7 ms·

Remove RMS from the GCC Steering Committee

51 points by arusahni 6y ago

baybal2 6y ago
My advice to Nathan, go, and fork the GCC.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
belval 6y ago
So what did RMS do exactly? I haven't been keeping track and the man is basically a living legend.
- geofft 6y ago
  I think good starting points are https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html and http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html (note, particularly, the several links in the sentence starting "In fact," - each word is its own link). Both of those posts are from former FSF board members who have basically spent their entire professional careers working to advance free software.
  - tsaloop 6y ago
    I think people who actually wrote free software have advanced it. Why do Foundations have so much imaginary power?
    - geofft 6y ago
      Largely because RMS gave them that power? Like I'm not sure what your argument is. Are you saying one should not take board members of the FSF seriously, and one should ignore people whose contribution to the free software movement is more political than technical? Then you've already made the argument against RMS having a role on the GCC steering committee.
      - tsaloop 6y ago
        The only real power is in the "or any later version" part of the GPL, which IMO is a mistake. I'd delete it like Linus when using the GPL. Yes, I think foundation members' influence is overrated. The Kuhn story looks like any plain vanilla internal power struggle. Why hasn't he spoken up 10 years ago? It is hypocritical to do so when everyone else is piling on. The same applies to old guard RedHat and SuSE people. They have known RMS for decades and suddenly he needs to be removed. Foundations in OSS in general attract the wrong kind of people. RMS, for all his flaws, did pretty well overall compared to others.
    - CJefferson 6y ago
      The mailing list post this thread is about is that the people who, for the last 20 years are actually writing free software want rid of RMS, because he hasn't done anything useful, and has done a lot of harm, in those 20 years. RMS did indeed start a lot of great projects, but that doesn't give him the right to continue to rule over them now, after thousands of other people have contributed more lines of codes than him in the last 20 years.
- alacombe 6y ago
  He's fat, unattractive (not to say ugly), asocial and most likely borderline autistic. Don't get me wrong, I've attempted to book him for a conference, and experienced the two-page long list of "requests" to be fulfilled, but he's basically being cancelled for having a dissenting opinion from the current culture war going on. edit: to the downvoters, plenty of slim handsome socially-skillful celebrities have done worth than RMS and got away with a slap on their wrist.
  - core-questions 6y ago
    Yeah, that's the long and the short of it. RMS has had fantastic ideas, and I think he generally cares quite a bit about humanity, but the guy is weird, and people don't seem to be willing to put up with that brand of weird. (You can be plenty of other sorts of weird and not be cancelled, of course, making the whole thing quite arbitrary....)
    - alacombe 6y ago
      > (You can be plenty of other sorts of weird and not be cancelled, of course, making the whole thing quite arbitrary....) ... and you just summarized everything wrong with the current bs going on. You've got to be the right kind of weird to fit in their narrative, everybody else is gonna be cancelled. "The pot calling the kettle black" they used to say... Today's puritans are no better than yesterday's.
      - xref 6y ago
        You just hand-waived sexual harassment away as not “the right kind of weird” and speaking out against a serial perpetrator of it as “Puritanism”
    - klyrs 6y ago
      The "weird" in question is perpetual harassment of women. As in, doing harm to individuals in our community. Granted, He has had fantastic ideas... but has he been contributing fantastic ideas to the GCC steering committee in the last decade? What's he actually bringing to the table that offsets the harm that he causes? And FWIW, I think he's cute and I've never been on a second date with a guy who wasn't socially awkward.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- rbanffy 6y ago
  The FA has an extensive list.
- seneca 6y ago
  The left-wing cultural puritans that have been taking hold in the OSS community don't like his opinions, largely those around sex,and are attempting to push him out. Admittedly his ideas around sex are out there, but no more so than many of the type of people trying to ostracize him.
  - loopz 6y ago
    That letter is just racist and discriminatory. In fact, the basis is; because someone is white, use that to fire someone you don't like? That's illegal. No point trying to attach political content to such drivel. So yeah, that "positive move towards more inclusivity and diversity, is not in a court of law, but could be if implemented due to that letter.
- Grieving 6y ago
  I assume it goes back to the Minsky incident. From what I understand, a trafficked woman/girl at Epstein's island was instructed to sleep with Minsky. Whether or not this was actually carried out is unclear. RMS said to give him the benefit of the doubt, that he likely wouldn't have known that she was being trafficked. Just another RMS hot take. It was stupid, like a lot of his statements. Not worth canning him IMO.
  - Udik 6y ago
    Can you elaborate what is stupid about it? Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
    - Grieving 6y ago
      He went there after Epstein's first conviction. If you're flying to a billionaire sex-offender's private island and get offered a young girl, I'm pretty sure it would raise some red flags. I don't think the part about giving him the benefit of the doubt is stupid, especially because it's never been clarified whether he did have sex with her, or if Epstein just suggested it to her. I just find his explanation unconvincing.
  - belval 6y ago
    Considering the amount of downvotes under my comment I don't want to pile in too much, but I expected more. The email talks about racism and I just don't see how that ties in with Minsky.
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      There is also his position on paedophilia and on "censorship" of child porn.
      - belval 6y ago
        Source? I had no clue.
- amanzi 6y ago
  I've posted these before, but these are the best two links I've found that put all the accusations into context: https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/ https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/ https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web
rocqua 6y ago
I see the argument. Essentially: - RMS doesn't contribute code to GCC - RMS scares off other people from contributing to GCC - RMS has made questionable decisions in treating women - RMS does not fully condemn everything we call pedophilia. Hence, according to the argument, there is little to no upside to having him in there, and quite some upside to removing him.
- ignoranceprior 6y ago
  > RMS does not fully condemn everything we call pedophilia. He does currently: https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September_2019_(Sex_between_an_adult_and_a_child_is_wrong) https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...
deft 6y ago
The important bits of this are at the end. The guy just doesn't like RMS and thinks since he hasn't made a commit recently he should be kicked off. The author states "this isn't a court of law" as justification for why it doesn't matter if the random accusations are true or not, then says removing him from gcc is "actions have consequences". True, but making a few social faux pas (assuming they are true, despite many being proven false) does not deserve this bizarre punishment. Can this mob at least try or be intellectually honest? If RMS is a nuisance and you don't like him, just say so. Vote him off the board, don't organize a mob and collect a series of false accusations.
Zababa 6y ago
There are people protesting against RMS, and especially how he's non-inclusive of women. I understand why people want to remove him from his position of power, but I fear that by removing him we would lose one of the uncompromising figures of software freedom. For example, the author refers to "the other open source compiler", which I suppose is LLVM. But LLVM allows Apple to not release some optimizations because it's not copyleft. I fear that by insisting so much on removing RMS we may move from "activist open source" to "corporation allowed open source". Is this paranoia on my part? Or maybe I'm valuing freedom more than inclusivity because, as a white male, I don't feel the need for inclusivity as much as other people? I'm not sure of the answer, but I feel that there's a tradeoff that is made by removing RMS that isn't explicit and calculated. I'd like to hear other views on that and what people think.
- deft 6y ago
  That's exactly what they are intending to achieve, it's not about protecting women or whatever else. One of the debian leaders even admits this. Embrace. Extend. And now, extinguish.
  - Zababa 6y ago
    > That's exactly what they are intending to achieve, it's not about protecting women or whatever else. One of the debian leaders even admits this. Do you have some proof of that? That's a pretty big claim. I wasn't able to find anything.
    - deft 6y ago
      You'd have to join the private discussions going on to see it for yourself.
      - krapp 6y ago
        So no, then.
- rbanffy 6y ago
oh_sigh 6y ago
Why exactly is the leaky tech pipeline a fallacy? I see it claimed as such frequently, but then I see other SJWs argue it is the biggest thing that needs addressing(I think I recall a big-shot diversity person at FB saying the pipeline needs to be fixed, and a big-shot diversity person at Google say the pipeline is a distraction). To me, it doesn't make sense how the pipeline couldn't be a major issue. I took an intro to programming class in 9th grade (1999), and there was literally one girl and 29 boys. How can you ever overcome that and hope for a 50/50 split at the end when, for whatever reason, 14 year olds choose such drastically different paths based on their genders. And I know for a fact that no one took the class or didn't take the class because of the demographics of the GCC steering committee.
underseacables 6y ago
Seems like the mob will not be happy until this man is drummed out of society.
arusahni 6y ago
Curious as to why this has been flagged? I haven't editorialized anything, this isn't a repost, and the OP has a voice that holds weight in the community (making this newsworthy). To those reporting this due to it being critical of RMS, is "free as in speech" just a fun tagline vs. a guiding principal?
- angry_octet 6y ago
  There's a couple of old fashioned misogynists who feel very threatened by the idea of RMS finally facing consequences for his behaviour, and they are pulling out all the stops to suppress criticism of RMS and the FSF. Various justifications will be applied -- it's a "divisive topic" or its "political" -- but it's just different types of denial. It just highlights why women have a problem in tech.
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  I think some people on all sides are tired of reading about Stallman.
- CJefferson 6y ago
  My personal feeling from the first RMS thread, is this site is full of people who want to defend RMS and argue against "cancel culture". They get upset when they find out the majority of the people who actually do the work in GNU, and have to work with RMS, want rid of him.
alpaca128 6y ago
> Representation matters, we’re the problem. Bold claims, not much explanation. If the amount of privileged, white, male, socially awkward people in a project would clearly correlate with its popularity or success I am sure people like the author would have shouted it from the rooftops long ago. I wonder if the author talked to one of the minorities he finds too underrepresented to see what they think of RMS, and what their real reasons and motivations are. Because, as much as he likes to throw all "privileged white males" into the same bucket and all the minorities into another one(both with the usual obvious connotations), opinions differ and reality usually disagrees with this binary good vs. evil thinking. Meanwhile the obvious explanation, that a decades old complex project written in a language with decreasing popularity might not attract many contributors in general, is ignored. > This is not a court of law. So many are pointing in the same direction that you cannot ignore the implication. Yes, the majority is always right! Let's just get rid of the guy who sometimes didn't know when to shut up, and maybe later consider why the court of law's principles were introduced in the first place. Flawless reasoning.
rtopw 6y ago
The ritualistic language in the "proposal" and the fact that Facebook and RedHat developers agreed without discussion is disturbing. If they want him out for technical reasons, then say so and don't do it now of all times. But like this they are just good foot soldiers for their corporate masters. How about examining everything Zuckerberg has said and done on this mailing list?

51 points by arusahni 6y ago

baybal2 6y ago

My advice to Nathan, go, and fork the GCC.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

belval 6y ago

So what did RMS do exactly? I haven't been keeping track and the man is basically a living legend.

geofft 6y ago
I think good starting points are https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html and http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html (note, particularly, the several links in the sentence starting "In fact," - each word is its own link). Both of those posts are from former FSF board members who have basically spent their entire professional careers working to advance free software.
- tsaloop 6y ago
  I think people who actually wrote free software have advanced it. Why do Foundations have so much imaginary power?
  - geofft 6y ago
    Largely because RMS gave them that power? Like I'm not sure what your argument is. Are you saying one should not take board members of the FSF seriously, and one should ignore people whose contribution to the free software movement is more political than technical? Then you've already made the argument against RMS having a role on the GCC steering committee.
    - tsaloop 6y ago
      The only real power is in the "or any later version" part of the GPL, which IMO is a mistake. I'd delete it like Linus when using the GPL. Yes, I think foundation members' influence is overrated. The Kuhn story looks like any plain vanilla internal power struggle. Why hasn't he spoken up 10 years ago? It is hypocritical to do so when everyone else is piling on. The same applies to old guard RedHat and SuSE people. They have known RMS for decades and suddenly he needs to be removed. Foundations in OSS in general attract the wrong kind of people. RMS, for all his flaws, did pretty well overall compared to others.
  - CJefferson 6y ago
    The mailing list post this thread is about is that the people who, for the last 20 years are actually writing free software want rid of RMS, because he hasn't done anything useful, and has done a lot of harm, in those 20 years. RMS did indeed start a lot of great projects, but that doesn't give him the right to continue to rule over them now, after thousands of other people have contributed more lines of codes than him in the last 20 years.
alacombe 6y ago
He's fat, unattractive (not to say ugly), asocial and most likely borderline autistic. Don't get me wrong, I've attempted to book him for a conference, and experienced the two-page long list of "requests" to be fulfilled, but he's basically being cancelled for having a dissenting opinion from the current culture war going on. edit: to the downvoters, plenty of slim handsome socially-skillful celebrities have done worth than RMS and got away with a slap on their wrist.
- core-questions 6y ago
  Yeah, that's the long and the short of it. RMS has had fantastic ideas, and I think he generally cares quite a bit about humanity, but the guy is weird, and people don't seem to be willing to put up with that brand of weird. (You can be plenty of other sorts of weird and not be cancelled, of course, making the whole thing quite arbitrary....)
  - alacombe 6y ago
    > (You can be plenty of other sorts of weird and not be cancelled, of course, making the whole thing quite arbitrary....) ... and you just summarized everything wrong with the current bs going on. You've got to be the right kind of weird to fit in their narrative, everybody else is gonna be cancelled. "The pot calling the kettle black" they used to say... Today's puritans are no better than yesterday's.
    - xref 6y ago
      You just hand-waived sexual harassment away as not “the right kind of weird” and speaking out against a serial perpetrator of it as “Puritanism”
  - klyrs 6y ago
    The "weird" in question is perpetual harassment of women. As in, doing harm to individuals in our community. Granted, He has had fantastic ideas... but has he been contributing fantastic ideas to the GCC steering committee in the last decade? What's he actually bringing to the table that offsets the harm that he causes? And FWIW, I think he's cute and I've never been on a second date with a guy who wasn't socially awkward.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rbanffy 6y ago
The FA has an extensive list.
seneca 6y ago
The left-wing cultural puritans that have been taking hold in the OSS community don't like his opinions, largely those around sex,and are attempting to push him out. Admittedly his ideas around sex are out there, but no more so than many of the type of people trying to ostracize him.
- loopz 6y ago
  That letter is just racist and discriminatory. In fact, the basis is; because someone is white, use that to fire someone you don't like? That's illegal. No point trying to attach political content to such drivel. So yeah, that "positive move towards more inclusivity and diversity, is not in a court of law, but could be if implemented due to that letter.
Grieving 6y ago
I assume it goes back to the Minsky incident. From what I understand, a trafficked woman/girl at Epstein's island was instructed to sleep with Minsky. Whether or not this was actually carried out is unclear. RMS said to give him the benefit of the doubt, that he likely wouldn't have known that she was being trafficked. Just another RMS hot take. It was stupid, like a lot of his statements. Not worth canning him IMO.
- Udik 6y ago
  Can you elaborate what is stupid about it? Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
  - Grieving 6y ago
    He went there after Epstein's first conviction. If you're flying to a billionaire sex-offender's private island and get offered a young girl, I'm pretty sure it would raise some red flags. I don't think the part about giving him the benefit of the doubt is stupid, especially because it's never been clarified whether he did have sex with her, or if Epstein just suggested it to her. I just find his explanation unconvincing.
- belval 6y ago
  Considering the amount of downvotes under my comment I don't want to pile in too much, but I expected more. The email talks about racism and I just don't see how that ties in with Minsky.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    There is also his position on paedophilia and on "censorship" of child porn.
    - belval 6y ago
      Source? I had no clue.
amanzi 6y ago
I've posted these before, but these are the best two links I've found that put all the accusations into context: https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/ https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/ https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web

rocqua 6y ago

I see the argument. Essentially: - RMS doesn't contribute code to GCC - RMS scares off other people from contributing to GCC - RMS has made questionable decisions in treating women - RMS does not fully condemn everything we call pedophilia. Hence, according to the argument, there is little to no upside to having him in there, and quite some upside to removing him.

ignoranceprior 6y ago
> RMS does not fully condemn everything we call pedophilia. He does currently: https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September_2019_(Sex_between_an_adult_and_a_child_is_wrong) https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...

deft 6y ago

The important bits of this are at the end. The guy just doesn't like RMS and thinks since he hasn't made a commit recently he should be kicked off. The author states "this isn't a court of law" as justification for why it doesn't matter if the random accusations are true or not, then says removing him from gcc is "actions have consequences". True, but making a few social faux pas (assuming they are true, despite many being proven false) does not deserve this bizarre punishment. Can this mob at least try or be intellectually honest? If RMS is a nuisance and you don't like him, just say so. Vote him off the board, don't organize a mob and collect a series of false accusations.

Zababa 6y ago

There are people protesting against RMS, and especially how he's non-inclusive of women. I understand why people want to remove him from his position of power, but I fear that by removing him we would lose one of the uncompromising figures of software freedom. For example, the author refers to "the other open source compiler", which I suppose is LLVM. But LLVM allows Apple to not release some optimizations because it's not copyleft. I fear that by insisting so much on removing RMS we may move from "activist open source" to "corporation allowed open source". Is this paranoia on my part? Or maybe I'm valuing freedom more than inclusivity because, as a white male, I don't feel the need for inclusivity as much as other people? I'm not sure of the answer, but I feel that there's a tradeoff that is made by removing RMS that isn't explicit and calculated. I'd like to hear other views on that and what people think.

deft 6y ago
That's exactly what they are intending to achieve, it's not about protecting women or whatever else. One of the debian leaders even admits this. Embrace. Extend. And now, extinguish.
- Zababa 6y ago
  > That's exactly what they are intending to achieve, it's not about protecting women or whatever else. One of the debian leaders even admits this. Do you have some proof of that? That's a pretty big claim. I wasn't able to find anything.
  - deft 6y ago
    You'd have to join the private discussions going on to see it for yourself.
    - krapp 6y ago
      So no, then.
rbanffy 6y ago

oh_sigh 6y ago

Why exactly is the leaky tech pipeline a fallacy? I see it claimed as such frequently, but then I see other SJWs argue it is the biggest thing that needs addressing(I think I recall a big-shot diversity person at FB saying the pipeline needs to be fixed, and a big-shot diversity person at Google say the pipeline is a distraction). To me, it doesn't make sense how the pipeline couldn't be a major issue. I took an intro to programming class in 9th grade (1999), and there was literally one girl and 29 boys. How can you ever overcome that and hope for a 50/50 split at the end when, for whatever reason, 14 year olds choose such drastically different paths based on their genders. And I know for a fact that no one took the class or didn't take the class because of the demographics of the GCC steering committee.

underseacables 6y ago

Seems like the mob will not be happy until this man is drummed out of society.

arusahni 6y ago

Curious as to why this has been flagged? I haven't editorialized anything, this isn't a repost, and the OP has a voice that holds weight in the community (making this newsworthy). To those reporting this due to it being critical of RMS, is "free as in speech" just a fun tagline vs. a guiding principal?

angry_octet 6y ago
There's a couple of old fashioned misogynists who feel very threatened by the idea of RMS finally facing consequences for his behaviour, and they are pulling out all the stops to suppress criticism of RMS and the FSF. Various justifications will be applied -- it's a "divisive topic" or its "political" -- but it's just different types of denial. It just highlights why women have a problem in tech.
pseudalopex 6y ago
I think some people on all sides are tired of reading about Stallman.
CJefferson 6y ago
My personal feeling from the first RMS thread, is this site is full of people who want to defend RMS and argue against "cancel culture". They get upset when they find out the majority of the people who actually do the work in GNU, and have to work with RMS, want rid of him.

alpaca128 6y ago

> Representation matters, we’re the problem. Bold claims, not much explanation. If the amount of privileged, white, male, socially awkward people in a project would clearly correlate with its popularity or success I am sure people like the author would have shouted it from the rooftops long ago. I wonder if the author talked to one of the minorities he finds too underrepresented to see what they think of RMS, and what their real reasons and motivations are. Because, as much as he likes to throw all "privileged white males" into the same bucket and all the minorities into another one(both with the usual obvious connotations), opinions differ and reality usually disagrees with this binary good vs. evil thinking. Meanwhile the obvious explanation, that a decades old complex project written in a language with decreasing popularity might not attract many contributors in general, is ignored. > This is not a court of law. So many are pointing in the same direction that you cannot ignore the implication. Yes, the majority is always right! Let's just get rid of the guy who sometimes didn't know when to shut up, and maybe later consider why the court of law's principles were introduced in the first place. Flawless reasoning.

rtopw 6y ago

The ritualistic language in the "proposal" and the fact that Facebook and RedHat developers agreed without discussion is disturbing. If they want him out for technical reasons, then say so and don't do it now of all times. But like this they are just good foot soldiers for their corporate masters. How about examining everything Zuckerberg has said and done on this mailing list?