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The only joy I get from these threads is in watching a whole bunch of newbies to GNU get upset that politics, social policy, and GNU are intertwined. They have

The only joy I get from these threads is in watching a whole bunch of newbies to GNU get upset that politics, social policy, and GNU are intertwined. They have always been! You could at least have the dignity to read Stallman’s writings (a fine start is available at: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/essays-and-articles.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/essays-and-articles.html , a more advanced diet is available at Stallman.org ) to understand just how politically charged GNU, the FSF, and Stallman have always been. So now some members of a social movement disagree with the leader of that social movement you feel upset to see social issues discussed? That seems dishonest. Why should any social and political movement remain beholden to one original star of the old guard as the world moves forward. How ought the community respond to a trend to controversy and irrelevance other than by asking Stallman to step aside from the figurehead role? Is the argument here really that once you are a figurehead for a social movement you earn that position for life? I can’t think of any successful movement or organisation for which that has been the case. GNU has always been political, the politics needed to bring software freedom to all users is different now than it was in the 90’s. Some battles have been won, others have been lost hard, new battles have arisen. An honest discussion of whether Stallman is best placed to lead those new battles is overdue.

blub 7y ago
There's no one in that project that is such a fanatic and well-known personality that they'd be able to lead it. After being embraced, extended and diluted by corporations, software freedom will slide even more into irrelevance. This also doesn't seem to be a discussion, it's a statement towards Stallman to GTFO.
- morelisp 7y ago
  > There's no one in that project that is such a fanatic and well-known personality that they'd be able to lead it. Ignorance of the fame and effectiveness of several people on that list says more about your awareness of the current state of the FSF and GNU than it does about those organizations. Werner Koch led FSFE. Ian Jackson led Debian and SPI. Matt Lee is responsible for many of the FSF's major publicity campaigns. Joshua Gay put together Stallman's book. I don't volunteer any of them or have any knowledge of whether they want to run the project, but any of them easily could.
  - blub 7y ago
    I don't doubt that they could lead the project from a purely administrative perspective, just like any of the other Tesla executives could in theory lead that company :)
- canarypilot 7y ago
  That may well be true. Certainly, and reserving judgement on exactly what this means, nobody who could lead it quite like Stallman. But, I find the implication hard to accept. It would be to say that Stallman’s continuing presence is essential to the success of free software; surely a frightening responsibility for any one mortal person to carry through their remaining years! Free software has had success as a movement. To believe otherwise is to take away more than just Stallman’s position, but his entire contribution to our modern society! That means there are others who will, and for a fact do already, take care for the well-being of the GNU projects. Not all of these will believe in everything Stallman has said or represents, and things would certainly change without him. A large and successful movement lives beyond its founder, and grows to challenge the new status quo. If it fails to grow, new movements fill the vacuum.
  - kungito 7y ago
    I'd say an interesting question could be what was the reach of Stallman's leadership. I haven't followed GNU and FSF at all in my years while I am a comp sci guy and I do wonder on each new project which license to take. Free software is something which affect pretty directly every person on the planet yet few have heard about these movements. Software piracy is an example of a similar movement to free software which has had way more publicity with regular people. I'd say this has a lot to do with the persona of Stallman and the way he interacts with the world. People learn about who made the telephone and who discovered Americas but no high school coursebook mentions who created Linux or Python. Software has in many ways been instrumental in shaping the last 20 years yet people have never been more detached with the technology they use. Everything is a black box nowdays. Even concepts like client server communication is completely unknown to a laic. This is a failure of computer and software movements which have alienated themselves and the rest of us programmers from the public.
  - blub 7y ago
    I'm not worried about GNU projects or any project, I am worried about the idea of free software, which has and has had many supporters but only one champion. I don't think it will survive. Rich corporations like Google or Microsoft will continue to fund open source projects when it suits them, while locking out users through the cloud and hardware. Those other supporters will play along, because the corporations are paying their salaries or donating to their projects.
ibeckermayer 7y ago
> Why should any social and political movement remain beholden to one original star of the old guard as the world moves forward. The real question here isn't whether GNU should be political (all institutions are political), but whether the world is really "moving forward".
- canarypilot 7y ago
  Do you object to “moving” or “forward”? If the former, I disagree; I see new battlegrounds emerging for free software and the developers and users of free software. Many of these new battlegrounds are commercial as we voluntarily hand over our data to opaque computing platforms, some are societal as we redefine how we expect work to be done, and who we expect to do it. If the latter, it doesn’t hurt my argument for you to pretend I never used the word forward at all, and I’m very happy for you to do so. Our common ground here is that things feel as though they are changing. Many great leaders are as much a product of their time and circumstances as they are a reflection of their innate talents. Whether you see the world progressing or regressing you might still agree that Stallman is not necessarily effective in the current climate.
  - ibeckermayer 7y ago
    > Do you object to “moving” or “forward”? Forward. > Whether you see the world progressing or regressing you might still agree that Stallman is not necessarily effective in the current climate. This is an amoral (and depraved) approach to this topic. The issue of what constitutes an healthy culture takes precedence over whether an individual is "effective" in that culture. There are many ways to recognize this fact, the simplest being to recognize that humanity's most horrific monsters (Hitler, Stalin, Mao) were highly "effective" leaders in their respective monstrous cultures.
belorn 7y ago
Naturally GNU and free software movement is intertwined with politics, but as someone who remember the time when people debated if they were communists I remember the answers. When Creative commons came out with the No Commercial variant we saw the same discussions pop up, and again with the same answer. They said GNU and the free software movement was not communist, socialists, libertarians, left or right. It was a new political movement based on the four software freedoms, pulling activists from both side of the political spectrum. You could have multiple project leaders, including RMS, in the same room and have as larger political diversity as there were people. The one thing that united them is that they believed in and advocated for free software. The reasons some people are now getting upset is because that answer seems to have change in very recent time. It is no longer a new political movement that recruits activists from all sides, nor is acceptable any more that there is political diversity among contributors. In that environment I am not suprised that RMS do not fit with his unconventional view on multiple political topics. He is neither a true democrat nor a true republican, and if GNU want one of those then indeed there need to be a discussion for a new leader.
fortran77 7y ago
> That seems dishonest. There are few honest people opposing Stallman who has, at the very least, been _extremely_ honest! You can dislike Stallman (as I do) and still believe that he is an honest man.

blub 7y ago

There's no one in that project that is such a fanatic and well-known personality that they'd be able to lead it. After being embraced, extended and diluted by corporations, software freedom will slide even more into irrelevance. This also doesn't seem to be a discussion, it's a statement towards Stallman to GTFO.

morelisp 7y ago
> There's no one in that project that is such a fanatic and well-known personality that they'd be able to lead it. Ignorance of the fame and effectiveness of several people on that list says more about your awareness of the current state of the FSF and GNU than it does about those organizations. Werner Koch led FSFE. Ian Jackson led Debian and SPI. Matt Lee is responsible for many of the FSF's major publicity campaigns. Joshua Gay put together Stallman's book. I don't volunteer any of them or have any knowledge of whether they want to run the project, but any of them easily could.
- blub 7y ago
  I don't doubt that they could lead the project from a purely administrative perspective, just like any of the other Tesla executives could in theory lead that company :)
canarypilot 7y ago
That may well be true. Certainly, and reserving judgement on exactly what this means, nobody who could lead it quite like Stallman. But, I find the implication hard to accept. It would be to say that Stallman’s continuing presence is essential to the success of free software; surely a frightening responsibility for any one mortal person to carry through their remaining years! Free software has had success as a movement. To believe otherwise is to take away more than just Stallman’s position, but his entire contribution to our modern society! That means there are others who will, and for a fact do already, take care for the well-being of the GNU projects. Not all of these will believe in everything Stallman has said or represents, and things would certainly change without him. A large and successful movement lives beyond its founder, and grows to challenge the new status quo. If it fails to grow, new movements fill the vacuum.
- kungito 7y ago
  I'd say an interesting question could be what was the reach of Stallman's leadership. I haven't followed GNU and FSF at all in my years while I am a comp sci guy and I do wonder on each new project which license to take. Free software is something which affect pretty directly every person on the planet yet few have heard about these movements. Software piracy is an example of a similar movement to free software which has had way more publicity with regular people. I'd say this has a lot to do with the persona of Stallman and the way he interacts with the world. People learn about who made the telephone and who discovered Americas but no high school coursebook mentions who created Linux or Python. Software has in many ways been instrumental in shaping the last 20 years yet people have never been more detached with the technology they use. Everything is a black box nowdays. Even concepts like client server communication is completely unknown to a laic. This is a failure of computer and software movements which have alienated themselves and the rest of us programmers from the public.
- blub 7y ago
  I'm not worried about GNU projects or any project, I am worried about the idea of free software, which has and has had many supporters but only one champion. I don't think it will survive. Rich corporations like Google or Microsoft will continue to fund open source projects when it suits them, while locking out users through the cloud and hardware. Those other supporters will play along, because the corporations are paying their salaries or donating to their projects.

ibeckermayer 7y ago

> Why should any social and political movement remain beholden to one original star of the old guard as the world moves forward. The real question here isn't whether GNU should be political (all institutions are political), but whether the world is really "moving forward".

canarypilot 7y ago
Do you object to “moving” or “forward”? If the former, I disagree; I see new battlegrounds emerging for free software and the developers and users of free software. Many of these new battlegrounds are commercial as we voluntarily hand over our data to opaque computing platforms, some are societal as we redefine how we expect work to be done, and who we expect to do it. If the latter, it doesn’t hurt my argument for you to pretend I never used the word forward at all, and I’m very happy for you to do so. Our common ground here is that things feel as though they are changing. Many great leaders are as much a product of their time and circumstances as they are a reflection of their innate talents. Whether you see the world progressing or regressing you might still agree that Stallman is not necessarily effective in the current climate.
- ibeckermayer 7y ago
  > Do you object to “moving” or “forward”? Forward. > Whether you see the world progressing or regressing you might still agree that Stallman is not necessarily effective in the current climate. This is an amoral (and depraved) approach to this topic. The issue of what constitutes an healthy culture takes precedence over whether an individual is "effective" in that culture. There are many ways to recognize this fact, the simplest being to recognize that humanity's most horrific monsters (Hitler, Stalin, Mao) were highly "effective" leaders in their respective monstrous cultures.

belorn 7y ago

Naturally GNU and free software movement is intertwined with politics, but as someone who remember the time when people debated if they were communists I remember the answers. When Creative commons came out with the No Commercial variant we saw the same discussions pop up, and again with the same answer. They said GNU and the free software movement was not communist, socialists, libertarians, left or right. It was a new political movement based on the four software freedoms, pulling activists from both side of the political spectrum. You could have multiple project leaders, including RMS, in the same room and have as larger political diversity as there were people. The one thing that united them is that they believed in and advocated for free software. The reasons some people are now getting upset is because that answer seems to have change in very recent time. It is no longer a new political movement that recruits activists from all sides, nor is acceptable any more that there is political diversity among contributors. In that environment I am not suprised that RMS do not fit with his unconventional view on multiple political topics. He is neither a true democrat nor a true republican, and if GNU want one of those then indeed there need to be a discussion for a new leader.

fortran77 7y ago

> That seems dishonest. There are few honest people opposing Stallman who has, at the very least, been _extremely_ honest! You can dislike Stallman (as I do) and still believe that he is an honest man.