6 ms·

The FSF unionised because of RMS

62 points by AndrewDucker 6y ago

ipsocannibal 6y ago
So I think this is the most cogent argument against RMS's leadership I've seen. It directly relates to his ability to practically lead an organization. Its too bad that this argument has not been front and center instead of the politically charged but subjective comments by RMS. In short RMS is a bad boss that does not consider the needs of his employees according to the author.
- agentdrtran 6y ago
  RMS being repeatedly awful to women is just as important as this, and his other comments are "political" insomuch that arguing about the age of consent is political.
  - belorn 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent#/media/File:Age_of_Consent_-_Global.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent#/media/File:Age... It seems like the age of consent is political, or the age would be identical everywhere. There is a bell curve for the start of human sexuality. Here in Sweden the age of 14 is the median for girls, 14.4 for boys, and the age of consent is set to 15. Does that mean 15 is a good age of consent? Should the age of consent be the median age, the 10% (12y), or the 80% (16y)? Personally I prefer the "half the person's age + 7" rule (for the partner's minimum age), but I don't know any country that has that as an age of consent.
    - Arainach 6y ago
      Consent has to do with mental maturity, not physical.
      - belorn 6y ago
        The mind finishes maturing at the age of 25. The medical evidence for that is pretty much established, and is why a lot of researchers want to (at minimum) abolish the death sentence for anyone younger. It is quite questionable if one should hold people responsible for behavior before their mind has finished developing. A similar argument could be made about driving. At the age of 16, the impulse control is severely underdeveloped, likely by evolutionary benefits. New experiences invoke a much stronger endocrine response than for fully matured individuals, and with faster depletion rate. A driving license should really be around age 20+ if one would follow mental maturity. Sweden have set it to 18. We have so many different age lines. Driving, drinking, military service, voting, consent, crime, legal responsibility. 25 would be a great line for it all based on medical data. In Sweden we expect young people to have the mind around 15 to start having sex with each other, but we don't trust that they have the mental capacity to drive before 18. Is the numbers that the US use better? Worse? Is the answer political? I would say yes.
    - gremlinsinc 6y ago
      How's the half the person's age+7 work?
      - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        You take the older person's age, divide by 2, and add 7 years. A relationship with a person younger than that is "icky". By that rule (guideline), a 50-year-old should not be in a relationship with an 18-year-old, even if 18 is the age of consent.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - true_religion 6y ago
      By the half your age + 7 rule, Trump should have never been married. Now I don’t have an opinion on how great or terrible the guy is but if 50% of the country supports him, then that’s indicative that there isn’t really any consensus on age differences when dating. Personally I think there is no reason to look down on consensual relationships between two adults. Especially true if they are far beyond the age of consent.
- ampdepolymerase 6y ago
  Or maybe he should had restricted the foundation's mission scope to solely open source software and not tie everything into a progressive endeavor. Your culture determines everything. Collective action and employee protests at Google is very different than at Amazon/Microsoft. If RMS had tied his personal brand to FSF's success, then he would have easily weathered the coup attempts. This is basic executive power MBA 101. During the massive corporate adoption of open source post-2010 he could have restructured the foundation to make it more scalable like the Linux Foundation or Wikimedia, a force unto itself with cash reserves and endowments. But he didn't, I think he has learnt an important lesson this time. The FSF is a startup that never grew beyond the "scrappy entrepreneur in garage" phase. Starbucks has a much better chance of surviving collective action than your average neighborhood kombucha café place.
- belorn 6y ago
  It is something to look at in term of leadership, but I am missing a key detail. What pay did RMS give to himself, what kind of raises, benefits, cost of living conditions, paid vacations, stock options, works hours? How much of it was communicated at the point of hire to the non-profit organization, and what were the expectations?
- einpoklum 6y ago
  Those are serious and cogent argument (although I don't like the "safe space" terminology). Having said that - the issue at hand right now is whether RMS should or should not be on the GCC steering committee, not managing the FSF. And "leadership" is an even more diffuse term. Also, one should bear in mind that Stallman has (AFAICT) Asperger's syndrome or High-Functioning Autism (a.k.a. neuro-diversity). That does not excuse much in itself - and in fact, is an argument against making him a powerful singular boss of people - but should be taken into consideration when you think about how this sort of situation develops.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
why_Mr_Anderson 6y ago
RMS is great leader, but apparently horrible manager. Leaders must have passion, not be just mindless MBA drones. Even though I usually disagree with his vision of how software should be made, I feel sorry for him being target of this insane witch hunt.
- why_Mr_Anderson 6y ago
  Hahaha, keep the downvotes coming! Get that uncomfortable truth out of of sight -> out of mind.
- olliej 6y ago
  a "great leader" also needs to be able to manage people. If you're passionate but spend your time being abusive to others then you're not a leader, you're a dictator. And that is what RMS is - we've seen time and time again he expects his opinion to be the law, and anyone with whom he disagrees is wrong and should themselves be expelled.
  - why_Mr_Anderson 6y ago
    No, great leader must recognize his weaknesses and hire people to compensate for them. If you think leaders/owners of big companies are not dictators, I have a bridge to sell to you.
    - Denvercoder9 6y ago
      > No, great leader must recognize his weaknesses and hire people to compensate for them. Which he didn't do.
      - Daho0n 6y ago
        What does everyone else do? https://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board/ https://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board/
    - notriddle 6y ago
HarryHirsch 6y ago
It's not that Stallman had the monopoly on bad management. In fact, the interests of workers and management are intrinsically at odds, and every workplace needs a union.
- olliej 6y ago
  Everywhere has bad managers, but this is a case where a union was formed specifically because of a single actor, and that actor has a demonstrated history of abuses yet was then silently brought back despite that history because of a few zealots who cared more about him than what was ostensibly their mission.
  - HarryHirsch 6y ago
    Oh, come on! Tone is set at the top everywhere. Uber, Amazon, SpaceX, these are great examples with tens of thousands affected. And what's with the abuse? One makes strange remarks about women and abhors soap, and the other manages you out a few months before vesting cliff. That isn't even the same league.
    - chowells 6y ago
      One denies you money. The other denies you dignity and humanity. You're right that it's not even close, but I suspect you've got the analysis backwards.
      - HarryHirsch 6y ago
        The thing is that money really helps with your dignity, many people who had income dislocations this year thanks to COVID will confirm. On the other hand, words are just words.
      - Daho0n 6y ago
        Are you saying that not getting a raise is so much worse than having to pee in a bottle at work that it isn't even in the same league?
h2odragon 6y ago
"RMS is hard to work with" is not news, JWZ had some deeply amusing insights about that before he got into web browsers. RMS has said, all along, that no one needs to work with him. He shares his stuff and anyone can make a better version of it. It's wild how often, and for how long, every criticism of him ends with "and thats why RMS should go away and leave us all the cool things he built". The "FSF" at heart, at first, was a way to get this unemployable geek paid so he could continue working for the good of the world even when no one particularly cared who he was. If it became more, great. If the "more" needs to be something better, than someone go build the something better.
- stonogo 6y ago
  The FSF did not pay him.
raverbashing 6y ago
Just to be clear, since the title is ambiguous, it's not "thanks to RMS" it's "to protect themselves from RMS" > We formed a union to help protect ourselves from RMS — he controlled our pay, benefits, and workplace conditions. > RMS did not believe in providing raises... RMS believed that if a precedent was created for increasing wages, the logical conclusion would be that employees would be paid infinity dollars and the FSF would go bankrupt.
- jfengel 6y ago
  RMS believed that if a precedent was created for increasing wages, the logical conclusion would be that employees would be paid infinity dollars Is he really that bad at math, or is he being misrepresented?
Daho0n 6y ago
I'm getting tired of these lynchmobs. An opinion screamed out on Twitter is not important and should be dismissed. Neither Twitter or HN is the place to decide for or against or dig around someone's life. The FSF's board is where this belongs. It disgusts me that HN is as bad as Reddit and Facebook and I'm extremely disappointed. How would you feel if this where about you? HN is usually better than this.
- ipsocannibal 6y ago
  1. This isn't lynch mob. Its a discussion. 2. RMS is a public figure by his own choice. This is not the same as your average HN commentor. 3. HN is definitely the place to discuss the public actions of organizations and people in tech 4. Please take the holier than thou, shaming attitude back to Reddit.
  - Daho0n 6y ago
    If you use Reddit, Twitter or Facebook then that makes one of us. I don't use any social media outside HN.
- danaris 6y ago
  Well, personally, if it were about me, they wouldn't be able to say that I had refused to provide cost-of-living increases to people I employed because I don't understand that "slippery slope" is a fallacy, not a truism. In general, they wouldn't be able to say that I had mistreated people serially over the course of years with no apology, made a long string of bigoted and degrading statements about a wide variety of marginalized groups, and generally made an asshole of myself in public with no apparent understanding of why it was bad and no apology for it. I mean, what, did you think "how would you feel if they talked on Twitter about what you did at work" would result in similar stories for everyone?

62 points by AndrewDucker 6y ago

So I think this is the most cogent argument against RMS's leadership I've seen. It directly relates to his ability to practically lead an organization. Its too bad that this argument has not been front and center instead of the politically charged but subjective comments by RMS. In short RMS is a bad boss that does not consider the needs of his employees according to the author.

agentdrtran 6y ago
RMS being repeatedly awful to women is just as important as this, and his other comments are "political" insomuch that arguing about the age of consent is political.
- belorn 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent#/media/File:Age_of_Consent_-_Global.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent#/media/File:Age... It seems like the age of consent is political, or the age would be identical everywhere. There is a bell curve for the start of human sexuality. Here in Sweden the age of 14 is the median for girls, 14.4 for boys, and the age of consent is set to 15. Does that mean 15 is a good age of consent? Should the age of consent be the median age, the 10% (12y), or the 80% (16y)? Personally I prefer the "half the person's age + 7" rule (for the partner's minimum age), but I don't know any country that has that as an age of consent.
  - Arainach 6y ago
    Consent has to do with mental maturity, not physical.
    - belorn 6y ago
      The mind finishes maturing at the age of 25. The medical evidence for that is pretty much established, and is why a lot of researchers want to (at minimum) abolish the death sentence for anyone younger. It is quite questionable if one should hold people responsible for behavior before their mind has finished developing. A similar argument could be made about driving. At the age of 16, the impulse control is severely underdeveloped, likely by evolutionary benefits. New experiences invoke a much stronger endocrine response than for fully matured individuals, and with faster depletion rate. A driving license should really be around age 20+ if one would follow mental maturity. Sweden have set it to 18. We have so many different age lines. Driving, drinking, military service, voting, consent, crime, legal responsibility. 25 would be a great line for it all based on medical data. In Sweden we expect young people to have the mind around 15 to start having sex with each other, but we don't trust that they have the mental capacity to drive before 18. Is the numbers that the US use better? Worse? Is the answer political? I would say yes.
  - gremlinsinc 6y ago
    How's the half the person's age+7 work?
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      You take the older person's age, divide by 2, and add 7 years. A relationship with a person younger than that is "icky". By that rule (guideline), a 50-year-old should not be in a relationship with an 18-year-old, even if 18 is the age of consent.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - true_religion 6y ago
    By the half your age + 7 rule, Trump should have never been married. Now I don’t have an opinion on how great or terrible the guy is but if 50% of the country supports him, then that’s indicative that there isn’t really any consensus on age differences when dating. Personally I think there is no reason to look down on consensual relationships between two adults. Especially true if they are far beyond the age of consent.
ampdepolymerase 6y ago
Or maybe he should had restricted the foundation's mission scope to solely open source software and not tie everything into a progressive endeavor. Your culture determines everything. Collective action and employee protests at Google is very different than at Amazon/Microsoft. If RMS had tied his personal brand to FSF's success, then he would have easily weathered the coup attempts. This is basic executive power MBA 101. During the massive corporate adoption of open source post-2010 he could have restructured the foundation to make it more scalable like the Linux Foundation or Wikimedia, a force unto itself with cash reserves and endowments. But he didn't, I think he has learnt an important lesson this time. The FSF is a startup that never grew beyond the "scrappy entrepreneur in garage" phase. Starbucks has a much better chance of surviving collective action than your average neighborhood kombucha café place.
belorn 6y ago
It is something to look at in term of leadership, but I am missing a key detail. What pay did RMS give to himself, what kind of raises, benefits, cost of living conditions, paid vacations, stock options, works hours? How much of it was communicated at the point of hire to the non-profit organization, and what were the expectations?
einpoklum 6y ago
Those are serious and cogent argument (although I don't like the "safe space" terminology). Having said that - the issue at hand right now is whether RMS should or should not be on the GCC steering committee, not managing the FSF. And "leadership" is an even more diffuse term. Also, one should bear in mind that Stallman has (AFAICT) Asperger's syndrome or High-Functioning Autism (a.k.a. neuro-diversity). That does not excuse much in itself - and in fact, is an argument against making him a powerful singular boss of people - but should be taken into consideration when you think about how this sort of situation develops.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

why_Mr_Anderson 6y ago

RMS is great leader, but apparently horrible manager. Leaders must have passion, not be just mindless MBA drones. Even though I usually disagree with his vision of how software should be made, I feel sorry for him being target of this insane witch hunt.

why_Mr_Anderson 6y ago
Hahaha, keep the downvotes coming! Get that uncomfortable truth out of of sight -> out of mind.
olliej 6y ago
a "great leader" also needs to be able to manage people. If you're passionate but spend your time being abusive to others then you're not a leader, you're a dictator. And that is what RMS is - we've seen time and time again he expects his opinion to be the law, and anyone with whom he disagrees is wrong and should themselves be expelled.
- why_Mr_Anderson 6y ago
  No, great leader must recognize his weaknesses and hire people to compensate for them. If you think leaders/owners of big companies are not dictators, I have a bridge to sell to you.
  - Denvercoder9 6y ago
    > No, great leader must recognize his weaknesses and hire people to compensate for them. Which he didn't do.
    - Daho0n 6y ago
      What does everyone else do? https://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board/ https://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board/
  - notriddle 6y ago

HarryHirsch 6y ago

It's not that Stallman had the monopoly on bad management. In fact, the interests of workers and management are intrinsically at odds, and every workplace needs a union.

olliej 6y ago
Everywhere has bad managers, but this is a case where a union was formed specifically because of a single actor, and that actor has a demonstrated history of abuses yet was then silently brought back despite that history because of a few zealots who cared more about him than what was ostensibly their mission.
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  Oh, come on! Tone is set at the top everywhere. Uber, Amazon, SpaceX, these are great examples with tens of thousands affected. And what's with the abuse? One makes strange remarks about women and abhors soap, and the other manages you out a few months before vesting cliff. That isn't even the same league.
  - chowells 6y ago
    One denies you money. The other denies you dignity and humanity. You're right that it's not even close, but I suspect you've got the analysis backwards.
    - HarryHirsch 6y ago
      The thing is that money really helps with your dignity, many people who had income dislocations this year thanks to COVID will confirm. On the other hand, words are just words.
    - Daho0n 6y ago
      Are you saying that not getting a raise is so much worse than having to pee in a bottle at work that it isn't even in the same league?

h2odragon 6y ago

"RMS is hard to work with" is not news, JWZ had some deeply amusing insights about that before he got into web browsers. RMS has said, all along, that no one needs to work with him. He shares his stuff and anyone can make a better version of it. It's wild how often, and for how long, every criticism of him ends with "and thats why RMS should go away and leave us all the cool things he built". The "FSF" at heart, at first, was a way to get this unemployable geek paid so he could continue working for the good of the world even when no one particularly cared who he was. If it became more, great. If the "more" needs to be something better, than someone go build the something better.

stonogo 6y ago
The FSF did not pay him.

raverbashing 6y ago

Just to be clear, since the title is ambiguous, it's not "thanks to RMS" it's "to protect themselves from RMS" > We formed a union to help protect ourselves from RMS — he controlled our pay, benefits, and workplace conditions. > RMS did not believe in providing raises... RMS believed that if a precedent was created for increasing wages, the logical conclusion would be that employees would be paid infinity dollars and the FSF would go bankrupt.

jfengel 6y ago
RMS believed that if a precedent was created for increasing wages, the logical conclusion would be that employees would be paid infinity dollars Is he really that bad at math, or is he being misrepresented?

Daho0n 6y ago

I'm getting tired of these lynchmobs. An opinion screamed out on Twitter is not important and should be dismissed. Neither Twitter or HN is the place to decide for or against or dig around someone's life. The FSF's board is where this belongs. It disgusts me that HN is as bad as Reddit and Facebook and I'm extremely disappointed. How would you feel if this where about you? HN is usually better than this.

ipsocannibal 6y ago
1. This isn't lynch mob. Its a discussion. 2. RMS is a public figure by his own choice. This is not the same as your average HN commentor. 3. HN is definitely the place to discuss the public actions of organizations and people in tech 4. Please take the holier than thou, shaming attitude back to Reddit.
- Daho0n 6y ago
  If you use Reddit, Twitter or Facebook then that makes one of us. I don't use any social media outside HN.
danaris 6y ago
Well, personally, if it were about me, they wouldn't be able to say that I had refused to provide cost-of-living increases to people I employed because I don't understand that "slippery slope" is a fallacy, not a truism. In general, they wouldn't be able to say that I had mistreated people serially over the course of years with no apology, made a long string of bigoted and degrading statements about a wide variety of marginalized groups, and generally made an asshole of myself in public with no apparent understanding of why it was bad and no apology for it. I mean, what, did you think "how would you feel if they talked on Twitter about what you did at work" would result in similar stories for everyone?