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>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

>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

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