6 ms·

I hope that I'm wrong here and there is evidence of actual bots, but as far as I can tell you're making this judgement based on the fact the people signing the

by willeh 6y ago

I hope that I'm wrong here and there is evidence of actual bots, but as far as I can tell you're making this judgement based on the fact the people signing the RMS support letter have Russian sounding names. First off, yes I don't doubt that the totalitarian oppressive and oppressive governments are using this type of technique, in fact they are probably using it a lot because it is highly effective. However, it seems exceedingly unlikely that they have any interest in a spat in an, on the whole, insignificant professional organization. I think it is worth reevaluating your opinion, as understanding the other side of an argument is useful and helps us understand the world better. Generalising, a bit in my experience Russians tend to be slightly technocratic valuing pragmatism over ideology, which seems natural considering that it was beaten out of them by a series of absolutist despots. Still their opinions are valid even if most people in Europe and the US, no matter their political beliefs, will consider RMS to have perjured himself as an ideological leader to the extent that trust can not be mended, and consequently must resign.

mpol 6y ago
"in my experience Russians tend to be slightly technocratic valuing pragmatism over ideology" Strange, I always experienced the FSF as ideological and Linux as pragmatical with their grey areas of closed drivers. This reads like the world upside-down :) Is Copyleft Free Software suddenly pragmatic? No offense, mostly just curious.
- willeh 6y ago
  None taken. My comment wasn't necessarily about Free vs Open source software, but about leaders for the free software movement. From my point of view RMS seems like a strong leader from a technocratic perspective, he has written significant portions of the code for the GNU "operating system" and of course is still the leader of the GNU project. His means of accomplishing his political goals are practical - writing software with copyleft licences and boycotting other alternatives. To accept RMS as a leader we must take a technocratic view we ignore everything but his performance, in a narrow sense. I myself am no fan of RMS (although I'm also critical of the way he was "cancelled") so it is much harder to put justification for an opinion I don't share to paper but I hope this clears up my previous post somewhat.
bitwize 6y ago
Russian sounding names, many with little GitHub activity and most are certainly not major contributors to major projects. So already pretty sus. Then there's this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26618253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26618253 Even assuming that each and every one of those signatures has a human behind it, it smells more like a brigading attempt than it does an outpouring of genuine good will toward Stallman from members of the community in good standing.

by willeh 6y ago

mpol 6y ago

"in my experience Russians tend to be slightly technocratic valuing pragmatism over ideology" Strange, I always experienced the FSF as ideological and Linux as pragmatical with their grey areas of closed drivers. This reads like the world upside-down :) Is Copyleft Free Software suddenly pragmatic? No offense, mostly just curious.

willeh 6y ago
None taken. My comment wasn't necessarily about Free vs Open source software, but about leaders for the free software movement. From my point of view RMS seems like a strong leader from a technocratic perspective, he has written significant portions of the code for the GNU "operating system" and of course is still the leader of the GNU project. His means of accomplishing his political goals are practical - writing software with copyleft licences and boycotting other alternatives. To accept RMS as a leader we must take a technocratic view we ignore everything but his performance, in a narrow sense. I myself am no fan of RMS (although I'm also critical of the way he was "cancelled") so it is much harder to put justification for an opinion I don't share to paper but I hope this clears up my previous post somewhat.

bitwize 6y ago

Russian sounding names, many with little GitHub activity and most are certainly not major contributors to major projects. So already pretty sus. Then there's this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26618253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26618253 Even assuming that each and every one of those signatures has a human behind it, it smells more like a brigading attempt than it does an outpouring of genuine good will toward Stallman from members of the community in good standing.