Their reasoning for kicking him off is pretty weak. I'm taking these quotes from the list of incidents linked from the first.
> Especially chilling is when Stallman addresses the accusations that Marvin Minsky sexually assaulted one of Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking victims
This incident as it was initially reported was fabricated. This letter admits that but tries to reify those fabrications by twisting his words. Saying that maybe his friend Minsky didn't realize what was happening is not defending Epstein or rape.
> He regularly and repeatedly makes comments about “the dishonest law that labels sex with adolescents as ‘rape’ even if they are willing.”
The US criminal code is not above criticism. From Stallman or anyone else.
> He recommended that, should someone find out they are pregnant and the child tests positive for Down’s syndrome “the right course of action for the woman is to terminate the pregnancy.”
Not really an uncommon opinion. The movement to not abort down syndrome babies was really an offshoot of the pro-life movement. Stallman is vocally not pro-life, and you really shouldn't expect him to be. If he believes sometimes abortion is the right choice, more power to him.
> RMS has spent years on a campaign against using people’s correct pronouns. This is poorly disguised transphobia.
Having literary standards is not transphobic. There's no evidence Stallman ever prevented someone from participating because of their identity. There's no evidence Stallman doesn't mean what he says or that he says and speaks coded language only his detractors understand.
These signees should do better.
EDIT: Removed "Stallman-phobic" wording. Even if that's an apt description the phrasing has proved distracting in a different comment thread.
I, too, have an issue with people jumping on "RMS has transphobia" bandwagon without actually reading his words.
He is argument boils down to, some languages have four (or more) sets of pronouns: male, female, single and/or plural of people that is genderless (either explicitly or implicitly), singular and/or plural of inanimate object(s).
English has male, female, plural of people that is explicitly genderless (but not singular), and singular only of inanimate objects (but not plural). We don't have a pronoun that can fit a singular third gender or genderless reference. Using they as a singular pronoun in any situation often leads to awkward speech.
Other languages do other things, such as inanimate objects often being referred to with male or female pronouns (independent of having a singular inanimate pronouns), having both singular and plural inanimate object pronouns, or having singular genderless pronouns.
Adding additional words to English may be required to deal with people who do not wish to use male or female pronouns, but also do not wish to be called an it, or be forced to be called a they inappropriately (since they are not a plural, nor a royal we). Such words should appear similar to regular words, such words should be also standardized and regulated.
/End of RMS boiling down: at no point does he say trans people don't deserve pronouns that can fit their needs, he only illustrates that how we handle it now is not a good solution.
> English has male, female, plural of people that is explicitly genderless (but not singular), and singular only of inanimate objects (but not plural). We don't have a pronoun that can fit a singular third gender or genderless reference.
Except that we do. Singular "they" has been used since Shakespeare. And you likely use singular they in your normal speech. When you don't know anything about a particular person, you ask about their attributes. Who they are and what they like, what their name is.
> Adding additional words to English may be required to deal with people who do not wish to use male or female pronouns, but also do not wish to be called an it
Indeed, and we generally do this by asking what those people want to be called, not by prescribing what they are allowed to be called. Prescriptivist language is both ineffective and rude, much as you trying to tell me what my name is is rude.
That said, even if you're interested in prescriptivist approaches, Merriam-Webster[0], and the OED[1] recognize singular they, as do the APA, NYT, and WaPo style guides.
Singular they, for a nonbinary person who prefers the pronoun, or for a person of unknown gender, is the standard. Stallman is the one causing needless conflict by trying to push a different approach when there already is a standard.
The survey you're citing is from before I was born. Things have changed in the intervening 25 years.
Pretty much every style guide on the wiki page since ~2010 allows or prefers singular they. This includes, as previously mentioned, the APA, the AP, the NYT, WaPo, and a number of other relatively large and formal publications. Perhaps the odd man out is the Chicago Style guide, which says singular they is fine for informal writing, but doesn't yet recommend it for formal writing.
While yes, some Baby Boomer linguists may prickle at the singular they, for many in Gen Z, its all they've ever been exposed to, and for many Millenials, they've now used singular they for longer than other forms, in both formal and informal language.
There have been many genderless pronouns proposed over a long time. Declaring singular-they "standard" and then prescribing it despite the other options (and criticising the other options as nonstandard) is just the same old story.
There are a bunch of reasons why people like different words, and telling them their choices are bad (read: nonconforming) is prescriptive.
Perhaps I should rephrase: they is a reasonable default. If someone doesn't prefer they, they'll tell you and then you should use what they prefer instead.
Nowhere should you use "pers", unless someone specifically requests you use that pronoun for them. Stallman insisting other people use "pers" is bad and prescriptive. I would similarly say that neopronouns are nonstandard, but if someone asked me to use one, I would. I wouldn't insist on referring to them with "they", or "pers", once that person made their preference known.
Suggesting stallman adopt already commonly used and widely accepted terminology and style is not.
There is a confusion here that they can be used in two contexts: one for a person of unknown gender, and one for a person who prefers they/them pronouns. Stallman claims that they isn't acceptable in the first case (it is) and that "pers" should be prescribed in the second (it should not, you should use a person's preferred pronoun).
(Note here again how singular they/them/their is naturally used in this context).
> Stallman insisting other people use "pers" is bad and prescriptive.
I don't know if he's insisting other people use pers, but I wouldn't support that if so.
> There is a confusion here that they can be used in two contexts: one for a person of unknown gender, and one for a person who prefers they/them pronouns. Stallman claims that they isn't acceptable in the first case (it is)
Sure, 'singular they' are fine options for unknown gender and for people who ask for 'they'.
> Nowhere should you use "pers", unless someone specifically requests you use that pronoun for them.
I don't agree with this. Simply because "they" is common doesn't mean it's uniformly better than the alternatives. For example, it introduces singular-plural ambiguity in some cases where, say, "xe" doesn't.
> .... and that "pers" should be prescribed in the second (it should not, you should use a person's preferred pronoun).
There are politeness, inclusiveness, and gender-equality arguments in favor of calling people by their preferred pronoun. There are other factors as well. For example, I'd rather not refer to the high-born as "his royal highness" because I believe in equality. Likewise, I'd rather not specify gender at all, but singular-they isn't common for that, e.g. "this is my girlfriend Sarah, they like yogurt".
So I'd rather keep the options open and not sanction people for promoting alternatives.
I'd suggest you read stallmans writing on the subject. In brief its "here's why I will not use singular they, even when asked, and will always use pers when referring to gender nonconforming people, it and you should too."
It drew umbrage from trans and non-binary folk for good reason.
And it is highly prescriptive on a way that adopting the preferred language of the community your are speaking about is not.
It's also hard to see it as not an attack on such people, as he employs precisely the same rhetorical tricks as he does when attacking companies he dislikes and disproves of.
Ok I read it. I get what you're saying. Refusing to call people by their preferred pronouns is impolite, and if it's a group that has trouble getting recognition then it feels worse.
That said, he does have ground to stand on: I don't think "they" for a specific, individual person with known gender (see examples above) has been in English for very long -- at most 20 years in the US, and its use in those cases does break almost everybody's English grammar, and it reduces clarity in places where alternatives don't.
Therefore I don't see it as an attack on people who want to require "they", even though I understand where you're coming from. Instead, I see it as consistent with his free-software advocacy: he's defending people's ability to control the programming language they use in their own mind and protect it from externally imposed breaking changes.
> Every language has grammar rules. They are in the minds of speakers of the language — including, for English, me. The fact that they weren't decided by an official edict doesn't mean these rules are a trivial matter; demanding people change their grammar rules is an affront. You might succeed in convincing me to change the English grammar rules in my mind, but don't you dare demand it.
This really has nothing to do with whether you find those positions agreeable or not. You have to understand that the core argument here is that Stallman is unfit to lead an organization that is supposed to be welcoming to all kinds of people, and that includes people with down syndrome or rape victims. The point is that constantly being the center of controversy is not helping here, not that any of those positions are reasons to make him homeless (which is still very much a step further than removing him from a position of power).
>There's no evidence Stallman ever prevented someone from participating because of their identity.
The standard for being in a leadership position is usually much higher than the one that a regular employee/IC is held up against. Stallman is the public face of an organization comprised of a lot of people. Everything he says publicly is representative of what the FSF stands for.
> You have to understand that the core argument here is that Stallman is unfit to lead an organization that is supposed to be welcoming to all kinds of people
Who is "fit to lead" by this standard? The FLOSS community also includes many people who align themselves with various sorts of social traditionalism and are quite skeptical of any fringe notion of social "progress". The kind of FSF board or leadership that promoters of this open letter might perhaps demand would be wholly contrary to such people's lived experience. There is no solution that can satisfy everyone, other than increased toleration of differing views.
Having read the apparently damning set of things RMS has said linked from the page, they sound very similar to the sorts of things I would have thought when I was an unsocialised 10 year old. All 'reasoned' in some technical sense, but hurtful, misguided, ignorant, impolite and basically no longer defensible. To be honest these sort of 'internally consistent but clangingly bad' takes on morality and social norms come out a lot in ASD people. The puritanical bent to RMS's prognostications on Software Freedom are also like this: if X then Y, and it MUST BE Y, and I don't care how you feel about it. I have no idea if this is in play here. It sounds like he is being excluded based upon his views (they mention "actions" but this seems to be 'act' of sharing his views?) but not actually taken to task or challenged about them?
Welcome to logical structure parsing. Believe it or not, internal consistency in language snd action is actuallu a pretty hard thing to get right, easy (and natural) to dismiss out of hand. In philosophy, we call it the self-referential inconsistency, and there is a shocking number of the population who not only indulge in it, but get very upset when you point it out due to the cognitive dissonance that comes from it. It really gets the lizard brain going. Bmwhen you strip away the emotional aspects of it though, you will find that there are linguistic roots of almost every conflict. It isn't the way of life the selected words represent that is at issue, but the words assembled by the other party that are at issue.
I second there is a level of immaturity at work, but not with Stallman; instead it is with his detractors. They take any challenge to the respect or superiority of chosen pronoun use as an act of transphobia. It is not. It is an adherence to clear unambiguous communication. They create the perception of transphobia in their own minds where it simply isn't just as readily as the oft derided "conspiracy theorists" see nefariousness behind every corner. His actions, nor his words are transphobic. His detractors, however, are phobic of everyone else that just doesn't care, or prioritizes things differently.
Which, I might add, is just something you learn to deal with as life goes on to get things done.
I understand seeking to exclude Stallman from leadership, because I'd be pretty disappointed if my org leader kept getting caught in completely unforced errors far outside of mission focus, such as on issues of pedophelia, rape, or Epstein. When a person becomes a leader, the calculus on them is no longer on whether they are merely an acceptable individual.
What is troublesome is that this letter seeks to oust the entire FSF board.
> I feel very sad for him. He’s a tragic figure. He is one of the most brilliant people I’ve met, who I have always thought desperately craved friendship and camaraderie, and seems to have less and less of it all the time. This is all his doing; nobody does it to him. But it’s still very sad. As far as I can tell, he believes his entire life’s work is a failure.
This is also a very sad epilogue, and the FSF board is to blame for not being able to explain to RMS why reinstating him was an awful idea.
At the same time, it's also sad that the open latter calls out RMS for ableism, when it's obviously clear that he is in turn not able to understand the situation that has arisen around him and the problem that he constitutes for the FSF.
To be 100% clear I am not saying that this should excuse or justify rms's misogynism or his well-known (by now) views on sexuality. But all this contributes to my feeling of sadness and I am pretty sure I am not the only one that feels like that.
So I am torn. I agree that the FSF board has failed, and I wish RMS would resign from his other leadership positions (including from the GNU project, which has been so instrumental to my career), but this open letter leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
See also https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-pr... (Joint statement on the GNU Project, October 2019) for something that instead I agree wholeheartedly with, though I didn't sign it at the time because I am not a GNU maintainer anymore.
The FSF board that just decided to put Stallman back. Seems like an obvious conclusion for people strongly opposed to him and the culture around him. Before he left there was always going to be the defensive argument of "but what are they gonna do, throw out the founder?", which is now more "they looked at the entire package and decided that yes actually, that's what we want from a fellow leader".
> What is troublesome is that this letter seeks to oust the entire FSF board.
Seeking to oust the entire FSF board is kind of the point of the entire exercise -- Stallman or no Stallman. As long as the FSF board is committed to the Four Olds, there will be an army of twitterati searching their entire blog, mailing-list, and social-media history for the six words that will hang them. As long as the FSF and other institutions remain authoritative and outside the control of the "woke" (who are really lickspittle agents of corporate interests mixed with a few assorted grifters), they will be considered hostile and a threat, to be dealt with accordingly: subverted and neutralized, or failing that, destroyed.
The next step is to gain control of the OSI so as to change the Open Source Definition.
How does this not produce gnashing of teeth and rage in people? Seriously, what the fuck is up with this holier-than-thou virtue signaling bullshit? Good to have a list of people that apparently approve of this kind of thing so I know what to avoid.
I was so disappointed in reading Federico Mena Quintero's name in the list. I have respect on him as a Mexican developer and open source evangelist.
To think that a lot of people here In Mexico laugh at the crazy Political Correctness and overreaction of Americans... I would think he would be more on the side of just getting shit done, live and let live.
The whole trendy cancelling thing is already completely senseless, out of control and is comparable to medieval standards.
Even if RMS dares to 'apologise' or say 'Sorry', those who already signed that list will never redeem his 'sins' and to them he is condemned forever to the lost and banned.
Look, without getting into a debate on cancel culture, I’m wondering if it’s specifically virtue signaling that you object to. Because RMS is specifically known for a massive amount of virtue signaling. It’s all over his website and was written all over his office at MIT. And he would join discussions and change the subject to whatever he felt like talking about in order to, we’ll, spread the good word. And of course the free software movement more broadly is about taking a moral stance and aggressively spreading it through copyleft and other forms of activism.
So I wonder if it’s not “virtue signaling” here that’s the problem, but the virtue being signaled itself that you don’t like.
I agree that Stallman is probably not the best PR person for the FSF, but that's not what this is about. This is about canceling Stallman due to his "problematic opinions". It's a modern day witch hunt. Notice how all of the evidence against him[0] is just about his controversial opinions rather than his behavior.
> I agree that Stallman is probably not the best PR person for the FSF, but that's not what this is about.
I truly don't understand this. I am neither autistic or even a 10x programmer.
RMS is such a genius dude who can match an entire Symbolics programming team that had genius and legendary hackers. His math skills are superior even among the elite math students at MIT(source at end [1]). RMS wrote the first version of gcc and many other utilties and *yet* despite all of his talents and genius gifts he started FSF and choose to remain poor because of his strong belief in freedom. This is immensely inspiring.
Its very rare to see a genius and who scarifies their life for a cause in a single person. The people i can think in this category are Noam Chomsky, Aaron Swartz.
How can any other person being the face of FSF a better fit?
Stallman is the public face of the FSF, by him being in the position that he is in, everything he says is representative of what the FSF stands for. It is precisely about whether he is a good PR person.
> These sorts of beliefs have no place in the free software, digital rights, and tech communities.
It's not: we need someone a bit less weird to be our PR person. It's: we need to cancel this person completely out of tech due to their "problematic opinions".
Have you looked at the appendix[0]? They seem a bit more than just "problematic".
2013: "There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children."
2015: "I wish an attractive woman had "abused" me that way when I was 14. I would have learned many important things and had a much happier life."
2016, on Down's syndrome: "If you'd like to love and care for a pet that doesn't have normal human mental capacity, don't create a handicapped human being to be your pet."
2017: "[..] together with the dishonest law that labels sex with adolescents as "rape" even if they are willing, [..]"
To be honest, the parts on transphobia seem a bit overblown; he does seem to be accepting of different gender identities (and even plurality), but still doesn't like the use of they as a singular specific pronoun. However, I just really don't think it's necessary to re-admit someone with those ^ views to the board of an organization.
You might be interested by Jane Austen's third most popular novel, "Sense and Sensibility", which has been adapted into TV series and movies several times, and favorably depicts a 17-year-old girl's romance with a colonel in his forties.
Screw it, how'd you fou feel about a younger fellow with an older woman? Or a young woman thirsting over an older man?
I really think you're discounting the fact there are two individuals involved here. As someone still within a stone's throw of that turbid time of hormonally driven adolescence, I assure you, one does no kindness leaving some to be predated upon.
I mean, hell, I've seen the occasional "I prefer the smell of perfume to Liniment oil" couple, and it always raises an eyebrow or two, but if the relationship is healthy, nobody really has any room to judge.
>And I don't need a wall of text to support that opinion
Maybe not, but in a conversation, it is generally in the best interests of everyone involved to lay their cards and reasoning on the table to minimize potential misunderstandings. This is something I've noticed a lot of older folks have trouble with at times. Hell I even struggle with it, but I work hard regardless to bring my years with me to help out the youngers. Without those of us who've been there to help them know how the world got to where it is, how ever are they to learn how to do the same, and avoid making the same screwups we did?
Stallman is still, and always will be, Stallman. An independent agent with his own thoughts, opinions, dreams, desires, and life. And ya know what? That's okay. Foundations aren't their Founders and Founders aren't their Foundations. Both should be focused on their missions, but both are a cumulative sum of their parts plus a bit more.
Given a choice of leader, I'll stick with the one eccentric who from the start knew exactly the direction industry and politics would go. I'll take the guy with 40 year success streak of being able to say "Called it!", who refuses to give one inch on the principles behind free software to the point he's inconenienced himself to stay true to them in a world being increasingly eaten by proprietary software, over the wannabe social media influencers who can't even successfully comprehend the content of an email, or understand the difference between caring about concise language and adherence to consistent internal principles and transphobia.
Also, to be quite frank, given the cancel movement's continual habit on getting called out for being fast and loose with facts, I think they need to reconsider their PR strategy. Talk out the side of your mouth is cheap. Lies and misinformation even more so. At least what Stallman says is backed by his actions, and his continued steadfast support of the organization that threw him out unjustly.
I really don't think most people understand just what level of commitment to a cause that takes, and I think if half the people concerned about his "problematic opinions" would focus on issues in that sphere on a platform that isn't the FSF, the world may legitimately become a better place. Instead, you just get this token drama that holds the State of the Art back. I swear, if I ever pull off independent wealth enough to take an extended sabbatical I'll come take someones position to unburden their conscience of working with the likes of Stallman or Linus, or whoever the world is dumping on for carrying the progress of Free Software forward. Never seen a group of people so disenfranchised with literally carrying a legacy to the species on their backs that they have to start eating each other to continue making the experience bearable.
The entire world of proprietary software and all the adherents there of want division. They want chaos that detracts from the quality of Free Software. They want infighting, they want a more manipulable figurehead. They want work they can steal, make their own, then hold society hostage for access to.
The only one with their eye on the ball seems to be the very GNUisance everyone wishes to condemn. That's the world we live in now I guess. Nothing but ultimatums and outrage.
I actually did meet Stallman on a few occasions. In all cases he was a kind and generally awesome human being:
* 2000's, Linux Conference in San Francisco / Silicon Valley, I asked him about porting some app from LibC5 to GlibC6, I bought the GNU LibC manuals there. I imagine he was more confused than me about my newbie questions, but he patiently heard me out and gave me some valuable insights.
* 2010-2016ish, FOSDEM conferences in Brussels. Attended multiple talks of him about FOSS.
Edit: Small spelling fixes and clarifications here and there.
I think that's a fair statement, but this letter calls for the removal of all FSF board members. Is that a fair response to RMS' opinions and behavior?
I have. He’s less of an asshat than my father. At best my father got called a prick. We didn’t form a consortium of people to cancel him. That’s just batshit crazy.
Multiple decades of bad behavior, people are tired of it and don't want to work with him. You can't force people to work with someone who treats them like shit.
When someone is being fired you remove them from an organization, you don't give them the organization and tell everyone else to go find new jobs, especially since they're the ones doing all the work.
That's essentially what's happening here. You have something like half the keynote speakers from LibreConf last week announcing that they will no longer participate in FSF events, and a bunch of community members supporting them.
No that's not what's happening. What is happening is they are trying to force RMS and now the entire FSF board out of the community. That's not the same as refusing to work with someone.
Interesting, could you point out where in that letter these people are being forced out of the community?
Alternatively, could you explain how you differentiate "we will not work with these people" and "forcing someone out of the community"? Like if enough people refuse to work with someone, doesn't that functionally force them out of the community?
I see two demands: the FSF board step down, and Stallman remove himself from any leadership positions. This is functionally the same request as last time, to keep RMS out of leadership. I'm unaware of any significant backlash to him having been a speaker at LibreConf, so clearly he could still still be a community member.
How is demanding the entire FSF board step down not an attempt to force them out of the community? To refuse to work with them would take the form of "we refuse to work with the FSF moving forward" or something to that effect. They are not doing this. They are demanding people lose their jobs because they disagree with them. Take your blinders off and be rational.
When they tried to cancel RMS for the first time in 2019, I am ashamed to say that I used it as an opportunity to pile on him on Twitter. I was sore about petty differences such as the architectural crippling of GCC and the viral nature of the GPL.
Since then, I have seen user freedoms continue to erode. Statists continue to push for more controls and backdoors on encryption. Repressive governments have the cooperation of the companies that run the mobile device app stores. Desktop operating systems continue to degrade with the addition of advertisements and increasing amounts of DRM, spying and "trusted computing" features that limit what you can do with your own machine. In short, we are one or two steps away from Stallman's nightmare scenario, where the illegal use of debuggers and compilers is considered a crime.
I used Stallman's first cancellation to advance my own permissive-licensing agenda (albeit by a very small amount, as I'm an unknown). Introspecting upon the way I reacted initially, I now suspect that this is simply another attempt by powerful interests in government and business (notably, a great deal of enmity against RMS comes from Microsoft and Salesforce) to destroy a man that has dedicated his life to keeping computing free.
On an aside, I don't think Stallman or the FSF are really part of the tech freedom story anymore, whether on the PR, civil rights, or the technological front. What's the most recent FSF victory?
Can someone explain to me how this is not cancel culture? Us folks on the liberal left end of the spectrum can't complain about the right for employing cancel culture tactics, yet use the same tactics hypocritically.
Not only that, if this isn't cancel culture and/or this needs to serve as the one exception, would we not also be required to go for the full nuclear option and stop using not only the GPL family of licenses, but all software that refuses to migrate off said licenses? Merely asking the FSF board to stand down is a meaningless gesture, as the entire foundation would need to cease to exist as it shall always be under rms's shadow.
Cancel culture is a dangerous thing, and shouldn't be tolerated in any liberal community that intends to protect the rights of individuals using ideals such as Freedom and Free Speech.
Note: Although I dislike how RMS conducts himself in person from time to time, that isn't a good reason to shove him under the bus. He makes arguments with zero tact, but does not make arguments made in bad faith. He clearly is somewhere on the Autism spectrum, and most likely was never diagnosed due to proper diagnosis not being invented until his 20s, and proper treatment not being invented until his 40s. The community needs to make sure we don't become some violent revolution that turns around and eats our own because its convenient.
> Can someone explain to me how this is not cancel culture?
What I increasingly hear are definite assertions that there is no such thing as “cancel culture”, only people’s actions having consequences. Also, following naturally from this, anyone then using the term “cancel culture” is therefore also subject to said “consequences”.
>Can someone explain to me how this is not cancel culture?
I'd look forward to hearing that, bit I wager the answer is no. You can call a pile of feces a rose, and it doesn't change the nature of what the pile of feces is
I'd like to thank you, and invite you out for a beer or the drink of your preference if you're ever in my neighborhood however, because you sound like one of the precious few sensible folks that actually project political action through past it's first order consequences to the inevitable conclusion.
It's rare enough at times that it's nice to call out when it happens, even in passing.
> Us folks on the liberal left end of the spectrum can't complain about the right for employing cancel culture tactics
Except in pointing out the hypocrisy of the right, no one on the left is accusing anyone using the right-wing ”cancel culture” buzzword (which differentiates it from the old-standard “political correctness” that it replaced, which was used in internecine disputes within the left before being adopted by the right, but even that was never generally deployed against the right even though they used the same tactics; pretending that the main flow is the other way around reads like false-flag concern trolling.
That didn't actually answer my question. I am maybe one of the furthest left regulars on the HN, and I'm concerned that this open letter is not being made in good faith.
I don't care about the etymology of the phrase, it is just the most apt description used by current internet culture. We called it something else before it was named cancel culture, and we shall name it something else in the future, as we shall with all other things. Your red herring does not answer my question.
> Except in pointing out the hypocrisy of the right, no one on the left is accusing anyone using the right-wing ”cancel culture” buzzword
Not everyone who believes there is a problem with "cancel culture" is on the right. Some people on the left (e.g. [0]) believe that there is a real problem being described by that term, and that the term's popularity with the right is not a reason why people on the left should reject it. Of course, left-wing believers in "cancel culture" don't necessarily agree with every example of it cited by right-wing believers in it, but there is definitely some overlap in cases–for example, the article I'm linking cites a Latino truck driver being fired for making the "OK" sign as a case which was criticised as "cancel culture" by people on both the left and the right.
> Can someone explain to me how this is not cancel culture?
If the definition of the nebulous concept of 'cancel culture' is so broad as to encompass disassociating ourselves from a person we consider heinous, and encouraging others to do the same, then I'm not sure there's any value in the concept to begin with. It's hard to argue that we should all limit how we use our freedom of association so that someone else may occupy a position that they are not entitled to.
Meanwhile the majority of software we're using was made possible by RMS. Let's not focus on that, let's instead focus on the fact that RMS isn't a saint and doesn't say what we believe to be the "right" things. Yes, RMS has made provocative statements on controversial topics - but I believe throwing out decades of his work and essentially throwing a human being away because you disagree with what he says on hot-topic issues to be much more repugnant than anything RMS has said or done.
And this coming from someone who disagrees with most of what RMS has said on these topics.
I don't see anyone talking about throwing away decades of his work. The good that he's done won't go away any time soon. But it's becoming more and more evident that the free software movement can't survive unless it continues to push past the rut in which people like RMS are content to remain.
From their statement: “It is time for RMS to step back from the free software, tech ethics, digital rights, and tech communities” - in other words they want RMS to step away from everything he’s worked on over the past 40+ years over pronouns and different thoughts on what constitutes consensual sex. They demand for him to simply walk away from his life’s work because they don’t like his opinions. Incredible. This is the manifestation of cancel culture. It’s repugnant.
The signatories are largely people who work on free and open source software projects, and their stated goal in keeping people like Stallman out of positions of influence within the community is to increase participation in general by discouraging behaviour that drives potential contributors away.
Having read a number of articles on both sides of this issue, I see no reason to believe that their advocacy is anything but genuinely motivated by a desire for a better community.
>increase participation in general by discouraging behaviour that drives potential contributors away.
I seriously feel like this would do the very exact opposite.
It's throwing out the baby with the bathwater in a hugely damaging way and who the actual fuck wants to work in such an environment.
And why for example do these people regardless of whether they agree with him or not genuinely believe that rms is trasphobic because he thinks there is/should be a gender neutral pronoun that would be better for common usage than they/them.
I think the one he suggested sounds stupid and won't find common usage at all...but I definitely do not think he's trans-phobic because of it and that his view on this matter should somehow be a contributing factor to the entire board getting thrown out or him being shunned from anything free software sounds absolutely stupid.
*RMS* may not conform to your societal standards, but condemning the man (him, or Torvalds, who also comes under fire,) marrs your reputation, and not his.
> He has shown himself to be misogynist, ableist, and transphobic, among other serious accusations of impropriety.
I have met RMS in person, (had Chinese food with him, in fact,) and though he may ignore some social conventions, he is a person who has very valuable and unique opinions, and a force to be reckoned with. These accusations appear to be, while not baseless, motivated by an extremely twisted socio-political ideology.
*Shame on you for bringing cancel culture into the world of software.*
ESR said that the open source movement would give us better software that was free from the influence of corporations.
He was wrong. The last decade has shown the FOSS ecosystem trapped, packaged and resold by companies offering "services". And when the FOSS leadership should have been doing something about it, they devoured each other over modern notions of morality and social justice.
Nice to see that big names at Gnome and Debian apparently have nothing better to do than throwing a public hissy fit. Seems these organizations are run by man-children.
IBM, Microsoft, Amazon etc are laughing all the way to the bank.
Am I the only one who sees the timing and tone of this open letter somewhat suspicious?
Technical stuff aside, I am not a RMS supporter or friend, I just exchanged like 5 words and shook his hand once, like huh... maybe 20 years ago at a conference. He may not be a winner in politically correctness, but I would expect a letter like that to be written against someone who actively behaves in some way, not just by being so stupid for making his odd ideas public.
> not just by being so stupid for making his odd ideas public
We're reaching the point in our society where thought-crime is a reality. You're not allowed to hold certain opinions, and if you do, you can't have a job or participate in the commons anymore. You must be imprisoned, stripped of your ability to provide for yourself, and ostracized from society.
Soon, these people will begin to claim political offices and they will have the police and military at their disposal to enact their will. Delete your post history, and lobotomize yourself before they come for the rest of us as well.
Regarding Down Syndrome, those who carry pregnancies are coming to a similar conclusion as Stallman (prenatal testing in many cases leads to termination of the pregnancy):
EDIT: Sidenote: We were offered embryo genetic testing and selection as part of IVF rounds. Didn't give a second thought to not selecting unhealthy embryos.
So many of those quotes really need to be read in the context of the original posts. I have read them all in the original context and have also read the journalistic reports on them that conveniently omit the context. There are others who have broken down the claims and compared them with the original quotes and it's really criminal how RMS has been misrepresented.
I can't think of anything more likely to harden the FSF board in defense of Stallman than leaders of the OSI being prominent in a group calling for the FSF board to step down for having tolerated him.
> These people are attacking Stallman to reinforce their self-image of being "good" and "progressive".
This is a poor assessment, as it doesn't account for the fact that people cultivate the environment they want to be a part of. Removing people like Stallman from positions of influence within the community changes the tone of the community; while you may believe that change would be for the worse, it's better to acknowledge that others genuinely believe the inverse, rather than dishonestly dismissing it as blind reinforcement of self-identity.
Wanting the tone of the community to be a certain way, is one thing. The means of getting there—a public campaign to get someone and everyone who supported him to lose their place in their organization—is its own thing, and some would say it's below the belt, and that exercising this means has its own detrimental effect on the tone of the community, and that it harms the claimed ends more than it helps.
I would be more inclined to agree if not for the fact that the board invited him back. Standing by him through this would have been bad enough, let alone inviting him back after his resignation. I don't have confidence in a board which believes this to be a wise decision.
They shouldn't lose their positions because of Stallman's beliefs, but because of their own unwise decision to return him to a position of greater influence.
Hmm, some have said that they think he's an ineffective public face or leader because he's connected to bad publicity, but you specified "a position of greater influence", which is interestingly different than that. For what it's worth: do you think Stallman, in his position at FSF, is going to have any influence on laws about rape and child sex, or on women deciding whether to abort Down's syndrome fetuses, or on the prevalence of what the letter writers call "transphobia" in the population, or anything else connected to the opinions that the majority of the appendix is spent discussing?
I'm more concerned about his influence on the free software community: Stallman thankfully lacks direct influence over legal matters, but he has a direct influence over the community's form and function. Essentially, I believe that he discourages valuable contributions to free software by contributing negatively to the impression of what kind of community a potential contributor would be joining. I can't remember an example offhand, but I've heard of existing contributors dissuaded from continuing because of that, as well.
I see. I have seen a few claims of that sort. I think those usually take the form "I saw him behaving badly in person, and decided to avoid him and things associated with him". I don't think I've seen anyone say "I saw his opinion about X and decided to avoid a programming community".
In that case, would you agree that the stuff about his opinions is irrelevant? In fact, given that there's some likelihood he'll remain at FSF and certainly will remain a famous programmer, wouldn't it then be best to draw as little attention as possible to his unpopular opinions? (This is not the same as "wouldn't it be best to draw as little attention as possible to his alleged bad behavior", because whereas him mistreating people would be bad no matter how many people knew about it, him having unpopular opinions that won't change anything does not harm anyone, and if people are distressed to learn about those opinions, then publicizing those opinions increases that distress.)
I think the problem with that concept is that it's not possible so long as he's actively sharing his opinions and having those opinions amplified by supporters. Ignoring that problem won't make it go away, and I don't support preventing him from using his personal resources to share his opinions. Drawing additional attention to his opinions may create more stress in the immediate term, but for the greater long-term benefit of discouraging similar attitudes from growing in prominence within the community.
I was a kid when i heard about RMS, his words moved me and helped me find the courage to be weird, and live to my own principles.
I wonder how many of the people personally offended by what they think RMS said have taken it up with him? "Transphobic"? really? I haven't spent more than a few minutes speaking to RMS, and that years ago; but "-phobic" isn't a word i can see applying to him.
> RMS has spent years on a campaign against using people’s correct pronouns. This is poorly disguised transphobia. In the original publication of the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines, he said “there are various ways to express gender neutrality in third-person singular pronouns in English; you do not have to use ‘they.’”14 This text has since been updated, but is still transphobic.15 The main page on his web site includes the statement that “‘They’ is plural — for singular antecedents, use singular gender-neutral pronouns.”16
Wow, this seems to be a complete lie, on the surface of it.
When you read all these documents, you find that they care 115% about the issue of how to refer to people in order to respect their gender idenity.
The singular gender-neutral pronouns Stallman refers to in [16] are actually gender-neutral: they are ones he invented himself and uses. He's just bothered by the bad grammar of using "they" as a singular, and the ambiguities it causes in sentences where it could plausibly have either multiple people as an antecedent or just one person.
Or is there some new development that I'm missing? Are there people who would like to be referred to in plural, due to multiple personalities, so that using singular pronouns makes hurtful assumptions against them?
"I am not a 'perse', Mr. Stallman! I am two people: a man named Bob and a female named Stephanie. Please refer to me by the correct pronoun 'they'."
... kind of thing? I admittedly don't keep up with this stuff.
I'm not sure publishing a letter via pull requests on a closed-source platform owned by Microsoft is going to convince the Free Software Foundation (it's in the name) on the merits of the argument.
It needs another vouch now. I was at least one of the people who vouched earlier, I think this is an important thread to be seen on HN. It is weird to me that HN kneejerk flags this, when they didn't flag the FSF announcing his re-placement on the board. They're both equally important and equally controversial.
> "Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it," Stallman wrote. "Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per [sic] psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that. I am grateful for the conversations that enabled me to understand why."
Why a public letter? This action should be done using non public pressure. It’s a bit like who does not sign approves this imho strange action from the fsf board. And still no good public response from the fsf on this delicate issue. Using the Gpl is already a statement for many Foss devs. The fsf should take care not to pollute the gpl with rms issues.
Bradley M. Kuhn was one of the few who wrote a good retrospective in public and his own role. I can not imagine that he showed up at libre planet this year to receive his deserved award if he knew upfront that rms was back on the fsf board...
> In his acceptance speech, Bradley gave advice to software freedom activists, noting that all should follow a few simple principles: take care in the words they choose in their communications, be prepared to "speak truth to power" (both to powerful proprietary software companies and to other Free Software leaders), stubbornly refuse to use or develop proprietary software, and find ways to bolster and coordinate with other important social justice causes, such as those that seek to ameliorate systemic bias and combat climate change.
> Bradley also acknowledged that his work in collaboration with Conservancy's Executive Director, Karen Sandler, has allowed them “to achieve accomplishments in Free Software that neither of [them] could achieve working alone”. While thrilled to receive this individual honor, Bradley views his collaboration with Karen and Conservancy's staff as an excellent example of how software freedom activism is bigger than any single individual's achievements or views. Bradley added: “we succeed with the best results for the future of software freedom when we work together, set aside personal ambition, and reject cult of personality.”
For me, the undersigned list has now become a shitlist of projects with folk who are more concerned about public image, perception and signalling than engineering.
I am quite frankly tired of this.
I don’t give a crap what RMS thinks or says quite frankly or this lot.
What did being divisive ever solve? All they are doing is creating more problems, more animosity and discrediting us all.
Don't believe everything the media tells you. Tech news sites only report on what they read in public sources, which leads them to wildly inaccurate conclusions like the idea that objections to Stallman started with his comments about Epstein, or that there was no objection to him from inside the free software community.
I can perhaps see how he could be accused of misogyny but how is RMS been ableist or transphobic? Is the former supposed to be some stretch about GNU software accessibility or something?
The transphobic thing appears to be because he advocates using gender neutral pronouns, but apparently not the right gender neutral pronouns. I'm not sure how this is supposed to be transphobic.
The ableist thing is probably his recommending that women with Down's syndrome fetuses should abort them.
> I'm not sure how this is supposed to be transphobic.
Trans, genderqueer, or nonbinary people often express their preferred pronouns. If you do not use these pronouns to address or refer to that particular person, it is considered transphobic.
By far the most common gender-neutral pronouns are "they/them". It does not matter what Strunk & White says -- you are considered a transphobe if you do not use "they" for someone who has an expressed preference for "they". Period. By choosing deliberately not to respect their preferences, you are thought to deny or "erase" their gender identity.
You may think this doesn't matter. Ultimately, even in the grand scheme of terrible things that have been done to trans people, it's quite a small issue (the buzzterm is "microaggression" after all), and it certainly doesn't matter in a technical discussion. But securing compliance in small things like this is a dry run in pressure tactics: if people, especially if held in high esteem, buckle under and adopt and enforce the orthodox practice with regard to gender pronouns or other detail, the tactics worked. Ultimately the goal is to use those tactics to sway decisions on issues that matter, like who gets an authoritative say in what constitutes open source and which overarching goals should the movement serve.
While I dont know anything about the RMS case (first heard about it now), your comment reminds me about the paradox of tolerance. While it's easy to cry hypocrisy when intolerant people aren't tolerated by those in favor of tolerance, it's needed in order to not let intolerance win.
If anything it's more hypocrisy by the intolerant. "I don't have to tolerate X, but you have to tolerate me" like some catch22.
But Richard Stallman is not intolerant! The issue is that he's too tolerant. And this is the crux. There exists kind of secondary tolerance paradox in liberal politics whereby you're branded as intolerant simply for being excessively tolerant, as evidenced by something that you said.
"If you are intolerant in exactly the same ways that we are, then you are tolerant. If you are more or less tolerant than that, then you're intolerant."
It's slightly more complicated than that. "Tolerant" means you support the advancement of marginalized groups in word and deed. "Marginalized groups" roughly means BIPOC, LGBTQ, and (depending on circumstances) sometimes women. "Intolerant" means you effectively support the continued oppression of these groups in word and deed, irrespective of what your actual opinions and motivations truly are. You cannot be neutral or indecisive; per Desmond Tutu, to do so is to choose the side of the oppressor.
But again, it all boils down to membership in these specific identity groups and their perceived need for protection.
I see the paradox of tolerance come up from time to time, and often with links to Wikipedia, usually implying that intolerance should be suppressed. A perusal of the literature around the topic suggests that moral philosophical consensus is that intolerance should, in fact, be tolerated except in cases of imminent danger to the tolerant society or individuals in it.
(Note: I cannot tell from your post where you fall on this point. This is a more general response on the paradox of tolerance as I typically see it in this sort of context.)
From the section of Popper in the Wikipedia article:
> In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.
Rather, he claims that:
> we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary...
Thus, tolerance of intolerance is the default, with suppression of intolerance reserved as a last resort.
From the article (original emphasis):
> Thus, in context, Popper's acquiescence to suppression when all else has failed
> Thomas Jefferson had already addressed the notion of a tolerant society in his first inaugural speech, concerning those who might destabilise the United States and its unity, saying, "let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."
Another moral philosopher, Rawls, agrees that tolerance should be the default, and suppression of intolerance used only as a last resort (emphasis mine):
> In 1971, philosopher John Rawls concluded in A Theory of Justice that a just society must tolerate the intolerant ... Rawls qualifies this with the assertion that under extraordinary circumstances in which constitutional safeguards do not suffice to ensure the security of the tolerant and the institutions of liberty, tolerant society has a reasonable right of self-preservation against acts of intolerance ....
More Rawls:
> This should be done, however, only to preserve equal liberty – i.e., the liberties of the intolerant should be limited only insofar as they demonstrably limit the liberties of others: "While an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger."
In the Wikipedia article, there are several examples of people calling out the hypocrisy of tolerating intolerant viewpoints, but there are no claims that the default stance against intolerance in a tolerant society should be suppression.
EDIT: added a missing subordinate clause to clarify the first paragraph.
Stallman isn't a group or class of protected people - he's an individual and actions have consequences, and unfortunately I think you'll probably see this is not a case where those consequences have an effect on RMS.
I'm responding to your appending "phobic" to the end as if that was a symmetrical response to something like trans-phobic which refers to a protected class in the US - these get _special_ protections that individuals do not get. RMS is probably a protected class for his disability, but that doesn't prevent him from being excluded for actions unrelated to that.
No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service doesn't equate to "RMS is a bad person" if RMS happens to not be wearing a shirt, it just means he won't served based on that.
This org isn't RMS phobic, they are - against the actions / views RMS has perpetuated, and from his position of power, so they would like someone else to be in power, that's a pretty simple request, and I am sure there are a lot of qualified people to lead who haven't brought so much baggage along with them.
That said, this is clearly just a polarizing issue that folks don't really appear capable of discussing because I mean, what's there to discuss, are you on the FSF? Do you know RMS? Have you worked with that org at all? I haven't!
Can anyone explain to me what the OSI even does and why they seem to have the time to protest RMS?
From their website:
>For over 20 years the Open Source Initiative (OSI) has worked to raise awareness and adoption of open source software, and build bridges between open source communities of practice.
So they build bridges? That's a great goal.
So what bridge are they building here? Seems more like they are starting a fight. That seems against their stated mission.
Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26535224 - March 2021 (814 comments)