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"Later in life, I discovered that some people had negative reactions to my behavior, which I did not even know about. Tending to be direct and honest with my th

"Later in life, I discovered that some people had negative reactions to my behavior, which I did not even know about. Tending to be direct and honest with my thoughts, I sometimes made others uncomfortable or even offended them -- especially women. This was not a choice: I didn't understand the problem enough to know which choices there were. Sometimes I lost my temper because I didn't have the social skills to avoid it. Some people could cope with this; others were hurt. I apologize to each of them. Please direct your criticism at me, not at the Free Software Foundation." This is such a great argument for why he shouldn't be in a leadership position. These social skills are crucial in this role.

whatshisface 6y ago
>These social skills are crucial in this role. For better or worse, a huge number of very successful leaders have had problems with losing their temper. Not that we should idolize poor anger control, of course.
henearkr 6y ago
>These social skills are crucial in this role. Absolutely not. He is a theorist (if not the theorist) of Free Software. His role is paramount, he is literally the only human completely implacable regarding the degrees of freedom that should be guaranteed to algorithms and software. The whole movement he started has as well spurred the Creative Commons movement, that is an application to the same principles more specifically to art.
- imwillofficial 6y ago
  So unwanted sexual advances on women or ok for theorists?
  - thewakalix 6y ago
    Yes, anyone is morally allowed to hit on anyone[1], even though chances are it won’t be reciprocated. Of course, going too far without consent[2] is wrong. But merely initiating, and then listening, is not. [1] Pedantry: as long as they’d be morally allowed to continue with consent. Pedophilia being wrong implies that hitting on children is wrong, for example. [2] Note that it is possible to preemptively withdraw consent. Hitting on someone who previously said “don’t hit on me,” but hasn’t said it to you yet, is still wrong.
    - imwillofficial 6y ago
      People downvoted you, but you actually engaged my question in good faith. You make some excellent points. I’d argue that being in a leadership position, RMS should have practiced more professionalism, but in a simple way, the way I asked the question, you are correct.
- danaris 6y ago
  So make him a consultant. Make him an advisor or something. In most organizations, "theorists" aren't the people in charge, no matter how cogent their theories. Even if it's true that he's the "only human" who's capable of doing the job the best possible (in which case, as some other commenters noted, what happens if he drops dead tomorrow??), that doesn't justify allowing someone with a long history of abusive management and no apparent understanding of what made it abusive back into a management position. If his prior pedophilia apologism were the only issue with him, then this more-or-less-apology might at least passably address that. It does nothing for his terrible personality in general and his tendency to be ableist, racist, misogynist, and just overall an asshole, any of which should disqualify him from such a public leadership role in the software community. Keeping him there does so much harm to the image of programmers and software developers of all kinds worldwide.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  But what does that have to do with running the FSF day to day?
  - b215826 6y ago
    The FSF ran just fine under him before the Selam G. shitstorm. Sure, he irked a lot of people with his rigid stances. But considering how those stances are exactly what made him found the FSF in the first place, I don't see it as a big problem.
    - pseudalopex 6y ago
      Several people who worked there don't agree it ran just fine.[1][2] [1] http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html [2] https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1377079987950395393 https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1377079987950395393
- hota_mazi 6y ago
  > he is literally the only human completely implacable Not only is this assuredly false, but it's also the last thing we need in a position of leadership or even as a consultant. Understanding nuances is paramount for these positions.
  - iajrz 6y ago
    > it's also the last thing we need in a position of leadership or even as a consultant. On technical matters, you are correct; on moral matters it's a different story. Think about the moral tragedies of history; we didn't need someone saying "maybe we should not be so evil; let's be less evil - not stop, because that's disruptive and I am not an extremist, but maybe dial it down a bit?" On moral battlegrounds we need someone capable of saying "we have to stop, and no price is too high to pay in order to stop being evil". Someone who is willing to pay the price themselves, and make the price as low as possible for anyone that wishes to follow through. Nothing less than that suffices; "They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin", to say it poetically.
    - dralley 6y ago
      >On technical matters, you are correct; on moral matters it's a different story. They are intertwined. His moral positions have done incredible damage to GCC at a technical level, and lost huge amounts of marketshare to LLVM as a direct result. (Stallman thought that making the compiler more modular and extensible was totally unacceptable because it might be possible in theory to write proprietary tools that used GCC to dump intermediate representations. Thus preventing any FOSS tools from using GCC, also).
      - iajrz 6y ago
        > His moral positions have done incredible damage to GCC at a technical level, and lost huge amounts of marketshare to LLVM as a direct result. We can take this as a given for the purposes of the discussion. > They are intertwined But which has priority? The main issue with this topic is that it's sometimes hard to see things from an angle we're so unaccustomed to. The FSF and the GNU project are accidentally technical, morally-driven organizations. Technical superiority is never the argument for Free Software. You may be thinking about Open Source and mixing them up. Try to see it from that point of view: if an organization exists to prevent "some evil" from happening and make it as easily as possible for "good people" to not commit and not be subjected to "that evil", it makes sense that the organization will sacrifice things that don't seem to make sense because they are avoiding as strongly as they can to make "some evil" easier to commit. The goal is not market share; the goal is not technical superiority; the goal is not profit; the goal is to "not be evil", help others "not be evil" and not make it easier than it ever needs to be to "be evil". Look at the "about" pages in the FSF & Gnu project websites and you will notice that it is not a bad choice for them to avoid doing some things "for market share" or "to remain competitive" when those clash with creating free software, making it easier to create free software, and make sure (within the realm of possibility) that their work cannot be used to facilitate the building of non-free software. From the FSF's point of view loss of market share is an acceptable loss, if the alternative is "be evil". That is why, odd as it may seem, the FSF needs someone who does not compromise on that.
- bitmunk 6y ago
  >he is literally the only human completely implacable regarding the degrees of freedom that should be guaranteed to algorithms and software. So he's the Emperor from W40K? Got it. /s
nextaccountic 6y ago
I agree rms is unfit to be a leader, but as a member of the FSF board he is fit to give his opinion on what GPLv4 should be if it ever gets released. I'm trust FSF to do the right thing on "or later" licenses if rms is onboard, but when I see Red Hat removing funding to get him out of the board, well, this give me pause. https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-statement-about-richard-stallmans-return-free-software-foundation-board https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-statement-about-richa...
- rbanffy 6y ago
  Why would Red Hat want to be associated with a group that quietly reinstates him? The board that did it should also go.
- an_mp_speaks 6y ago
  If you look at the FSF's 990, you will see that the Red Hat contribution amounted to about $7000 USD a year. It was a really negligible amount.
  - nextaccountic 6y ago
    So why did they think they had any leverage?
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Exactly, there was no reason the FSF board couldn't message him to seek advice without him holding a leadership position. I don't care if people contribute, but positions of leadership should be conveyed to people who set a positive example. I think there's a massive difference with RMS in that he excuses his actions, but doesn't show much intent or ability to change them. Another FOSS leader, Linus Torvalds, did a 180 when it became clear his behavior wasn't tolerable anymore, and I think Linus showed a level of leadership in that which RMS cannot. I have my own issues, and I freely admit I probably don't belong in a leadership role. Stallman should do the same, and put himself in an advising-only capacity.
pmarin 6y ago
So people without social skills can't not be in leadership positions?
- stusmall 6y ago
  Same reason we keep people without technical skills out of technical roles. Being able to understand, working with, organize, inspire and influence people is at the core of being a leader.
  - africanboy 6y ago
    so why's Elon Musk still there? /s Jocking aside, perfection is enemy of the good. Nobody is all those things, all the time, consistently, over a life time. Being a leader in the real World is mostly about being in the political position of influencing the decision of the entity you lead, being it a small team of developers, the local sports team or a corporation. Look at Steve Jobs, he was capable of being a terrible human being, but was also able to put a lot of money in investors' pockets and so they kept him. Also, having no technical skill has never stopped anybody from being involved in technical roles. They simply end up working where the bar is lower or were management doesn't care. If what you say was true, posts like this would not exist. https://allarsblog.com/2018/03/17/confessions-of-an-unreal-engine-4-engineering-firefighter/ https://allarsblog.com/2018/03/17/confessions-of-an-unreal-e...
JoeyBananas 6y ago
This comment section has devolved into another episode of "Hackernews attempts to justify the pointless character assassination of RMS by scraping the bottom of the barrel for half-assed reasons to be outraged"

whatshisface 6y ago

>These social skills are crucial in this role. For better or worse, a huge number of very successful leaders have had problems with losing their temper. Not that we should idolize poor anger control, of course.

henearkr 6y ago

>These social skills are crucial in this role. Absolutely not. He is a theorist (if not the theorist) of Free Software. His role is paramount, he is literally the only human completely implacable regarding the degrees of freedom that should be guaranteed to algorithms and software. The whole movement he started has as well spurred the Creative Commons movement, that is an application to the same principles more specifically to art.

imwillofficial 6y ago
So unwanted sexual advances on women or ok for theorists?
- thewakalix 6y ago
  Yes, anyone is morally allowed to hit on anyone[1], even though chances are it won’t be reciprocated. Of course, going too far without consent[2] is wrong. But merely initiating, and then listening, is not. [1] Pedantry: as long as they’d be morally allowed to continue with consent. Pedophilia being wrong implies that hitting on children is wrong, for example. [2] Note that it is possible to preemptively withdraw consent. Hitting on someone who previously said “don’t hit on me,” but hasn’t said it to you yet, is still wrong.
  - imwillofficial 6y ago
    People downvoted you, but you actually engaged my question in good faith. You make some excellent points. I’d argue that being in a leadership position, RMS should have practiced more professionalism, but in a simple way, the way I asked the question, you are correct.
danaris 6y ago
So make him a consultant. Make him an advisor or something. In most organizations, "theorists" aren't the people in charge, no matter how cogent their theories. Even if it's true that he's the "only human" who's capable of doing the job the best possible (in which case, as some other commenters noted, what happens if he drops dead tomorrow??), that doesn't justify allowing someone with a long history of abusive management and no apparent understanding of what made it abusive back into a management position. If his prior pedophilia apologism were the only issue with him, then this more-or-less-apology might at least passably address that. It does nothing for his terrible personality in general and his tendency to be ableist, racist, misogynist, and just overall an asshole, any of which should disqualify him from such a public leadership role in the software community. Keeping him there does so much harm to the image of programmers and software developers of all kinds worldwide.
mhh__ 6y ago
But what does that have to do with running the FSF day to day?
- b215826 6y ago
  The FSF ran just fine under him before the Selam G. shitstorm. Sure, he irked a lot of people with his rigid stances. But considering how those stances are exactly what made him found the FSF in the first place, I don't see it as a big problem.
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    Several people who worked there don't agree it ran just fine.[1][2] [1] http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html [2] https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1377079987950395393 https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1377079987950395393
hota_mazi 6y ago
> he is literally the only human completely implacable Not only is this assuredly false, but it's also the last thing we need in a position of leadership or even as a consultant. Understanding nuances is paramount for these positions.
- iajrz 6y ago
  > it's also the last thing we need in a position of leadership or even as a consultant. On technical matters, you are correct; on moral matters it's a different story. Think about the moral tragedies of history; we didn't need someone saying "maybe we should not be so evil; let's be less evil - not stop, because that's disruptive and I am not an extremist, but maybe dial it down a bit?" On moral battlegrounds we need someone capable of saying "we have to stop, and no price is too high to pay in order to stop being evil". Someone who is willing to pay the price themselves, and make the price as low as possible for anyone that wishes to follow through. Nothing less than that suffices; "They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin", to say it poetically.
  - dralley 6y ago
    >On technical matters, you are correct; on moral matters it's a different story. They are intertwined. His moral positions have done incredible damage to GCC at a technical level, and lost huge amounts of marketshare to LLVM as a direct result. (Stallman thought that making the compiler more modular and extensible was totally unacceptable because it might be possible in theory to write proprietary tools that used GCC to dump intermediate representations. Thus preventing any FOSS tools from using GCC, also).
    - iajrz 6y ago
      > His moral positions have done incredible damage to GCC at a technical level, and lost huge amounts of marketshare to LLVM as a direct result. We can take this as a given for the purposes of the discussion. > They are intertwined But which has priority? The main issue with this topic is that it's sometimes hard to see things from an angle we're so unaccustomed to. The FSF and the GNU project are accidentally technical, morally-driven organizations. Technical superiority is never the argument for Free Software. You may be thinking about Open Source and mixing them up. Try to see it from that point of view: if an organization exists to prevent "some evil" from happening and make it as easily as possible for "good people" to not commit and not be subjected to "that evil", it makes sense that the organization will sacrifice things that don't seem to make sense because they are avoiding as strongly as they can to make "some evil" easier to commit. The goal is not market share; the goal is not technical superiority; the goal is not profit; the goal is to "not be evil", help others "not be evil" and not make it easier than it ever needs to be to "be evil". Look at the "about" pages in the FSF & Gnu project websites and you will notice that it is not a bad choice for them to avoid doing some things "for market share" or "to remain competitive" when those clash with creating free software, making it easier to create free software, and make sure (within the realm of possibility) that their work cannot be used to facilitate the building of non-free software. From the FSF's point of view loss of market share is an acceptable loss, if the alternative is "be evil". That is why, odd as it may seem, the FSF needs someone who does not compromise on that.
bitmunk 6y ago
>he is literally the only human completely implacable regarding the degrees of freedom that should be guaranteed to algorithms and software. So he's the Emperor from W40K? Got it. /s

nextaccountic 6y ago

I agree rms is unfit to be a leader, but as a member of the FSF board he is fit to give his opinion on what GPLv4 should be if it ever gets released. I'm trust FSF to do the right thing on "or later" licenses if rms is onboard, but when I see Red Hat removing funding to get him out of the board, well, this give me pause. https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-statement-about-richard-stallmans-return-free-software-foundation-board https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-statement-about-richa...

rbanffy 6y ago
Why would Red Hat want to be associated with a group that quietly reinstates him? The board that did it should also go.
an_mp_speaks 6y ago
If you look at the FSF's 990, you will see that the Red Hat contribution amounted to about $7000 USD a year. It was a really negligible amount.
- nextaccountic 6y ago
  So why did they think they had any leverage?

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

Exactly, there was no reason the FSF board couldn't message him to seek advice without him holding a leadership position. I don't care if people contribute, but positions of leadership should be conveyed to people who set a positive example. I think there's a massive difference with RMS in that he excuses his actions, but doesn't show much intent or ability to change them. Another FOSS leader, Linus Torvalds, did a 180 when it became clear his behavior wasn't tolerable anymore, and I think Linus showed a level of leadership in that which RMS cannot. I have my own issues, and I freely admit I probably don't belong in a leadership role. Stallman should do the same, and put himself in an advising-only capacity.

pmarin 6y ago

So people without social skills can't not be in leadership positions?

stusmall 6y ago
Same reason we keep people without technical skills out of technical roles. Being able to understand, working with, organize, inspire and influence people is at the core of being a leader.
- africanboy 6y ago
  so why's Elon Musk still there? /s Jocking aside, perfection is enemy of the good. Nobody is all those things, all the time, consistently, over a life time. Being a leader in the real World is mostly about being in the political position of influencing the decision of the entity you lead, being it a small team of developers, the local sports team or a corporation. Look at Steve Jobs, he was capable of being a terrible human being, but was also able to put a lot of money in investors' pockets and so they kept him. Also, having no technical skill has never stopped anybody from being involved in technical roles. They simply end up working where the bar is lower or were management doesn't care. If what you say was true, posts like this would not exist. https://allarsblog.com/2018/03/17/confessions-of-an-unreal-engine-4-engineering-firefighter/ https://allarsblog.com/2018/03/17/confessions-of-an-unreal-e...

JoeyBananas 6y ago

This comment section has devolved into another episode of "Hackernews attempts to justify the pointless character assassination of RMS by scraping the bottom of the barrel for half-assed reasons to be outraged"