4 ms·

> Stallman has been a problematic person for a long time. I'm no fan of his. If after a while the university had said, "Enough is enough, Richard, you need to s

> Stallman has been a problematic person for a long time. I'm no fan of his. If after a while the university had said, "Enough is enough, Richard, you need to shape up or get out." I would have understood that. According to the Register, this is the position of both the SFC and GNOME > On Monday, the Software Freedom Conservancy called for his resignation. "When considered with other reprehensible comments he has published over the years, these incidents form a pattern of behavior that is incompatible with the goals of the free software movement," the group said in a blog post. "We call for Stallman to step down from positions of leadership in our movement." > So did the GNOME Foundation's executive director Neil McGovern, who said Stallman's Minksy defense email was "the straw that broke the camel’s back." https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/17/richard_stallman_interview/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/17/richard_stallman_in...

astine 7y ago
That's good to know.
calvinmorrison 7y ago
.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
Unfortunately, that reads like them finding historical justifications so a mob-induced disassociation doesn't look like it's mob-induced. They had time anywhere between "over the years" and few days ago to pull the trigger. Or they could wait a few days and do it 'after careful consideration'. Whether they bowed to crowd pressure or just wanted to score virtue points, this diminishes their stance in my view.
- eropple 7y ago
  I trust that you know GNOME has had beefs with Richard Stallman at least as far back as the way he treated Mono developers (not the Mono project, but individuals). And I recall that, coincidental with that, his "Saint Ignucius" routine delivered in 2009 at Gran Canaria had some gross sexist commentary in it, too, which Lefty Schlesinger--a member of the GNOME Advisory Board at the time--called him out on, too. You're right that this isn't new, but at some point the camel's back breaks and the idea that it's so implausible that what he said happened to, y'know, really upset people when they read it and that they'd had enough--well, it's a pretty cheap charge on your part.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Maybe I'm just getting too cynical, but this is not the first nor second time I've seen an outrage manufactured by a social media post of someone who took offense at a minor transgression, which ended up costing the transgressor their job. I didn't know that GNOME has had issues with Stallman before, though I do believe it now and can certainly imagine it; I learned a few new, bad things about his behavior that I didn't know prior to today. Still, my point is - if they wanted to get rid of him for a list of valid reasons, they could've done it earlier, or they could've waited for the current storm to blow over and do it then. They picked this moment, and unless I'm grossly misunderstanding the timeline, they must've known it'll get carried by the media. So for better or worse, out of all possible opportunities, they picked the one where RMS is a subject of borderline-libelous and utterly nonsense shitstorm. Sure, people got upset when the news broke, but that's the thing with Internet witch hunts - people get upset over lies, and react without thinking, further fueling the avalanche.
    - eropple 7y ago
      Perhaps they do not believe it is utterly nonsense. I don't think it's nonsensical and I read the original-source thread before any of the follow-up reporting came out about it to potentially bias my opinion (beyond my bias of "Stallman is a creep" that I've known about second- and third-hand for a decade). His behavior was appalling: the attempt to construct a situation wherein someone Stallman knew personally happened to have clean hands while hanging out with a known pedophile and sex-trafficker of children, and then judging a protest through that lens, is just not okay, and even if he didn't have a history of gross behavior--which he does--I'd have had to have a real good reason not to eject him at speed from any business or institution over which I had authority for that alone. That it wasn't an isolated incident, and was known to not be isolated before this happened (more on that in a sec), would likely only harden my resolve to show him the door. While it was known to not be isolated beforehand, it's pretty clear to me that a number of people have felt safe to tell their own stories in the couple days since this broke. I live near MIT but did not attend, and so I am not in any particularly privileged circles; despite that, this incident prompted a lot of people to speak up about RMS's consistent bad personal behavior as well as his bad public behavior. These sorts of things have a way of providing courage to people who have felt suppressed--someone is brave enough to kick one rock and dozens more come with. I would submit that if a nobody like me is hearing that stuff it is a near-certainty that people with hire-and-fire authority at MIT, and in decision-making roles at the FSF and GNOME, are hearing it and likely more. This is what makes most of the protestations in this thread (not, I stress, the ones that you're laying out) so disheartening. On one hand you've got people adjusting their pince-nez and going "well, really, don't we need to have a conversation about statutory rape?" (we don't), while you've got another contingent who are all about clapping for pedophiles to "own the libs". It's just...really gross, and it's not about "free thinking" or "free speech" at all. (And it never really is.)

astine 7y ago

That's good to know.

calvinmorrison 7y ago

TeMPOraL 7y ago

Unfortunately, that reads like them finding historical justifications so a mob-induced disassociation doesn't look like it's mob-induced. They had time anywhere between "over the years" and few days ago to pull the trigger. Or they could wait a few days and do it 'after careful consideration'. Whether they bowed to crowd pressure or just wanted to score virtue points, this diminishes their stance in my view.

eropple 7y ago
I trust that you know GNOME has had beefs with Richard Stallman at least as far back as the way he treated Mono developers (not the Mono project, but individuals). And I recall that, coincidental with that, his "Saint Ignucius" routine delivered in 2009 at Gran Canaria had some gross sexist commentary in it, too, which Lefty Schlesinger--a member of the GNOME Advisory Board at the time--called him out on, too. You're right that this isn't new, but at some point the camel's back breaks and the idea that it's so implausible that what he said happened to, y'know, really upset people when they read it and that they'd had enough--well, it's a pretty cheap charge on your part.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Maybe I'm just getting too cynical, but this is not the first nor second time I've seen an outrage manufactured by a social media post of someone who took offense at a minor transgression, which ended up costing the transgressor their job. I didn't know that GNOME has had issues with Stallman before, though I do believe it now and can certainly imagine it; I learned a few new, bad things about his behavior that I didn't know prior to today. Still, my point is - if they wanted to get rid of him for a list of valid reasons, they could've done it earlier, or they could've waited for the current storm to blow over and do it then. They picked this moment, and unless I'm grossly misunderstanding the timeline, they must've known it'll get carried by the media. So for better or worse, out of all possible opportunities, they picked the one where RMS is a subject of borderline-libelous and utterly nonsense shitstorm. Sure, people got upset when the news broke, but that's the thing with Internet witch hunts - people get upset over lies, and react without thinking, further fueling the avalanche.
  - eropple 7y ago
    Perhaps they do not believe it is utterly nonsense. I don't think it's nonsensical and I read the original-source thread before any of the follow-up reporting came out about it to potentially bias my opinion (beyond my bias of "Stallman is a creep" that I've known about second- and third-hand for a decade). His behavior was appalling: the attempt to construct a situation wherein someone Stallman knew personally happened to have clean hands while hanging out with a known pedophile and sex-trafficker of children, and then judging a protest through that lens, is just not okay, and even if he didn't have a history of gross behavior--which he does--I'd have had to have a real good reason not to eject him at speed from any business or institution over which I had authority for that alone. That it wasn't an isolated incident, and was known to not be isolated before this happened (more on that in a sec), would likely only harden my resolve to show him the door. While it was known to not be isolated beforehand, it's pretty clear to me that a number of people have felt safe to tell their own stories in the couple days since this broke. I live near MIT but did not attend, and so I am not in any particularly privileged circles; despite that, this incident prompted a lot of people to speak up about RMS's consistent bad personal behavior as well as his bad public behavior. These sorts of things have a way of providing courage to people who have felt suppressed--someone is brave enough to kick one rock and dozens more come with. I would submit that if a nobody like me is hearing that stuff it is a near-certainty that people with hire-and-fire authority at MIT, and in decision-making roles at the FSF and GNOME, are hearing it and likely more. This is what makes most of the protestations in this thread (not, I stress, the ones that you're laying out) so disheartening. On one hand you've got people adjusting their pince-nez and going "well, really, don't we need to have a conversation about statutory rape?" (we don't), while you've got another contingent who are all about clapping for pedophiles to "own the libs". It's just...really gross, and it's not about "free thinking" or "free speech" at all. (And it never really is.)