4 ms·

> Reform the leadership. It’s time for Richard Stallman to go. > We need more leaders of color, women, LGBTQ representation, and others besides. Stallman is i

by yarg 4y ago

> Reform the leadership. It’s time for Richard Stallman to go. > We need more leaders of color, women, LGBTQ representation, and others besides. Stallman is in many ways a problem - but the solution is finding technically and socially competent leadership with a vision that aligns with the core ideologies of the FSF and the ability to lay it out as a coherent long-term plan. Forced diversity has not ever and will not ever make that sort of thing easier to achieve.

bo1024 4y ago
Technical and socially competent leadership is compatible -- actually, well-aligned -- with diverse representation.
- yarg 4y ago
  There's a difference between organic and forced diversity. When someone starts out with bullet-point one devoted to orthogonal social issues and not the actual goals of the foundation and how to reach them, it's fairly clear where they stand.
  - kmeisthax 4y ago
    "Orthogonal social issues?" So are we just going to pretend that unauditable, proprietary facial recognition software isn't being actively weaponized against minorities? Like, cops using secret rules to determine guilt would be considered dystopian basically anywhere.
    - yarg 4y ago
      Yes, the issues are completely orthogonal to the effective operation of an open source software foundation. If you want to have a talk about the also completely unrelated issue of facial recognition, we can do that too.
      - ParetoOptimal 4y ago
        > Yes, the issues are completely orthogonal to the effective operation of an open source software foundation. Only if you begin by presuming diversity isn't a benefit on it's own.
      - kmeisthax 4y ago
        The facial recognition software issue is not orthogonal: the biggest problem with it is that it's proprietary software being used to do law enforcement. We don't know how Clearview's software works and it is already generating false arrests and convictions. If this is an orthogonal issue, than software freedom is just a petty tech squabble between programmers with no bearing on the average user, and nobody should care about it. The way that you get the average user to care about software freedom is by drawing lines between it and seemingly unrelated issues. You don't say "proprietary software means you can't edit the code", you say "proprietary software means more surveillance tech everywhere". And the way that surveillance tech works is that it follows a very specific "shitty technology adoption curve"[0]. It will first be weaponized against socially acceptable targets such as criminals first, and then to social minorities that don't have the leverage to say 'no', and then to poor people at large, and so on and so forth up the chain of oppression. Of course, because of how this adoption curve works, a foundation staffed entirely with old white guys isn't going to be inherently aware of these sorts of problems. They are going to be fighting them by accident, and losing out on a way to do effective outreach about the problem they want to solve. [0] Thanks to Cory Doctorow for pointing this one out.
        GoblinSlayer 4y ago
        All political campaigns against population work this way: censorship, privacy, four horsemen, gun control.
        t-3 4y ago
        If the facial recognition software was open source, it would still be used to facially recognize people. There's no guarantee the algorithms would be better, but even if they were, that wouldn't stop them from being applied in a biased fashion. There are no technical solutions to human governance and society, we need human solutions for those.
  - drewbug01 4y ago
    To be fair - the author didn't "start[s] out" with that statement. They started out with seven(ish) paragraphs explaining exactly why the FSF has become irrelevant and how the foundation cannot reach its goals. The author contends that Stallman (and through his leadership, the FSF) ends up repelling the very kind of interconnected community that could sustain the free software movement. Thus, their first suggestion (replace Stallman, and include different kinds of people in future leadership) is directly related to that specific issue. It's actually a rather nicely written piece, and they support their suggestions in the narrative pretty well. Perhaps you skipped ahead (or perhaps you just disagree, which is certainly your right), but they absolutely didn't "start out" with "orthogonal social issues". They made the case for why those issues matter and then connected them to their suggestions.
- ghusto 4y ago
  > Technical and socially competent leadership is compatible -- actually, well-aligned -- with diverse representation Reality begs to differ. If they're well aligned, where are these people? Have they been oppressed by not being given a chance? Let's see where we are in 20 years when that argument can finally be put to rest (when's the last time you saw a positive _male_ role model in films or other pop-culture, tech-related or otherwise?).
  - Shared404 4y ago
    Justine Tunney, Mekka Okereke, Christine Lemmer-Webber. Three off the top of my head. I wonder why it is you wouldn't have run into any...
  - ParetoOptimal 4y ago
    > when's the last time you saw a positive _male_ role model in films or other pop-culture, tech-related or otherwise? Do we live in the same reality?
  - vrtx0 4y ago
    My perspective as an openly gay male with 20+ years of experience in software security, systems programming and distributed databases: Tech companies tend to be extremely supportive and welcoming of talent from diverse backgrounds. My proudest technical accomplishments have always been with a diverse group of peers, including straight white males who champion diversity. These people are heroes to me, but it’s not like they’re the type to gloat… I’m not the best person to ask about movies, but most example of protagonist “hackers” that comes to mind include white males. Counter examples that come to mind are “The Web” (female), and Sens8 (transgender lead, helped by straight white male)… That said, I may have misunderstood your point, but happy to correct it elaborate if I’m off base!
    - ghusto 4y ago
      Yes, you're way off base :D But it's a welcome miss, because I found your experience interesting anyway, and relevant. My first point was that if it were true that "technical and social leadership" indeed was compatible and even "well-aligned", then why is it we don't see that in people in leadership positions? Where are they? Then I pre-empted the tired argument that we don't see them because they've been oppressed for so long. I suggested that culture has been so "progressive" in recent years, that there are no longer any positive male role models (the over-compensating pendulum swing, in place of actual progress), so now that that's done, let's see what effect it has had on future society in 20 years, because we won't be able to blame "the patriarchy" or whatever any more. Now having said all that, I'm super happy to hear that you've had a positive experience in diverse workplaces :) I'm old, and remember when being openly gay wasn't fun.
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  Small groupings of people drawn from populations that are heavily weighted toward white male English speakers organically selected are unlikely to be more diverse than the population its drawn from and many groupings will end up distinctly unequal even without bias being involved. If you imagine dealing out people like cards into stacks chosen randomly and enumerating the demographics of each stack then large stacks would tend towards the population demographics but many smaller stacks would have all sorts of distributions. The only way to ensure a small group is diverse or a large group isn't is to select them for immutable characteristics instead of skill.
davexunit 4y ago
Lots of talk about "forced diversity" that ignores the diverse pool of talented people that the FSF has pushed away because they don't think "GNU+Linux" is a hill worth dying on or whatever.
- rekado 4y ago
  It goes beyond just battles on mole hills: the FSF and the GNU mailing lists are full of extremely time-consuming discussions that are fueled by conspiratorial thinking, feature excessive celebration of nitpicking, with participants that regularly lose themselves in groan-worthy tangents, operate on oversimplified models of society with unjustified arrogance, etc --- they are really bad places for constructive discourse. There are not many people who are both talented in their fields and have the surplus time and energy to exercise a saint-like restraint to deal with all the draining crap. This environment is the sediment that filters a lot of talent and successfully prevents healthy growth. This does not necessarily apply to individual GNU packages, but the overarching "project" structure is rotten and resistant to any attempts at reform.
  - davexunit 4y ago
    Thanks for following up with more details. You're absolutely right about all of it. After experiencing some/all of those things, most rational people realize there time is better spent elsewhere and move on.
  - michaelmrose 4y ago
    Thanks that explains why their board is filled with drek like a treasurer with a degree in economics from Harvard and Gerald J. Sussman, Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT.
- subsistence234 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - rekado 4y ago
    What's the deal with this low-effort flame bait? Have you volunteered for the FSF? Are you or have you been active on the FSF or GNU mailing lists? Certainly there are countless opportunities for reform away from elitist pedantry that are not tantamount to "being about the newest Apple products", wouldn't you agree?

by yarg 4y ago

bo1024 4y ago

Technical and socially competent leadership is compatible -- actually, well-aligned -- with diverse representation.

yarg 4y ago
There's a difference between organic and forced diversity. When someone starts out with bullet-point one devoted to orthogonal social issues and not the actual goals of the foundation and how to reach them, it's fairly clear where they stand.
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  "Orthogonal social issues?" So are we just going to pretend that unauditable, proprietary facial recognition software isn't being actively weaponized against minorities? Like, cops using secret rules to determine guilt would be considered dystopian basically anywhere.
  - yarg 4y ago
    Yes, the issues are completely orthogonal to the effective operation of an open source software foundation. If you want to have a talk about the also completely unrelated issue of facial recognition, we can do that too.
    - ParetoOptimal 4y ago
      > Yes, the issues are completely orthogonal to the effective operation of an open source software foundation. Only if you begin by presuming diversity isn't a benefit on it's own.
    - kmeisthax 4y ago
      The facial recognition software issue is not orthogonal: the biggest problem with it is that it's proprietary software being used to do law enforcement. We don't know how Clearview's software works and it is already generating false arrests and convictions. If this is an orthogonal issue, than software freedom is just a petty tech squabble between programmers with no bearing on the average user, and nobody should care about it. The way that you get the average user to care about software freedom is by drawing lines between it and seemingly unrelated issues. You don't say "proprietary software means you can't edit the code", you say "proprietary software means more surveillance tech everywhere". And the way that surveillance tech works is that it follows a very specific "shitty technology adoption curve"[0]. It will first be weaponized against socially acceptable targets such as criminals first, and then to social minorities that don't have the leverage to say 'no', and then to poor people at large, and so on and so forth up the chain of oppression. Of course, because of how this adoption curve works, a foundation staffed entirely with old white guys isn't going to be inherently aware of these sorts of problems. They are going to be fighting them by accident, and losing out on a way to do effective outreach about the problem they want to solve. [0] Thanks to Cory Doctorow for pointing this one out.
      - GoblinSlayer 4y ago
        All political campaigns against population work this way: censorship, privacy, four horsemen, gun control.
      - t-3 4y ago
        If the facial recognition software was open source, it would still be used to facially recognize people. There's no guarantee the algorithms would be better, but even if they were, that wouldn't stop them from being applied in a biased fashion. There are no technical solutions to human governance and society, we need human solutions for those.
- drewbug01 4y ago
  To be fair - the author didn't "start[s] out" with that statement. They started out with seven(ish) paragraphs explaining exactly why the FSF has become irrelevant and how the foundation cannot reach its goals. The author contends that Stallman (and through his leadership, the FSF) ends up repelling the very kind of interconnected community that could sustain the free software movement. Thus, their first suggestion (replace Stallman, and include different kinds of people in future leadership) is directly related to that specific issue. It's actually a rather nicely written piece, and they support their suggestions in the narrative pretty well. Perhaps you skipped ahead (or perhaps you just disagree, which is certainly your right), but they absolutely didn't "start out" with "orthogonal social issues". They made the case for why those issues matter and then connected them to their suggestions.
ghusto 4y ago
> Technical and socially competent leadership is compatible -- actually, well-aligned -- with diverse representation Reality begs to differ. If they're well aligned, where are these people? Have they been oppressed by not being given a chance? Let's see where we are in 20 years when that argument can finally be put to rest (when's the last time you saw a positive _male_ role model in films or other pop-culture, tech-related or otherwise?).
- Shared404 4y ago
  Justine Tunney, Mekka Okereke, Christine Lemmer-Webber. Three off the top of my head. I wonder why it is you wouldn't have run into any...
- ParetoOptimal 4y ago
  > when's the last time you saw a positive _male_ role model in films or other pop-culture, tech-related or otherwise? Do we live in the same reality?
- vrtx0 4y ago
  My perspective as an openly gay male with 20+ years of experience in software security, systems programming and distributed databases: Tech companies tend to be extremely supportive and welcoming of talent from diverse backgrounds. My proudest technical accomplishments have always been with a diverse group of peers, including straight white males who champion diversity. These people are heroes to me, but it’s not like they’re the type to gloat… I’m not the best person to ask about movies, but most example of protagonist “hackers” that comes to mind include white males. Counter examples that come to mind are “The Web” (female), and Sens8 (transgender lead, helped by straight white male)… That said, I may have misunderstood your point, but happy to correct it elaborate if I’m off base!
  - ghusto 4y ago
    Yes, you're way off base :D But it's a welcome miss, because I found your experience interesting anyway, and relevant. My first point was that if it were true that "technical and social leadership" indeed was compatible and even "well-aligned", then why is it we don't see that in people in leadership positions? Where are they? Then I pre-empted the tired argument that we don't see them because they've been oppressed for so long. I suggested that culture has been so "progressive" in recent years, that there are no longer any positive male role models (the over-compensating pendulum swing, in place of actual progress), so now that that's done, let's see what effect it has had on future society in 20 years, because we won't be able to blame "the patriarchy" or whatever any more. Now having said all that, I'm super happy to hear that you've had a positive experience in diverse workplaces :) I'm old, and remember when being openly gay wasn't fun.
michaelmrose 4y ago
Small groupings of people drawn from populations that are heavily weighted toward white male English speakers organically selected are unlikely to be more diverse than the population its drawn from and many groupings will end up distinctly unequal even without bias being involved. If you imagine dealing out people like cards into stacks chosen randomly and enumerating the demographics of each stack then large stacks would tend towards the population demographics but many smaller stacks would have all sorts of distributions. The only way to ensure a small group is diverse or a large group isn't is to select them for immutable characteristics instead of skill.

davexunit 4y ago

Lots of talk about "forced diversity" that ignores the diverse pool of talented people that the FSF has pushed away because they don't think "GNU+Linux" is a hill worth dying on or whatever.

rekado 4y ago
It goes beyond just battles on mole hills: the FSF and the GNU mailing lists are full of extremely time-consuming discussions that are fueled by conspiratorial thinking, feature excessive celebration of nitpicking, with participants that regularly lose themselves in groan-worthy tangents, operate on oversimplified models of society with unjustified arrogance, etc --- they are really bad places for constructive discourse. There are not many people who are both talented in their fields and have the surplus time and energy to exercise a saint-like restraint to deal with all the draining crap. This environment is the sediment that filters a lot of talent and successfully prevents healthy growth. This does not necessarily apply to individual GNU packages, but the overarching "project" structure is rotten and resistant to any attempts at reform.
- davexunit 4y ago
  Thanks for following up with more details. You're absolutely right about all of it. After experiencing some/all of those things, most rational people realize there time is better spent elsewhere and move on.
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  Thanks that explains why their board is filled with drek like a treasurer with a degree in economics from Harvard and Gerald J. Sussman, Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT.
subsistence234 4y ago
[flagged]
- rekado 4y ago
  What's the deal with this low-effort flame bait? Have you volunteered for the FSF? Are you or have you been active on the FSF or GNU mailing lists? Certainly there are countless opportunities for reform away from elitist pedantry that are not tantamount to "being about the newest Apple products", wouldn't you agree?