7 ms·

Red Hat Pulls Free Software Foundation Funding over Richard Stallman's Return

72 points by tasubotadas 6y ago

bbanyc 6y ago
Even setting aside the details of the specific allegations against Stallman, why would anyone want to reinstate him? He has a almost perfect track record of alienating everyone who's ever interacted with him, with his combination of religious fervor for ridding the world of nonfree software and complete disregard for everything else. Just this week I read a couple of anecdotes, from people who'd otherwise be inclined to defend Stallman, about him haranguing people about the immorality of using appliances with unmodifiable embedded firmware. Okay, fine, I get why this is concerning to him, but it ranks about 1000th on the list of issues I would want an organization like FSF to be focused on. And also, why talk like this to someone you just met? But you know what? This line of argument misses the point. I look at Stallman and I see a man who is profoundly mentally ill and incapable of controlling himself. He shouldn't be condemned or defended, he should be institutionalized, for his sake and the sake of those around him.
- liaukovv 6y ago
  He is supposed to be a symbol, as far as I'm concerned it' fine for symbols to be exaggerated and not balanced. Better than modern water-"leaders" anyway.
- bondarchuk 6y ago
  "profoundly mentally ill [...] he should be institutionalized" I don't think it is a good idea to call for the institutionalization of someone based on some ad-hoc diagnosis you just made because he is a disagreeable annoying activist. Politicization of psychiatry has a very nasty history. Seriously, please reconsider this kind of talk. If you want him locked up you can sue him.
- fstwall 6y ago
  You are literally advocating for someone who is occasionally rude and had 10 views outside the Overton window over three decades to be forcefully hospitalized. I don't agree with these 10 views (which he retracted), but that is on he level of abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_... The proper way of dealing with people who you think are assholes is to tell them. If he hands you a "pleasure card" (allegedly, assume for a moment that this is true), tell him to pleasure himself. If he interrupts you, tell him to stop interrupting you. But congratulations, instead you have introduced the next logical step how the collective should deal with political opponents.
- zimbatm 6y ago
  I find it fascinating the level of assurance that this post has. Being able to remotely diagnose somebody, based on a few social media posts, seems a really useful skill to have! That being said, people that follow their own convictions, to a fault, are probably a bit crazy. After all, if they were finely attuned to all the social cues they would know that their thinking is not welcome. We all benefited from the GNU movement on some way or another, but now that this idea is well received (to some extent), it's time to get rid of that inconvenient leader.
- detaro 6y ago
  No, we should not institutionalize people (or call for people to be institutionalized) just because. The threshold for that is very rightly very high. We don't do that to people who are way worse than the worst depiction of RMS, for good reasons.
downrightmike 6y ago
Stallman is a skeevy person, but he's been right about all the bullshit big tech would do.
- notananthem 6y ago
  Skeevy people shouldn't serve on boards, there's not one person alone in a void that knows how shitty big tech is
astrophysics 6y ago
No more RedHat for my organization, then.
mark_l_watson 6y ago
Well, I just made a small donation because of his return. We all get to have separate opinions.
blacktriangle 6y ago
Funny, I just started playing around with BSD on my servers this month, thanks for even more motivation to do so RedHat.
- bifrost 6y ago
  HN runs on FreeBSD, start there :)
2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y ago
They did not even give the FSF time to react, huh? All very convenient for Red Hat/IBM. I personally agree that putting rms back into place was maybe not the best move. But why is he not even allowed to participate at all? Why not aim for a compromise? I am very confused by the sheer toxicity of this whole reaction and it feels more like the big players were just waiting for an excuse to finally openly bash the FSF.
- wrycoder 6y ago
  The point is to force the FSF to eject Stallman again and be totally disrupted in the resulting split of their supporters. Then RH can step in and pick up the pieces. Edit: I hope they don't give in to the howling mob.
- detaro 6y ago
  Just as the FSF didn't give LibrePlanets top sponsor (RedHat) or projects that had clearly indicated they wouldn't want to participate if RMS was involved (Tor) any headsup they were going to use LibrePlanet to announce RMS' return? It's not like the pushback is a sudden unexpected event, so additionally blindsiding others with it probably doesn't help.
  - stonogo 6y ago
    They didn't even inform the organizers of LibrePlanet this was happening. The whole thing is extremely poorly-handled.
- jacques_chester 6y ago
  The big players are not threatened by the FSF. The FSF is background noise to paying customers. There's nothing to gain or lose by bashing or not bashing. Sometimes you have to take at face value that Red Hat is made of people, who can have principles and act according to them. Disclosure: I work for VMware, ostensibly a mortal enemy, and they are so far on the correct side of history here that I'd be proud to wear the crimson fedora today.
  - 6y ago
gentleman11 6y ago
In another hn story about stallman, I found this link was interesting. It is a discussion about why a group continues to work with him, and quotes a former president of the aclu who weighs in. She makes some interesting comments, eg > But a number of the ideas for which Richard Stallman has been attacked and punished are ideas that I as a feminist advocate of human rights find completely correct and positive from the perspective of women’s equality and dignity! https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web
- camdenlock 6y ago
  Pfft. Get out of here with your reasoned analysis and balanced approach. WE WANT BLOOD
staunch 6y ago
> CTO Chris Wright tweeted overnight: "I am really outraged by FSF's decision to reinstate RMS. At a moment in time where diversity and inclusion awareness is growing, this is a step backwards." What does "diversity and inclusion" have to do with Stallman returning? Is the Wokeist subtext here that "we don't need yet another white male" on the board? RMS is the reason most of these people have the jobs they have. He is very far from being "yet another" anything. As long as RMS has done his best to correct any mistakes, they should be extremely grateful he is willing to return. Red Hat seems more and more out of touch with Free Software and Open Source.
- Veen 6y ago
  In woke speak, they're implying that because he said something "problematic" his presence may make certain people feel "unsafe", thereby harming "diversity and inclusion".
- wrycoder 6y ago
  They don't have any idea if Stallman has made any changes during his year in the wilderness, and they don't care. They just want him out, because it weakens the FSF and the Free Software/GPL movement. Edit: weakens the FSF if Stallman is gone, that is.
- matthewmacleod 6y ago
  One of my personal biggest discoveries in the past few weeks has been that HN in particular is way more full of raging snowflake techbros who use terms like "wokeist" in seriousness than I ever would have suspected. Y'all sound like Slasdotters from 2002 throwing "Micro$oft" into every sentence. It's hilarious.
  - staunch 6y ago
    Pretty funny coming from someone that uses "techbro" and "snowflake" in seriousness... If you don't think there is a new style language use by people who are most easily categorized as "Woke" then you're out of touch with reality. Parsing what these people mean is often very hard unless you're fully up-to-date on the latest trends. Those of us that are not ideologues often find it ridiculous, confusing, and counter-productive, even if we ultimately share many of the same goals.
HeckFeck 6y ago
Hmm, this just makes RockyLinux and the other CentOS forks look better.
bovermyer 6y ago
My opinion of Stallman aside, this appears to confirm my belief that Red Hat has strayed from the path. I think I'll write a blog post about why I feel this way.
- liaukovv 6y ago
  They got acquired by IBM. There is literally nowhere further from the path a company could go.
  - dgellow 6y ago
    They could have been bought by Oracle!
    - liaukovv 6y ago
      At least oracle is actively evil IBM just kind of... exists
Barrin92 6y ago
Exactly what I thought would happen. Not only was reinstalling Stallman going to alienate institutional supporters, it's also really a slap in the face of a lot of newer free software supporters, young women in particular given Stallman's past behaviour and comments. Also very interesting to see the difference in commentary compared to the reddit admin fiasco.
- drenvuk 6y ago
  I don't think the leader of the FSF should be making as many public comments about unrelated matters as Stallman has so I don't think he should be reinstated, but I also find that many of his comments are wrongfully interpreted. Logically and administratively, if quite a few of those ideas were followed through with we'd be better off as a society. Have you read them? Every single one of them is freedom bent.
  - ianmacd 6y ago
    Why should "the leader of the FSF" not make "as many public comments about unrelated matters as Stallman"? This seems to suggest that a leadership role results or should result, ipso facto, in a reduction of its occupier's freedom of speech. I don't follow that rationale at all, which isn't to say that I don't acknowledge that such comments can and obviously do in some cases lead to public distraction from the actual work of said leader, shifting the focus to the leader's perceived identity and moral fortitude. That's a lamentable development to be sure, but to advocate abstention from public discourse as a precaution against the danger of becoming a distraction from the cause you advocate seems to be a clear case of blaming the victim. Stallman is not at fault here.
    - drenvuk 6y ago
      Whether you follow the rationale doesn't matter at all. The moment you become a public figure that leads an organization people will take a microscope to your life, using anything they can find as substance for juicy stories or their own agenda. It's not just Stallman. Pick any political figure. With the power and trust comes a target on your back. This is self-evident if you've see the news at any point in time in your life. It sucks but it doesn't make it any less true.
null-shell 6y ago
So what has Richard Stallman done? I get that generally he's a bit of an unpleasant person but is there an actual reason?
rvz 6y ago
Ah yes, the financial suffocation move. Very tactical. /s For Red Hat to choose a side wasn't really the smartest move especially also calling for the whole FSF board to resign for the sake of 'diversity and inclusion'. I mean, Red Hat going to IBM already meaning it was on the way out. Probably better off anyway.
- ofrzeta 6y ago
  Semi-serious question: diversity is meant only in respect to genders and colors but not in opinions?
Animats 6y ago
This is overkill. Stallman is not accused of doing anything illegal. He just expressed an unpopular opinion. Get angry about something real, like Georgia voting to keep poor people from voting.
- Austin_Conlon 6y ago
  What was the opinion?
  - LukeShu 6y ago
    > In fact, RMS' views and statements posted on stallman.org about sexual morality escalated for the worse over the last few years. -- Bradley Kuhn (at-the-time FSF board member), http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html On the original blog, every word in that sentence is a link to a different post on stallman.org
  - simlevesque 6y ago
    He's said: I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. He regretted saying it later, because he misunderstood the concept of grooming.
  - andrepd 6y ago
    Several. They are quoted in some detail in the open letter. Some are patently silly, such as disagreeing with the use of "they" as a gender-neutral pronoun, since he simply prefers other alternatives and has indeed been attentive to that problem since before it hit the mainstream in recent years. I guess the most unpopular ones are his comments regarding relationships with minors... Regardless of strongly disagreeing with him, I lean towards freedom of speech on this one. EDIT: I also must say I haven't read his comments in full, so it's possible he said things about this which I'm not aware of.
    - shakow 6y ago
      > I guess the most unpopular ones are his comments regarding relationships with minors... To which he recently added that he changed his minds after discussing about it with unspecified people.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
notananthem 6y ago
YES. GO REDHAT. All these apologists fawning over stallman on this site is sad. He's not unrelated to FSF he's on their fucking board.
- ahartmetz 6y ago
  Mabye explain in your own words what the problem is with Stallman.
- anthk 6y ago
  What did actually Stallman do? And gossip-like "proofs" are not evidence. Did the affected people actually sue him? What's the Police for then? I mean, if Stallman it's actually that bad for you all, just call the Police and ask for a trial. But no one at the FSF tried, ever.
  - stonogo 6y ago
    Are you saying there is no middle ground between remaining completely silent and pressing criminal charges? That doesn't seem obviously absurd to you? Does a person have to have committed a crime before people are allowed to think poorly of them? Which crimes, specifically, should disqualify one from membership on an executive board?
    - anthk 6y ago
      Stallman is no wacko like Alex Jones. Look up RMS's opinion timeline completely and then try to say the same about that person. Do not cherry pick as the whole SJW mob is doing to spread hate and malice. RMS it's just the modern Diogenes with crazy philosophycal points on everything. That's it. With ESR you could be right. But, RMS? Most of its timeline it's pretty progressive for anyone.
- meddlepal 6y ago
  Engineers circling the wagons for one of their own. If this was a CEO, politician, broadcaster, or anyone else with an ounce of notability they would probably be calling for their head.
dgellow 6y ago
From the article: > Stallman suggested Minsky might somehow not have known she'd been forced to do so. > In the same thread on MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory listserv, he also referred to Epstein's victims as a "harem." Is that the full story? That sounds very mild comments to trigger such a strong reaction. I don't really understand what is awful here, the first comment seems to say "Maybe Minsky wasn't aware", which sounds plausible (though, I wouldn't personally bet on it...) and doesn't invalidate the woman's claims or justify Minsky or Epstein actions. The second one seems to use "harem" to design how Epstein was behaving around his victims by surrounding himself with young women that he was exploiting, which sounds insulting against him and not them. Am I missing something here? Edit: fixed some typos
- jstanley 6y ago
  No, I don't think you're missing anything. People are reacting to what they've heard others say about Stallman, rather than what he actually said.
  - sjansen 6y ago
    If you haven't met RMS in person, it's hard to understand what a raging asshole he is. Frankly I'm surprised it has taken this long for him to be called to account for his behavior.
    - andrewflnr 6y ago
      That does not remotely justify ousting him on the basis of lies, which is what happened before. If you do that, it's really hard to argue that the correct course is anything but reversing the actions you took that were driven by lies.
    - BlackLotus89 6y ago
      He was staying for a few days at a colleagues house and even thought he seems to have some weird preferences I didn't really hear anything negative about him. Seems to be a nice guy to be honest and I trust in my colleagues ability to be a good judge of character. (Didn't meet RMS myself so can't attest for him myself)
notananthem 6y ago
To mods @ HNN / YC, all the language denigrating D&I using language like "woke this" and "cancel that" is you hosting and serving shitty people, clean up your playground
- anthk 6y ago
  Danke Schön, herr STASI mann.
jrm4 6y ago
Okay. This is the excuse, not the reason right? As in, the real reason is the FSF is generally incompatible with the way in which most of these companies and organizations want to make money, and blaming Stallman is the current easy out?
- wmf 6y ago
  Red Hat specifically seems quite compatible with the FSF.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > This is the excuse, not the reason right? As in, the real reason is the FSF is generally incompatible with the way in which most of these companies and organizations want to make money, and blaming Stallman is the current easy out? Yes, that's why plenty of nonprofits orgs and their leadership have also complained about the same things, and why an FSF board member resigned over it. All the complaints about Stallman are false-flag objections by people with a covert agenda of making money undermining software freedom. That's much more likely than that Stallman, like so many other prominent figures in a number of fields, is genuinely being impacted by society’s reduced tolerance when it comes to broad subject of sexual harassment.
  - jrm4 6y ago
    I'm not saying all those people are lying or false-flagging, I'm saying there exist quite a few other parties that perhaps don't care much about harassment but would like to see his ideas suppressed, and might find this convenient and play it up. What I absolutely will not do is presume guilt based on what might be something of a metaphorical lynch mob. I expect and require something that looks like due process, and so I'm continuing to watch how this public conversation goes.
- detaro 6y ago
  How is the FSF fundamentally incompatible with how the FSF Europe, the Tor project, the Software Freedom Conservancy, ... want to make money? IMHO there's too many people who have worked a lot and deeply for Free Software goals against him to explain it as an attempt to make Free Software weaker. If I'm being cynic, if you are a large company wanting the FSF to be less relevant, you should probably encourage them to let RMS alienate more people. To quote a recent HN comment of mine: "RMS came to speak at my university. He probably did more damage to general student perception of anything associated with the FSF than industry-ass-kissing professors did in the 3 years prior in that one day", and my impression is that the FSF is worse off to achieve its stated goals with him at the helm.
gtpeter 6y ago
I'm close to the point where I'd recommend IBM to revive AIX and devote all resources to that. /s This is another power grab by RedHat, which has been infiltrating many open source projects in the past decade. Their representatives are dominant and operate in groups. If you contradict them even on technical matters, they'll remember for years to come and make your life difficult. RedHat has been a net harm for several projects, this is another political move to grab even more power.
- jacques_chester 6y ago
  > this is another political move to grab even more power. What power? The FSF is decrepit and its influence long spent.
  - gtpeter 6y ago
    Ok, I somewhat agree. But apparently enough influence for RedHat to donate until now. In general I think that dragging other issues like "Stallman should have pushed the AGPL earlier" as a justification for calling for his second resignation is not fair (not attacking you here, but people on the web who did that). These issues have been out there for decades and could have been brought up much earlier. I also find it immensely hypocritical to see members of old-style distributions piling on Stallman now. Apart from RedHat I saw a high ranking SuSE person who got rich off other people's GPL software signing the anti-RMS petition. These people have known exactly what exploratory and non-mainstream views Stallman expoused (held might even be too strong). All of a sudden the "see the light" and throw him under the bus.
    - ianmacd 6y ago
      The way that some tech millionaires are now queuing up to sacrifice Stallman after having become rich beyond their wildest dreams on the back of his pioneering work reminds me of all those former Facebook executives and prominents we see in mainstream social media documentaries, who are now, after having secure their financial future, at pains to express remorse for the monster they designed and created. Yet, no-one ever feels bad enough to donate all of their blood money to a charitable cause. Talk is cheap.
dvh 6y ago
Stallman said [1]: The announcement of the Friday event does an injustice to Marvin Minsky: “deceased AI ‘pioneer’ Marvin Minsky (who is accused of assaulting one of Epstein’s victims [2])” The injustice is in the word “assaulting”. The term “sexual assault” is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation: taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y, which is much worse than X. The accusation quoted is a clear example of inflation. The reference reports the claim that Minsky had sex with one of Epstein’s harem. (See https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jeffrey-epstein-sex-trafficking-island-court-records-unsealed.) Let’s presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it). The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex. We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates. I’ve concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term “sexual assault” in an accusation. Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism. Media said [2]: Computer scientist Richard Stallman, who defended Jeffrey Epstein, resigns from MIT CSAIL and the Free Software Foundation Stallman reacted to media [3]: I want to respond to the misleading media coverage of messages I posted about Marvin Minsky's association with Jeffrey Epstein. The coverage totally mischaracterised my statements. Headlines say that I defended Epstein. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've called him a "serial rapist", and said he deserved to be imprisoned. But many people now believe I defended him — and other inaccurate claims — and feel a real hurt because of what they believe I said. I'm sorry for that hurt. I wish I could have prevented the misunderstanding. [1] https://itsfoss.com/richard-stallman-controversy/ https://itsfoss.com/richard-stallman-controversy/ [2] https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/16/computer-scientist-richard-stallman-who-defended-jeffrey-epstein-resigns-from-mit-csail-and-the-free-software-foundation/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/16/computer-scientist-richard... [3] https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September_2019_(Statements_about_Epstein) https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...
- 6y ago
cyberge99 6y ago
They’ve always wanted to. This announcement gives them a graceful exit.
JoeyBananas 6y ago
Many people are far too quick to label RMS as an X, Y and Z. He's just a person who has political views. Everyone get over yourselves.
jangid 6y ago
I have long waited for a Pure GNU OS. Redhat's, oops sorry, IBM's move gives more motivation to use Guix.
- billyjobob 6y ago
  Unfortunately Guix also want Stallman out: https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-project/ https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-pr... The entire free software community seems to have turned on their own founder - I don't think there's anyone sane left.
taylodl 6y ago
Remember that IBM owns Red Hat. So really this should read 'IBM Pulls Free Software Funding over Richard Stallman's Return." The corrected headline reveals a possible hidden agenda.

72 points by tasubotadas 6y ago

Even setting aside the details of the specific allegations against Stallman, why would anyone want to reinstate him? He has a almost perfect track record of alienating everyone who's ever interacted with him, with his combination of religious fervor for ridding the world of nonfree software and complete disregard for everything else. Just this week I read a couple of anecdotes, from people who'd otherwise be inclined to defend Stallman, about him haranguing people about the immorality of using appliances with unmodifiable embedded firmware. Okay, fine, I get why this is concerning to him, but it ranks about 1000th on the list of issues I would want an organization like FSF to be focused on. And also, why talk like this to someone you just met? But you know what? This line of argument misses the point. I look at Stallman and I see a man who is profoundly mentally ill and incapable of controlling himself. He shouldn't be condemned or defended, he should be institutionalized, for his sake and the sake of those around him.

liaukovv 6y ago
He is supposed to be a symbol, as far as I'm concerned it' fine for symbols to be exaggerated and not balanced. Better than modern water-"leaders" anyway.
bondarchuk 6y ago
"profoundly mentally ill [...] he should be institutionalized" I don't think it is a good idea to call for the institutionalization of someone based on some ad-hoc diagnosis you just made because he is a disagreeable annoying activist. Politicization of psychiatry has a very nasty history. Seriously, please reconsider this kind of talk. If you want him locked up you can sue him.
fstwall 6y ago
You are literally advocating for someone who is occasionally rude and had 10 views outside the Overton window over three decades to be forcefully hospitalized. I don't agree with these 10 views (which he retracted), but that is on he level of abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_... The proper way of dealing with people who you think are assholes is to tell them. If he hands you a "pleasure card" (allegedly, assume for a moment that this is true), tell him to pleasure himself. If he interrupts you, tell him to stop interrupting you. But congratulations, instead you have introduced the next logical step how the collective should deal with political opponents.
zimbatm 6y ago
I find it fascinating the level of assurance that this post has. Being able to remotely diagnose somebody, based on a few social media posts, seems a really useful skill to have! That being said, people that follow their own convictions, to a fault, are probably a bit crazy. After all, if they were finely attuned to all the social cues they would know that their thinking is not welcome. We all benefited from the GNU movement on some way or another, but now that this idea is well received (to some extent), it's time to get rid of that inconvenient leader.
detaro 6y ago
No, we should not institutionalize people (or call for people to be institutionalized) just because. The threshold for that is very rightly very high. We don't do that to people who are way worse than the worst depiction of RMS, for good reasons.

downrightmike 6y ago

Stallman is a skeevy person, but he's been right about all the bullshit big tech would do.

notananthem 6y ago
Skeevy people shouldn't serve on boards, there's not one person alone in a void that knows how shitty big tech is

astrophysics 6y ago

No more RedHat for my organization, then.

mark_l_watson 6y ago

Well, I just made a small donation because of his return. We all get to have separate opinions.

blacktriangle 6y ago

Funny, I just started playing around with BSD on my servers this month, thanks for even more motivation to do so RedHat.

bifrost 6y ago
HN runs on FreeBSD, start there :)

2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y ago

They did not even give the FSF time to react, huh? All very convenient for Red Hat/IBM. I personally agree that putting rms back into place was maybe not the best move. But why is he not even allowed to participate at all? Why not aim for a compromise? I am very confused by the sheer toxicity of this whole reaction and it feels more like the big players were just waiting for an excuse to finally openly bash the FSF.

wrycoder 6y ago
The point is to force the FSF to eject Stallman again and be totally disrupted in the resulting split of their supporters. Then RH can step in and pick up the pieces. Edit: I hope they don't give in to the howling mob.
detaro 6y ago
Just as the FSF didn't give LibrePlanets top sponsor (RedHat) or projects that had clearly indicated they wouldn't want to participate if RMS was involved (Tor) any headsup they were going to use LibrePlanet to announce RMS' return? It's not like the pushback is a sudden unexpected event, so additionally blindsiding others with it probably doesn't help.
- stonogo 6y ago
  They didn't even inform the organizers of LibrePlanet this was happening. The whole thing is extremely poorly-handled.
jacques_chester 6y ago
The big players are not threatened by the FSF. The FSF is background noise to paying customers. There's nothing to gain or lose by bashing or not bashing. Sometimes you have to take at face value that Red Hat is made of people, who can have principles and act according to them. Disclosure: I work for VMware, ostensibly a mortal enemy, and they are so far on the correct side of history here that I'd be proud to wear the crimson fedora today.
- 6y ago

gentleman11 6y ago

In another hn story about stallman, I found this link was interesting. It is a discussion about why a group continues to work with him, and quotes a former president of the aclu who weighs in. She makes some interesting comments, eg > But a number of the ideas for which Richard Stallman has been attacked and punished are ideas that I as a feminist advocate of human rights find completely correct and positive from the perspective of women’s equality and dignity! https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web

camdenlock 6y ago
Pfft. Get out of here with your reasoned analysis and balanced approach. WE WANT BLOOD

staunch 6y ago

> CTO Chris Wright tweeted overnight: "I am really outraged by FSF's decision to reinstate RMS. At a moment in time where diversity and inclusion awareness is growing, this is a step backwards." What does "diversity and inclusion" have to do with Stallman returning? Is the Wokeist subtext here that "we don't need yet another white male" on the board? RMS is the reason most of these people have the jobs they have. He is very far from being "yet another" anything. As long as RMS has done his best to correct any mistakes, they should be extremely grateful he is willing to return. Red Hat seems more and more out of touch with Free Software and Open Source.

Veen 6y ago
In woke speak, they're implying that because he said something "problematic" his presence may make certain people feel "unsafe", thereby harming "diversity and inclusion".
wrycoder 6y ago
They don't have any idea if Stallman has made any changes during his year in the wilderness, and they don't care. They just want him out, because it weakens the FSF and the Free Software/GPL movement. Edit: weakens the FSF if Stallman is gone, that is.
matthewmacleod 6y ago
One of my personal biggest discoveries in the past few weeks has been that HN in particular is way more full of raging snowflake techbros who use terms like "wokeist" in seriousness than I ever would have suspected. Y'all sound like Slasdotters from 2002 throwing "Micro$oft" into every sentence. It's hilarious.
- staunch 6y ago
  Pretty funny coming from someone that uses "techbro" and "snowflake" in seriousness... If you don't think there is a new style language use by people who are most easily categorized as "Woke" then you're out of touch with reality. Parsing what these people mean is often very hard unless you're fully up-to-date on the latest trends. Those of us that are not ideologues often find it ridiculous, confusing, and counter-productive, even if we ultimately share many of the same goals.

HeckFeck 6y ago

Hmm, this just makes RockyLinux and the other CentOS forks look better.

bovermyer 6y ago

My opinion of Stallman aside, this appears to confirm my belief that Red Hat has strayed from the path. I think I'll write a blog post about why I feel this way.

liaukovv 6y ago
They got acquired by IBM. There is literally nowhere further from the path a company could go.
- dgellow 6y ago
  They could have been bought by Oracle!
  - liaukovv 6y ago
    At least oracle is actively evil IBM just kind of... exists

Barrin92 6y ago

Exactly what I thought would happen. Not only was reinstalling Stallman going to alienate institutional supporters, it's also really a slap in the face of a lot of newer free software supporters, young women in particular given Stallman's past behaviour and comments. Also very interesting to see the difference in commentary compared to the reddit admin fiasco.

drenvuk 6y ago
I don't think the leader of the FSF should be making as many public comments about unrelated matters as Stallman has so I don't think he should be reinstated, but I also find that many of his comments are wrongfully interpreted. Logically and administratively, if quite a few of those ideas were followed through with we'd be better off as a society. Have you read them? Every single one of them is freedom bent.
- ianmacd 6y ago
  Why should "the leader of the FSF" not make "as many public comments about unrelated matters as Stallman"? This seems to suggest that a leadership role results or should result, ipso facto, in a reduction of its occupier's freedom of speech. I don't follow that rationale at all, which isn't to say that I don't acknowledge that such comments can and obviously do in some cases lead to public distraction from the actual work of said leader, shifting the focus to the leader's perceived identity and moral fortitude. That's a lamentable development to be sure, but to advocate abstention from public discourse as a precaution against the danger of becoming a distraction from the cause you advocate seems to be a clear case of blaming the victim. Stallman is not at fault here.
  - drenvuk 6y ago
    Whether you follow the rationale doesn't matter at all. The moment you become a public figure that leads an organization people will take a microscope to your life, using anything they can find as substance for juicy stories or their own agenda. It's not just Stallman. Pick any political figure. With the power and trust comes a target on your back. This is self-evident if you've see the news at any point in time in your life. It sucks but it doesn't make it any less true.

null-shell 6y ago

So what has Richard Stallman done? I get that generally he's a bit of an unpleasant person but is there an actual reason?

rvz 6y ago

Ah yes, the financial suffocation move. Very tactical. /s For Red Hat to choose a side wasn't really the smartest move especially also calling for the whole FSF board to resign for the sake of 'diversity and inclusion'. I mean, Red Hat going to IBM already meaning it was on the way out. Probably better off anyway.

ofrzeta 6y ago
Semi-serious question: diversity is meant only in respect to genders and colors but not in opinions?

Animats 6y ago

This is overkill. Stallman is not accused of doing anything illegal. He just expressed an unpopular opinion. Get angry about something real, like Georgia voting to keep poor people from voting.

Austin_Conlon 6y ago
What was the opinion?
- LukeShu 6y ago
  > In fact, RMS' views and statements posted on stallman.org about sexual morality escalated for the worse over the last few years. -- Bradley Kuhn (at-the-time FSF board member), http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html On the original blog, every word in that sentence is a link to a different post on stallman.org
- simlevesque 6y ago
  He's said: I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. He regretted saying it later, because he misunderstood the concept of grooming.
- andrepd 6y ago
  Several. They are quoted in some detail in the open letter. Some are patently silly, such as disagreeing with the use of "they" as a gender-neutral pronoun, since he simply prefers other alternatives and has indeed been attentive to that problem since before it hit the mainstream in recent years. I guess the most unpopular ones are his comments regarding relationships with minors... Regardless of strongly disagreeing with him, I lean towards freedom of speech on this one. EDIT: I also must say I haven't read his comments in full, so it's possible he said things about this which I'm not aware of.
  - shakow 6y ago
    > I guess the most unpopular ones are his comments regarding relationships with minors... To which he recently added that he changed his minds after discussing about it with unspecified people.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

notananthem 6y ago

YES. GO REDHAT. All these apologists fawning over stallman on this site is sad. He's not unrelated to FSF he's on their fucking board.

ahartmetz 6y ago
Mabye explain in your own words what the problem is with Stallman.
anthk 6y ago
What did actually Stallman do? And gossip-like "proofs" are not evidence. Did the affected people actually sue him? What's the Police for then? I mean, if Stallman it's actually that bad for you all, just call the Police and ask for a trial. But no one at the FSF tried, ever.
- stonogo 6y ago
  Are you saying there is no middle ground between remaining completely silent and pressing criminal charges? That doesn't seem obviously absurd to you? Does a person have to have committed a crime before people are allowed to think poorly of them? Which crimes, specifically, should disqualify one from membership on an executive board?
  - anthk 6y ago
    Stallman is no wacko like Alex Jones. Look up RMS's opinion timeline completely and then try to say the same about that person. Do not cherry pick as the whole SJW mob is doing to spread hate and malice. RMS it's just the modern Diogenes with crazy philosophycal points on everything. That's it. With ESR you could be right. But, RMS? Most of its timeline it's pretty progressive for anyone.
meddlepal 6y ago
Engineers circling the wagons for one of their own. If this was a CEO, politician, broadcaster, or anyone else with an ounce of notability they would probably be calling for their head.

dgellow 6y ago

From the article: > Stallman suggested Minsky might somehow not have known she'd been forced to do so. > In the same thread on MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory listserv, he also referred to Epstein's victims as a "harem." Is that the full story? That sounds very mild comments to trigger such a strong reaction. I don't really understand what is awful here, the first comment seems to say "Maybe Minsky wasn't aware", which sounds plausible (though, I wouldn't personally bet on it...) and doesn't invalidate the woman's claims or justify Minsky or Epstein actions. The second one seems to use "harem" to design how Epstein was behaving around his victims by surrounding himself with young women that he was exploiting, which sounds insulting against him and not them. Am I missing something here? Edit: fixed some typos

jstanley 6y ago
No, I don't think you're missing anything. People are reacting to what they've heard others say about Stallman, rather than what he actually said.
- sjansen 6y ago
  If you haven't met RMS in person, it's hard to understand what a raging asshole he is. Frankly I'm surprised it has taken this long for him to be called to account for his behavior.
  - andrewflnr 6y ago
    That does not remotely justify ousting him on the basis of lies, which is what happened before. If you do that, it's really hard to argue that the correct course is anything but reversing the actions you took that were driven by lies.
  - BlackLotus89 6y ago
    He was staying for a few days at a colleagues house and even thought he seems to have some weird preferences I didn't really hear anything negative about him. Seems to be a nice guy to be honest and I trust in my colleagues ability to be a good judge of character. (Didn't meet RMS myself so can't attest for him myself)

notananthem 6y ago

To mods @ HNN / YC, all the language denigrating D&I using language like "woke this" and "cancel that" is you hosting and serving shitty people, clean up your playground

anthk 6y ago
Danke Schön, herr STASI mann.

jrm4 6y ago

Okay. This is the excuse, not the reason right? As in, the real reason is the FSF is generally incompatible with the way in which most of these companies and organizations want to make money, and blaming Stallman is the current easy out?

wmf 6y ago
Red Hat specifically seems quite compatible with the FSF.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> This is the excuse, not the reason right? As in, the real reason is the FSF is generally incompatible with the way in which most of these companies and organizations want to make money, and blaming Stallman is the current easy out? Yes, that's why plenty of nonprofits orgs and their leadership have also complained about the same things, and why an FSF board member resigned over it. All the complaints about Stallman are false-flag objections by people with a covert agenda of making money undermining software freedom. That's much more likely than that Stallman, like so many other prominent figures in a number of fields, is genuinely being impacted by society’s reduced tolerance when it comes to broad subject of sexual harassment.
- jrm4 6y ago
  I'm not saying all those people are lying or false-flagging, I'm saying there exist quite a few other parties that perhaps don't care much about harassment but would like to see his ideas suppressed, and might find this convenient and play it up. What I absolutely will not do is presume guilt based on what might be something of a metaphorical lynch mob. I expect and require something that looks like due process, and so I'm continuing to watch how this public conversation goes.
detaro 6y ago
How is the FSF fundamentally incompatible with how the FSF Europe, the Tor project, the Software Freedom Conservancy, ... want to make money? IMHO there's too many people who have worked a lot and deeply for Free Software goals against him to explain it as an attempt to make Free Software weaker. If I'm being cynic, if you are a large company wanting the FSF to be less relevant, you should probably encourage them to let RMS alienate more people. To quote a recent HN comment of mine: "RMS came to speak at my university. He probably did more damage to general student perception of anything associated with the FSF than industry-ass-kissing professors did in the 3 years prior in that one day", and my impression is that the FSF is worse off to achieve its stated goals with him at the helm.

gtpeter 6y ago

I'm close to the point where I'd recommend IBM to revive AIX and devote all resources to that. /s This is another power grab by RedHat, which has been infiltrating many open source projects in the past decade. Their representatives are dominant and operate in groups. If you contradict them even on technical matters, they'll remember for years to come and make your life difficult. RedHat has been a net harm for several projects, this is another political move to grab even more power.

jacques_chester 6y ago
> this is another political move to grab even more power. What power? The FSF is decrepit and its influence long spent.
- gtpeter 6y ago
  Ok, I somewhat agree. But apparently enough influence for RedHat to donate until now. In general I think that dragging other issues like "Stallman should have pushed the AGPL earlier" as a justification for calling for his second resignation is not fair (not attacking you here, but people on the web who did that). These issues have been out there for decades and could have been brought up much earlier. I also find it immensely hypocritical to see members of old-style distributions piling on Stallman now. Apart from RedHat I saw a high ranking SuSE person who got rich off other people's GPL software signing the anti-RMS petition. These people have known exactly what exploratory and non-mainstream views Stallman expoused (held might even be too strong). All of a sudden the "see the light" and throw him under the bus.
  - ianmacd 6y ago
    The way that some tech millionaires are now queuing up to sacrifice Stallman after having become rich beyond their wildest dreams on the back of his pioneering work reminds me of all those former Facebook executives and prominents we see in mainstream social media documentaries, who are now, after having secure their financial future, at pains to express remorse for the monster they designed and created. Yet, no-one ever feels bad enough to donate all of their blood money to a charitable cause. Talk is cheap.

dvh 6y ago

Stallman said [1]: The announcement of the Friday event does an injustice to Marvin Minsky: “deceased AI ‘pioneer’ Marvin Minsky (who is accused of assaulting one of Epstein’s victims [2])” The injustice is in the word “assaulting”. The term “sexual assault” is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation: taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y, which is much worse than X. The accusation quoted is a clear example of inflation. The reference reports the claim that Minsky had sex with one of Epstein’s harem. (See https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jeffrey-epstein-sex-trafficking-island-court-records-unsealed.) Let’s presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it). The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex. We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates. I’ve concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term “sexual assault” in an accusation. Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism. Media said [2]: Computer scientist Richard Stallman, who defended Jeffrey Epstein, resigns from MIT CSAIL and the Free Software Foundation Stallman reacted to media [3]: I want to respond to the misleading media coverage of messages I posted about Marvin Minsky's association with Jeffrey Epstein. The coverage totally mischaracterised my statements. Headlines say that I defended Epstein. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've called him a "serial rapist", and said he deserved to be imprisoned. But many people now believe I defended him — and other inaccurate claims — and feel a real hurt because of what they believe I said. I'm sorry for that hurt. I wish I could have prevented the misunderstanding. [1] https://itsfoss.com/richard-stallman-controversy/ https://itsfoss.com/richard-stallman-controversy/ [2] https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/16/computer-scientist-richard-stallman-who-defended-jeffrey-epstein-resigns-from-mit-csail-and-the-free-software-foundation/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/16/computer-scientist-richard... [3] https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September_2019_(Statements_about_Epstein) https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...

6y ago

cyberge99 6y ago

They’ve always wanted to. This announcement gives them a graceful exit.

JoeyBananas 6y ago

Many people are far too quick to label RMS as an X, Y and Z. He's just a person who has political views. Everyone get over yourselves.

jangid 6y ago

I have long waited for a Pure GNU OS. Redhat's, oops sorry, IBM's move gives more motivation to use Guix.

billyjobob 6y ago
Unfortunately Guix also want Stallman out: https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-project/ https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-pr... The entire free software community seems to have turned on their own founder - I don't think there's anyone sane left.

taylodl 6y ago

Remember that IBM owns Red Hat. So really this should read 'IBM Pulls Free Software Funding over Richard Stallman's Return." The corrected headline reveals a possible hidden agenda.