5 ms·

The X.Org Foundation is joining calls for RMS to be removed

9 points by delduca 6y ago

rbanffy 6y ago
It's sad that it needs to come to this, but it is what it is.
alexeyoganezov 6y ago
There is also a way to support RMS, we can sign this open letter: https://github.com/rms-support-letter/rms-support-letter.github.io https://github.com/rms-support-letter/rms-support-letter.git...
chacha2 6y ago
You wouldn't catch RMS advocating free software on twitter...
stevieoop 6y ago
seriously, read through some of the quotes this guy has made over time. https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix originally i thought the reason he left FSF was just because of the Minsky thing, which maybe can be excused as poor phrasing but theres such a long history of this behavior that its hard to ignore. I know a lot of people on here strongly support RMS and want him back on the FSF, but im struggling to understand why? What benefit will he bring to the FSF? from my pount of view it just seems like this is an argument between two opposing sports teams. some people are fans of RMS and therefore want to see him on the FSF without really considering what benefit he'd even bring. sure he made great, useful software and is a strong voice for open source, but at this point im not sure how him being on the FSF benefits anyone but himself? I think him being back on the FSF only benefits himself, and I dont see why we should cheer for him
- geofft 6y ago
  It was absolutely not just the Minsky thing. The media, doing what the media does best, told an incomplete and misleading story that relied on public sources (including themselves). At best the media coverage made it obvious that RMS's continued involvement in the free software movement was harming it. http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html is a post from a former FSF board member who had been working with RMS for years to try to get him to be less of an anti-asset to the movement, and finally resigned. https://wingolog.org/archives/2019/10/08/thoughts-on-rms-and-gnu https://wingolog.org/archives/2019/10/08/thoughts-on-rms-and... was a post from a GNU maintainer about how several GNU maintainers objected to RMS's continued dictatorship over the GNU project. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25193674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25193674 says: "GNU is internally managed on a private mailing list. Guix and other GNU maintainers coming out against Stallman may have been surprising to those who aren't privy to that list, but for the rest of us, it has been a long time coming. For a long time, key GNU projects have either effectively quit GNU or, with great effort, wrested authority away from RMS because what goes on "behind the scenes" in GNU is not good. The only change is that now they are doing it in public. As far back as 2003-04, the Free Software Foundation's non-management staff unionized to protect themselves from RMS. https://twitter.com/NovalisDMT/status/1172573166956437505 https://twitter.com/NovalisDMT/status/1172573166956437505 https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1374532930400227328 https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1374532930400227328 https://twitter.com/_msw_/status/1374542889531834371 https://twitter.com/_msw_/status/1374542889531834371 Imagine how much stronger the free software movement would have been today if maintainers and advocates had been free of this distraction decades ago. What the FSF board is saying is that it's more important for the FSF to be a cult of personality for RMS than to actually advocate for free software.
  - salawat 6y ago
    >For the last two years, I had been a loud internal voice in the FSF leadership regarding RMS' Free-Software-unrelated public statements; I felt strongly that it was in the best interest of the FSF to actively seek to limit such statements, Even trying to give you the benefit of a doubt, and you link to something with lines like this? Mother of all that's holy what are you all doing At FSF? Freedom of Speech ring a bell? The man is free to have opinions uncensored. It's not FSF's job to censor that, and no, you don't just get excise his right to an articulated view or viewpoint because you happen to be on a foundation's Board of Directors. This is another example of just the sort of reason that Stallman has been right all along. Free Software provides for everyone a resistant platform presence to resist control and survive attempts at deplatforming, or wresting the means of communiccation or outreach from those considered persona non-grata for whatever pearl clutching happens to be in vogue this year. All the complaints you brought up in that are completely tangentumial to the cause of Free Software, and thereby are no business of the FSF to control. Your second link is filled with content primarily sourced from people who jumped on the bandwagon of misinformation related to the Minsky event and pushed and syndicated hard in every way humamly possible to drsg him through the mud, most of the complaints are complete non-issues in terms of fundamentally turning around any type of organizational issue. Of course Stallman has gotten further away from the code. He's bringing the message to the world, and keeping the philosophy alive and inspiring; something the FSF and seemingly a bunch of GNU maintainers seem to have completely forgotten. Same goes for the third. Even some of your other posts in this thread demonstrate a woeful lack of perspective. Yes. Debian is not in alignment with Free Software. Open Source? Check, Free? No. It's more of a Gateway drug to RedHat, and does nothing to fundamentally help people understand what goes on under the covers. Your arguments sicken me. I understand that your heart is in the right place, and I know you think you're fighting the good fight, but you've done more to put me off of FSF and Free Software than that weird old man Stallman has. The group your championing seperating from Stallman to me is nothing but a tumor, and not worthy of trust to hold the line mission-wise. Despite how close I'm getting to No-True-Scotsman, it's worth pointing out in the interests of rooting out self-referential inconsistency: Part of Freedom is that people are free to do with it what they want. If you start chaining it, and throwing people out of the "club" because you imagine they aren't good fpr it, you aren't fighting for it anymore. Just. stop. You aren't convincing anyone. You're demonstrating on how easy it is for the monolith to get run away with by vested interests that have nothing to do with the mission. When you have something grounded in fact that doesn't come down to "Ewwwww. Creepy old man makes everyone uncomfortable...", then you can come get back to me. Whhat you've presented here is weak, inconsequential, and nothing short of the mission being set aside to further political aspirations. I don't understand what anyone sees in FSF anymore. The only thing they've got going for them is Stallman sees them as a champion of his cause. Sad really. I think he could do better with people who could set aside personal discomfort to get good high quality work done. I mean, show me a bad Pull Request. A destructive design decision. A broken thing. Anything. Don't throw around that He alienates people. Thisgets cause and effect wrong, People decide to be alienated by not interacting with him. Edges don't smooth off without a bit of tumble drying, and it's good for everyone to put in a bit of effort to overcome theirown discomforts and push the envelope of who they draw the line at accepting into their tribe. Overcoming that is part of being an adult, and to be frank, part of Stallman's of being a leader by example of the Free Software movement comes in part from his odddity and refusal to compromise to the pragmatic approach of being convinced of being a poorer steward to a set of Tools intended to be preserved indellibly for future generations as theirs. Debian can go permissive license and sell out to RedHat and corporate interests all they want, but GNU and GPL are the lines in thhe sand that must be held if we don't want the Software world to degenerate into some disinclusive fiefdom. Part of what makes the Hacker community great is that it was born out of a bunch of misfits, but still found a place where peoplewho didn't fit anywhere else could thrive, and I'll defend that to my dying breath from all comers. You're free to come and go as you please. But don't kill that which got you where you are.
- denton-scratch 6y ago
  "but im struggling to understand why?" Because he's an uncompromising advocate for Free Software. It's quite extraordinary that the hopeless crew at X.Org are even calling for his dismissal from GNU, which is his own organisation! They need to fix their own bugs, before jumping on the Cancel Culture bandwagon, and interfering with the GNU and Free Software foundations. X.Org is closely linked to Gnome and Redhat, neither of which is clearly aligned with Free Software principles. https://launchpad.net/xorg/+bugs?search=Search&field.status=New https://launchpad.net/xorg/+bugs?search=Search&field.status=... Get back to work, and stop the meddling.
  - geofft 6y ago
    The best thing about this line of argument is that anyone can be interfering with free software, no matter what they do. Nine former/current Debian project leaders are on this list, as well as several Debian technical committee members - well, Debian isn't aligned with free software either! Several GNU maintainers are on this list - well, they weren't really committed to the cause! Several former FSF board members and staffers are on this list - well, they were insidious traitors all along!
racketeer10 6y ago
That's what foundations do: Siphon off money, live on the fruits of labor of idealists, and occasionally throw people under the bus to create fear and stay in power. The hackers shouldn't have allowed the bureaucrats in.
- geofft 6y ago
  The X.org foundation board is made up of hackers.
swiley 6y ago
Finally a good argument for switching to Wayland!
foolzcrow 6y ago
Conform and obey or else. Assimilate or else. This isn't diversity it's authoritarian neo colonialism. If you ever disagree with these people they will destroy your lifes work.

9 points by delduca 6y ago

It's sad that it needs to come to this, but it is what it is.

There is also a way to support RMS, we can sign this open letter: https://github.com/rms-support-letter/rms-support-letter.github.io https://github.com/rms-support-letter/rms-support-letter.git...

chacha2 6y ago

You wouldn't catch RMS advocating free software on twitter...

stevieoop 6y ago

seriously, read through some of the quotes this guy has made over time. https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix originally i thought the reason he left FSF was just because of the Minsky thing, which maybe can be excused as poor phrasing but theres such a long history of this behavior that its hard to ignore. I know a lot of people on here strongly support RMS and want him back on the FSF, but im struggling to understand why? What benefit will he bring to the FSF? from my pount of view it just seems like this is an argument between two opposing sports teams. some people are fans of RMS and therefore want to see him on the FSF without really considering what benefit he'd even bring. sure he made great, useful software and is a strong voice for open source, but at this point im not sure how him being on the FSF benefits anyone but himself? I think him being back on the FSF only benefits himself, and I dont see why we should cheer for him

geofft 6y ago
It was absolutely not just the Minsky thing. The media, doing what the media does best, told an incomplete and misleading story that relied on public sources (including themselves). At best the media coverage made it obvious that RMS's continued involvement in the free software movement was harming it. http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html is a post from a former FSF board member who had been working with RMS for years to try to get him to be less of an anti-asset to the movement, and finally resigned. https://wingolog.org/archives/2019/10/08/thoughts-on-rms-and-gnu https://wingolog.org/archives/2019/10/08/thoughts-on-rms-and... was a post from a GNU maintainer about how several GNU maintainers objected to RMS's continued dictatorship over the GNU project. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25193674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25193674 says: "GNU is internally managed on a private mailing list. Guix and other GNU maintainers coming out against Stallman may have been surprising to those who aren't privy to that list, but for the rest of us, it has been a long time coming. For a long time, key GNU projects have either effectively quit GNU or, with great effort, wrested authority away from RMS because what goes on "behind the scenes" in GNU is not good. The only change is that now they are doing it in public. As far back as 2003-04, the Free Software Foundation's non-management staff unionized to protect themselves from RMS. https://twitter.com/NovalisDMT/status/1172573166956437505 https://twitter.com/NovalisDMT/status/1172573166956437505 https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1374532930400227328 https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1374532930400227328 https://twitter.com/_msw_/status/1374542889531834371 https://twitter.com/_msw_/status/1374542889531834371 Imagine how much stronger the free software movement would have been today if maintainers and advocates had been free of this distraction decades ago. What the FSF board is saying is that it's more important for the FSF to be a cult of personality for RMS than to actually advocate for free software.
- salawat 6y ago
  >For the last two years, I had been a loud internal voice in the FSF leadership regarding RMS' Free-Software-unrelated public statements; I felt strongly that it was in the best interest of the FSF to actively seek to limit such statements, Even trying to give you the benefit of a doubt, and you link to something with lines like this? Mother of all that's holy what are you all doing At FSF? Freedom of Speech ring a bell? The man is free to have opinions uncensored. It's not FSF's job to censor that, and no, you don't just get excise his right to an articulated view or viewpoint because you happen to be on a foundation's Board of Directors. This is another example of just the sort of reason that Stallman has been right all along. Free Software provides for everyone a resistant platform presence to resist control and survive attempts at deplatforming, or wresting the means of communiccation or outreach from those considered persona non-grata for whatever pearl clutching happens to be in vogue this year. All the complaints you brought up in that are completely tangentumial to the cause of Free Software, and thereby are no business of the FSF to control. Your second link is filled with content primarily sourced from people who jumped on the bandwagon of misinformation related to the Minsky event and pushed and syndicated hard in every way humamly possible to drsg him through the mud, most of the complaints are complete non-issues in terms of fundamentally turning around any type of organizational issue. Of course Stallman has gotten further away from the code. He's bringing the message to the world, and keeping the philosophy alive and inspiring; something the FSF and seemingly a bunch of GNU maintainers seem to have completely forgotten. Same goes for the third. Even some of your other posts in this thread demonstrate a woeful lack of perspective. Yes. Debian is not in alignment with Free Software. Open Source? Check, Free? No. It's more of a Gateway drug to RedHat, and does nothing to fundamentally help people understand what goes on under the covers. Your arguments sicken me. I understand that your heart is in the right place, and I know you think you're fighting the good fight, but you've done more to put me off of FSF and Free Software than that weird old man Stallman has. The group your championing seperating from Stallman to me is nothing but a tumor, and not worthy of trust to hold the line mission-wise. Despite how close I'm getting to No-True-Scotsman, it's worth pointing out in the interests of rooting out self-referential inconsistency: Part of Freedom is that people are free to do with it what they want. If you start chaining it, and throwing people out of the "club" because you imagine they aren't good fpr it, you aren't fighting for it anymore. Just. stop. You aren't convincing anyone. You're demonstrating on how easy it is for the monolith to get run away with by vested interests that have nothing to do with the mission. When you have something grounded in fact that doesn't come down to "Ewwwww. Creepy old man makes everyone uncomfortable...", then you can come get back to me. Whhat you've presented here is weak, inconsequential, and nothing short of the mission being set aside to further political aspirations. I don't understand what anyone sees in FSF anymore. The only thing they've got going for them is Stallman sees them as a champion of his cause. Sad really. I think he could do better with people who could set aside personal discomfort to get good high quality work done. I mean, show me a bad Pull Request. A destructive design decision. A broken thing. Anything. Don't throw around that He alienates people. Thisgets cause and effect wrong, People decide to be alienated by not interacting with him. Edges don't smooth off without a bit of tumble drying, and it's good for everyone to put in a bit of effort to overcome theirown discomforts and push the envelope of who they draw the line at accepting into their tribe. Overcoming that is part of being an adult, and to be frank, part of Stallman's of being a leader by example of the Free Software movement comes in part from his odddity and refusal to compromise to the pragmatic approach of being convinced of being a poorer steward to a set of Tools intended to be preserved indellibly for future generations as theirs. Debian can go permissive license and sell out to RedHat and corporate interests all they want, but GNU and GPL are the lines in thhe sand that must be held if we don't want the Software world to degenerate into some disinclusive fiefdom. Part of what makes the Hacker community great is that it was born out of a bunch of misfits, but still found a place where peoplewho didn't fit anywhere else could thrive, and I'll defend that to my dying breath from all comers. You're free to come and go as you please. But don't kill that which got you where you are.
denton-scratch 6y ago
"but im struggling to understand why?" Because he's an uncompromising advocate for Free Software. It's quite extraordinary that the hopeless crew at X.Org are even calling for his dismissal from GNU, which is his own organisation! They need to fix their own bugs, before jumping on the Cancel Culture bandwagon, and interfering with the GNU and Free Software foundations. X.Org is closely linked to Gnome and Redhat, neither of which is clearly aligned with Free Software principles. https://launchpad.net/xorg/+bugs?search=Search&field.status=New https://launchpad.net/xorg/+bugs?search=Search&field.status=... Get back to work, and stop the meddling.
- geofft 6y ago
  The best thing about this line of argument is that anyone can be interfering with free software, no matter what they do. Nine former/current Debian project leaders are on this list, as well as several Debian technical committee members - well, Debian isn't aligned with free software either! Several GNU maintainers are on this list - well, they weren't really committed to the cause! Several former FSF board members and staffers are on this list - well, they were insidious traitors all along!

racketeer10 6y ago

That's what foundations do: Siphon off money, live on the fruits of labor of idealists, and occasionally throw people under the bus to create fear and stay in power. The hackers shouldn't have allowed the bureaucrats in.

geofft 6y ago
The X.org foundation board is made up of hackers.

swiley 6y ago

Finally a good argument for switching to Wayland!

foolzcrow 6y ago

Conform and obey or else. Assimilate or else. This isn't diversity it's authoritarian neo colonialism. If you ever disagree with these people they will destroy your lifes work.