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Here[0] is a post by someone else who (by his own account) "worked for RMS longer than any other programmer." While he obviously has had a long relationship wi

Here[0] is a post by someone else who (by his own account) "worked for RMS longer than any other programmer." While he obviously has had a long relationship with Stallman, one of his key takeaways was: "RMS’s loss of MIT privileges and leadership of the FSF are the appropriate responses to a pattern of decades of poor behavior. It does not matter if they are appropriate responses to a single email thread, because they are the right thing in the total situation." Which I think is very well said. So while Paull's assessment that people's reaction to some email quotes is out-of-proportion, this is really just the proverbial straw on the back of the camel. [0] https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-rms-18e6a835fd84 https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa...

wpietri 7y ago
Totally. I get that the OP is from Stallman's publicist. But I think a good publicist shouldn't at worse be selective about the truth, not say outright false things like this. Plenty of people who know Stallman have made it clear that Stallman's behavior is consistent, harmful, and willful. E.g.: https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1172422966904160257 https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1172422966904160257
- codr7 7y ago
  And who, if I may ask, is this person who is so eagerly ventilating his opinions to feed the wolves? To me it sounds more like he's upset because RMS didn't agree with him, which would be his problem in a sane world.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
    > And who, if I may ask, is this person "This person" is Thomas Bushnell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bushnell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bushnell > who is so eagerly ventilating his opinions to feed the wolves? To me it sounds more like he's upset This is just my reading, but "A reflection on the departure of RMS" does not have the tone of someone who is upset nor someone who is eager. It has the tone of someone who feels like they have a unique perspective that ought to be shared on a difficult subject.
    - ppsreejith 7y ago
      To be fair, he may have motive for being "upset" since he was dismissed from being GNU Hurd's official maintainer by Stallman. From the Wikipedia link shared: "Bushnell was Hurd's official maintainer from its instigation until November 2003, when he posted to the GNU project's discussion mailing list saying that he had been dismissed by Stallman for criticizing the GNU Free Documentation License.[5] Stallman said the dismissal was because Bushnell had been inactive since 2001 and wasn't responding to mail."
  - wpietri 7y ago
    I'm not sure which person you didn't bother to Google, but the one I quoted is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Garrett https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Garrett Stallman is currently a topic of public interest, so it's unsurprising that people are commenting on his situation, just like you're doing here.
WillPostForFood 7y ago
How is this different than police planting evidence on a known bad guy and saying, well he was a criminal anyway so who cares, justice was done by putting him in jail with falsified evidence. As long as you get what your deserve, process is irrelevant.
- TomVDB 7y ago
  One is a criminal investigation where evidence is planted. The other is not.
  - WillPostForFood 7y ago
    What got Stallman taken down was a false claim that he said Epstein's victims were "willing". That was totally a lie, and the equivalent of planting evidence. "Famed Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As 'Entirely Willing'." https://archive.is/RVpdd https://archive.is/RVpdd
- houssc 7y ago
  Was something planted in Stallman's case? Blowing his quotes out of proportion isn't the same thing as planting evidence. I suppose a better analogy is being on your second strike and doing some minor crime to get your third. Some would argue people on two strikes should keep their head down. Furthermore his quotes are pretty fucking creepy.
  - WillPostForFood 7y ago
    Twisting a quote into a different meaning is a lie, and pretty similar to planting evidence. You are saying two strikes, and then we have license to make up a third to take you out.
  - windexh8er 7y ago
    It's called "libel".
  - sergioj97 7y ago
jeffchien 7y ago
I must admit I didn't know who Mr. Bushnell was, so I looked him up. Finding out about his dismissal from GNU Hurd back in 2003 was quite ironic to me: > RMS has now "dismissed" me as Hurd maintainer because I have publicly spoken against the GFDL, saying that a GNU maintainer must support and speak in favor of GNU policies. If this is really RMS's reason, then it means that he demands the right to control the speech of every GNU volunteer when it comes to GNU project policies. He wants not merely to set the direction, but also to require that each and every one of us publicly support a GNU policy when asked to. [1] https://lists.softwarelibero.it/pipermail/discussioni/2003-November/008495.html https://lists.softwarelibero.it/pipermail/discussioni/2003-N... [2] https://lwn.net/Articles/59147/ https://lwn.net/Articles/59147/
- thefj 7y ago
  Keep in mind that Stallman maintained that Bushnell stopped answering emails for two years, and that was the reason for firing him. Seems like he still holds a grudge.
  - jeffchien 7y ago
    Interesting. Not to entirely doubt what you're saying, but the source for that statement on Wikipedia doesn't have a primary source. Do you happen to have more reading? I would love to have the complete story between them. (Aside: Now that I look into it, Mr. Bushnell's Wikipedia page has basically been rewritten on September 22nd [1] after his article) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Bushnell&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Bushnell&a...
- flippinburgers 7y ago
  So it is safe to say that at least some of the people eager to see Stallman burn have a grudge with him. In other words, they are not being objective.
- noobermin 7y ago
  One of the issues whenever this sort of cancelling occurs is of the people who come out of the woodwork to join in the calls, it turns out some of them have personal issues with the person aside from their contentious conduct. This is why these things, as others have mentioned, should be tried in official channels, not merely be executed in response to public attitudes and press releases.
roenxi 7y ago
Bushnell* writes a very reasonable piece. It deals with a number of issues with Stallman as a leader of the FSF and MIT and suggests Stallman is unlikely to come back to either of those institutions. But he doesn't deal with what the big problem here is - the way this was done is concerning. Stallman wasn't forced to resign by people like him - who are quite happy to say "Look, Stallman, you've dedicated your life to this, you've done good work, but we want to take the movement into a more mainstream place". Stallman resigned in the middle of a press firestorm, based on lies, with people publicly accusing him of supporting someone he called a 'serial rapist'. He is now facing large numbers of people retroactively justifying his treatment by spreading various rumours that may or may not be true but certainly can't be enumerated and assessed for accuracy. They are unfalsifiable and undebunkable because so far there is very little substance and a lot of hearsay. I've seen the odd comments justifying all sorts of weird assumptions, in one case literally because 'he was an eccentric bloke'. This is gross pigeonholing and stereotyping. This is not a reasonable process and the outcomes are horrible. Stallman has literally dedicated his life to trying to make the world better for other people. He was bought down by leaks by someone who now says "Did I even really know who Richard Stallman was before those emails? To be honest, not really" [0]. This is not how these things should be done and it bodes very poorly for the future of the FSF. Not only is there no particular reward for leading the FSF, there is also the risk of being publicly shamed and driven out. There is a difference between leadership change by mob rule, and leadership change by voting and process. This isn't a sustainable way of doing things. It is really bad. [0] https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec210794 https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec2... * EDIT - Thanks yakshaving_jgt for pointing out I said Paul. Moment of confusion, although fortunately not one that obscured the point.
- yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
  Paull* and she*.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- mjg59 7y ago
  Stallman resigned in the face of people who had always known who he was being faced with the reality that the rest of the world also knew. The motivation wasn't the misquotes of his already abhorrent argument. (source: former FSF board member)
ralfd 7y ago
And here [0] is someone else who (by his own accord) worked with both RMS and Bushnell and is saying Bushnell is bullshitting and grinding an axe: [0] https://mobile.twitter.com/thomas_lord/status/1174433654942007297?p=v https://mobile.twitter.com/thomas_lord/status/11744336549420... > Bushnell and I overlapped in our employment at FSF. ... The general culture of inclusiveness and tolerance that RMS fostered meant that, at least when I was there alongside Bushnell, that social circle in and around the organization was feminized and all the stronger for it. This does not mean, of course, that RMS (or any of us) never gave offense or acted stupidly. But Bushnell's portrait showing a depraved sexist coddled by this or that MIT prof. is simply bullshit, and Bushnell probably knows or should know that in his heart.
- solidasparagus 7y ago
  > "The general culture of inclusiveness and tolerance" That was not the Stallman I saw at CSAIL. There are many good things to be said about Stallman, but in multiple years there I never saw either tolerance or inclusivity.
- strenholme 7y ago
  Thank you for the link. My impression is that RMS mainly had some opinions which were leftover from the “free love” movement of the 1960s and 1970s which were not particularly shocking or out of line back then, but are considered job-losing toxic opinions here in 2019. For the record, as someone who saw that whole movement first hand, I disagree with the whole “free love” movement and think sex should only be done in a lifetime monogamous commitment. I have met and have had dinner with RMS; he came off to me as a very kind person who has very strong principles. I do not see the imaginary monster that the outrage clickbait media is trying to make RMS be in him.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Yeah, from someone who was there, that's almost it. I'd add hacker punk as another key influence. But seriously, you don't say that stuff in public these days. Edit: Even if you're joking, or just doing it to light people up. Which was, you know, quite the thing. Back in the day. And damn, had to work at it, but I found a couple BOFH episodes that actually mention women.[0,1] 0) https://bofh.subversivedata.com/story/2009/4 https://bofh.subversivedata.com/story/2009/4 1) http://bofharchive.com/1998/bastard98-21.html http://bofharchive.com/1998/bastard98-21.html
ajxs 7y ago
This quote from the opening paragraph "I recommend in particular Selam G’s original articles on this topic for background" doesn't do much to endear it to me. I'd hardly call the original article a very accurate representation of Stallman's words or even his overall point. Far be it from me to defend Stallman's outrageous statements and opinions, I don't feel that the original article or the subsequent media frenzy stirred up in its wake is a fair representation of the situation. The author then goes on in the subsequent paragraphs to talk about how the media circus mischaracterised Stallman...
tmsh 7y ago
Bushnell authored GNU Hurd: "RMS: I am not very optimistic about the GNU HURD. It makes some progress, but to be really superior it would require solving a lot of deep problems. However, mainly what I think about the HURD is that finishing it is not crucial." https://redditblog.com/2010/07/29/rms-ama/ https://redditblog.com/2010/07/29/rms-ama/ I think Bushnell makes some good points but: (1) he’s biased. (2) a Googler calling out Stallman is just rich (given the debt Google, its employees, and all modern tech companies owe free software and the relatively little they repay).
- lostjohnny 7y ago
  > a Googler calling out Stallman Isn't it stange that the other one calling out Stallman, Matthew Garret, is a Googler too?
egdod 7y ago
He worked with rms longer than any other programmer and said nothing for decades? Then after this fall from grace, he piles on and acts superior? Gross.
- klingonopera 7y ago
  Yeah, where are all those articles and opinions about his bad behavior from before the recent debacle? Why are they all being written now?
klingonopera 7y ago
And not a single word about his dismissal from RMS beforehand? And looking at the older entries on his Wikipedia entry, it seems that the dismissal itself was a controversial topic, with Bushnell claiming disagreement with licensing and RMS claiming communications blackout. I highly doubt his recount is objective, or even tried to be. He could've admitted to potentially being biased beforehand, that would've redeemed his account in my eyes, but having me find out that they didn't part on the best of terms leaves a bad taste instead.

wpietri 7y ago

Totally. I get that the OP is from Stallman's publicist. But I think a good publicist shouldn't at worse be selective about the truth, not say outright false things like this. Plenty of people who know Stallman have made it clear that Stallman's behavior is consistent, harmful, and willful. E.g.: https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1172422966904160257 https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1172422966904160257

codr7 7y ago
And who, if I may ask, is this person who is so eagerly ventilating his opinions to feed the wolves? To me it sounds more like he's upset because RMS didn't agree with him, which would be his problem in a sane world.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  > And who, if I may ask, is this person "This person" is Thomas Bushnell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bushnell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bushnell > who is so eagerly ventilating his opinions to feed the wolves? To me it sounds more like he's upset This is just my reading, but "A reflection on the departure of RMS" does not have the tone of someone who is upset nor someone who is eager. It has the tone of someone who feels like they have a unique perspective that ought to be shared on a difficult subject.
  - ppsreejith 7y ago
    To be fair, he may have motive for being "upset" since he was dismissed from being GNU Hurd's official maintainer by Stallman. From the Wikipedia link shared: "Bushnell was Hurd's official maintainer from its instigation until November 2003, when he posted to the GNU project's discussion mailing list saying that he had been dismissed by Stallman for criticizing the GNU Free Documentation License.[5] Stallman said the dismissal was because Bushnell had been inactive since 2001 and wasn't responding to mail."
- wpietri 7y ago
  I'm not sure which person you didn't bother to Google, but the one I quoted is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Garrett https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Garrett Stallman is currently a topic of public interest, so it's unsurprising that people are commenting on his situation, just like you're doing here.

WillPostForFood 7y ago

How is this different than police planting evidence on a known bad guy and saying, well he was a criminal anyway so who cares, justice was done by putting him in jail with falsified evidence. As long as you get what your deserve, process is irrelevant.

TomVDB 7y ago
One is a criminal investigation where evidence is planted. The other is not.
- WillPostForFood 7y ago
  What got Stallman taken down was a false claim that he said Epstein's victims were "willing". That was totally a lie, and the equivalent of planting evidence. "Famed Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As 'Entirely Willing'." https://archive.is/RVpdd https://archive.is/RVpdd
houssc 7y ago
Was something planted in Stallman's case? Blowing his quotes out of proportion isn't the same thing as planting evidence. I suppose a better analogy is being on your second strike and doing some minor crime to get your third. Some would argue people on two strikes should keep their head down. Furthermore his quotes are pretty fucking creepy.
- WillPostForFood 7y ago
  Twisting a quote into a different meaning is a lie, and pretty similar to planting evidence. You are saying two strikes, and then we have license to make up a third to take you out.
- windexh8er 7y ago
  It's called "libel".
- sergioj97 7y ago

jeffchien 7y ago

I must admit I didn't know who Mr. Bushnell was, so I looked him up. Finding out about his dismissal from GNU Hurd back in 2003 was quite ironic to me: > RMS has now "dismissed" me as Hurd maintainer because I have publicly spoken against the GFDL, saying that a GNU maintainer must support and speak in favor of GNU policies. If this is really RMS's reason, then it means that he demands the right to control the speech of every GNU volunteer when it comes to GNU project policies. He wants not merely to set the direction, but also to require that each and every one of us publicly support a GNU policy when asked to. [1] https://lists.softwarelibero.it/pipermail/discussioni/2003-November/008495.html https://lists.softwarelibero.it/pipermail/discussioni/2003-N... [2] https://lwn.net/Articles/59147/ https://lwn.net/Articles/59147/

thefj 7y ago
Keep in mind that Stallman maintained that Bushnell stopped answering emails for two years, and that was the reason for firing him. Seems like he still holds a grudge.
- jeffchien 7y ago
  Interesting. Not to entirely doubt what you're saying, but the source for that statement on Wikipedia doesn't have a primary source. Do you happen to have more reading? I would love to have the complete story between them. (Aside: Now that I look into it, Mr. Bushnell's Wikipedia page has basically been rewritten on September 22nd [1] after his article) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Bushnell&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Bushnell&a...
flippinburgers 7y ago
So it is safe to say that at least some of the people eager to see Stallman burn have a grudge with him. In other words, they are not being objective.
noobermin 7y ago
One of the issues whenever this sort of cancelling occurs is of the people who come out of the woodwork to join in the calls, it turns out some of them have personal issues with the person aside from their contentious conduct. This is why these things, as others have mentioned, should be tried in official channels, not merely be executed in response to public attitudes and press releases.

roenxi 7y ago

Bushnell* writes a very reasonable piece. It deals with a number of issues with Stallman as a leader of the FSF and MIT and suggests Stallman is unlikely to come back to either of those institutions. But he doesn't deal with what the big problem here is - the way this was done is concerning. Stallman wasn't forced to resign by people like him - who are quite happy to say "Look, Stallman, you've dedicated your life to this, you've done good work, but we want to take the movement into a more mainstream place". Stallman resigned in the middle of a press firestorm, based on lies, with people publicly accusing him of supporting someone he called a 'serial rapist'. He is now facing large numbers of people retroactively justifying his treatment by spreading various rumours that may or may not be true but certainly can't be enumerated and assessed for accuracy. They are unfalsifiable and undebunkable because so far there is very little substance and a lot of hearsay. I've seen the odd comments justifying all sorts of weird assumptions, in one case literally because 'he was an eccentric bloke'. This is gross pigeonholing and stereotyping. This is not a reasonable process and the outcomes are horrible. Stallman has literally dedicated his life to trying to make the world better for other people. He was bought down by leaks by someone who now says "Did I even really know who Richard Stallman was before those emails? To be honest, not really" [0]. This is not how these things should be done and it bodes very poorly for the future of the FSF. Not only is there no particular reward for leading the FSF, there is also the risk of being publicly shamed and driven out. There is a difference between leadership change by mob rule, and leadership change by voting and process. This isn't a sustainable way of doing things. It is really bad. [0] https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec210794 https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec2... * EDIT - Thanks yakshaving_jgt for pointing out I said Paul. Moment of confusion, although fortunately not one that obscured the point.

yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
Paull* and she*.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mjg59 7y ago
Stallman resigned in the face of people who had always known who he was being faced with the reality that the rest of the world also knew. The motivation wasn't the misquotes of his already abhorrent argument. (source: former FSF board member)

ralfd 7y ago

And here [0] is someone else who (by his own accord) worked with both RMS and Bushnell and is saying Bushnell is bullshitting and grinding an axe: [0] https://mobile.twitter.com/thomas_lord/status/1174433654942007297?p=v https://mobile.twitter.com/thomas_lord/status/11744336549420... > Bushnell and I overlapped in our employment at FSF. ... The general culture of inclusiveness and tolerance that RMS fostered meant that, at least when I was there alongside Bushnell, that social circle in and around the organization was feminized and all the stronger for it. This does not mean, of course, that RMS (or any of us) never gave offense or acted stupidly. But Bushnell's portrait showing a depraved sexist coddled by this or that MIT prof. is simply bullshit, and Bushnell probably knows or should know that in his heart.

solidasparagus 7y ago
> "The general culture of inclusiveness and tolerance" That was not the Stallman I saw at CSAIL. There are many good things to be said about Stallman, but in multiple years there I never saw either tolerance or inclusivity.
strenholme 7y ago
Thank you for the link. My impression is that RMS mainly had some opinions which were leftover from the “free love” movement of the 1960s and 1970s which were not particularly shocking or out of line back then, but are considered job-losing toxic opinions here in 2019. For the record, as someone who saw that whole movement first hand, I disagree with the whole “free love” movement and think sex should only be done in a lifetime monogamous commitment. I have met and have had dinner with RMS; he came off to me as a very kind person who has very strong principles. I do not see the imaginary monster that the outrage clickbait media is trying to make RMS be in him.
- mirimir 7y ago
  Yeah, from someone who was there, that's almost it. I'd add hacker punk as another key influence. But seriously, you don't say that stuff in public these days. Edit: Even if you're joking, or just doing it to light people up. Which was, you know, quite the thing. Back in the day. And damn, had to work at it, but I found a couple BOFH episodes that actually mention women.[0,1] 0) https://bofh.subversivedata.com/story/2009/4 https://bofh.subversivedata.com/story/2009/4 1) http://bofharchive.com/1998/bastard98-21.html http://bofharchive.com/1998/bastard98-21.html

ajxs 7y ago

This quote from the opening paragraph "I recommend in particular Selam G’s original articles on this topic for background" doesn't do much to endear it to me. I'd hardly call the original article a very accurate representation of Stallman's words or even his overall point. Far be it from me to defend Stallman's outrageous statements and opinions, I don't feel that the original article or the subsequent media frenzy stirred up in its wake is a fair representation of the situation. The author then goes on in the subsequent paragraphs to talk about how the media circus mischaracterised Stallman...

tmsh 7y ago

Bushnell authored GNU Hurd: "RMS: I am not very optimistic about the GNU HURD. It makes some progress, but to be really superior it would require solving a lot of deep problems. However, mainly what I think about the HURD is that finishing it is not crucial." https://redditblog.com/2010/07/29/rms-ama/ https://redditblog.com/2010/07/29/rms-ama/ I think Bushnell makes some good points but: (1) he’s biased. (2) a Googler calling out Stallman is just rich (given the debt Google, its employees, and all modern tech companies owe free software and the relatively little they repay).

lostjohnny 7y ago
> a Googler calling out Stallman Isn't it stange that the other one calling out Stallman, Matthew Garret, is a Googler too?

egdod 7y ago

He worked with rms longer than any other programmer and said nothing for decades? Then after this fall from grace, he piles on and acts superior? Gross.

klingonopera 7y ago
Yeah, where are all those articles and opinions about his bad behavior from before the recent debacle? Why are they all being written now?

klingonopera 7y ago

And not a single word about his dismissal from RMS beforehand? And looking at the older entries on his Wikipedia entry, it seems that the dismissal itself was a controversial topic, with Bushnell claiming disagreement with licensing and RMS claiming communications blackout. I highly doubt his recount is objective, or even tried to be. He could've admitted to potentially being biased beforehand, that would've redeemed his account in my eyes, but having me find out that they didn't part on the best of terms leaves a bad taste instead.