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This past month has completely destroyed my confidence in FSF leadership. I hope they can earn it back. Say what you want about the open letter - and it is an

This past month has completely destroyed my confidence in FSF leadership. I hope they can earn it back. Say what you want about the open letter - and it is an inaccurate open letter - the fact is that most people who had legitimate criticisms of RMS's leadership decided to sign onto it anyway. You might argue that this is malice. I'd argue that the open letter's ultimate conclusion - wipe the FSF management slate clean - was still warranted. Remember: the FSF did not attempt to defend, explain, or rehabilitate Stallman's behavior or character. That was individuals within the community doing that - and themselves making the mistake of, say, ignoring other, better criticisms of RMS's behavior than misreading his personal quirks as inherently sexist. I find it hard not to read the FSF's conduct as anything but "let's just quietly bring RMS back once the mainstream media gets off our case". They ignored the fact that people within the community had significant problems with his conduct, completely unrelated to the Epstein thing. The Minsky e-mail was just a catalyst, like putting a spoon in superheated water. If they had handled this the way Linus Torvalds did - i.e. making a show out of toning down his toxic behavior, and then actually toning it down, this could have worked. It's possible for the FSF to actually still do this, despite having been apparently(!?) caught on the backfoot... but that's going to be far harder than if they had actually messaged this properly. Since nobody's head is actually going to roll for this terrible PR nightmare, I can only hope that the organization tries to tone down RMS's toxic behavior, and maybe we'll get something useful out of deliberately reopening year-old (or for some, decade-old) wounds. Still, I feel like this is akin to Mozilla's crippling Google dependency - it's not like RMS is going to live forever, he's pushing 70. His number will come up sooner or later. His remaining tenure with the FSF should be wholly dedicated towards making the organization relevant to those who aren't already "in the know" so that we have suitable replacements when we lose RMS.

WesolyKubeczek 6y ago
> They ignored the fact that people within the community had significant problems with his conduct, completely unrelated to the Epstein thing. Then you should have hounded him for those things, and not twisted the words he actually wrote (which was even more blatant since both what rms said and what Vice said is there in the public) and then tried to pin it onto him. Do you really think everyone is going to have a short memory about how this all was handled? Regardless of whether you like rms or not, would you like to have this kind of due diligence to be applied to you one day? > If they had handled this the way Linus Torvalds did - i.e. making a show out of toning down his toxic behavior, and then actually toning it down, this could have worked. So, what you're saying is... people expect a show. It doesn't have to be sincere, it just has to be the right kind of a show, maybe jerking a tear or two. And they know full well it's just a show. But they still are going to make a decision based on the quality of that show. Right? "Extremely superficial" and "infantile" are words that immediately come to mind to describe this kind of behavior, and frankly speaking, this is not the kind of people that should be let within a mile of any kind of decision making.
- kmeisthax 6y ago
  Well, the entire point of the FSF is to be an advocacy organization, which means that "making a show of things" is part of their job. They need to explain to people why Free Software is a thing people should value. Related to this is the need to defend why they themselves are worthwhile figureheads to continue the fight (as opposed to other organizations with similar stated goals, such as the EFF, Mozilla Foundation, or hell even the OSI). This isn't "just a show", I specifically stated that you also have to actually follow through with changing your character to match. If Linus had merely said "I'm too toxic, it's blocking work, I need to change" and then a week later put someone on blast and insulted them for PRing something that broke userspace, that would be the extremely superficial and infantile thing you're railing against. But if he had also just said nothing and quietly stopped being toxic, people would still be mad about his prior behavior. You need both messaging and action, and the FSF has been lax on both with the RMS reinstatement.
  - WesolyKubeczek 6y ago
    > But if he had also just said nothing and quietly stopped being toxic, people would still be mad about his prior behavior. You need both messaging and action Well, I thought we as humankind had spent almost a whole century to get wiser about these things, learn to read between the lines, to stop being overly judgmental and prejudiced, and oftentimes we the software developers consider ourselves to be somewhat wiser and intellectually advanced than the common folk, being able to reason on topics reaching way beyond our own field of expertise, as can be witnessed here on HN as well. Guess these bits about wisdom and intellectual advancement are blatantly false. We're centuries away from being insightful by default.

WesolyKubeczek 6y ago

> They ignored the fact that people within the community had significant problems with his conduct, completely unrelated to the Epstein thing. Then you should have hounded him for those things, and not twisted the words he actually wrote (which was even more blatant since both what rms said and what Vice said is there in the public) and then tried to pin it onto him. Do you really think everyone is going to have a short memory about how this all was handled? Regardless of whether you like rms or not, would you like to have this kind of due diligence to be applied to you one day? > If they had handled this the way Linus Torvalds did - i.e. making a show out of toning down his toxic behavior, and then actually toning it down, this could have worked. So, what you're saying is... people expect a show. It doesn't have to be sincere, it just has to be the right kind of a show, maybe jerking a tear or two. And they know full well it's just a show. But they still are going to make a decision based on the quality of that show. Right? "Extremely superficial" and "infantile" are words that immediately come to mind to describe this kind of behavior, and frankly speaking, this is not the kind of people that should be let within a mile of any kind of decision making.

kmeisthax 6y ago
Well, the entire point of the FSF is to be an advocacy organization, which means that "making a show of things" is part of their job. They need to explain to people why Free Software is a thing people should value. Related to this is the need to defend why they themselves are worthwhile figureheads to continue the fight (as opposed to other organizations with similar stated goals, such as the EFF, Mozilla Foundation, or hell even the OSI). This isn't "just a show", I specifically stated that you also have to actually follow through with changing your character to match. If Linus had merely said "I'm too toxic, it's blocking work, I need to change" and then a week later put someone on blast and insulted them for PRing something that broke userspace, that would be the extremely superficial and infantile thing you're railing against. But if he had also just said nothing and quietly stopped being toxic, people would still be mad about his prior behavior. You need both messaging and action, and the FSF has been lax on both with the RMS reinstatement.
- WesolyKubeczek 6y ago
  > But if he had also just said nothing and quietly stopped being toxic, people would still be mad about his prior behavior. You need both messaging and action Well, I thought we as humankind had spent almost a whole century to get wiser about these things, learn to read between the lines, to stop being overly judgmental and prejudiced, and oftentimes we the software developers consider ourselves to be somewhat wiser and intellectually advanced than the common folk, being able to reason on topics reaching way beyond our own field of expertise, as can be witnessed here on HN as well. Guess these bits about wisdom and intellectual advancement are blatantly false. We're centuries away from being insightful by default.