4 ms·

We almost Linus Torwalds because of the cancel culture, would be a big loss to lose RMS because he is no longer good PR to have him, bonus points if some big bu

We almost Linus Torwalds because of the cancel culture, would be a big loss to lose RMS because he is no longer good PR to have him, bonus points if some big business like Google or Red Hat could grab the leadership of FSF and GNU. There was a few days back a post for people to support RMS and I admit I did not put my name on the list because i am afraid this could affect my future, cancel culture could get worse and my actions could be misinterpreted as the worse things possible(like I must support pedos if I support RMS).

mhh__ 6y ago
Well the difference is that Torvalds remains competent? Easy example: Stallman's idealism is why LLVM is now the academics favoured compiler to work on (i.e. no plugins for GCC) More human example: Someone I know who works in the GNU ecosystem on a reasonably major project mentioned that rms was cordial until he found out that this maintainer had children. And this was in response to someone handing already GPL code over to the FSF
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  "Stallman's ideology is why LLVM is now the academics favoured compiler to work on" FTFY
- simion314 6y ago
  Any proof that LLVM is chosen now on most universities? Because I also have anecdotes where I was offered a job to work on GCC for a specific hardware architecture and bring improvements. Though I would be more interested on what compiler or license brings the most real value to the society and not which ones brings more money to a small group of mega rich guys. Why not credit GPL or RMS for the Linux success over BSD ? There are many projects using BSD but still a giant number of companies and projects still use the "evil, cancerous" GPL project when they could use BSD and be selfish. Maybe open source will win over free software but that this will not prove the free software movement wrong, will prove that money and greed will win as always.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    All the new fangled optimizations are being done on LLVM, Sanitizers were LLVM first etc. GCC target support remains incredibly impressive of course, but that's not the sexy stuff. Also I regard GNU's success in userspace as mainly stemming from the 90s, my comment was regarding roughly post- somewhere in the 2000s
    - simion314 6y ago
      Is that LLVM success good for society or for the giant SV companies? LLVM is still not a clear winner in performance or supported platforms.
      - mhh__ 6y ago
        LLVM is better technology but the fact that it isn't copyleft pains me (for one). Whereas with GCC you kind of have to upstream (making it easy or not), with LLVM you can upstream stuff you want other people to work with (or cynically, maintain) but keep relatively private things with your secret sauce (I don't think Apple's M1 patches for LLVM are upstreamed).
dfcowell 6y ago
I think the difference here is that Linus was at least self-aware, humble or critical enough of a thinker to realize that his behavior was problematic, state the fact plainly and take responsibility for changing it for the good of the community. RMS has been unrepentantly stubborn, famously intolerant of differing views and has not demonstrated a desire to change.
- simion314 6y ago
  This is false, RMS changed is opinion on that sensitive topic and on the other issues so far I only read things like "X said that 20 years ago RMS did Y and X felt uncomfortable" , what should he do? The other difference between Linus and RMS is that RMS is the GPL guy and many people on HN hate GPL with a passion and will spread FUD about the license any chance they get, I think this RMS controversy is fueled by the GPL/free software hate.
pjc50 6y ago
Torvalds listened and apologized.
bitwize 6y ago
Linus was confronted with his toxic behavior by peers and apologized. That is the only reason why we didn't "lose" him, or rather, he was allowed to stay. It's high time the open source community cleaned house and made itself unwelcome to assholes.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- simion314 6y ago
  Can you tell me for exactly what specific thing RMS should apologize (there are many vague or misinterpreted actions of RMS so I am not sure which one is affecting you)?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
gjulianm 6y ago
> We almost Linus Torvalds because of the cancel culture This is not what happened and I don't know why you would say "it's cancel culture". The issue with Torvalds was not about PR. It was a push by maintainers of the kernel, aka his peers. Torvalds was not criticized because of his opinions, but because of his behavior towards others. As he said in his own email [1] "My flippant attacks in emails have been both unprofessional and uncalled for [...] I know now this was not OK and I am truly sorry". Saying it's "cancel culture" is as if get fired from my company because I'm constantly lashing out at my colleagues and say "they fired me because of my opinions!". A lot of times people conflate "cancel culture" with "people being responsible for what they say and do". In this case, Stallman replied to a protest that called for a review of MIT donor policies and association with people like Epstein with nitpicking about whether Minsky's actions (who was dead by that time already) were or not "technically sexual assault". That also helped surface a lot of actions and words by Stallman that were, at the very least, inadequate. Maybe that's not the kind of actions that one expects from the president of the FSF. 1: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1809.2/00117.html?print=anz http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1809.2/00117.html?... 2: https://www.facebook.com/events/687098025098336/ https://www.facebook.com/events/687098025098336/
foobar33333 6y ago
I also support RMS but I would not sign that letter with my real name. If I did not support him, I would feel no hesitation to sign the other one.
Traster 6y ago
Your reference to Linus is a great example that completely undermines the entire fundamental argument of "cancel culture". If people complain about your bad behaviour, you apoligize and we all move on that's not cancel culture is it. That's just people making mistakes, being picked up on them and apoligizing. People aren't setting out to cancel anyone, they've highlighted something they don't like, explained why it's unacceptable, the person at fault has listened and apologized. It's the perfect example of why it's not cancel culture, they entire point of cancel culture is you're not meant to be able to just make amends - you've been "cancelled"
- simion314 6y ago
  Your changing the history, cancel culture failed to cancel Linus, he had a smart strategy and enough supporters to escape. For what specific issue RMS did not apologized yet? Let us know the issue, why does he need to apologize for that specific one and why if there is no apology for that issue should he be canceled from his own project?
  - Traster 6y ago
    It's not "a smart strategy" to apologize when someone points out you've done something wrong. Well fortunately RMS collates all of his posts here: https://www.stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September_2019_(Statements_about_Epstein) https://www.stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_Septe... , so a start would be... actually apologizing for what he said about Marvin Minsky.
    - simion314 6y ago
      Why are you still vague, what did he said and why is it legal, immoral, unpopular or incorrect. Yes i would like a logical phrase that starts from "RMS said X" then I want to see how you extrapolate that using logic to conclude that RMS supports some illegal practices.
      - Traster 6y ago

mhh__ 6y ago

Well the difference is that Torvalds remains competent? Easy example: Stallman's idealism is why LLVM is now the academics favoured compiler to work on (i.e. no plugins for GCC) More human example: Someone I know who works in the GNU ecosystem on a reasonably major project mentioned that rms was cordial until he found out that this maintainer had children. And this was in response to someone handing already GPL code over to the FSF

hutzlibu 6y ago
"Stallman's ideology is why LLVM is now the academics favoured compiler to work on" FTFY
simion314 6y ago
Any proof that LLVM is chosen now on most universities? Because I also have anecdotes where I was offered a job to work on GCC for a specific hardware architecture and bring improvements. Though I would be more interested on what compiler or license brings the most real value to the society and not which ones brings more money to a small group of mega rich guys. Why not credit GPL or RMS for the Linux success over BSD ? There are many projects using BSD but still a giant number of companies and projects still use the "evil, cancerous" GPL project when they could use BSD and be selfish. Maybe open source will win over free software but that this will not prove the free software movement wrong, will prove that money and greed will win as always.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  All the new fangled optimizations are being done on LLVM, Sanitizers were LLVM first etc. GCC target support remains incredibly impressive of course, but that's not the sexy stuff. Also I regard GNU's success in userspace as mainly stemming from the 90s, my comment was regarding roughly post- somewhere in the 2000s
  - simion314 6y ago
    Is that LLVM success good for society or for the giant SV companies? LLVM is still not a clear winner in performance or supported platforms.
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      LLVM is better technology but the fact that it isn't copyleft pains me (for one). Whereas with GCC you kind of have to upstream (making it easy or not), with LLVM you can upstream stuff you want other people to work with (or cynically, maintain) but keep relatively private things with your secret sauce (I don't think Apple's M1 patches for LLVM are upstreamed).

dfcowell 6y ago

I think the difference here is that Linus was at least self-aware, humble or critical enough of a thinker to realize that his behavior was problematic, state the fact plainly and take responsibility for changing it for the good of the community. RMS has been unrepentantly stubborn, famously intolerant of differing views and has not demonstrated a desire to change.

simion314 6y ago
This is false, RMS changed is opinion on that sensitive topic and on the other issues so far I only read things like "X said that 20 years ago RMS did Y and X felt uncomfortable" , what should he do? The other difference between Linus and RMS is that RMS is the GPL guy and many people on HN hate GPL with a passion and will spread FUD about the license any chance they get, I think this RMS controversy is fueled by the GPL/free software hate.

pjc50 6y ago

Torvalds listened and apologized.

bitwize 6y ago

Linus was confronted with his toxic behavior by peers and apologized. That is the only reason why we didn't "lose" him, or rather, he was allowed to stay. It's high time the open source community cleaned house and made itself unwelcome to assholes.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
simion314 6y ago
Can you tell me for exactly what specific thing RMS should apologize (there are many vague or misinterpreted actions of RMS so I am not sure which one is affecting you)?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

gjulianm 6y ago

> We almost Linus Torvalds because of the cancel culture This is not what happened and I don't know why you would say "it's cancel culture". The issue with Torvalds was not about PR. It was a push by maintainers of the kernel, aka his peers. Torvalds was not criticized because of his opinions, but because of his behavior towards others. As he said in his own email [1] "My flippant attacks in emails have been both unprofessional and uncalled for [...] I know now this was not OK and I am truly sorry". Saying it's "cancel culture" is as if get fired from my company because I'm constantly lashing out at my colleagues and say "they fired me because of my opinions!". A lot of times people conflate "cancel culture" with "people being responsible for what they say and do". In this case, Stallman replied to a protest that called for a review of MIT donor policies and association with people like Epstein with nitpicking about whether Minsky's actions (who was dead by that time already) were or not "technically sexual assault". That also helped surface a lot of actions and words by Stallman that were, at the very least, inadequate. Maybe that's not the kind of actions that one expects from the president of the FSF. 1: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1809.2/00117.html?print=anz http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1809.2/00117.html?... 2: https://www.facebook.com/events/687098025098336/ https://www.facebook.com/events/687098025098336/

foobar33333 6y ago

I also support RMS but I would not sign that letter with my real name. If I did not support him, I would feel no hesitation to sign the other one.

Traster 6y ago

Your reference to Linus is a great example that completely undermines the entire fundamental argument of "cancel culture". If people complain about your bad behaviour, you apoligize and we all move on that's not cancel culture is it. That's just people making mistakes, being picked up on them and apoligizing. People aren't setting out to cancel anyone, they've highlighted something they don't like, explained why it's unacceptable, the person at fault has listened and apologized. It's the perfect example of why it's not cancel culture, they entire point of cancel culture is you're not meant to be able to just make amends - you've been "cancelled"

simion314 6y ago
Your changing the history, cancel culture failed to cancel Linus, he had a smart strategy and enough supporters to escape. For what specific issue RMS did not apologized yet? Let us know the issue, why does he need to apologize for that specific one and why if there is no apology for that issue should he be canceled from his own project?
- Traster 6y ago
  It's not "a smart strategy" to apologize when someone points out you've done something wrong. Well fortunately RMS collates all of his posts here: https://www.stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September_2019_(Statements_about_Epstein) https://www.stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_Septe... , so a start would be... actually apologizing for what he said about Marvin Minsky.
  - simion314 6y ago
    Why are you still vague, what did he said and why is it legal, immoral, unpopular or incorrect. Yes i would like a logical phrase that starts from "RMS said X" then I want to see how you extrapolate that using logic to conclude that RMS supports some illegal practices.
    - Traster 6y ago