9 ms·

On Recent Controversial Events

161 points by richardfontana 7y ago

hollerith 7y ago
>human sexual behavior not a topic on which RMS has adequate expertise Ouch!
- rdiddly 7y ago
  Yeah that struck me as a "sick burn" too, or at least potentially could be taken as one, but the rest of the essay makes me think it was unintentional and more about being one of the people who study sexuality.
  - jammygit 7y ago
    Kuhn is a pretty level headed person, it is just unfortunate and sloppy wording. He is speaking about scientific or other expert knowledge
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  I think that's factually accurate. He's not a professor of sexology and (to my knowledge) has never pursued any formal study of the topic. Not everybody needs to be Dr. Ruth, but in some sense, Stallman going on about sex topics when he's not is as much a problem as Sagan once going on about the "reptile brain" without considering how much of the neuroscience he was contemporary to had already disproved that hypothesis. If you're going to have strong opinions on something and want to maintain your credibility in general, at least find a trustworthy and informed advisor on the topic.
  - ernst_klim 7y ago
    > He's not a professor of sexology It's not a question of sexology, it's a question of ethics. I doubt that any of his critics are professors of sexology as well, people are arguing on moral ground here. Many of issues people are attacking him on, are not issues in my country. I don't see many fellow Europeans bothering what he said, it's American moral issue totally.
- on_and_off 7y ago
  Considering the guy has felt the need to publicly express his view that kids should be "allowed" to have sex with adults if they want to.. yeahh, I am going to have to agree.
- mimi89999 7y ago
  This actually makes sense. It is also morally bad to sell cigarettes and alcohol to minors because it is proven to be bad for their health and the society has determined that before the age of 18 people are unable to choose what's good for them.
smitty1e 7y ago
What a thoughtful essay. Kuhn clearly pored over those words most carefully. > The question is whether an organization should have a designated leader who is on a sustained, public campaign advocating about an unrelated issue that many consider controversial. It really doesn't matter what your view about the controversial issue is; a leader who refuses to stop talking loudly about unrelated issues eventually creates an untenable distraction from the radical activism you're actively trying to advance. The inability to differentiate between "acute" and "chronic" plagues our day.
- yourbandsucks 7y ago
  But then Kuhn gives the game away within a couple paragraphs, calling RMS's views 'problematic' and expressing disagreement with several of them. If you're gonna go with that line, stay on-message.
  - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
    It is possible that there are multiple angles and reasons why a leader is no longer compatible, and that there is no 'game' to give away. EDIT: What I mean is, it's entirely possible that its not just that Stallman had views that were disagreeable, nor that Stallman wouldn't stop talking about his personal views- its that Stallman wouldn't stop talking about his specifically disagreeable personal viewpoints.
    - yourbandsucks 7y ago
      Absolutely possible and I don't have a hard time believing they'd reached that point with RMS. I hadn't seen RMS's politics link before -- he puts out like 10 bullet-point hot takes a day, lots of them with a viewpoint way outside the mainstream. He's got weirdo semanticist takes about basically everything, including, as infamously linked, sex laws. I normally want to defend the right to have unorthodox takes on general principle, but I can see where they're coming from here as far as leadership.
  - eightysixfour 7y ago
mistermann 7y ago
> In fact, RMS' views and statements posted on stallman.org about sexual morality escalated for the worse over the last few years. Each word is a linked to a comment, some of them fairly eye opening.
- deft 7y ago
  Except reading the links and keeping the timestamps in mind pretty much the opposite occurred. In 2016 he was blabbing about bestiality and pedophilia / rape of minors and excusing it, but later on he was mostly talking about not calling 18yos children, and saying that not all 'Sexual assault' is equal and different words should be used to describe different actions, he even provides a pretty logical argument for this. His worst comment was probably this one https://web.archive.org/web/20180131020215/https://stallman.org/archives/2017-jul-oct.html#29_October_2017_(Pestering_women) https://web.archive.org/web/20180131020215/https://stallman....
  - fencepost 7y ago
    Regardless of how his stated views changed over time, the article is more about how such outside-the-mainstream views end up being a significant distraction from the already (unrelated) outside-the-mainstream views of the FSF. Even were he to turn out to be an incredible coder and lover of open source, I also wouldn't expect the FSF to hire David Duke as a spokesman because the combination of two unrelated advocacy positions would be a distraction for both.
    - ng12 7y ago
      I think we need to keep in mind that RMS was posting this stuff very publicly all the while FSF was a runaway success. If RMS were being nominated to lead the FSF today, sure it might be appropriate to point out that he seems like a wack-job. However, as it stands we've lost one of the most impactful thought leaders of the past several decades over some mudslinging and theoretical "distraction".
      - XorNot 7y ago
ng12 7y ago
> The question is whether an organization should have a designated leader who is on a sustained, public campaign advocating about an unrelated issue that many consider controversial. I don't understand this. Are people in prominent positions not allowed to have opinions or interests outside of their job? As long as RMS wasn't actively using his power/influence as head of the FSF to advance his odd-ball views I really don't see what the problem is. The only argument I could see is that RMS's persona was so fundamentally quintessential to the FSF that the two could not be separated -- in which case firing him was obviously a boneheaded move.
- iamaelephant 7y ago
  Your question is addressed in the article.
- eightysixfour 7y ago
  > Are people in prominent positions not allowed to have opinions or interests outside of their job? There are absolutely jobs in the world where “don’t be a distraction” is a requirement for the job.
  - humanrebar 7y ago
    Sometimes who you are, a physical trait, an accent, an unrelated disability is a "distraction". And, yes, personality and neurological traits can count as well. I can understand "don't be a jerk", and maybe RMS failed that test. But "don't be a distraction" can easily be (and has been) an excuse to oppress in the name of pragmatism.
- pmichaud 7y ago
  Are people in prominent positions not allowed to have opinions or interests outside of their job? That is basically correct.
  - vkou 7y ago
    You're allowed to have interests outside of your job, but most workplaces expect you to leave them aside, and focus on doing WORK at work. If your job involves being a public speaker, who is 'on' 24/7, then that's what you have to deal with. You're always free to pursue flipping burgers, or fixing cars, where you only need to be focused on work for 40 hours a week.
fencepost 7y ago
While it doesn't match the FA title, I think an addition of "(FSF and RMS)" could be helpful to many people.
bbanyc 7y ago
Even setting aside RMS's indefensible behavior, his vision of what "free software" means is stuck in the '80s. [1] got flagged for its flame-baity title but it's a valid point. Nobody gives a damn about the firmware for your laptop's wi-fi card. Cloud services and mobile rule the world now, and RMS never came up with a good solution to either besides "don't use them." (There's AGPL but it's never won any victories for software freedom. All it means is "buy a commercial license.") It's unfortunate that RMS loyalists will continue to control the FSF for the foreseeable future. This is one of those cases where progress is made one funeral at a time. [1] https://maffulli.net/2019/10/17/why-richard-stallman-doesnt-matter/ https://maffulli.net/2019/10/17/why-richard-stallman-doesnt-...
- wardenPresides 7y ago
  firmware Yeah, great, so we're all just cool with exploitative APT implants from nation-state actors that can track and fingerprint each of our uniquely identifiable devices, via cellular radio firmware vulns, facial recognition and satellite/aerostat surveillance, so that the next Hong Kong doesn't need to be a Tiananmen Square debacle, and they can quietly round up dissent one-by-one, weeks and months after collecting intel, and then disappearing blacklisted citizens for re-education, slave labor, organ donation, and medical experiments at their leisure, right? It's certainly true that RMS never came up with a good solution, because the only winning move is not to play. But sure, rattle off your agit-comments. You don't sound like you have an agenda at all.
- catalogia 7y ago
  > "Cloud services and mobile rule the world now, and RMS never came up with a good solution to either besides "don't use them."" I generally agree and I think the problem is bigger than SaaS. Consumers are now becoming accustomed to software "running" on low power hardware that simply cannot actually run on that low power hardware, which requires some sort of "SaaS" system, which in turn requires that they either trust somebody else (inevitably a for-profit corporation who very often has incentives misaligned with the user) or become their own system administrator (an unreasonable ask for the typical user.) A concrete example: Suppose a user wants a FOSS photograph organization application that supports organizing large numbers of images through tagging. A user coming from the proprietary world might reasonably expect this application to perform face detection and recognition to automatically tag all of their friends in the application. There are FOSS implementations of this kind of ML tech.. but what are the chances any of that heavy duty stuff can run on the users low power smartphone? Snowball's chance in hell. Even if you get it to run, it certainly won't scale as well as the SaaS alternative from Facebook/Google/Apple. What's the answer though? I don't have a great answer to this, RMS obviously doesn't, I don't think any RMS supporters or critics do. Not that I've heard anyway.
jammygit 7y ago
RMS resigned!? I can’t believe I missed something like that (I’m even a fsf “member”)
- krapp 7y ago
  Seems you have some drama to catch up on... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990583
  - jammygit 7y ago
    Wow, 2100 comments. Thanks for the link
ahuth 7y ago
> However, we do not need to follow leadership from those whose views we fundamentally disagree. I don't know much about the author, but I really like this viewpoint. People are of course entitled to their opinions and to free speech. But we don't have to follow leaders whose values don't align with our own.
starpilot 7y ago
RMS forever.
jammygit 7y ago
The “Free as in Freedom” podcast, with Sandler and Kuhn, restarted this year. It hasn’t had an episode in a few months however. I wonder if they will do an episode on this
haberman 7y ago
> organizations need not and should not elevate spokespeople and leaders who speak regularly on unrelated issues that organizations find do not advance their mission, and/or that alienate important constituents. I, like many other software freedom leaders, curtail my public comments on issues not related to FOSS. (Indeed, I would not even be commenting on this issue if it had not become a central issue of concern to the software freedom community.) I really respect this. Kuhn is articulating a principle here and then gives an example of how he himself makes a sacrifice to adhere to this principle. This makes him much more credible to me than if he was using the principle solely as an instrument against others.
- breck 7y ago
  Is this a good pattern though? Seems to me like a low standard for our leaders. You should be able to do more than one thing at once.
  - wmf 7y ago
    It's not really about leaders at all but about the public and press who will listen to and amplify anything leaders say even if it's off-topic bullshit.
    - lisp-missionary 7y ago
      Trump says anything and it's fine. Guy tells blatant lies. Says he saw muslims cheering on 9/11 and he's the president. But god forbid some computer programmer says something Americans don't agree with.
      - dang 7y ago
        Please don't take HN threads further into political or ideological flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        7y ago
shadowgovt 7y ago
Thinking about Stallman leading FSF while chewing on these topics of sexuality reminds me a bit about a bad joke I heard regarding the Libertarian party. Question: Can a party with the Libertarians' political philosophy of government's role in society be trusted with the Presidency in a country where the executive has so much power? Answer: Doesn't matter; they don't have a chance at the Presidency until everyone forgets about the time the one candidate for party chair stripped naked on stage at their national convention.
zaptheimpaler 7y ago
> It really doesn't matter what your view about the controversial issue is; a leader who refuses to stop talking loudly about unrelated issues eventually creates an untenable distraction from .... I can understand his position, but this is part of the picture of a core problem in society today. Its NOT that leaders aren't allowed to speak about controversial issues - its that they aren't allowed to advocate ONE side of an issue, while the other side is perfectly OK. You probably shouldn't say "diversity is important but not our only goal" as a CEO, but you CAN say "diversity is the best". That kind of large scale censorship only stifles dissent without changing the dissenters mind. Which is a state of affairs the far left happily accepts - "toxic people dont deserve a voice". Just pray you don't speak against mob or they'll cancel you. Better yet, just don't even think those unthinkable thoughts. Submit to the collective. All your opinions can be inferred from your tribe anyways. You don't really exist, only your tribe does.
- skybrian 7y ago
  This isn't new and it's a consequence of how publicity works. Some views make the news and others don't, depending on how outside the mainstream they are. Public figures are judged by all their attention-getting views. Maybe it doesn't matter too much if nobody knows who you are, but it's why some authors write under pen names. (Back when the U.S. was founded, writing for newspapers using your real name was apparently pretty rare.)
  - herostratus101 7y ago
    This argument seems to assume that the media is a fair and impartial arbiter of acceptable opinion, which is a fairly controversial stance.
    - skybrian 7y ago
      Fairness has little to do with it. It's almost maximally unfair, since people often get more attention because they're already famous, or they get it randomly for almost no reason.
- 7y ago
michannne 7y ago
> Most importantly, I believe we must find a way to stand firm for software freedom while also making a safe environment for victims of sexual assault, sexual abuse, gaslighting, and other deplorable actions. I understand and I fully stand by his belief that software freedom does not mean egalitarian and morally righteous principles have to be undermined in order to progress. However, it is not the FSF's job to make sure those values are upheld in every facet of moral righteousness. The goal is clear: make and keep software free as in liberty. That's it. Anything else should be completely within the realm of personal viewpoints. I completely and wholeheartedly stand by the fact that we as a society need to deal with sexual violence much better than we are currently doing so. Not an ounce of my being, however, places the burden on dealing with this onto Stallman's, or Kuhn's, or any other FSF member's shoulder. Help if you can. Help if you want, but if your job is to make software free, you're doing great. If you can solve other moral issues while doing so, even better, but it's not required.
- mrkurt 7y ago
  The problem is that RMS undermines the FSF's progress by being a dumbass. No one's expects him to solve a moral issue, they expect to him to avoid harming their mission by being a ridiculous troll.
  - ng12 7y ago
    Their mission is his mission. FSF didn't hire Stallman, he created it. I think it's baseless to say that Stallman is either trolling or harming the FSF.
    - ixtli 7y ago
      He created it more then 30 years ago. It has evolved into something much, much greater than himself and so the organization has a very serious responsibility to more stakeholders as well.
      - ng12 7y ago
        That's exactly it -- 30 years of flourishing with RMS very publicly documenting his opinion on everything the whole time. That's why I find it hard to believe that his behavior was so harmful to the organization.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pnako 7y ago
Et tu, Brute?
lisp-missionary 7y ago
This is absolutely ridiculous and completely reflective of California liberalism where if you don't agree with everything the group thinks you are seen as evil. We saw the same thing when that guy from google pointed out that the number of women in software is a result of women not wanting to learn programming rather than men keeping them out. I've seen it my entire life. It's the same mentality that Portlandia famously satirized. This is a California phenomena. If you go to other places in the country it is easy to find open minded people that identify and fit the traditional category of "liberal". This is the same state where racist political groups organize to get more hispanic people voted into office without being called out as the hispanic supremacists that they are. Even more ironically, hispanic people are the racial majority in California. Richard stallman did not do anything. He shared his thoughts. Thinking something is not a crime. Are you so perfect that every thought you've ever had has been the right one. This guy has been tried and convicted by these fake poser moralists for nothing less orwelliam than THOUGHT CRIME. Everyone pointing the finger at a guy for having thoughts, even if those thoughts were that all white people dying wouldn't be that bad or supporting American companies acting as instruments of a foreign government like China or supporting the witch trial of Zuckerberg for selling information by the same government that bought information from Zuckerberg for years, it wouldn't matter, you can't point at someone for thinking and call them evil. These are thoughts not actions. I am absolutely sick of California liberals. Sick of them. They don't think for themselves. They don't believe in the rights of Americans. They don't vbelieve in freespeech, not only imposing censorship from everything from twitter to a fucking videogame, but actively support everyome that imposes censorship. They don't believe in the 2nd amendment, or even realize why it's there. They don't believe in the right to face your accuser. They are not open to logic or new information. The group is always right and individuals are always wrong. Fuck this guy and fuck the entire programming community.
- lisp-missionary 7y ago
  Downvoting me without substance literally argues on behalf of my thesis.
  - krapp 7y ago
    You didn't post a thesis, you posted an unhinged rant about your hatred for "California liberals." If you want a substantive reply, offer something of substance to begin with.
Supermancho 7y ago
> #MeToo is not a “frenzy”; it is a global movement by individuals who have been harmed seeking to hold both bad actors and society-at-large accountable for ignoring systemic wrongs I'll kindly disagree there, since those characterizations (the link to the "frenzy" interpretation is in the blog) are independently accurate of the movement. Edit: the downvotes are tragically ironic.
phront 7y ago
>talking loudly about unrelated issues eventually creates an untenable distraction "Welcome back to the new Middle Ages"
throwaway13337 7y ago
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." This is understood as the principle of freedom of speech. We don't get that if you risk losing your job if you don't share every view of the majority. The principle should be well understood by an organization that stands for, above all, these sorts of freedoms. There is no freedom of speech left if you're only able to say what everyone agrees with. When did we lose sight of this? This posturing is shameful.
- mthoms 7y ago
  His freedom of speech hasn't been hindered in any way, shape, or form (as far as I can tell). What I do see, is others utilizing their right to (dis)associate with whomever they want. Freedom of speech has never included any notion of "Freedom from societal repercussions".
  - humanrebar 7y ago
    "Freedom of speech" is a universal principle that is also crystallized in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution with respect to government suppression of private speech. It's also important that the principle be applied in private interactions, weighing other considerations. Of course, a political diatribe at a funeral is a poor choice. But there need to be places for well intentioned and civil people to come together and discuss things, even if ignorance is spouted of from time to time. If we're all humble, we'll all understand we're each ignorant in our own way and have a little grace to let each other be wrong, annoying, and even circumstantially negative from time to time. Yes, freedom of association is important and conflicts with freedom of speech sometimes. But deciding to shun people also has repercussions. We have to consider all the repercussions of all of our actions.
    - mthoms 7y ago
      Well said. I agree completely. The question I would ask next though, is whether RMS is well intentioned, humble and aware of his own capability to be ignorant? I don't have a strong opinion, but there does appear to be a long history of behaviours and musings which suggest he isn't. I'm not saying he deserves to be a social pariah. But it seems reasonable for the FSF to want to disassociate with him.
reggieband 7y ago
> However, we do not need to follow leadership from those whose views we fundamentally disagree. I hesitate to bring up Trump in this context but I know many wish they didn't have to follow a man who casually joked about sexual assault. Yet Americans do have to follow Trump on matters of law related to his office as President, like it or not. > [...] organizations need not and should not elevate spokespeople and leaders who speak regularly on unrelated issues that organizations find do not advance their mission, and/or that alienate important constituents. I agree on "need not" but disagree on "should not". Just because Kuhn chooses to keep his public persona free from conflicts with his personal commitments to organizations does not mean anyone else must as well. Nor does his belief that he is doing something worthwhile mean it is a universal moral law. I appreciate his integrity but I do not consider it a requirement for leadership of software advocacy organizations. I find it troubling that a common tactic when someone disagrees with someone else is they want to ruin them. They want them de-platformed and unemployable. It isn't enough to combat their ideas with better ideas, they need them to go away permanently. I would have preferred both Kuhn and RMS to stay on the FSF and engage in a public healthy debate.
- XorNot 7y ago
  RMS is being pushed out of a public relations role, because he has demonstrated that he cannot competently maintain relations with the public. The Trump administration has, similarly, repeatedly fired public relations representatives when it became dissatisfied with their performance.
telaelit 7y ago
Very thoughtful and nuanced post-mortem. I generally agree with what he had to say. I think I’m more on the side of thinking leaders should be moral people and not think that pedophilia is defensible. I do believe people in power should be held accountable. I think “cancel culture” is the wrong term to use, I think is accountable culture. If you think it’s okay to demean woman and defend someone exploiting young girls because his sex trafficker friend gives his institution lots of money, then I think you’re a bad person. Free speech doesn’t mean you’re free from consequences.
dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
> It really doesn't matter what your view about the controversial issue is; a leader who refuses to stop talking loudly about unrelated issues eventually creates an untenable distraction So this practically means the moment you become the leader, you renounce your freedom of free speech. RMS is a freedom fighter, there is no way he would agree to that. And I'm grateful he didn't give up.
neurocline 7y ago
This is Bradley Kuhn trying to explain and justify his behavior to himself (and, to take a personal stance, I think he did - I think his actions and motivations are fine). I think it points out several things. 1. Dealing with a controversial issue from inside an organization rarely works. Sure, maybe FSF has been grappling with Stallman's non-FSF stances and how they hurt the FSF and free software in general. But they had several years internally to make changes and nothing happened until it spilled over into the public. And then, yes, it did happen quickly. 2. There is a huge tension between the mission of a group and how to interact with the society that group is embedded within. I agree that a group should focus on its mission, and leave other goals to groups more dedicated to those issues. I especially agree that a group with no particular expertise in a matter should avoid pontificating or trying to "lead" in that issue. And yet a group is composed of members from the society. There's a conflict here that no one really knows how to handle. Why do people high up in very visible or very powerful organizations take on topics outside their remit? Because they have personal opinions and want to use the power of the organization to amplify their voice. I think this is a subtle form of corruption, even in the case where you "created" the organization. Because while Stallman did pioneer the idea of "free software", he's not personally responsible for all or even most of the success and visibility of the FSF. He hijacked the org to press certain opinions. And, yes, while he didn't pretend that the FSF was saying these things, he knew full well that he only had attention paid to him because of all the history of free software and the fact that he was the very visible figurehead. Saying these things to your friends and associates is one thing, but blogging about them is a public campaign. I don't know the full answer. But an org can't avoid big issues for the society it's embedded in, because that often looks like it's made a decision (usually for repression - to wit, the many groups facing public approbation over apparent kow-towing to the Chinese position on recent events in Hong Kong). But also #metoo and LGBTQ+ rights and Epstein and any number of culture flashpoints in recent history. I think orgs need to make cautious statements that these things exist and that orgs will not endorse unethical or illegal behavior but that other things are up to the actual actors involved. So for example "Black Lives Matter" - I don't expect companies to be champions, and I certainly don't expect any companies to attack it (whether flat-out or noxious things like "Blue Lives Matter"); but I do expect those companies to not make empty talk about equal rights and diversity but to work to make sure their companies aren't part of the problem (e.g. only hiring white men, for example). When a problem is exposed to you, you take that information in and you use it, you don't ignore it, and you certainly don't work to undermine it. These things blow up because someone in a position of a lot of power does something either purposely or accidentally evil, and then the reaction looks like an overreaction, and we all "murmur murmur MURMUR MURMUR!!" about it for a while. Let's all be humans. That means we have our goals (game companies make games - and profits) but we also are composed of members of the society we are embedded in, so we are part of those larger goals whether we like it or not. And we don't make social decisions based on "the market", but on foundations of morals and ethics - which we argue about constantly, but over the longer run are pretty easy to see. Not quite on a tangent - companies today face a huge problem in that they employ people, and people have their own opinions and goals not related to the company's mission. For some companies, the expectation is that you take no position on matters, because that would harm the opinion of the company. I think this is very problematic, especially since a lot of self-censoring happens. I said very little controversial in public while I was employed by a certain large game company, for example, and no one in the company explictly told me to be like that. I think that caused society a tiny bit of harm. But the flip-side is also bad in that companies face unwarranted criticism because some employee says something that goes viral, and then if the company fires the person, the company is in trouble, but if the company defends the person, the company can also get in trouble. I think this whole thing is only tough because we haven't yet figured out how to handle it. And then once we do, future generations will look back in dismay and say "what the fuck, how could you have been so blind?". I wish someone would figure it out already, so we can go back to being productive.

>human sexual behavior not a topic on which RMS has adequate expertise Ouch!

rdiddly 7y ago
Yeah that struck me as a "sick burn" too, or at least potentially could be taken as one, but the rest of the essay makes me think it was unintentional and more about being one of the people who study sexuality.
- jammygit 7y ago
  Kuhn is a pretty level headed person, it is just unfortunate and sloppy wording. He is speaking about scientific or other expert knowledge
shadowgovt 7y ago
I think that's factually accurate. He's not a professor of sexology and (to my knowledge) has never pursued any formal study of the topic. Not everybody needs to be Dr. Ruth, but in some sense, Stallman going on about sex topics when he's not is as much a problem as Sagan once going on about the "reptile brain" without considering how much of the neuroscience he was contemporary to had already disproved that hypothesis. If you're going to have strong opinions on something and want to maintain your credibility in general, at least find a trustworthy and informed advisor on the topic.
- ernst_klim 7y ago
  > He's not a professor of sexology It's not a question of sexology, it's a question of ethics. I doubt that any of his critics are professors of sexology as well, people are arguing on moral ground here. Many of issues people are attacking him on, are not issues in my country. I don't see many fellow Europeans bothering what he said, it's American moral issue totally.
on_and_off 7y ago
Considering the guy has felt the need to publicly express his view that kids should be "allowed" to have sex with adults if they want to.. yeahh, I am going to have to agree.
mimi89999 7y ago
This actually makes sense. It is also morally bad to sell cigarettes and alcohol to minors because it is proven to be bad for their health and the society has determined that before the age of 18 people are unable to choose what's good for them.

What a thoughtful essay. Kuhn clearly pored over those words most carefully. > The question is whether an organization should have a designated leader who is on a sustained, public campaign advocating about an unrelated issue that many consider controversial. It really doesn't matter what your view about the controversial issue is; a leader who refuses to stop talking loudly about unrelated issues eventually creates an untenable distraction from the radical activism you're actively trying to advance. The inability to differentiate between "acute" and "chronic" plagues our day.

yourbandsucks 7y ago
But then Kuhn gives the game away within a couple paragraphs, calling RMS's views 'problematic' and expressing disagreement with several of them. If you're gonna go with that line, stay on-message.
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  It is possible that there are multiple angles and reasons why a leader is no longer compatible, and that there is no 'game' to give away. EDIT: What I mean is, it's entirely possible that its not just that Stallman had views that were disagreeable, nor that Stallman wouldn't stop talking about his personal views- its that Stallman wouldn't stop talking about his specifically disagreeable personal viewpoints.
  - yourbandsucks 7y ago
    Absolutely possible and I don't have a hard time believing they'd reached that point with RMS. I hadn't seen RMS's politics link before -- he puts out like 10 bullet-point hot takes a day, lots of them with a viewpoint way outside the mainstream. He's got weirdo semanticist takes about basically everything, including, as infamously linked, sex laws. I normally want to defend the right to have unorthodox takes on general principle, but I can see where they're coming from here as far as leadership.
- eightysixfour 7y ago

mistermann 7y ago

> In fact, RMS' views and statements posted on stallman.org about sexual morality escalated for the worse over the last few years. Each word is a linked to a comment, some of them fairly eye opening.

deft 7y ago
Except reading the links and keeping the timestamps in mind pretty much the opposite occurred. In 2016 he was blabbing about bestiality and pedophilia / rape of minors and excusing it, but later on he was mostly talking about not calling 18yos children, and saying that not all 'Sexual assault' is equal and different words should be used to describe different actions, he even provides a pretty logical argument for this. His worst comment was probably this one https://web.archive.org/web/20180131020215/https://stallman.org/archives/2017-jul-oct.html#29_October_2017_(Pestering_women) https://web.archive.org/web/20180131020215/https://stallman....
- fencepost 7y ago
  Regardless of how his stated views changed over time, the article is more about how such outside-the-mainstream views end up being a significant distraction from the already (unrelated) outside-the-mainstream views of the FSF. Even were he to turn out to be an incredible coder and lover of open source, I also wouldn't expect the FSF to hire David Duke as a spokesman because the combination of two unrelated advocacy positions would be a distraction for both.
  - ng12 7y ago
    I think we need to keep in mind that RMS was posting this stuff very publicly all the while FSF was a runaway success. If RMS were being nominated to lead the FSF today, sure it might be appropriate to point out that he seems like a wack-job. However, as it stands we've lost one of the most impactful thought leaders of the past several decades over some mudslinging and theoretical "distraction".
    - XorNot 7y ago

ng12 7y ago

> The question is whether an organization should have a designated leader who is on a sustained, public campaign advocating about an unrelated issue that many consider controversial. I don't understand this. Are people in prominent positions not allowed to have opinions or interests outside of their job? As long as RMS wasn't actively using his power/influence as head of the FSF to advance his odd-ball views I really don't see what the problem is. The only argument I could see is that RMS's persona was so fundamentally quintessential to the FSF that the two could not be separated -- in which case firing him was obviously a boneheaded move.

iamaelephant 7y ago
Your question is addressed in the article.
eightysixfour 7y ago
> Are people in prominent positions not allowed to have opinions or interests outside of their job? There are absolutely jobs in the world where “don’t be a distraction” is a requirement for the job.
- humanrebar 7y ago
  Sometimes who you are, a physical trait, an accent, an unrelated disability is a "distraction". And, yes, personality and neurological traits can count as well. I can understand "don't be a jerk", and maybe RMS failed that test. But "don't be a distraction" can easily be (and has been) an excuse to oppress in the name of pragmatism.
pmichaud 7y ago
Are people in prominent positions not allowed to have opinions or interests outside of their job? That is basically correct.
- vkou 7y ago
  You're allowed to have interests outside of your job, but most workplaces expect you to leave them aside, and focus on doing WORK at work. If your job involves being a public speaker, who is 'on' 24/7, then that's what you have to deal with. You're always free to pursue flipping burgers, or fixing cars, where you only need to be focused on work for 40 hours a week.

fencepost 7y ago

While it doesn't match the FA title, I think an addition of "(FSF and RMS)" could be helpful to many people.

bbanyc 7y ago

Even setting aside RMS's indefensible behavior, his vision of what "free software" means is stuck in the '80s. [1] got flagged for its flame-baity title but it's a valid point. Nobody gives a damn about the firmware for your laptop's wi-fi card. Cloud services and mobile rule the world now, and RMS never came up with a good solution to either besides "don't use them." (There's AGPL but it's never won any victories for software freedom. All it means is "buy a commercial license.") It's unfortunate that RMS loyalists will continue to control the FSF for the foreseeable future. This is one of those cases where progress is made one funeral at a time. [1] https://maffulli.net/2019/10/17/why-richard-stallman-doesnt-matter/ https://maffulli.net/2019/10/17/why-richard-stallman-doesnt-...

wardenPresides 7y ago
firmware Yeah, great, so we're all just cool with exploitative APT implants from nation-state actors that can track and fingerprint each of our uniquely identifiable devices, via cellular radio firmware vulns, facial recognition and satellite/aerostat surveillance, so that the next Hong Kong doesn't need to be a Tiananmen Square debacle, and they can quietly round up dissent one-by-one, weeks and months after collecting intel, and then disappearing blacklisted citizens for re-education, slave labor, organ donation, and medical experiments at their leisure, right? It's certainly true that RMS never came up with a good solution, because the only winning move is not to play. But sure, rattle off your agit-comments. You don't sound like you have an agenda at all.
catalogia 7y ago
> "Cloud services and mobile rule the world now, and RMS never came up with a good solution to either besides "don't use them."" I generally agree and I think the problem is bigger than SaaS. Consumers are now becoming accustomed to software "running" on low power hardware that simply cannot actually run on that low power hardware, which requires some sort of "SaaS" system, which in turn requires that they either trust somebody else (inevitably a for-profit corporation who very often has incentives misaligned with the user) or become their own system administrator (an unreasonable ask for the typical user.) A concrete example: Suppose a user wants a FOSS photograph organization application that supports organizing large numbers of images through tagging. A user coming from the proprietary world might reasonably expect this application to perform face detection and recognition to automatically tag all of their friends in the application. There are FOSS implementations of this kind of ML tech.. but what are the chances any of that heavy duty stuff can run on the users low power smartphone? Snowball's chance in hell. Even if you get it to run, it certainly won't scale as well as the SaaS alternative from Facebook/Google/Apple. What's the answer though? I don't have a great answer to this, RMS obviously doesn't, I don't think any RMS supporters or critics do. Not that I've heard anyway.

jammygit 7y ago

RMS resigned!? I can’t believe I missed something like that (I’m even a fsf “member”)

krapp 7y ago
Seems you have some drama to catch up on... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990583
- jammygit 7y ago
  Wow, 2100 comments. Thanks for the link

ahuth 7y ago

> However, we do not need to follow leadership from those whose views we fundamentally disagree. I don't know much about the author, but I really like this viewpoint. People are of course entitled to their opinions and to free speech. But we don't have to follow leaders whose values don't align with our own.

starpilot 7y ago

RMS forever.

jammygit 7y ago

The “Free as in Freedom” podcast, with Sandler and Kuhn, restarted this year. It hasn’t had an episode in a few months however. I wonder if they will do an episode on this

haberman 7y ago

> organizations need not and should not elevate spokespeople and leaders who speak regularly on unrelated issues that organizations find do not advance their mission, and/or that alienate important constituents. I, like many other software freedom leaders, curtail my public comments on issues not related to FOSS. (Indeed, I would not even be commenting on this issue if it had not become a central issue of concern to the software freedom community.) I really respect this. Kuhn is articulating a principle here and then gives an example of how he himself makes a sacrifice to adhere to this principle. This makes him much more credible to me than if he was using the principle solely as an instrument against others.

breck 7y ago
Is this a good pattern though? Seems to me like a low standard for our leaders. You should be able to do more than one thing at once.
- wmf 7y ago
  It's not really about leaders at all but about the public and press who will listen to and amplify anything leaders say even if it's off-topic bullshit.
  - lisp-missionary 7y ago
    Trump says anything and it's fine. Guy tells blatant lies. Says he saw muslims cheering on 9/11 and he's the president. But god forbid some computer programmer says something Americans don't agree with.
    - dang 7y ago
      Please don't take HN threads further into political or ideological flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - 7y ago

shadowgovt 7y ago

Thinking about Stallman leading FSF while chewing on these topics of sexuality reminds me a bit about a bad joke I heard regarding the Libertarian party. Question: Can a party with the Libertarians' political philosophy of government's role in society be trusted with the Presidency in a country where the executive has so much power? Answer: Doesn't matter; they don't have a chance at the Presidency until everyone forgets about the time the one candidate for party chair stripped naked on stage at their national convention.

zaptheimpaler 7y ago

> It really doesn't matter what your view about the controversial issue is; a leader who refuses to stop talking loudly about unrelated issues eventually creates an untenable distraction from .... I can understand his position, but this is part of the picture of a core problem in society today. Its NOT that leaders aren't allowed to speak about controversial issues - its that they aren't allowed to advocate ONE side of an issue, while the other side is perfectly OK. You probably shouldn't say "diversity is important but not our only goal" as a CEO, but you CAN say "diversity is the best". That kind of large scale censorship only stifles dissent without changing the dissenters mind. Which is a state of affairs the far left happily accepts - "toxic people dont deserve a voice". Just pray you don't speak against mob or they'll cancel you. Better yet, just don't even think those unthinkable thoughts. Submit to the collective. All your opinions can be inferred from your tribe anyways. You don't really exist, only your tribe does.

skybrian 7y ago
This isn't new and it's a consequence of how publicity works. Some views make the news and others don't, depending on how outside the mainstream they are. Public figures are judged by all their attention-getting views. Maybe it doesn't matter too much if nobody knows who you are, but it's why some authors write under pen names. (Back when the U.S. was founded, writing for newspapers using your real name was apparently pretty rare.)
- herostratus101 7y ago
  This argument seems to assume that the media is a fair and impartial arbiter of acceptable opinion, which is a fairly controversial stance.
  - skybrian 7y ago
    Fairness has little to do with it. It's almost maximally unfair, since people often get more attention because they're already famous, or they get it randomly for almost no reason.
7y ago

michannne 7y ago

> Most importantly, I believe we must find a way to stand firm for software freedom while also making a safe environment for victims of sexual assault, sexual abuse, gaslighting, and other deplorable actions. I understand and I fully stand by his belief that software freedom does not mean egalitarian and morally righteous principles have to be undermined in order to progress. However, it is not the FSF's job to make sure those values are upheld in every facet of moral righteousness. The goal is clear: make and keep software free as in liberty. That's it. Anything else should be completely within the realm of personal viewpoints. I completely and wholeheartedly stand by the fact that we as a society need to deal with sexual violence much better than we are currently doing so. Not an ounce of my being, however, places the burden on dealing with this onto Stallman's, or Kuhn's, or any other FSF member's shoulder. Help if you can. Help if you want, but if your job is to make software free, you're doing great. If you can solve other moral issues while doing so, even better, but it's not required.

mrkurt 7y ago
The problem is that RMS undermines the FSF's progress by being a dumbass. No one's expects him to solve a moral issue, they expect to him to avoid harming their mission by being a ridiculous troll.
- ng12 7y ago
  Their mission is his mission. FSF didn't hire Stallman, he created it. I think it's baseless to say that Stallman is either trolling or harming the FSF.
  - ixtli 7y ago
    He created it more then 30 years ago. It has evolved into something much, much greater than himself and so the organization has a very serious responsibility to more stakeholders as well.
    - ng12 7y ago
      That's exactly it -- 30 years of flourishing with RMS very publicly documenting his opinion on everything the whole time. That's why I find it hard to believe that his behavior was so harmful to the organization.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

pnako 7y ago

Et tu, Brute?

lisp-missionary 7y ago

This is absolutely ridiculous and completely reflective of California liberalism where if you don't agree with everything the group thinks you are seen as evil. We saw the same thing when that guy from google pointed out that the number of women in software is a result of women not wanting to learn programming rather than men keeping them out. I've seen it my entire life. It's the same mentality that Portlandia famously satirized. This is a California phenomena. If you go to other places in the country it is easy to find open minded people that identify and fit the traditional category of "liberal". This is the same state where racist political groups organize to get more hispanic people voted into office without being called out as the hispanic supremacists that they are. Even more ironically, hispanic people are the racial majority in California. Richard stallman did not do anything. He shared his thoughts. Thinking something is not a crime. Are you so perfect that every thought you've ever had has been the right one. This guy has been tried and convicted by these fake poser moralists for nothing less orwelliam than THOUGHT CRIME. Everyone pointing the finger at a guy for having thoughts, even if those thoughts were that all white people dying wouldn't be that bad or supporting American companies acting as instruments of a foreign government like China or supporting the witch trial of Zuckerberg for selling information by the same government that bought information from Zuckerberg for years, it wouldn't matter, you can't point at someone for thinking and call them evil. These are thoughts not actions. I am absolutely sick of California liberals. Sick of them. They don't think for themselves. They don't believe in the rights of Americans. They don't vbelieve in freespeech, not only imposing censorship from everything from twitter to a fucking videogame, but actively support everyome that imposes censorship. They don't believe in the 2nd amendment, or even realize why it's there. They don't believe in the right to face your accuser. They are not open to logic or new information. The group is always right and individuals are always wrong. Fuck this guy and fuck the entire programming community.

lisp-missionary 7y ago
Downvoting me without substance literally argues on behalf of my thesis.
- krapp 7y ago
  You didn't post a thesis, you posted an unhinged rant about your hatred for "California liberals." If you want a substantive reply, offer something of substance to begin with.

Supermancho 7y ago

> #MeToo is not a “frenzy”; it is a global movement by individuals who have been harmed seeking to hold both bad actors and society-at-large accountable for ignoring systemic wrongs I'll kindly disagree there, since those characterizations (the link to the "frenzy" interpretation is in the blog) are independently accurate of the movement. Edit: the downvotes are tragically ironic.

phront 7y ago

>talking loudly about unrelated issues eventually creates an untenable distraction "Welcome back to the new Middle Ages"

throwaway13337 7y ago

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." This is understood as the principle of freedom of speech. We don't get that if you risk losing your job if you don't share every view of the majority. The principle should be well understood by an organization that stands for, above all, these sorts of freedoms. There is no freedom of speech left if you're only able to say what everyone agrees with. When did we lose sight of this? This posturing is shameful.

mthoms 7y ago
His freedom of speech hasn't been hindered in any way, shape, or form (as far as I can tell). What I do see, is others utilizing their right to (dis)associate with whomever they want. Freedom of speech has never included any notion of "Freedom from societal repercussions".
- humanrebar 7y ago
  "Freedom of speech" is a universal principle that is also crystallized in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution with respect to government suppression of private speech. It's also important that the principle be applied in private interactions, weighing other considerations. Of course, a political diatribe at a funeral is a poor choice. But there need to be places for well intentioned and civil people to come together and discuss things, even if ignorance is spouted of from time to time. If we're all humble, we'll all understand we're each ignorant in our own way and have a little grace to let each other be wrong, annoying, and even circumstantially negative from time to time. Yes, freedom of association is important and conflicts with freedom of speech sometimes. But deciding to shun people also has repercussions. We have to consider all the repercussions of all of our actions.
  - mthoms 7y ago
    Well said. I agree completely. The question I would ask next though, is whether RMS is well intentioned, humble and aware of his own capability to be ignorant? I don't have a strong opinion, but there does appear to be a long history of behaviours and musings which suggest he isn't. I'm not saying he deserves to be a social pariah. But it seems reasonable for the FSF to want to disassociate with him.

reggieband 7y ago

> However, we do not need to follow leadership from those whose views we fundamentally disagree. I hesitate to bring up Trump in this context but I know many wish they didn't have to follow a man who casually joked about sexual assault. Yet Americans do have to follow Trump on matters of law related to his office as President, like it or not. > [...] organizations need not and should not elevate spokespeople and leaders who speak regularly on unrelated issues that organizations find do not advance their mission, and/or that alienate important constituents. I agree on "need not" but disagree on "should not". Just because Kuhn chooses to keep his public persona free from conflicts with his personal commitments to organizations does not mean anyone else must as well. Nor does his belief that he is doing something worthwhile mean it is a universal moral law. I appreciate his integrity but I do not consider it a requirement for leadership of software advocacy organizations. I find it troubling that a common tactic when someone disagrees with someone else is they want to ruin them. They want them de-platformed and unemployable. It isn't enough to combat their ideas with better ideas, they need them to go away permanently. I would have preferred both Kuhn and RMS to stay on the FSF and engage in a public healthy debate.

XorNot 7y ago
RMS is being pushed out of a public relations role, because he has demonstrated that he cannot competently maintain relations with the public. The Trump administration has, similarly, repeatedly fired public relations representatives when it became dissatisfied with their performance.

telaelit 7y ago

Very thoughtful and nuanced post-mortem. I generally agree with what he had to say. I think I’m more on the side of thinking leaders should be moral people and not think that pedophilia is defensible. I do believe people in power should be held accountable. I think “cancel culture” is the wrong term to use, I think is accountable culture. If you think it’s okay to demean woman and defend someone exploiting young girls because his sex trafficker friend gives his institution lots of money, then I think you’re a bad person. Free speech doesn’t mean you’re free from consequences.

dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago

> It really doesn't matter what your view about the controversial issue is; a leader who refuses to stop talking loudly about unrelated issues eventually creates an untenable distraction So this practically means the moment you become the leader, you renounce your freedom of free speech. RMS is a freedom fighter, there is no way he would agree to that. And I'm grateful he didn't give up.

neurocline 7y ago

This is Bradley Kuhn trying to explain and justify his behavior to himself (and, to take a personal stance, I think he did - I think his actions and motivations are fine). I think it points out several things. 1. Dealing with a controversial issue from inside an organization rarely works. Sure, maybe FSF has been grappling with Stallman's non-FSF stances and how they hurt the FSF and free software in general. But they had several years internally to make changes and nothing happened until it spilled over into the public. And then, yes, it did happen quickly. 2. There is a huge tension between the mission of a group and how to interact with the society that group is embedded within. I agree that a group should focus on its mission, and leave other goals to groups more dedicated to those issues. I especially agree that a group with no particular expertise in a matter should avoid pontificating or trying to "lead" in that issue. And yet a group is composed of members from the society. There's a conflict here that no one really knows how to handle. Why do people high up in very visible or very powerful organizations take on topics outside their remit? Because they have personal opinions and want to use the power of the organization to amplify their voice. I think this is a subtle form of corruption, even in the case where you "created" the organization. Because while Stallman did pioneer the idea of "free software", he's not personally responsible for all or even most of the success and visibility of the FSF. He hijacked the org to press certain opinions. And, yes, while he didn't pretend that the FSF was saying these things, he knew full well that he only had attention paid to him because of all the history of free software and the fact that he was the very visible figurehead. Saying these things to your friends and associates is one thing, but blogging about them is a public campaign. I don't know the full answer. But an org can't avoid big issues for the society it's embedded in, because that often looks like it's made a decision (usually for repression - to wit, the many groups facing public approbation over apparent kow-towing to the Chinese position on recent events in Hong Kong). But also #metoo and LGBTQ+ rights and Epstein and any number of culture flashpoints in recent history. I think orgs need to make cautious statements that these things exist and that orgs will not endorse unethical or illegal behavior but that other things are up to the actual actors involved. So for example "Black Lives Matter" - I don't expect companies to be champions, and I certainly don't expect any companies to attack it (whether flat-out or noxious things like "Blue Lives Matter"); but I do expect those companies to not make empty talk about equal rights and diversity but to work to make sure their companies aren't part of the problem (e.g. only hiring white men, for example). When a problem is exposed to you, you take that information in and you use it, you don't ignore it, and you certainly don't work to undermine it. These things blow up because someone in a position of a lot of power does something either purposely or accidentally evil, and then the reaction looks like an overreaction, and we all "murmur murmur MURMUR MURMUR!!" about it for a while. Let's all be humans. That means we have our goals (game companies make games - and profits) but we also are composed of members of the society we are embedded in, so we are part of those larger goals whether we like it or not. And we don't make social decisions based on "the market", but on foundations of morals and ethics - which we argue about constantly, but over the longer run are pretty easy to see. Not quite on a tangent - companies today face a huge problem in that they employ people, and people have their own opinions and goals not related to the company's mission. For some companies, the expectation is that you take no position on matters, because that would harm the opinion of the company. I think this is very problematic, especially since a lot of self-censoring happens. I said very little controversial in public while I was employed by a certain large game company, for example, and no one in the company explictly told me to be like that. I think that caused society a tiny bit of harm. But the flip-side is also bad in that companies face unwarranted criticism because some employee says something that goes viral, and then if the company fires the person, the company is in trouble, but if the company defends the person, the company can also get in trouble. I think this whole thing is only tough because we haven't yet figured out how to handle it. And then once we do, future generations will look back in dismay and say "what the fuck, how could you have been so blind?". I wish someone would figure it out already, so we can go back to being productive.