructive No-True-Scotsman-like behavior that freezes out any attempts at any positive inclusivity.

You're looking at the football stadium, he's commenting on the sports riot in progress.


I'll be honest here, I dislike the cancel culture with passion.

When an angry mob tries to cancel a person there are 3 things that bothers me:

1. The cancellers are judging the past actions of a person with today's values, and are judging the past version of the person as if such person hadn't had already the chance to reflect on their past actions, accept their mistakes and become a better person.

2. The cancellers are becoming paradoxically the epitome of the paradox of tolerance by destroying the ability of others to be tolerant: Agree with us or we'll cancel you.

3. The cancellers are hidden behind the anonymity that their numbers provide, so they can destroy other people's lives with impunity. Cancellers should be held accountable for their actions.


> 1. The cancellers are judging the past actions of a person with today's values, and are judging the past version of the person as if such person hadn't had already the chance to reflect on their past actions, accept their mistakes and become a better person.

That would make sense for someone judging the Mongols for conquering half of Eurasia. For someone judging sexual harassment and/or rape, when would you draw the line when "today's values" weren't applicable with regards to sexual harassment and/or rape? Like, take Andrew Cuomo or Harvey Weinstein. Is what many people are alleging they did fine because it was some time ago?

And of course there are "cancellings" ( i hate that terminology...) for current actions, like LGBTQ-phobia, or the Q lunatics.

I absolutely agree that "doing blackface" at a college party 30 years ago isn't really relevant to who a person is today.


Dislike with passion? There are words for that: hate, despise, disdain, detest.

"Darling, I like you with passion."

Innocent errors of diction are de minimis; tiptoeing heresy emboldens orthodox bigotry.


There are other words like disapproval or concern.

Example:

  82 percent of Americans agree that hate speech is a problem in America today
  but 80 percent also view political correctness as an issue.
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a70a7c3010027736a227...


Neither of those two words include passion, nor does your example.

The argument from consensus is particularly weak when not averaged historically across the lives of the present generation, much less historically.


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 guy that essentially started all of this, without further discussion or investigation.


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 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. It has a specific mission, and the question isn't whether Stallman is so bad that he deserves to be excluded, it's whether associating themselves with Stallman helps them achieve that goal.

Given how much of the free software movement he has alienated, including past FSF staff, past FSF board members, and a number of present and former GNU contributors, as well as other organizations like Software Freedom Conservancy that work closely with the FSF and defend the GPL and software freedom, it seems very unlikely that it does.


> 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.


In practice the FSF is the Stallman Foundation.


It hasn't been since at least fall 2019, when he stepped down. He hasn't been involved (at least on paper!) for over a year now, and the FSF has presumably been functioning between then and last Saturday.

It hasn't been since 2004, when the FSF staff unionized to protect themselves from Stallman (https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1374532930400227328).

It hasn't been since whenever Stallman's rider started including explicit instructions that his speaking fees should be sent to his personal mailing address and made out to his personal bank account, not the FSF treasury, not even to his personal assistant employed by the FSF. https://github.com/ddol/rre-rms/blob/master/rider.txt#L725-L...

And maybe it is in practice despite all that, but should it be? That's not their mission statement, and I think, for instance, that very few software authors would have been willing to say "or, at your option, any later version published by the Stallman Foundation" - let alone transfer their copyrights to the Stallman Foundation. Free software developers including myself entrusted the FSF with the ability to control our work precisely because the FSF was not just one guy, it was an organization that claimed to represent the entire free software movement.


So... You suddenly realized the value you handed off, and are annoyed because you can't take them back? I mean, personally, I don't think IP rights (if we have to suffer them to exist) should be transferrable. It should either be utilized by the person who did the work, or w waived into the public domain. Nevertheless, you never had any guarantee FSF would always be run by people, or run how, you like. You knew this. You did it anyway. What is it they say today? "There are consequences."

You can't take it back. Once it's out there, it's out there. That was the point! Nor does it at all Change that Stallman has done absolutely nothing to deserve ousting, nor does his reinstatement detract from FSF or it's mission.

Looked into the rider; good for him; he's bringing it in, he should get a choice in where it goes. Also, makes me wonder why. Given Stallman's dedication, I have to wonder what the Foundation has been up to that's got him feeling like he's got to take care of himself first, but heck, maybe he just got tired of having to rely on the charity of others? I know in his position, (particularly nowadays) I'd not feel a great degree of trust in the face of my peers.

I'm just in awe of the fact he's even gone back, and throughout the entire thing kept advocating for FSF. That's commitment.

After thumbing through the Twitter thread, came across this gem:

>I worked at the FSF from 2015-2018 & was shop steward for a while. I recall having a months (MONTHS) long conversation with ED John Sullivan about why racist & sexist 'hacker humor' from the 90s needed to be removed from http://gnu.org. rms didn't get why it was harmful.

So... Someone had a subculture clash, and totally failed to attain enlightenment? Or to even appreciate the importance of maintaining a historical record to change and develop over time?

Seriously, this sounds like the kind of person who'd advocate having all old periodicals available in libraries re-written to the moral standards of today to protect the sensibilities of the youth.

The problem I have sympathizing with all of this is that if these same exact circumstances happened to any other member of the FSF, I'd be in the same uproar. You don't hang someone out to dry because people got hysterical because someone couldn't read, or because other people don't like that someone else is using their right to speak their mind.


He resigned in 2019. There was lots of discussion at the time. Not so much before he returned.


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 other then Firefox. Firefox is cool, don’t get me wrong, but literally every year we have startups from Ycombinator come out with impressive, sustainable projects for less than half a million.

As for Stallman, is there an exhaustive list of so-called unacceptable behavior that he has done?


Most people point to his essays on GNU.org

The best I could determine is that his treatment of chosen pronouns got him labeled transphobic, the abort joke is him being misogynistic (that was him preserving historical/cultural context) in addition to a rather unfortunate lapse of character when coming onto a student once. Most everything I've found tends to map back to stuff dredged up while he was under fire for the Minsky stuff.

Got a thorough write up of the debunking of lies though!

https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/

Enjoy!


The irony is stallman posts are possibly the least transphobic things possible. He calls for a new word to be added which is both gender neutral and singular since he doesn’t believe “they” is adequate.

This is what he is being called transphobic over.


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


Please read this to get another point of view on the calls to ostracize RMS. It has facts, quotes, and givies analysis from Nadine Strossen, former president of the ACLU.

https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web


I cancelled my monthly contribution to the Mozilla foundation.


Thanks, interesting article. I agree that a lot of his supposed crimes consist of talking about—and, most of the time, saying very reasonable things about—subjects which 'normal' people understand are taboo to publicly talk/reason/think about.

I thought this was funny, in an article defending Stallman:

"I have had 3 lunches, 1 free software event, and 1 long car ride with Richard Stallman... In that span of time he managed to confront and berate me countless times. He is by far the most disagreeable person I’ve ever met."


This makes me want to read Nadine Strossen's books. Interestingly "Defending Pornography" came out the same year Wendy McElroy's "XXX" did. (http://www.wendymcelroy.com/xxx/) Interesting coincidence.


It’s sad how far the ACLU has fallen. Where they were once principled, with leaders like Nadine, they have instead turned into just another partisan activist organization. Their social media posts look like a college student’s overly-conformist and simplistic personal Twitter feed. I sadly ended up cancelling my donations after supporting them for years.


Well, there go my annual Tor donations, oh well. Let's see if they can make up for these losses by going the cancel culture/censorship route.

And Mozilla has been a joke for a while with their latest CEO. He's literally trying to jump on anything currently trendy, to hold onto his seat and salary for as long as possible while he drives its projects into the bedrock.


I just did the same - no contributions to Tor from me. As I mentioned in a different comment, I also just uninstalled Firefox.

Slightly off topic, I have been hammering my friends when they start spouting off cancel culture. I am considerably to the left of most of my friends who are democrats so I don't think it is political. Too many people judge written or spoken words based on who said them, rather than the content.


I am not even sure how to trust something like Tor given their name appears on this letter. If the people leading it are willing to participate in cancel culture witch hunts built on baseless allegations and bad faith hyperbolic exaggerations, then they will be just as unprincipled and ready to betray the privacy of Tor users when it does not agree with their ideologies or values.



I had some correspondence with rms while he was being hunted, and all he asked is to help the FSF by becoming a member. He was still defending the same organization that was removing him. So if we want to show support now is the time to become members, to show the FSF our support for rms and what he stands for.


I strongly support the concept and the practical benefits of both Firefox and Tor, but I would never have anything to do with the two organizations behind the software. How many people in the Tor project leadership directly supported or did not directly oppose the death threats, home invasion, cyber bullying, and extra-judicial punishment involving Jacob Appelbaum?

Free software is built on volunteers doing what is often a thankless job, and all this drama is going to make a lot of people to consider doing something else than contributing.


> I strongly support the concept and the practical benefits of both Firefox and Tor, but I would never have anything to do with the two organizations behind the software.

And, IIRC, if you donate money to Mozilla, none of it will go into Firefox development.


Once you have been painted with the scarlet letter of cancel culture, you may never return to before, and your mistakes will haunt, and people will hound you for it, for the rest of your days.


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 clear that he was only defending his friend, who was dead and couldn't defend himself.

EDIT: for what it is worth, I just uninstalled Firefox.

EDIT #2: I just rejoined the FSF (well, I was still a member, I just started donating again).


> 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.


For the other side of the issue, please also see:

https://github.com/rms-support-letter/rms-support-letter.git... and the open letter in support of RMS more generally: https://rms-support-letter.github.io

and, quoting the former president of the ACLU and civil rights activist Nadine Strossen on the Stallman matter:

https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web


Same here Mark. Thanks for putting these words so nicely. I have also stopped using commercial social network like Twitter. People do not even know that their brains are being manipulated. And people who had nothing to do with Free Software and have not even read or written anything about Free Software are making slanderous comments about FSF and the movement in general. Pretty disgusting and I don't know where the west society is heading to. I am glad I don't live in the west. But left liberals are taking similar paths in this country too, so I guess it is not too long before we catch up with the rest of the world.

May be this is the easiest thing people can do?

What are some alternatives to Firefox on GNU/Linux?


Very much agree wit that sentiment to stop using social media, but you are not going to escape 'manipulation' or political views from that.

I find your remark on 'where society is heading to' very odd. You say you don't live in the west so might not have a full picture, but overall I wouldn't see any negative trend. Some things are sometimes taken to an extreme, but I would prefer excess caution around sexual harassment over, say, a culture which treats women as sub-human, as less than men, or as the property of men, as is sadly still the case in far too many countries.


// People should lose their jobs over things like sexual or any type of harassment //

It's not just the Minsky issue that makes people don't want RMS to be in power. It's also a pattern of sexual harassment towards women, since long back, in conferences and MIT. They can be found online, idk whether there is an article that details everything. I think most just want him not to be in a position of power. Just copying another comment from a flagged HN post below:

Here's some readings on why many don't want RMS in a leadership position.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21287006

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20994216

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26545420

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26535789

[5] https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-pr...

. .

Some well-regarded papers on sexism in CS, which are still relevant.

[1] Why are There so Few Female Computer Scientists (Ellen Spertus, 1991)

https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7040

[2] How to Encourage Women in Linux (Val Henson, 2002)

https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/

[3] What Happens to Us Does Not Happen to Most of You (Kathryn S. McKinley, 2018)

https://www.sigarch.org/what-happens-to-us-does-not-happen-t...

[4] Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing (Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher, 2001)

https://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Clubhouse-Women-Computing-P...

[5] The Elephant in the Valley (by Michele Madansky and Trae Vassallo, 2015)

https://www.elephantinthevalley.com/


> 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 only defending his friend, who was dead and couldn't defend himself.

A lot of the comments and actions at issue, including the separate general endorsement of “voluntary” child sex, had nothing to do with Minsky.


> 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.


> RMS is pretty unambiguously leftist and libertarian

FYI libertarians nowadays, especially in the US, are basically anarcho-capitalists, and considered right on the political spectrum.

> Left-libertarian[14][15][16][17][18] ideologies include anarchist schools of thought, alongside many other anti-paternalist and New Left schools of thought centered around economic egalitarianism as well as geolibertarianism, green politics, market-oriented left-libertarianism and the Steiner–Vallentyne school.[14][17][19][20][21] In the mid-20th century, right-libertarian[15][18][22][23] proponents of anarcho-capitalism and minarchism co-opted[8][24] the term libertarian to advocate laissez-faire capitalism and strong private property rights such as in land, infrastructure and natural resources.[25] The latter is the dominant form of libertarianism in the United States,[23] where it advocates civil liberties,[26] natural law,[27] free-market capitalism[28][29] and a major reversal of the modern welfare state.[30]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism

RMS himself is very anti-libertarians in their US form ( right-libertarian in the Wiki article):

https://stallman.org/glossary.html#anti


Yes, I am very much aware (myself being a libertarian - in the actual sense, rather than the perverted "freedom is when capitalism" / "socialism is when government" sense).


@Mozilla is the twitter account of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation and not the for profit Mozilla Corporation.


You don't sound very liberal to me.


Because you have to love cancel culture to be a liberal...?


[flagged]


'Cancel culture' is a thing - it's been the subject of academic scrutiny, even by left-leaning professors and academics on how it affects movements within the left. And you're right, it isn't a uniquely 'leftist' thing. But purity politics (whether the predecessor or the underlying philosophy of how 'cancel culture' operates - regardless of whether it's a 'thing' or not) and moral grandstanding are serious topics of concern and interest to political and moral philosophers, and sociologists too. There is balanced academic analysis both in condemnation and in praise of so-called 'cancel culture'. I think, however, this comes down to a measure of practicality among activists and what they want to accomplish. There are several good ways of being true to your ideals and unwavering, without 'callouts' and 'cancelling'.

Whether or not you support Stallman, whether or not you find the accusations of 'cancel culture' in some places misguided and unfocused, to say that activism hasn't taken a turn to moral purity and the impossibility of forgiveness betrays either an ignorance of modern activism (which I consider myself a part of), or non-involvement in how these processes form. Arguably, 'cancel culture' also forms part of the carceral turn of various activist projects.

When the worst thing you can do is admit a mistake and apologize, there's a problem. When most of the population, according to polls, says it is reluctant to make its true political views known (right or left) - there's a problem.


You are largely thinking about the US, which just seems to be more and more politically polarised. The 'cancel' part is not a feature of (left) activism though, it's a general feature of this polarisation - see e.g. the whole 'take a knee' controversy.


I would love to read the academic material on "Cancel culture" being an objective thing. Would you point me to that?


I found no instance of the word "objective" in the GP's comment, so no pointing necessary.


No, you don't, you need a modest dose of pattern recognition ability to recognize the fundamental pattern behind cancel culture. It's the same thing, different day, and always worth standing in opposition of no matter where you are on the political spectrum, or where the victim stands in relation to you.


I see cancel culture as used by the political party who likely does not recognize banning abortion clinics by law through an entire state as cancellation. The stakes aren’t a matter of Twitter hates you. Your boss firing you doesn’t mean your doctor is banned from giving you an abortion.

Or when TX sought to enforce a ban on gay sex in 2003, I really doubt the GOP sees that as cancellation. It’s a kind of failure to see the forest, even while pretending to have such moral clarity. The stakes aren’t a matter of Reddit hates you.

When a Christian refuses to bake a cake, sign a marriage certificate, or when they fight for the right to fire gay people, etc., the activity is not cancellation but spiritual observation.

And does one not remember that during the Bush presidential candidacy a major get out to vote issue for Christian conservatives was a US constitutional ban on gay marriage? Of course this is not cancellation. It was a Constitutional exercise.

These are points of pride for the GOP. This is what it means to energize the base.


The very fact that the GOP is also guilty of the cancellations you exposed doesn't preclude anyone, including the GOP, to complain about other forms of cancellation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque


According to the GOP, these aren't cancellations, but matters of spiritual and moral clarity.

Before one rushes to the aid of those who are powerful, one might first observe those who live underfoot. It is reasonable to say that in the lifetime of your children, it will still be a Constitutional right for Christian businesses and employees to deny gay employees or customers.


Isn't, according to cancelers, cancellation about moral clarity or in other terms "politically correct" stuff?

By definition those who are powerful don't need my aid, and I'm only here to learn.

Denying an employee (and even a customer, if one really wants so) for any real reason is already possible and done, by invoking any other reason. Such a Constitutional Right doesn't change anything.

Trying to coerce people into interacting with persons they don't like is either moot or, if apparently efficient for a while because "those who are powerful" enforce it, leads to a major clash as soon as this power vanishes.


And Antifa is just an idea.



I mean, you're technically correct in the sense that "liberal" and "leftist" have been erroneously conflated in American politics for some time. So yes, a "liberal" not voting for Clinton would be out of character.

A leftist not voting for Clinton, however, seems perfectly reasonable, considering that she is not even remotely leftist. She's a neoliberal, who ran on a neoliberal platform - one that would've made no meaningful effort to advance actual leftism in this country. It would've been, at best, appeasement.


Yeah, Americans don't get it.

The Republican Party in Europe would be a conservative right party while the Democrat Party would be a moderated center-right one with some liberal hints.


>>> As a very liberal person, I have to say that I am disgusted by cancel culture. Disgusted.

> He's not. https://mark-watson.blogspot.com/2016/01/i-will-not-vote-for...

Walk me through how that shows that he's not "a very liberal person."


That does not confirm what you think it does


As an also very liberal person, I'm mostly in favor of what we're calling "cancel culture," the broad weight of it \ I 100% believe to be a movement in the right direction.

That being said, there are people who are going too far, and this feels very much like that. I don't think people trying to oust RMS much appreciate the sheer weight of what they are up against, and that uphill fights like this are going to bring in "extremists" and just plain weirdos.

You're (at least at times) fighting literally the richest and most powerful people in the world, and only a tiny number of people even much understand what the whole thing is about, much less are on your side.

I'm a black person in tech, I'm well aware of both what it's like to have to deal with boorish powerful people, but I'm also close enough to older folks who've also been in real serious underdog type fights to understand that - you don't always get your choice of co-fighters when you're in the minority -- at the risk of being dramatic, it's darn near war.


A plethora of women have come forward, with their stories of sexual harassment and manipulation by RMS. (See links in other posts; e.g. the first link in the open letter's appendix.)

This isn't just about him describing a "sex trafficking victim" as "entirely willing", and hence not a victim of "sexual assault". This is wrong on so many levels.


Do you mean to say that a "plethora of women" was exactly one alleged claim by one woman that RMS had said he would kill himself unless she went out with him on a date?

If it is true then that was bad, and I am sure that gave him a reputation that on a campus likely burned like a wild fire (it sure would do that on my university if anyone said something like that), but what is an appropriate reaction be now several decades later?

The second thing the appendix listed was a mattress in his office whose primary user were most likely RMS himself since he kind of had a reputation of living in the university.


> The second thing the appendix listed was a mattress in his office whose primary user were most likely RMS himself since he kind of had a reputation of living in the university.

Living in an office doesn't excuse having topless people on a mattress in your office.


The claim that his office was some playboy mansion harem goes counter to the extremely desperate concept of using suicide in order to get a date.

The 80's was a different time, but not that different. Unless the "topless people" were RMS himself sleeping on it, I have a hard time believing it. In theory I can imagine (but I doubt it) a warm summer where a team of emacs collaborators were all living and sleeping in the university office room, but I strongly doubt the implication sex went on there.


I'd prefer if there was plethora of evidence.


Testimony is evidence.


Testimony happens in a court of law not on Twitter. Show us the testimony.


Legal testimony happens in a court of law. Testimony can happen anywhere. Religious testimony for instance. Or testimonial advertising.


To which kind of testimony were you referring in your GP comment?


"firsthand authentication of a fact" or "open acknowledgment".[1]

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/testimony


Lol, thus you are saying testifying in church is 'evidence'.

Gotta love the mental gymnastics on HN sometimes.


Anecdotal evidence is evidence. Maybe you're thinking of proof.


What did Stallman do specifically? Why is it always so hard to find out what someone actually said or did when they are being cancelled?


Can't help on what set people off, but those who value the truth collated a thorough debunking of the media smear job.

https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/


Wow thanks for sharing that. This rabbit hole of smearing by activists and left leaning news media is far far deeper than I was expecting. Unfortunately with so few paying attention I’m not sure how to even fight back. It feels like speaking up risks one’s social and professional credentials, and I’m not sure it would be effective given there are overwhelming numbers of people spreading these smears.


By being vague, they can give the slightest missteps immense gravity.


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


> "He regularly and repeatedly makes comments about “the dishonest law that labels sex with adolescents as ‘rape’ even if they are willing.”

I'm a gay man who is into older men.

When I was in highschool I intentionally sought out men in their 20s and 30s.

Cross generational relationships are a sexual preference and can be just as fulfilling and last just as long as any other.

Sometimes the younger person has more money and is the one paying for everything. Really. I should know. I've been that younger person. It's really just like any other relationship. We laugh, love, and have deep meaningful emotional connections.

These antiquated stereotypes of a mustache twirling abusive old pervert preying on the naive country bumpkin has to go.

The vast majority simply aren't like that. There's creeps, sure, but there's creepy people everywhere.

A 17 year old in love with a 30 year old shouldn't come with secrecy, shame and judgemental speculation. I had enough of that when I was young.

Let us emerge from the shadows. We've been here all along.

RMS is saying there shouldn't be prison sentences for love. Abuse is a relationship dynamic, not a function of the age of the participants.

Hit me up if you want to have me fired over my sexual orientation as well, email info is on my contact page. I'll mail you my manager's info.


That in Europe it's just "Monday". In my country, the legal age to consent is 16. And, a few years ago, it was... 13!!!


I would agree somewhere there is a threshold where abuse can reasonably be assumed. But abuse has to be the thing demonstrated for the crime and not merely the age of the participants.

I agree those implications sound shocking, but please read on:

When it comes to criminality, we need to stay focused on the abuse and manipulation and not be distracted by ages or any other correlative relationship. Going over the line of consent is the trespass we all agree upon.

Such hyper-vigilance will permit us to pursue the true sentiments and goals of metoo and cancel culture, to rout out systems and institutions of abuse. All kinds.

For instance, a 10 year old with a 40 year old late at night at a park sounds like a major red flag, something we should all find unacceptable.

What if it's a basketball coach waiting for a parent who's running late?

The point of that redirection story is that abuse and manipulation is what needs to be demonstrated, not just the mere existence of a relationship. Abuse can happen without sex at all.

Our immense paranoia of child sex predators has robbed people of their natural desires to nurture children. By assuming the worst is inevitable we have made the best impossible.

I know it's a high standard so let us all aim high.


OFC, bear in mind having consent low in Spain said a lot of other terms, such as if you were 14 and commited some serious crime, (murder for example), you could be jailed as an adult. That got changed a few decades ago with the "Minor's Law" and not everyone was happy because a gang composed of minors commited one of the worst crimes ever in Spain against slightly mentally challenged woman.

On the main theme, yes, the US is paranoid, and a lot of people exploiting the average fear from the American: the market and the consumering society.


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 calling for his removal was way overblown and quite childish.

I worked in a college setting for years and tenured professors were found in possession of pornography on school grounds and on school equipment. We in tech, who discovered and reported it,thought it was a big deal. Academic freedom policy and union protection gave it the big shrug. That didn't protect their reputation but it did protect their freedom.

I came to hold dear the notion of academic and intellectual freedom from my years working there. Web filtering and monitoring were completely off the table. Not because it might protect some creepy dudes from exposure but because it protects us all in ways that most people don't even fathom.

I predict that the author of that post will deeply regret their actions one day when they grow up.


> I predict that the author of that post will deeply regret their actions one day when they grow up.

The original signers of that letter are:

* Molly de Blanc (Debian Project, GNOME Foundation)

* Nathan Freitas

* Matthew Garrett (Former member of the FSF board of directors). See: https://twitter.com/mjg59

* Shauna Gordon-McKeon

* Elana Hashman (Debian Technical Committee Member, Open Source Initiative Director, Kubernetes SIG Instrumentation Chair)

* Faidon Liambotis (Open Source Initiative Director)

* Katherine Maher

* Tom Marble (Software Freedom Conservancy, Evaluation Committee Chair)

* Neil McGovern (GNOME Foundation Executive Director, Former Debian Project Leader)

* Deb Nicholson (OSI General Manager, SeaGL Co-Founder)

* Nadya Peek

* Julia Reda

* Eric Schultz

* Joan Touzet (Apache CouchDB PMC, Former Apache Software Foundation Director)

* Luis Villa (Former Director of the Open Source Initiative and the GNOME Foundation; contributor to the GPL v3 drafting process)

* Stefano Zacchiroli (Former Debian Project Leader and Former Director of the Open Source Initiative)

See:

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


They can all still grow up, I hope. But the probabilities are slim. Still, it would probably be a bad idea to ostracize all of them just because they say weird things.


> 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.


I checked one of those citations, and wow....

> I expect that Sudanese law defines "rape" to exclude rape by the husband. That's comparable to US laws that define "rape" to include voluntary sex with under N years of age (where N varies). Both laws falsify the meaning of "rape".

https://stallman.org/archives/2018-may-aug.html#14_May_2018_...


Yeah I saw that, but I didn’t see anything that he did specifically.

It seems he said some things that one might disagree with which is fair enough but saying it’s sexual harassment seems like a stretch IMO.


Did you, uh, read the medium link that I and the appendix linked to? https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-appendix...

He threatened suicide if a woman wouldn't date him. That's abusive manipulation.

He, unsolicitedly hands out 'pleasure cards' to women at conferences. That's harassment: Conferences are a interest and professional environment; they're not Tinder.

Having a bed in his office at MIT is creepy as hell. Inviting woman at MIT into his office would hence be harassment.

Women at MIT had to keep plants in their offices to ward him off. Ward off his persistent, unwanted, sexual advances. That's him causing harassment.


Those cards said "Sharing good books, good food and exotic music and dance - tender embraces - unusual sense of humor." Handing out such calling cards seems to only be classified as harassment if the man is fat.


I have an office in my bedroom. Is that ok?


That depends. Do you wear shirts while on teleconferences, and what art do people get subjected to?

I will also require your taste in literature, boxers or briefs, tube socks with/without the colored stripes or those ankle socks, and toilets or bidets to make a final determination.


you'll have to buy me dinner first.


Having a bed in your office is unusual but I disagree it’s harassment.


Here's a satirization of the open letter: https://ultralux97.medium.com/stallman-must-be-removed-a3061...


I think your link might be broken. Here's a working link: https://ultralux97.medium.com/stallman-must-be-removed-a3061...


Thanks! I edited mine to reflect yours.



[flagged]


We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the HN guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop.

This is not a site for political or ideological hell war.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


Thank you.


The Open Letter site itself has an Appendix that includes specifics:

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



I read through it, and the first concrete accusations cites a newspaper article titled "Renowned MIT Scientist Defends Epstein: Victims Were 'Entirely Willing'" which is flat out wrong. He does not defend Epstein (but Marvin Minsky), and he does not state that the victims were entirely willing. Read the original email instead of the smearing article in a tabloid.

I also recommend the treatment here: https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web


Many things, over many years. The free software community was deeply unhappy with him for a long while. Here's a subset:

http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html

https://wingolog.org/archives/2019/10/08/thoughts-on-rms-and...

https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25193674

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21000374

The immediate pressure for him to resign was a media firestorm over his Epstein comments, but that wouldn't have done anything had he not already lost the support of the free software community by then.

(BTW, the answer to why it's so hard: every single reply giving you an answer has been downvoted, and the only reply that's staying up is the one that implies people want to be vague. I've been getting downvoted for providing actual answers often enough that HN blocks me for commenting for a bit. So if you are having trouble finding answers, remember the reason is censorship.)


Stop using Firefox( https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/the-firefox-brows... ) Firefox alternatives that use the same engine(Gecko): Palemoon - supports all old addons http://www.palemoon.org/ Waterfox - modern fork of Firefox without the spyware https://www.waterfox.net/ Librewolf - another fork closely following Firefox https://librewolf-community.gitlab.io/


I think this reflect the current state of the open source project governance committees: they have been overtaken by the “woke” individuals, concerned with virtue signaling. They did the same thing to Linus. I hope that the new open source projects will emerge from this mess, where the technical merits will dominate once again.


I hope Richard Stallman becomes the director again and fires every SJW at the FSF. If you don't fire these people they will fire you.


Revenge isn’t really his thing


He just wants to carry on the fight against proprietary software.


Does nobody else see the irony when people say they are uninstalling Firefox code because they hate cancel culture?

Lets build a premium water fountain exclusively for people of colour to fight racism too?


There’s an open letter in support of RMS as well:

https://rms-support-letter.github.io/


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.


>The article references sexual harassment, the commenters care about market share.

Alleged sexual harassment. Granted I don't know the whole story, but it doesn't seem like there has been anything more than accusations. I don't think its right to fire someone based on heresay. Once he is proven to have crossed the lines, then I'm all for holding him accountable. Until then, I think people should keep the pitchfork in the shed.

Also I'm not defending his commentary, but people are entitled to their own opinions.


> The article references sexual harassment, the commenters care about market share.

The sexual harassment is hearsay, and one making accusations (Mozilla) is so deep in bed with Google, if they sneezed Alphabet would come out.

The market share is people way if saying, really, that's what you want to focus on?


> 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 has a lot of signatories, many prominent figures. Sadly, of course, the open letter is necessary.


> 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".


the sexual harassment was asking women at conferences on dates


He's obviously an animal, devoid of all reason./sarcasm


You're downplaying it entirely. He has a track record of handing out sexualized 'pleasure cards' at professional conferences.

Women at MIT were warned away from him, told to keep plants to ward him off.

And one of the most troubling things he has done is psychological manipulation. Many jurisdictions rightly recognise as domestic abuse. In particular, he told one woman he would kill himself if she didn't date him.

Depressed people should seek treatment. Being depressed doesn't excuse manipulation.


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, told to keep plants to ward him off.

That may have been a joke or they didn't want to listen to his preaching. Anecdotal hearsay anyway.

> he told one woman he would kill himself if she didn't date him.

How did he say that? Most likely as a joke, which millions of people have done.

But hey, let's focus on Stallman who wasn't even involved with Epstein himself instead of the people that Epstein collected dossiers about. Those would be the interesting ones, but perhaps some corporate or political interests don't allow it.


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....


You downplay the sexual harassment of handing out these 'pleasure cards'.

But ultimately, real women are upset by it. The unprofessional behavior discourages women from being in tech.

Just because you wouldn't mind receiving such a card, doesn't mean it's not harassment. I mean, do you understand (a) the nature of consent, and (b) professional workplace environments?


you realize that the situation you are describing is 'being handed a business card', right


Which real women? Why could they not reject such card?


> But ultimately, real women are upset by it.

I wouldn't call anyone (woman or man) that can't handle being upset "real". In fact it is the opposite of it. It shows a distinct lack of skills in dealing with reality, that is if you accept that real life is not just rainbows and sunshine, no matter how much we desire so.


>In particular, he told one woman he would kill himself if she didn't date him.

>Depressed people should seek treatment. Being depressed doesn't excuse manipulation.

I've been on the receiving end of that same situation; and yet, I don't think inciting an internet hate mob to banish that person from their life's work indefinitely is the proper "treatment" I'd recommend to give that person.


Again, mental health doesn't excuse domestic abuse.


This is not domestic abuse.


What makes you think I said it did?



Mozilla should better concentrate on their core product instead of this virtue signalling.


The page won’t load but my “free articles this month” still go down every page load


The article itself is fairly generic. A rehashing of why Stallman was out in the first place, noting that he was recently re-appointed, and some quotes about why he shouldn't be involved.

See the Open Letter / Petition here for more details:

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


There's a copy archived here about 20 mins ago:

https://archive.is/s9Ikp


Same. I can’t read the article at all.


Clickbait headline. This story is just about the original petition and the original 1500 names; yesterday's news. The petition in support of Stallman has a comparable number of names.


... that's exactly why the headline points out that among those names on the original petition are some major organizations producing free software. It even names the specific organizations. It's not "clickbait" in the usual sense, like "You won't believe who's calling for Richard Stallman to leave the FSF!". (And it's a much better headline than "1500 people sign petition..." would be.)

Which organizations have signed the petition in support of Stallman?

Or even just looking at individuals, which GNU project members or FSF staffers have signed it?


Seems like something that can only drag you down, baby, bathwater, the works.

Best to ignore despicable people.


No more donations to Mozilla and The Tor Project. I don't support bully organizations.


It just seems to be article about this tweet: https://twitter.com/mozilla/status/1374513444838199304

and this petition: https://rms-open-letter.github.io/


It's all so tiresome


Thanks, now I hate both Mozilla and Chrome, among Tor which in the end it wasn't so ready and secure against malicious nodes.

Netsurf/Lynx and i2p should be the freedom supporting trend against right wing and left wing extremist wackos.


I want to like Firefox. It is at least a tolerable alternative to Chrome.

But the Mozilla foundation just taints it. Every time they come out with one of their sanctimonious PR releases they make me want to have less to do with them. I think they've completely lost their focus.

I end up bouncing between Chrome, Firefox, and Brave. Brave makes me the happiest, but it's a minor player, and I'm worried about it's long-term prospects.


Brave only exists because Mozilla fired eich for some donations he made to an anti gay-marriage group, iirc. I really dislike the donation he made, but firing people for their legal personal political behaviour is like poison to a free society


Eich wasn't fired. He resigned because people didn't want to follow him.


You don’t speak for me, so why are you writing “He resigned because” here?


Well, to me personally this might be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back. Time to ditch Firefox and switch to Brave for good.


I switched to brave on desktop and mobile and couldn't be happier. They're willing to try and push new boundaries if you're into the whole crypto domain.


I really wish Brave didn’t use Chromium.

Is there some non-Mozilla Foundation fork of Firefox?


I use waterfox.


Glad to see that Mozilla refuses to tolerate neurodiversity. Socially awkward people deserve to be permanently ostracized from society, am I right? I'm proud to use a web browser developed by people who offer no quarter to autists, schizos, and the rest of them loonies; if they wanted inclusion, they should just stop being mentally unwell - it's all in their heads, after all! Thank you, Mitchell Baker, very cool.

(/s, because on the Internet nobody knows you're a dog^W^Wbeing sarcastic)

...like, I ain't saying I like the guy or anything - he definitely seems like someone I wouldn't enjoy interacting with day-to-day - but I'm skeptical of the idea that having heterodox opinions or being a bit of a stubborn ass should be a fireable offense. If he was outright sexually assaulting people, or abusing a position of power for sex, or something like that, then sure, villainize the guy (and - better yet - pursue criminal charges), but as it stands, it seems like his worst actual offense was being a stereotypical socially awkward nerd.

But hey, if Mozilla doesn't want to associate with the FSF for whatever reason, then that's their perogative. I'm sure they'll stop using GNU and its components company-wide any day now.


> I'm skeptical of the idea that having heterodox opinions or being a bit of a stubborn ass should be a fireable offense

It's more of an issue when someone is part of the leadership for a group though, as they are seen as representing the whole group.


Well maybe that mentality is the actual problem, rather than the targets thereof. It's quite possible to separate personal beliefs from professional interactions, and unless there's tangible evidence that said separation ain't happening, then maybe we could stand to assume innocence in the absense of evidence of guilt?

Like, should we consider the emtire organization developing the Brave web browser to be implicitly homophobic because its founder and CEO once donated to an anti-gay-marriage campaign? Should we have considered Mozilla itself to have been at one point implicitly homophobic in its brief appointment of that same person as CEO? Was Netscape homophobic for that reason?

Or do you think that maybe people can have views that ain't representative of their employers?


[flagged]


Sexual harassment? The claim that he wrote "knight of hot ladies" was false: it was a vandal. He's never groped or raped anyone. The worst true accusation is that he kept a mattress at the office which he used to sleep on.


> He is being ostracized for sexual harassment.

Being a bit of a weirdo - which is really the only allegation so far that has had any real merit, to my knowledge - is not sexual harassment. Claiming otherwise does a massive disservice both to neuroatypical people and to actual victims of sexual harassment.

> Finally, does he have an autism diagnosis?

Does he need one? This is the US we're talking about; considering how frequently and harshly even the slightest mental irregularity gets ostracized in this country - as exemplified in this very thread - I wouldn't blame him for being undiagnosed, whether due to not knowing there's something different about himself in the first place or due to actively wanting to avoid the stigma such a diagnosis would carry.

> The responsible thing to do, if Stallman were autistic, would be to seek treatment for autism.

Right, I'm sure there's some pill he can take, right? Oooh, or maybe hypnotherapy! Or lobotomies! Or electroshock therapy!

Imagine calling me ableist in the same breath used to insist that neuroatypical people should submit themselves to some sort of conversion therapy if they want to be accepted in society.


> Being a bit of a weirdo - which is really the only allegation so far that has had any real merit, to my knowledge - is not sexual harassment.

Well, sure: if you ignore all the evidence, then put up a straw man, you'll never be able to criticise his harassment.

Again, RMS is being ostracized for sexual harassment, not for being a weirdo.


> if you ignore all the evidence

What evidence? Pretty much all of it, last I checked, has fallen into any of three categories:

1. Debunked (the "protector of hot ladies" thing, claiming Epstein's victims to have been "entirely willing")

2. Based on some gross exaggeration or misrepresentation (the mattress in his office at MIT, EDIT: and the "pleasure cards")

3. Hearsay


Sexual Harassment can mean anything to these usurpers.

What it probably means is a big, fat, ugly nerd tried his hand at flirting. Didn't go so well. A little bit of awkwardness for both parties ensured. End of story.

Long Live RS!


> Sexual Harassment can mean anything to these usurpers.

This is a complete strawman. Sexual harassment is well defined. It would be unwanted and, especially, persistent sexual attention.


By definition, literally any rejection of an intimate advance would make that advance "unwanted". Should we as a society interpret this to mean that the only people allowed to flirt with other people are ones who are successful 100% of the time?

Now, obviously if he persisted after rejection then that changes things, but it doesn't seem like that's been alleged AFAICT.


> Sexual harassment is well defined. It would be unwanted and, especially, persistent sexual attention.

Don't go to latin america or you'd be in for a surprise. Or Japan.


In Spain on weekends it can be in both ways and with different sexual orientations.


Unbelievable... so autism is now a treatable disease? Is LGBTQ++ also treatable according to you?

Your comment is bigotted nonesense across the whole gamut.


> 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.


> That's a crass straw man. Being LGBT+ is not a disorder. Indeed, being trans was recently removed as a disorder from DSM.

And who's to say the same won't eventually be said of autism spectrum disorder, or social communication disorder? Like you say, being homosexual or dysphoric was a "disorder" until it wasn't.

That is: it's hardly a strawman to draw comparisons between how homosexuality / transgender identity was historically regarded v. how neuroatypical personality traits are regarded now.


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 who are not assholes and are lovely people. Many of them say they go out of their way to have their rational brain compensate for the level of emotional processing that other people expect out of them, that they specifically worry about being perceived as rude.

The least a leader of an activism organization can do (assuming he does in fact care about the activism) is to figure out when he's alienating people and figure out how to stop, or to step down and let someone else take the leadership role.


> The least a leader of an activism organization can do (assuming he does in fact care about the activism) is to figure out when he's alienating people and figure out how to stop, or to step down and let someone else take the leadership role.

Which he did, and pretty quickly at that. And then the FSF evidently wanted him to return, hence his reappointment to the Board of Directors.


> 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?


I personally find the open letter a bit short on these sorts of details. I think better sources are these:

http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html (October 2019, by a former FSF board member and 2021 recipient of the FSF's Award for the Advancement of Free Software):

> For the last two years, I had been a loud internal voice in the FSF leadership regarding RMS' Free-Software-unrelated public statements; I felt strongly that it was in the best interest of the FSF to actively seek to limit such statements, and that it was my duty to FSF to speak out about this within the organization. [...] When the escalation started, I still considered RMS both a friend and colleague, and I attempted to argue with him at length to convince him that some of his positions were harmful to sexual assault survivors and those who are sex-trafficked, and to the people who devote their lives in service to such individuals. More importantly to the FSF, I attempted to persuade RMS that launching a controversial campaign on sexual behavior and morality was counter to his and FSF's mission to advance software freedom, and told RMS that my duty as an FSF Director was to assure the best outcome for the FSF, which IMO didn't include having a leader who made such statements.

https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html (September 2019, by a former FSF board member and 2014 recipient of the FSF's Award for the Advancement of Free Software):

> I've spent a lot of time working with him to help him understand why various positions he holds are harmful. I've reached the conclusion that it's not that he's unable to understand, he's just unwilling to change his mind.

They aren't going to change the letter or its appendix at this point, given that people have signed, but if I had the magic power to change it, I would suggest those two as citations that he was repeatedly asked to consider the impact of his actions and repeatedly refused.

If he did stop - if he did express the interest in figuring out why he's alienating people and why his statements were not only hurting the cause of free software directly but wasting the time of FSF board members who could be contributing to free software instead - then yes, the letter would have been unnecessary, because the problem would have been resolved.


>For the last two years, I had been a loud internal voice in the FSF leadership regarding RMS' Free-Software-unrelated public statements; I felt strongly that it was in the best interest of the FSF to actively seek to limit such statements, and that it was my duty to FSF to speak out about this within the organization. [...]

Read: I felt it was in the Foundation's best interest's to deprive Richard Stallman of his inalienable right to free speech. I also felt it was my duty to try to get the organization to agree with me on the virtue of censoring Richard Stallman.

>I've spent a lot of time working with him to help him understand why various positions he holds are harmful. I've reached the conclusion that it's not that he's unable to understand, he's just unwilling to change his mind.

Read: I've argued my case, but the case I made was not sufficient for Richard Stallman to decide to change his viewpoint on the matter.

Note all of these are written in such a way to put the most uncharitable spin on Richard, and the most charitable spin on the writer.

Russell's conjugation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation

Critical thinking is important.


Both of these are relevant to his removal back then, but how are they relevant now?

> assure the best outcome for the FSF, which IMO didn't include having a leader who made such statements.

Ok, he's no longer leading the FSF and the recent development does not aim to change that. Why is this (reasonable-at-the-time, imo) opinion relevant now?

> I've reached the conclusion that it's not that he's unable to understand, he's just unwilling to change his mind.

Did he change his mind now? Has he repented? Atoned? The 2019 pieces are not going to take this into account.


He hasn't said anything, and moreover the FSF was awfully secretive about the fact that he was rejoining:

https://twitter.com/fsf/status/1374399897558917128

It is certainly possible that between 2019 and now that he is no longer "unwilling to change his mind." (I think that's more important than whether he "repented"/"atoned"; I'm not looking for a YouTube apology video, I'm looking for an effective leader.) But a) given that complaints about his leadership approach had been around for decades, it's a priori unlikely that anything changed in the last year and a half without further information, b) his announcement didn't say anything about reflecting on why he stepped down, he just said he's back and isn't planning on stepping down again, and c) he's continued leading the GNU Project, which the FSF provides organizational stewardship for, everything points to nothing having changed.

We don't know why the FSF put him back on the board - we don't know if the board asked or he asked. We don't know whether they took any of the above into account. We don't know what his role on the board is. The only statement the FSF made is that one tweet.

(And, in any case, being a member of the FSF board is a leadership role.)

There's a lot of concern apart from the text of the open letter about the FSF's secrecy. For instance, see this statement from the EFF https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/statement-re-election-... and this one from KDE https://ev.kde.org/2021/03/24/on-the-reappointment-of-rms-fs... .

I agree that the open letter doesn't go into full detail about why the authors of the letter believe that no meaningful change has happened, but I think they are justified in believing it.


Mozilla once again shows themselves to be a biased, cancel culture friendly organization. I am less and less inclined to continue using Firefox or other products associated with them.

Here are a number of instances where they revealed their political biases and their anti-free-speech stance:

Firefox rejects free speech, bans free speech commenting plugin Dissenter from its extensions gallery https://reclaimthenet.org/firefox-rejects-free-speech-bans-f...

Mozilla turns its attention to censoring decentralized tech https://reclaimthenet.org/mozilla-turns-its-attention-to-cen...

Firefox maker Mozilla calls for “more than” deplatforming https://reclaimthenet.org/firefox-maker-mozilla-calls-for-mo...

Firefox introduces extension that automatically censors “hate speech” https://reclaimthenet.org/firefox-introduces-extension-that-...


sudo apt remove firefox


[flagged]


It will never go away. Cancel culture has been around forever, its just been amplified by Social Media.


Between the rancid and racist Trumpists and blind/clueless SJW's with a mob based "justice", common sense is doomed in America.


[flagged]


Higher than GNU/Linux.

Update: Market share isn't really my point. Mozilla makes a browser used by millions of people while the FSF mostly reminisces about the old days. If Mozilla is a loser then the FSF is already dead by comparison.


Not really: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

Firefox is irrelevant. Which explains why they support things like this.

If you can't win by building better software you can win by bullying anyone else who does.


https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share

Last I checked, ~4% is greater than <1%.

Edit: It seemed pretty clear to me that, in the context of web browser usage, wmf was referring to GNU/Linux desktop usage, not server usage.


Linux dominates in the server space [1]:

* In 2021, 100% of the world’s top 500 supercomputers run on Linux.

* Out of the top 25 websites in the world, only 2 aren’t using Linux.

* 96.3% of the world’s top 1 million servers run on Linux.

* 90% of all cloud infrastructure operates on Linux and practically all the best cloud hosts use it.

Although you are correct its windows desktop competitor has a low market share, there has been some shift towards Linux derivates such as Chromebooks that captured 10% market share in Q4 2020 and 5.3% in 2020 overall [2]

[1] https://hostingtribunal.com/blog/linux-statistics/#gref [2] https://www.geekwire.com/2021/chromebooks-outsold-macs-world...


You're looking at market share among consumers. Check server marketshare and come back.


GNU/Linux is not limited to Desktop. It's magnitudes more relevant than Mozilla.


Wait android isn't linux? Not a mobile dev, just always thought it was linux..



[flagged]


Taking HN threads into religious flamewar like this is a bannable offence. Your account is already banned, of course.

The users who vouched for this comment will no longer have their vouches counted. Vouching for comments that break the site guidelines is an abuse of the feature.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


Are you insinuating that all Muslims support child marriage? Because it certainly seems like you are.

I'm a 'leftist', but also atheist, so I certainly don't support Islam. But I will tolerate people who believe in it. Same as I'll tolerate people who believe in Christianity, which has plenty of weird shit of its own.

Additionally, I'm opposed to the 'cancelling' of Richard Stallman. It's fucking stupid.

Maybe you should try to not paint all 'leftists' with this stupidly broad brush you're using.


Please don't take HN threads further into religious or ideological flamewar. This is just as damaging as the original post—more so, because if people just flagged these things instead of taking the bait and replying to them, then the flamewar wouldn't spread.

That's why the site guidelines include "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." a.k.a. Please don't feed the trolls.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


Some of this has to do with the various dystopian regimes, war criminals, and other pshycopaths throughout the world sending hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars to all US universities or colleges of note.

There is an investigation ongoing that has Yale receiving $330+MM in unreported donations (illegal) from sanctioned countries and other comprising regimes. Tip of the ice berg.


Being a leftist and supporting Islam is like supporting gay marriage and joining your local Nazi Party.


Religious and ideological flamewar will get you banned here. No more of this, please.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


When the pendulum swings the other way on cancel culture, we will miss the old days of subtlety and taking things in context.


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.


Please make this post link to the freely available open letter/ petition, instead of the pay walled article about it.

Also change the title to "Petition to oust RMS from FSF board"

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

It's an impressive list of names, of whom I know a few personally and hold in high regards.

At this point I'm VERY curious to how RMS and the folks that requested him to come back to the FSF have to say in his defense.

I'm not fully aware of what he did, and to what extend he holds on to being a "misogynist, ableist, and transphobic, among other serious accusations of impropriety". Hence I look fwd to a defense.


“ I'm not fully aware of what he did, and to what extend he hold on to being a "misogynist, ableist, and transphobic, among other serious accusations of impropriety". Hence I look fwd to a defense.”

You don’t know what he did. But you look forward to seeing his defence...?

One of the large problems of cancel culture is people, like you, who jump on the bandwagon without really knowing the context or what the person actually did.


C'mon the petition does not link where he expressed his views. How can I go and read all the internet looking for the offensive material?

Nah. I believe the people signing the petition know to some extend that this is serious. The petition respects him by not linking all expressions directly. Now it's up to him to defend himself if he likes. If he came around (like he came around before) that is a good defense in these cases. I know him as a very principled person: he'll not come around just for show :)


This leaves me very dismayed, why is simply "a lot of people think it" enough to convince you something is true/right? I can think of a good many scenarios where that couldn't ever be non-destructive. This is what critical thinking is for!


I'm saying the opposite. I want to see his defense. That's my whole point.

And yes, that list of people is impressive. I know some of 'm and hold m in high regard. That does not say it's true, but it does make me believe there's actually something going on here -- although I dont any evidence presented. And nowadays even with links to "evidence": what do we truly know?

Hence the defense'd be my proof of the pudding.


> I'm not fully aware of what he did, and to what extend he hold on to being a "misogynist, ableist, and transphobic, among other serious accusations of impropriety". Hence I look fwd to a defense.

The accusation uses political activist wording that most of us are familiar with at this point, indicating that woke activism of the signatories and the organizations they work for have at least had some influence. Do you think an expectation of a response should be tempered by this concern about political activism of the accusers?

Socially extremely competent innocent people regularly fail in defending themselves, or get cancelled even after proven innocent. Asking a borderline autistic person like RMS to defend himself while navigating the complex woke activism in the accusation seems like a big ask.


> complex woke activism

To me this list of people and organizations are not some silly knights of "woke activism", they are people who'd feel misrepresented by RMS due to his beliefs. I'd not be so dismissive to that. We try to make software a more inclusive place. We being: people organizing conferences, the companies that create software and the FLOSS movement as well. Having someone in a position believing what he is accused of is a real problem.

I just want to know if he can come around to his beliefs, or if he sticks to them. He came around with beliefs concerning the "age of sexual consent" and how that should not matter. I find people's ability to come around when presented with evidence a good thing.

Hence, I hope he responds with a defense.


> To me this list of people and organizations are not some silly knights of "woke activism", they are people who'd feel misrepresented by RMS due to his beliefs. I'd not be so dismissive to that. We try to make software a more inclusive place.

Several of these organizations engage in woke political D&I activism, e.g. Mozilla and GNOME.

The woke sense of tolerance is to be intolerant to violations of its fundamentalist norms, while most expect tolerance to be a two-way street. Serious accusations put into political activist wording, like in this petition, is a commonly used woke tool to remove viewpoint opponents from positions of influence. How are we supposed to judge what part of their reasoning stems from political activism, and what stems from evidence of malfeasance?

> I just want to know if he can come around to his beliefs, or if he sticks to them. He came around with beliefs concerning the "age of sexual consent" and how that should not matter. I find people's ability to come around when presented with evidence a good thing.

On top of the accusation of "misogynist, ableist, and transphobic, among other serious accusations of impropriety", this is another serious accusation.

An old political trick often used by the woke is to reduce the opponents moral standing by having them answer an accusation of bad things, true or not. "Sir, how do you respond to those that accuse you of pedophilia?". Even if one answered "Absolutely not; I just argued that a 19 year old is not a pedophile for engaging with one two years younger", the association sticks in peoples minds. How can you retain your moral standing by answering such a question?


> most expect tolerance to be a two-way street

Are you aware of the tolerance paradox of Popper?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

> The woke sense of tolerance

I dont think adding this "woke" word helps making your point. Or, could you please define what you mean by it?

I'm intolerant of hate speech myself. I think organizations that represent people may hold even stricter "codes of conduct" in order to ensure a maximum of people feels represented/welcomed by the organization.

> this is another serious accusation.

I did not accuse him, I said I valued him coming around on this topic. It seems you want to paint me in a color no matter what I say. An why did I say this about the age of consent? Because here I actually did go and look for the evidence, and here he did come around. Good stuff, not bad stuff. I hope he can come around IFF he really hold the beliefs people signing the petition find intolerable. I hope for a defense, or a statement of coming around.


> Are you aware of the tolerance paradox of Popper?

> The woke sense of tolerance

Yes, Popper wrote the "paradox of tolerance" in 1945 as a liberal philosophical answer to the national socialists that were intolerant to violations to their fundamentalist norms.

What the paradox of intolerance says is that we should be intolerant towards totalizing belief systems that justify force and coercion against viewpoint opponent to enforce their compliance to its norms. The woke belief system is exactly the kind of belief system he warned us about. Basically, Popper says tolerance need to be a two-way street.

> I did not accuse him, I said I valued him coming around on this topic. It seems you want to paint me in a color no matter what I say.

That is not what I meant, as I’ve been responding to your request for a defense. Focus is on the accusation and how this kind of accusation found in the linked open letter is frequently used by the woke to reduce the moral standing of opponents. I demonstrated how if you respond to such an accusation, that due to its woke political activist wording demonstrably at least partially contain political activist aspects, you will still loose moral standing.


I read it in its entirety pretty thoroughly and it seems to just list objectionable views he holds.

Has he actually ever said anything that constitutes harassment to a single individual or physically harassed anyone?

Normally I’d agree that holding certain views is enough but the views he hold are pretty controversial, idk.


The letter got posted yesterday and flagged (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26558348), which is probably why it can't be posted again, because of HN's dupe policies. But it was also posted basically immediately when the site was created, when the list of signatures was much smaller. So there wasn't any meaningful discussion of the list of folks who signed it, because they hadn't signed it yet.




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