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For anyone critizing this: From the trademark bullshit to the conference drama, it's clear at this point that someone with influence in the Rust foundation is b

For anyone critizing this: From the trademark bullshit to the conference drama, it's clear at this point that someone with influence in the Rust foundation is behaving like an asshole and damaging the project. That can happen in open source, see Stallman and others. It's also clear that others at the Rust foundation tolerate this behavior, downplay it, don't understand the impact, don't want to go against a "respected contributor", don't want to lose their own position of influence, or behave too much like sheep to stand up for what's right. Moves like these target them. This sends the message "fix this or the community will move on". Credible threats of a hostile fork have sometimes worked in the past to get a steering committee to fix their shit, see Node.js/io.js. It's no guarantee, but it's one of the very few weapons a community has if a project's leadership remains stubborn.

pietro72ohboy 3y ago
> That can happen in open source, see Stallman and others. Could you elaborate on because I'm increasingly seeing Stallman being thrown around as a bogeyman who impeded FOSS progress for years if not decades and I really dislike this trend. It seems that his personal views (which I do not support) and eccentricity is being conflated with his contributions to FOSS. I will preface this by noting that this is "my belief" but Stallman has been a positive force in ensuring that consumers today can work, play and do practically anything on a largely free platform. Via the FSF, his contributions towards the GPL license series ensures that contributions to the Linux kernel stay open allowing the kernel to improve as a whole.
- pydry 3y ago
  He doesnt seem to be liked by some of the more powerful, corporate entities in tech, probably because he pushes some agendas that are somewhat anti-their-profits. I think this was behind the rather unsuccessful attempts to cancel him a few years ago, which cast a shadow over his reputation.
  - devoutsalsa 3y ago
    I heard Stallman speak once about FOSS. He struck me as a very interesting person, but not very flexible in his views. Even if he's 100% "right" in the long run about how digital products should be completely free, his views are so polarizing that it'd be hard to interact with him long enough to understand his positions.
    - tombert 3y ago
      I think there is value in people like Stallman existing. I disagree with him in a lot of regards, but I think it's important for people like him to shift the "Overton Window" of software copyright a bit closer to FOSS. He's a disagreeable bastard, I'm not even sure he would dispute that, but a part of me does respect the dedication to the cause. That said, I almost always use BSD or MIT licenses for my personal stuff; sometimes I use the Eclipse one because that's the default that Leiningen gives me for Clojure and I can't really be bothered.
      - detourdog 3y ago
        That captures my sentiment exactly and GPL is always the last choice for me.
    - pydry 3y ago
      For the last 30 years a strong belief in anthropogenic global warming has been polarizing too. Sometimes appeals to moderation are valid, but I think sometimes it is entirely the wrong thing to do.
    - detourdog 3y ago
      Idealism retards the growth of most good ideas. I suffer this daily but it is an internal struggle and I structure my idealism to minimize the impact on others.
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    > He doesnt seem to be liked by some of the more powerful, corporate entities in tech, probably because he pushes some agendas that are somewhat anti-their-profits I don't think any of those corporate entities care about Stallman in the slightest. At least 95% of the time you hear talk about him even in technical forums it's the "why is he still around" sort of controversy in various forms. You almost never hear about him doing something that could be described as positive leadership that could make any competition worry. I highly doubt anybody at those powerful, corporate entities even keep track of what he's doing, let alone has any concerns for their profits because of him. > I think this was behind the rather unsuccessful attempts to cancel him a few years ago, which cast a shadow over his reputation. The attempts to get him out I think come mostly from the Free Software community itself who to a large extent wants a better and less embarrassing leadership.
- codeflo 3y ago
  > his personal views (which I do not support) and eccentricity Oh wow. That's some downplaying of the actual issue, which I won't make explicit because it's absolutely disgusting. The guy made himself and his foundation untouchable for anyone with a reputation to lose, leading to a lot of effort going into "de-GNU-ification" of technology stacks. > Stallman has been a positive force It's very hard to make this kind of argument for anything he has done in the last 15 years. Two quick points: The version of the GPL that continues to enable the success of Linux is one that Stallman now explicitly disapproves of. And you might have noticed not a single one of the recent successful programming languages uses GCC as the default backend -- there's a whole history of Stallman intervention in the project and resulting idiotic architecture decisions behind why that's the case.
  - zajio1am 3y ago
    > leading to a lot of effort going into "de-GNU-ification" of technology stacks. De-GNU-ification was mostly about GPLv3, not Stallman. Some of this was pushed by Apple, so they can use free software without copyleft requirements.
    - arp242 3y ago
      Technical issues were another reason; Stallman intentionally made GCC worse to prevent possible abuse (mostly based on unfounded fears, IMHO), some GNU tools are not well suited for all environments ("bloated", for lack of a better term), and there have been some governance issues (e.g. GNU libc was notorious for a long time, but also copyright assignments to the FSF, bad technical decisions being made for purely ideological reasons). Also, Apple pretty much proposed to transfer LLVM to the FSF: "If people are seriously in favor of LLVM being a long-term part of GCC, I personally believe that the LLVM community would agree to assign the copyright of LLVM itself to the FSF and we can work through these details."[1] which was basically just ignored. That was in 2005 before GPLv3, but it shows that Apple wasn't against copyleft out of principle and that a small bit of pragmatism would have prevented the alienation of Apple, as well as many other organisations and people. All that for the very small benefit the controversial clauses in GPLv3 give us. Well done people. [1]: https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2005-11/msg00888.html https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2005-11/msg00888.html
- kaba0 3y ago
  > with his contributions to FOSS It is not as noteworthy as well known his name is. Especially if you count how many have stopped working on open-source projects because of him.
  - unconed 3y ago
    Can you name a few of these luminaries to see what we've lost? Most of what I've heard about Stallman are social attacks from autistic mean girls with zero self awareness. Edit: FYI, people have flagged my follow up comment where I address the request for clarification to make it look like there is none. Just turn on showdead in your HN options to see. This is exactly the kind of playbook they love to use. Manipulative, dishonest and pathetic. https://acko.net/blog/on-sperging-out/ https://acko.net/blog/on-sperging-out/
    - jakear 3y ago
      Quite extreme words to provide no reference supporting them.
      - unconed 3y ago
        [flagged]
    - eyko 3y ago
      I've met and hung out quite a bit with Stallman (as part of a conference organizers group) in the early 2000s and he wasn't the most self aware person when it came to social situations. He is very socially awkward. Everything I've read so far has seemed plausible, although I would also agree that it seems to be blown out of proportion. He is one of the kindest persons I've met, very idealistic, and a captivating personality. It's just super socially awkward being around him. Sometimes straight up uncomfortable.
      - johnisgood 3y ago
        Do they still use the term socially awkward to describe nerdy people who work in IT? I thought it was quite on point, at least back in the days.
- arp242 3y ago
  I wrote about this a few years ago in [1]. I think some of the more recent personal attacks have been unfair and misguided, but criticism of Stallman goes back decades. Why does X use the MIT license and not GPL? Because they found Stallman too difficult to talk to (see quote in the article). Many prominent people involved in Free Software have been at odds with Stallman for a long time. When I first heard of Stallman in an interview sometime in the early 2000s I compared him to Osama Bin Laden in terms of extremism, which was a mean and wrong thing to do and I'm sorry I did that (I was young...), but it's indicative of the kind of responses he's evoked for a long time. Some of his ideas are good, but many are also silly, and some downright misguided. You can have good ideas and be a bad leader of a movement. These two things are not mutually exclusive. A wiser and less ego-centric Stallman would have stepped back decades ago. [1]: https://www.arp242.net/rms.html https://www.arp242.net/rms.html
  - toyg 3y ago
    > A wiser and less ego-centric Stallman would have stepped back decades ago. I don't agree. For all his limits, Stallman maintained an ideological purity that is required to firmly signpost one end of the Overton window. Opensource licenses and projects can mix and match rights and regulations, but you will always have an unwatered GPL option, there to remind people of what the original ideal looked like. Compare the trajectory of the GNU project with that of Mozilla, for example. Mozilla compromised ideals to gain popularity, and now that popularity is waning the compromise gets worse and worse (pocket, pop-unders...). GNU compromised nothing, ignored ebbs and flows in popularity, and will continue to do their thankless work for the good of the community at large.
    - bigcat12345678 3y ago
      The puny weak souls shudders in the sight of an unbreakable mind
    - dale_glass 3y ago
      I don't think ideological purity is the problem here.
- johnisgood 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36108633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36108633 [1] Guess who's the common denominator here? Yup. JeanHeyd. Such a small world. [1] https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235124.html https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235124.html
  - HumanOstrich 3y ago
    Yea, it's good to see someone consistently pushing back against hate and refusing to give up or be silenced.
    - srslack 3y ago
      That's a funny definition of "hate" you have there.
      - HumanOstrich 3y ago
        No, it's not really funny at all.
        srslack 3y ago
        You’re right, I was being charitable to try and adhere to guidelines. Should’ve been “delusional” instead of “funny.”
- goodpoint 3y ago
  This has nothing to do with the GPL. For more than two decades Stallman has been described as a terrible public speaker by most people who met him in person. He has many strange quirks and can be very brash. He himself admits being very tone deaf.
  - tristramb 3y ago
    I think it probably took an awkward misfit to create the GNU propject and the GPL in the first place. I am reminded of "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." (Maxims for Revolutionists by George Bernard Shaw)
    - goodpoint 3y ago
      No, GPL is the product of the existing hacker culture. Thousands of people were involved in the early FOSS movement.
- detourdog 3y ago
  Stallman is a pillar of our community for better or worse he insisted on the availability of a free c compiler with source code. He is too extreme for my tastes but deserves a base level of respect despite himself.
- danielheath 3y ago
  I'm thankful to Stallman for his many contributions to the field - (software, legal, moral writings, etc). I am better off for his work, as are most living humans. However, there's a pretty large number of perfectly reasonable-seeming people who refuse to spend any time interacting with him, either in person or online. His reputation, fairly or otherwise, is terrible. Maybe that's deserved, maybe it's undeserved - but it's the reputation he has, and that reputation is enough to seriously discourage people from getting involved in the FSF in any capacity.
- bigbillheck 3y ago
  The first one that comers to mind is when he refused to allow changes to gcc to expose the AST: https://lwn.net/Articles/629259/ https://lwn.net/Articles/629259/ , and this came up in another thread a while back: https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2001-02/msg00895.html https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2001-02/msg00895.html There was also the whole egcs thing.
- jbirer 3y ago
  [flagged]
Nanana909 3y ago
Agree on all points. Something needs to change in the Rust foundation fundamentally. But as far as forks go this one seems quite low effort. Does the tactic work if the other side knows what you’re doing? From Ashley Williams, former founding member of the Rust Foundation (I don’t support her pretentious tone here)[1]: > "I don't think any of the folks who are part of it are language designers," said Williams. "They didn't even do a full find-and-replace on the word 'rust' the repo. But the community doesn't have a lot of recourse in situations like this besides making kind of ridiculous gestures [to say] 'hey, we want you to engage with us differently.'" Personally I’d be interested in ideas for alternate governance models for Rust. Should package maintainers with over a certain threshold of users be given votes? Could strike the balance between complete direct democracy anarchy and an opaque small group making the choices. [1] https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2023/04/17/rust_foundation_apologizes_trademark_policy/ https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2023/04/17/rust_foundation_a...
- jakear 3y ago
  > I don't think any of the folks who are part of it are language designers Ugh. Hate this sentiment that some people are language designers, and others simply aren't. So pretentious. If someone is designing a language they're a language designer, they don't need your approval. And yes, designing the distribution, branding, community, and leadership around a fork of an existing language counts as designing a language. Just because the speaker's "team" seems to be lacking in those aspects doesn't mean they aren't an important part of language design. Regarding the "full find and replace", they haven't gone through to change path names because that'd cause far more trouble in synchronization with upstream than it's worth. Accordingly, they haven't changed source text that references those path names. Knowing which changes are appropriate versus the ones that aren't takes far more "language design" know-how than simply doing the "full find and replace" the speaker suggested.
  - Nanana909 3y ago
    It seemed quite pretentious and dismissive to me too. Sorry, didn’t intend to imply I agreed fully with the quote. But there is a deeper point which is part of our root comment: is it a genuine effort or a negotiation tactic?
alkonaut 3y ago
I can fork the repos too, but unless I present a large group of credible and high-level contributors (that is, I fork the team too). Which people are putting their weight behind this fork? The readme doesn't mention the reason for the fork, who made it and who governs it. Which would be the most interesting info. Edit: apperently there is a main site (https://crablang.org/ https://crablang.org/) with more info. The most important piece of info is missing though: names.
- bartimus 3y ago
  It appears this was already brewing since (before) April 14th: https://web.archive.org/web/20230414111812/https://crablang.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230414111812/https://crablang....
- zamalek 3y ago
  I'd argue that devops is somewhat more important than names, which crablang does seem to be addressing pretty quickly - the whole rustup workflow seems to be working, which is a big deal. Names will follow as names deem fit, especially when Rust leadership (following the latest issue, that is both the foundation and the project leadership) keeps making terrible decisions and terrible reparations.
hurril 3y ago
No, what is happening is a storm in a glass of water. _This_ is what is hurting the language and the environment. You have to protect trademarks or you lose them. Having a late change to a conference is definitely bad and sad but there is simply no need for that to imply a rage quit and all this drama. That is a non-sequiteur. Suck it up, make the talk on youtube (or somewhere else); I'm sure there are lots of people that wish to see it; I know I would. Enough drama!
- jakear 3y ago
  > You have to protect trademarks or you lose them. Let them be lost, who cares? It's not even a novel name, they just co-opted an existing word for their little gang and now don't want anyone else to use it. Even Oracle, the chief lawyer-assholes of the industry, have basically given up on trying to own "JavaScript", and that at least is a uniquely derived term.
  - Avamander 3y ago
    > Let them be lost, who cares? Users who don't want malware/abandonware. See more: Mumble.com and Mumble.info
    - jakear 3y ago
      You're arguing one of them should have exclusive right to use the word "mumble" in reference to software related to vocal communication?
      - Avamander 3y ago
        Yes, one of them should have the right to use that logo and name for VoIP, absolutely. There are plenty of names everyone can pick that don't namesquat on an existing project. I find it especially nasty if it's a FOSS project that gets its name abused.
        wink 3y ago
TotempaaltJ 3y ago
I think it's worth reiterating here that there are two separate entities at play in the Rust community. First, there's the Rust Project, a (non-incorporated) group of people that actually maintain the language and surrounding assets. They've been undergoing a "crisis of governance" for a couple of years now from what I can tell, and they're working on a new governance structure. This is where the moderation team resignation happened, and just a few days ago the RustConf drama. Then there's the Rust Foundation, which is an incorporated entity and the legal owner of Rust's trademarks. They manage (corporate) funding/donations, issue grants, and manage some infrastructure stuff. IIRC, they have no official influence in the Rust Project (and by extension, in the language). This is where the recent trademark policy drama originated. To be quite honest, I think this separation is super confusing and it should be delineated more clearly.
saithound 3y ago
As an interested outsider, it is indeed painfully clear at this point that someone is behaving like an asshole and damaging the project. Creating a hostile fork ticks both boxes.
- cookieperson 3y ago
  If the people in charge don't represent you, and you can't get rid of them, do your own thing. I see nothing wrong with this. It's an OSS project, people can do what they want with it. I doubt it'll succeed but who cares people can do whatever they want. I'm honestly surprised at the amount of people on here taking the side of "take the abuse from leadership and don't do what you want with OSS".
  - pie_flavor 3y ago
    They're not doing their own thing. They're doing the same thing with a different name and have no intent to contribute original patches that don't change the name. It takes about two seconds in GitHub's UI to fork, and about five minutes of fiddling with sed to change it to the degree that they changed it.
    - cookieperson 3y ago
      Maybe they have a different vision for it. And sometimes people prefer to work under different conditions. The ends don't justify the means. People jump from one insurance company to another insurance company for changes in leadership every day. If these people don't want to work under the current leadership I'd say they aren't doing the same thing. OSS is a free thing. They can do what they want.
      - pie_flavor 3y ago
        They aren't working under the current leadership. None of them work on Rust and none of them plan to work on Crab. There is no point acting like five minutes fiddling with sed is the start of something big in the first place, but especially when the authors explicitly state that they aren't planning on starting anything.
still_grokking 3y ago
Just to get this straight: Did you just say that Stallman, the inventor of free software, is damaging OpenSource?
- ilc 3y ago
  Learn the meaning of the two words: Open Source = You can see the source. Usually MIT / BSD + GPL + MPL and various others are all "Open Source" Free Software = GPL and other licenses that enforce the users freedom of access to source code. Free has nothing to do with cost.
- grayhatter 3y ago
  he is... the free software movement fails without the hearts and minds of developers. Developers are, unfortunately, still humans and will refuse to follow the advice of someone they deem to be a twat. Even if that twat is right, if you can't convince someone free/open source software is better you lose. Stallman is well known to act like a twat, thus holding him up as the voice of foss will convince people that foss is just a bunch of douche bags. thereby damaging open source.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
fermigier 3y ago
I met Stallman for the first time in ~1993-1995, in Paris. He was talking about the threat of copyright on user interfaces (the infamous "thrash bin" lawsuit) and (but less so) on software patents, speaking in the name of the League for Programming Freedom[1] (LPF) that he was leading at the time. So this was a talk explicitly about programming freedom (and against the risk posed by excessive IP regulations), NOT about free software. Everybody in the room mostly agreed with Stallman, but there was one guy, a shareware author, who had some objections to what he was saying, namely that he wanted some protection for his software and thought that his business couldn't survive without them. Stallman was not pleased at the objection, and began shouting at him like a madman, saying that he deserved to die (figuratively). This happened again a few years later, still in my presence, this time against a representative of MuPAD, an organisation who had ported their software to Linux. Since I was the person who had invited MuPAD in the first place, I got my fair share of Stallman's burst of anger. Needless to say, I found the first event bizarre, to say the least, and Stallman lost all of my respect, as a person, after the second event. Besides his anger management issues, I think that he made a major mistake in focussing on free software as a goal in itself, and not on programming freedom, which could have rallied many more supporters. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_for_Programming_Freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_for_Programming_Freedom
- globular-toast 3y ago
  > Besides his anger management issues, I think that he made a major mistake in focussing on free software as a goal in itself, and not on programming freedom, which could have rallied many more supporters. Programming freedom might have been easier, but I think free software is a more laudable goal. Programmers possess exceptional skills and it's mostly our choice to use and produce free software, or not. One of Stallman's essential tenets is that non-free software gives programmers power over the users. Giving programmers more freedom only serves to strengthen this power. Free software is supposed to give everybody (or nobody) this power.
  - syntheweave 3y ago
    Free software moves the goalposts of freedom towards "sufficiently clued in user can operate and maintain free software", not "everyone of any skillset has a viable path to control their program". Programming freedom is the harder goal. Anyone can dump source code and say "yeah it's GPL now." That's how it worked out that so much of the early stuff was, in respects small and large, "software for free, documentation for sale". There's no mandate for usability or conceptual simplicity. And we've only gotten better in the sense of having more developers interested in that stuff.
gigatexal 3y ago
Okay this is fine but will they have the commercial backing that Rust has from the likes of Microsoft and Mozilla and others? Are the languages different? Is the fork just to fix the management or will the languages diverge/have they already?
- gigatexal 3y ago
  from the main [site](https://crablang.org/ https://crablang.org/): "The Official Home of CrabLang! A community fork of a language named after a plant fungus. All of the memory-safe features you love, now with 100% less bureaucracy! Why CrabLang? The Crab (or “CrabLang”) community fork was created as a lighthearted yet measured response to the growing concerns within the community about the influence of corporations and the restrictive trademark policy proposed by the foundation. This was not a "knee-jerk" reaction, nor was it an attempt to spread fear or cause panic. While the document the foundation drafted did lead to the fork, we believe it is an overdue solution to a problem that already existed, and addresses some issues that many community members have had for some time. First and foremost: CrabLang is not trying to replace our beloved language. If you are happy with the way things are, we encourage you to continue using your language of choice. Our goal is not to fracture the community, but rather to provide an alternative for those who share our concerns and wish to have more freedom in using, creating with, and promoting the language without worrying about the litigation associated with trademark infringement. We acknowledge and appreciate the hard work and financial support that corporations have provided to the original project. We understand the importance of their contributions, but we also believe that it is essential to maintain a balance between corporate influence and the will of the community. The CrabLang Collective aims to provide a space where the community can thrive without the constraints imposed by corporate interests. We want to emphasize that we are not at odds with the project or the original language. We appreciate everything they do to make the language better, and our fork's main branch will continue to stay up to date with the upstream codebase. Our main goal is to ensure that the community has an alternative that aligns with their values and desire for unrestricted use. The Crab community fork is driven by our love for a language named after a type of fungus. We simply want to use it while retaining the ability to create content and promote its name, logo, and other assets however we please, without the limitations imposed by a trademark policy. By offering a community-driven alternative, we hope to maintain a spirit of collaboration, innovation, and creative freedom. With our shared passion for programming, we welcome anyone interested to join us in exploring the Crab community fork. Whether or not you fully agree with our concerns, we believe that diversity of thought and a commitment to inclusivity will only strengthen our collective efforts. Come on in! The water is warm! CrabLang 2023" Got it now.
Xenoamorphous 3y ago
ffmpeg vs libav is one case where I think the hostile fork ended up working well.
- fluoridation 3y ago
  libav was the hostile fork, not FFmpeg. Someone removed write permissions from key contributors (or contributor. I forget) and just about everyone sided with those contributors, thus the instigators were forced to rename their project. The development effort stayed on FFmpeg, even as the libav people tried porting back the changes. Eventually libav passed into irrelevance as it failed to acquire mindshare and distributions stopped including it.
  - Xenoamorphous 3y ago
    It's been a while since I read the story but I believe it did prompt some changes in ffmpeg management, that's why I was saying it was a hostile fork success story.
    - dralley 3y ago
      glibc would be a better example in that case.
- meinersbur 3y ago
  libav was the fork [1], and libav is dead now [2,3] (and many developers returned to ffmpeg). libav was forced to rename their project because Fabrice Bellard, still owner of the trademark and the ffmpeg.org domain, did not hand it over. ffmpeg put in much effort retain compatibility with libav, mostly by merging all their changes wholesale, while libav ignored ffmpeg, including and most crucially, their security fixes [4]. [1] http://blog.pkh.me/p/13-the-ffmpeg-libav-situation.html http://blog.pkh.me/p/13-the-ffmpeg-libav-situation.html [2] https://www.libav.org/ https://www.libav.org/ [3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/FFmpeg-Back-In-Debian https://www.phoronix.com/news/FFmpeg-Back-In-Debian [4] https://j00ru.vexillium.org/2014/01/ffmpeg-and-the-tale-of-a-thousand-fixes/ https://j00ru.vexillium.org/2014/01/ffmpeg-and-the-tale-of-a...
xoac 3y ago
The only thing this fork promises is even more drama.
Georgelemental 3y ago
The Rust Foundation (responsible for trademark drama) and the Rust Project (at fault for conference drama) are separate entities.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > The Rust Foundation (responsible for trademark drama) and the Rust Project (at fault for conference drama) are separate entities. They both appear to share the same tone-deafness, though.
andrewflnr 3y ago
It's clear that there's some collosal incompetence, but malice is not at all clear. Most of the recent drama plausibly boils down to communication failure. They're going to fix this, eventually.

pietro72ohboy 3y ago

> That can happen in open source, see Stallman and others. Could you elaborate on because I'm increasingly seeing Stallman being thrown around as a bogeyman who impeded FOSS progress for years if not decades and I really dislike this trend. It seems that his personal views (which I do not support) and eccentricity is being conflated with his contributions to FOSS. I will preface this by noting that this is "my belief" but Stallman has been a positive force in ensuring that consumers today can work, play and do practically anything on a largely free platform. Via the FSF, his contributions towards the GPL license series ensures that contributions to the Linux kernel stay open allowing the kernel to improve as a whole.

pydry 3y ago
He doesnt seem to be liked by some of the more powerful, corporate entities in tech, probably because he pushes some agendas that are somewhat anti-their-profits. I think this was behind the rather unsuccessful attempts to cancel him a few years ago, which cast a shadow over his reputation.
- devoutsalsa 3y ago
  I heard Stallman speak once about FOSS. He struck me as a very interesting person, but not very flexible in his views. Even if he's 100% "right" in the long run about how digital products should be completely free, his views are so polarizing that it'd be hard to interact with him long enough to understand his positions.
  - tombert 3y ago
    I think there is value in people like Stallman existing. I disagree with him in a lot of regards, but I think it's important for people like him to shift the "Overton Window" of software copyright a bit closer to FOSS. He's a disagreeable bastard, I'm not even sure he would dispute that, but a part of me does respect the dedication to the cause. That said, I almost always use BSD or MIT licenses for my personal stuff; sometimes I use the Eclipse one because that's the default that Leiningen gives me for Clojure and I can't really be bothered.
    - detourdog 3y ago
      That captures my sentiment exactly and GPL is always the last choice for me.
  - pydry 3y ago
    For the last 30 years a strong belief in anthropogenic global warming has been polarizing too. Sometimes appeals to moderation are valid, but I think sometimes it is entirely the wrong thing to do.
  - detourdog 3y ago
    Idealism retards the growth of most good ideas. I suffer this daily but it is an internal struggle and I structure my idealism to minimize the impact on others.
- dale_glass 3y ago
  > He doesnt seem to be liked by some of the more powerful, corporate entities in tech, probably because he pushes some agendas that are somewhat anti-their-profits I don't think any of those corporate entities care about Stallman in the slightest. At least 95% of the time you hear talk about him even in technical forums it's the "why is he still around" sort of controversy in various forms. You almost never hear about him doing something that could be described as positive leadership that could make any competition worry. I highly doubt anybody at those powerful, corporate entities even keep track of what he's doing, let alone has any concerns for their profits because of him. > I think this was behind the rather unsuccessful attempts to cancel him a few years ago, which cast a shadow over his reputation. The attempts to get him out I think come mostly from the Free Software community itself who to a large extent wants a better and less embarrassing leadership.
codeflo 3y ago
> his personal views (which I do not support) and eccentricity Oh wow. That's some downplaying of the actual issue, which I won't make explicit because it's absolutely disgusting. The guy made himself and his foundation untouchable for anyone with a reputation to lose, leading to a lot of effort going into "de-GNU-ification" of technology stacks. > Stallman has been a positive force It's very hard to make this kind of argument for anything he has done in the last 15 years. Two quick points: The version of the GPL that continues to enable the success of Linux is one that Stallman now explicitly disapproves of. And you might have noticed not a single one of the recent successful programming languages uses GCC as the default backend -- there's a whole history of Stallman intervention in the project and resulting idiotic architecture decisions behind why that's the case.
- zajio1am 3y ago
  > leading to a lot of effort going into "de-GNU-ification" of technology stacks. De-GNU-ification was mostly about GPLv3, not Stallman. Some of this was pushed by Apple, so they can use free software without copyleft requirements.
  - arp242 3y ago
    Technical issues were another reason; Stallman intentionally made GCC worse to prevent possible abuse (mostly based on unfounded fears, IMHO), some GNU tools are not well suited for all environments ("bloated", for lack of a better term), and there have been some governance issues (e.g. GNU libc was notorious for a long time, but also copyright assignments to the FSF, bad technical decisions being made for purely ideological reasons). Also, Apple pretty much proposed to transfer LLVM to the FSF: "If people are seriously in favor of LLVM being a long-term part of GCC, I personally believe that the LLVM community would agree to assign the copyright of LLVM itself to the FSF and we can work through these details."[1] which was basically just ignored. That was in 2005 before GPLv3, but it shows that Apple wasn't against copyleft out of principle and that a small bit of pragmatism would have prevented the alienation of Apple, as well as many other organisations and people. All that for the very small benefit the controversial clauses in GPLv3 give us. Well done people. [1]: https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2005-11/msg00888.html https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2005-11/msg00888.html
kaba0 3y ago
> with his contributions to FOSS It is not as noteworthy as well known his name is. Especially if you count how many have stopped working on open-source projects because of him.
- unconed 3y ago
  Can you name a few of these luminaries to see what we've lost? Most of what I've heard about Stallman are social attacks from autistic mean girls with zero self awareness. Edit: FYI, people have flagged my follow up comment where I address the request for clarification to make it look like there is none. Just turn on showdead in your HN options to see. This is exactly the kind of playbook they love to use. Manipulative, dishonest and pathetic. https://acko.net/blog/on-sperging-out/ https://acko.net/blog/on-sperging-out/
  - jakear 3y ago
    Quite extreme words to provide no reference supporting them.
    - unconed 3y ago
      [flagged]
  - eyko 3y ago
    I've met and hung out quite a bit with Stallman (as part of a conference organizers group) in the early 2000s and he wasn't the most self aware person when it came to social situations. He is very socially awkward. Everything I've read so far has seemed plausible, although I would also agree that it seems to be blown out of proportion. He is one of the kindest persons I've met, very idealistic, and a captivating personality. It's just super socially awkward being around him. Sometimes straight up uncomfortable.
    - johnisgood 3y ago
      Do they still use the term socially awkward to describe nerdy people who work in IT? I thought it was quite on point, at least back in the days.
arp242 3y ago
I wrote about this a few years ago in [1]. I think some of the more recent personal attacks have been unfair and misguided, but criticism of Stallman goes back decades. Why does X use the MIT license and not GPL? Because they found Stallman too difficult to talk to (see quote in the article). Many prominent people involved in Free Software have been at odds with Stallman for a long time. When I first heard of Stallman in an interview sometime in the early 2000s I compared him to Osama Bin Laden in terms of extremism, which was a mean and wrong thing to do and I'm sorry I did that (I was young...), but it's indicative of the kind of responses he's evoked for a long time. Some of his ideas are good, but many are also silly, and some downright misguided. You can have good ideas and be a bad leader of a movement. These two things are not mutually exclusive. A wiser and less ego-centric Stallman would have stepped back decades ago. [1]: https://www.arp242.net/rms.html https://www.arp242.net/rms.html
- toyg 3y ago
  > A wiser and less ego-centric Stallman would have stepped back decades ago. I don't agree. For all his limits, Stallman maintained an ideological purity that is required to firmly signpost one end of the Overton window. Opensource licenses and projects can mix and match rights and regulations, but you will always have an unwatered GPL option, there to remind people of what the original ideal looked like. Compare the trajectory of the GNU project with that of Mozilla, for example. Mozilla compromised ideals to gain popularity, and now that popularity is waning the compromise gets worse and worse (pocket, pop-unders...). GNU compromised nothing, ignored ebbs and flows in popularity, and will continue to do their thankless work for the good of the community at large.
  - bigcat12345678 3y ago
    The puny weak souls shudders in the sight of an unbreakable mind
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    I don't think ideological purity is the problem here.
johnisgood 3y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36108633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36108633 [1] Guess who's the common denominator here? Yup. JeanHeyd. Such a small world. [1] https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235124.html https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235124.html
- HumanOstrich 3y ago
  Yea, it's good to see someone consistently pushing back against hate and refusing to give up or be silenced.
  - srslack 3y ago
    That's a funny definition of "hate" you have there.
    - HumanOstrich 3y ago
      No, it's not really funny at all.
      - srslack 3y ago
        You’re right, I was being charitable to try and adhere to guidelines. Should’ve been “delusional” instead of “funny.”
goodpoint 3y ago
This has nothing to do with the GPL. For more than two decades Stallman has been described as a terrible public speaker by most people who met him in person. He has many strange quirks and can be very brash. He himself admits being very tone deaf.
- tristramb 3y ago
  I think it probably took an awkward misfit to create the GNU propject and the GPL in the first place. I am reminded of "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." (Maxims for Revolutionists by George Bernard Shaw)
  - goodpoint 3y ago
    No, GPL is the product of the existing hacker culture. Thousands of people were involved in the early FOSS movement.
detourdog 3y ago
Stallman is a pillar of our community for better or worse he insisted on the availability of a free c compiler with source code. He is too extreme for my tastes but deserves a base level of respect despite himself.
danielheath 3y ago
I'm thankful to Stallman for his many contributions to the field - (software, legal, moral writings, etc). I am better off for his work, as are most living humans. However, there's a pretty large number of perfectly reasonable-seeming people who refuse to spend any time interacting with him, either in person or online. His reputation, fairly or otherwise, is terrible. Maybe that's deserved, maybe it's undeserved - but it's the reputation he has, and that reputation is enough to seriously discourage people from getting involved in the FSF in any capacity.
bigbillheck 3y ago
The first one that comers to mind is when he refused to allow changes to gcc to expose the AST: https://lwn.net/Articles/629259/ https://lwn.net/Articles/629259/ , and this came up in another thread a while back: https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2001-02/msg00895.html https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2001-02/msg00895.html There was also the whole egcs thing.
jbirer 3y ago
[flagged]

Nanana909 3y ago

Agree on all points. Something needs to change in the Rust foundation fundamentally. But as far as forks go this one seems quite low effort. Does the tactic work if the other side knows what you’re doing? From Ashley Williams, former founding member of the Rust Foundation (I don’t support her pretentious tone here)[1]: > "I don't think any of the folks who are part of it are language designers," said Williams. "They didn't even do a full find-and-replace on the word 'rust' the repo. But the community doesn't have a lot of recourse in situations like this besides making kind of ridiculous gestures [to say] 'hey, we want you to engage with us differently.'" Personally I’d be interested in ideas for alternate governance models for Rust. Should package maintainers with over a certain threshold of users be given votes? Could strike the balance between complete direct democracy anarchy and an opaque small group making the choices. [1] https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2023/04/17/rust_foundation_apologizes_trademark_policy/ https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2023/04/17/rust_foundation_a...

jakear 3y ago
> I don't think any of the folks who are part of it are language designers Ugh. Hate this sentiment that some people are language designers, and others simply aren't. So pretentious. If someone is designing a language they're a language designer, they don't need your approval. And yes, designing the distribution, branding, community, and leadership around a fork of an existing language counts as designing a language. Just because the speaker's "team" seems to be lacking in those aspects doesn't mean they aren't an important part of language design. Regarding the "full find and replace", they haven't gone through to change path names because that'd cause far more trouble in synchronization with upstream than it's worth. Accordingly, they haven't changed source text that references those path names. Knowing which changes are appropriate versus the ones that aren't takes far more "language design" know-how than simply doing the "full find and replace" the speaker suggested.
- Nanana909 3y ago
  It seemed quite pretentious and dismissive to me too. Sorry, didn’t intend to imply I agreed fully with the quote. But there is a deeper point which is part of our root comment: is it a genuine effort or a negotiation tactic?

alkonaut 3y ago

I can fork the repos too, but unless I present a large group of credible and high-level contributors (that is, I fork the team too). Which people are putting their weight behind this fork? The readme doesn't mention the reason for the fork, who made it and who governs it. Which would be the most interesting info. Edit: apperently there is a main site (https://crablang.org/ https://crablang.org/) with more info. The most important piece of info is missing though: names.

bartimus 3y ago
It appears this was already brewing since (before) April 14th: https://web.archive.org/web/20230414111812/https://crablang.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230414111812/https://crablang....
zamalek 3y ago
I'd argue that devops is somewhat more important than names, which crablang does seem to be addressing pretty quickly - the whole rustup workflow seems to be working, which is a big deal. Names will follow as names deem fit, especially when Rust leadership (following the latest issue, that is both the foundation and the project leadership) keeps making terrible decisions and terrible reparations.

hurril 3y ago

No, what is happening is a storm in a glass of water. _This_ is what is hurting the language and the environment. You have to protect trademarks or you lose them. Having a late change to a conference is definitely bad and sad but there is simply no need for that to imply a rage quit and all this drama. That is a non-sequiteur. Suck it up, make the talk on youtube (or somewhere else); I'm sure there are lots of people that wish to see it; I know I would. Enough drama!

jakear 3y ago
> You have to protect trademarks or you lose them. Let them be lost, who cares? It's not even a novel name, they just co-opted an existing word for their little gang and now don't want anyone else to use it. Even Oracle, the chief lawyer-assholes of the industry, have basically given up on trying to own "JavaScript", and that at least is a uniquely derived term.
- Avamander 3y ago
  > Let them be lost, who cares? Users who don't want malware/abandonware. See more: Mumble.com and Mumble.info
  - jakear 3y ago
    You're arguing one of them should have exclusive right to use the word "mumble" in reference to software related to vocal communication?
    - Avamander 3y ago
      Yes, one of them should have the right to use that logo and name for VoIP, absolutely. There are plenty of names everyone can pick that don't namesquat on an existing project. I find it especially nasty if it's a FOSS project that gets its name abused.
      - wink 3y ago

TotempaaltJ 3y ago

I think it's worth reiterating here that there are two separate entities at play in the Rust community. First, there's the Rust Project, a (non-incorporated) group of people that actually maintain the language and surrounding assets. They've been undergoing a "crisis of governance" for a couple of years now from what I can tell, and they're working on a new governance structure. This is where the moderation team resignation happened, and just a few days ago the RustConf drama. Then there's the Rust Foundation, which is an incorporated entity and the legal owner of Rust's trademarks. They manage (corporate) funding/donations, issue grants, and manage some infrastructure stuff. IIRC, they have no official influence in the Rust Project (and by extension, in the language). This is where the recent trademark policy drama originated. To be quite honest, I think this separation is super confusing and it should be delineated more clearly.

saithound 3y ago

As an interested outsider, it is indeed painfully clear at this point that someone is behaving like an asshole and damaging the project. Creating a hostile fork ticks both boxes.

cookieperson 3y ago
If the people in charge don't represent you, and you can't get rid of them, do your own thing. I see nothing wrong with this. It's an OSS project, people can do what they want with it. I doubt it'll succeed but who cares people can do whatever they want. I'm honestly surprised at the amount of people on here taking the side of "take the abuse from leadership and don't do what you want with OSS".
- pie_flavor 3y ago
  They're not doing their own thing. They're doing the same thing with a different name and have no intent to contribute original patches that don't change the name. It takes about two seconds in GitHub's UI to fork, and about five minutes of fiddling with sed to change it to the degree that they changed it.
  - cookieperson 3y ago
    Maybe they have a different vision for it. And sometimes people prefer to work under different conditions. The ends don't justify the means. People jump from one insurance company to another insurance company for changes in leadership every day. If these people don't want to work under the current leadership I'd say they aren't doing the same thing. OSS is a free thing. They can do what they want.
    - pie_flavor 3y ago
      They aren't working under the current leadership. None of them work on Rust and none of them plan to work on Crab. There is no point acting like five minutes fiddling with sed is the start of something big in the first place, but especially when the authors explicitly state that they aren't planning on starting anything.

still_grokking 3y ago

Just to get this straight: Did you just say that Stallman, the inventor of free software, is damaging OpenSource?

ilc 3y ago
Learn the meaning of the two words: Open Source = You can see the source. Usually MIT / BSD + GPL + MPL and various others are all "Open Source" Free Software = GPL and other licenses that enforce the users freedom of access to source code. Free has nothing to do with cost.
grayhatter 3y ago
he is... the free software movement fails without the hearts and minds of developers. Developers are, unfortunately, still humans and will refuse to follow the advice of someone they deem to be a twat. Even if that twat is right, if you can't convince someone free/open source software is better you lose. Stallman is well known to act like a twat, thus holding him up as the voice of foss will convince people that foss is just a bunch of douche bags. thereby damaging open source.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

fermigier 3y ago

I met Stallman for the first time in ~1993-1995, in Paris. He was talking about the threat of copyright on user interfaces (the infamous "thrash bin" lawsuit) and (but less so) on software patents, speaking in the name of the League for Programming Freedom[1] (LPF) that he was leading at the time. So this was a talk explicitly about programming freedom (and against the risk posed by excessive IP regulations), NOT about free software. Everybody in the room mostly agreed with Stallman, but there was one guy, a shareware author, who had some objections to what he was saying, namely that he wanted some protection for his software and thought that his business couldn't survive without them. Stallman was not pleased at the objection, and began shouting at him like a madman, saying that he deserved to die (figuratively). This happened again a few years later, still in my presence, this time against a representative of MuPAD, an organisation who had ported their software to Linux. Since I was the person who had invited MuPAD in the first place, I got my fair share of Stallman's burst of anger. Needless to say, I found the first event bizarre, to say the least, and Stallman lost all of my respect, as a person, after the second event. Besides his anger management issues, I think that he made a major mistake in focussing on free software as a goal in itself, and not on programming freedom, which could have rallied many more supporters. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_for_Programming_Freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_for_Programming_Freedom

globular-toast 3y ago
> Besides his anger management issues, I think that he made a major mistake in focussing on free software as a goal in itself, and not on programming freedom, which could have rallied many more supporters. Programming freedom might have been easier, but I think free software is a more laudable goal. Programmers possess exceptional skills and it's mostly our choice to use and produce free software, or not. One of Stallman's essential tenets is that non-free software gives programmers power over the users. Giving programmers more freedom only serves to strengthen this power. Free software is supposed to give everybody (or nobody) this power.
- syntheweave 3y ago
  Free software moves the goalposts of freedom towards "sufficiently clued in user can operate and maintain free software", not "everyone of any skillset has a viable path to control their program". Programming freedom is the harder goal. Anyone can dump source code and say "yeah it's GPL now." That's how it worked out that so much of the early stuff was, in respects small and large, "software for free, documentation for sale". There's no mandate for usability or conceptual simplicity. And we've only gotten better in the sense of having more developers interested in that stuff.

gigatexal 3y ago

Okay this is fine but will they have the commercial backing that Rust has from the likes of Microsoft and Mozilla and others? Are the languages different? Is the fork just to fix the management or will the languages diverge/have they already?

gigatexal 3y ago
from the main [site](https://crablang.org/ https://crablang.org/): "The Official Home of CrabLang! A community fork of a language named after a plant fungus. All of the memory-safe features you love, now with 100% less bureaucracy! Why CrabLang? The Crab (or “CrabLang”) community fork was created as a lighthearted yet measured response to the growing concerns within the community about the influence of corporations and the restrictive trademark policy proposed by the foundation. This was not a "knee-jerk" reaction, nor was it an attempt to spread fear or cause panic. While the document the foundation drafted did lead to the fork, we believe it is an overdue solution to a problem that already existed, and addresses some issues that many community members have had for some time. First and foremost: CrabLang is not trying to replace our beloved language. If you are happy with the way things are, we encourage you to continue using your language of choice. Our goal is not to fracture the community, but rather to provide an alternative for those who share our concerns and wish to have more freedom in using, creating with, and promoting the language without worrying about the litigation associated with trademark infringement. We acknowledge and appreciate the hard work and financial support that corporations have provided to the original project. We understand the importance of their contributions, but we also believe that it is essential to maintain a balance between corporate influence and the will of the community. The CrabLang Collective aims to provide a space where the community can thrive without the constraints imposed by corporate interests. We want to emphasize that we are not at odds with the project or the original language. We appreciate everything they do to make the language better, and our fork's main branch will continue to stay up to date with the upstream codebase. Our main goal is to ensure that the community has an alternative that aligns with their values and desire for unrestricted use. The Crab community fork is driven by our love for a language named after a type of fungus. We simply want to use it while retaining the ability to create content and promote its name, logo, and other assets however we please, without the limitations imposed by a trademark policy. By offering a community-driven alternative, we hope to maintain a spirit of collaboration, innovation, and creative freedom. With our shared passion for programming, we welcome anyone interested to join us in exploring the Crab community fork. Whether or not you fully agree with our concerns, we believe that diversity of thought and a commitment to inclusivity will only strengthen our collective efforts. Come on in! The water is warm! CrabLang 2023" Got it now.

Xenoamorphous 3y ago

ffmpeg vs libav is one case where I think the hostile fork ended up working well.

fluoridation 3y ago
libav was the hostile fork, not FFmpeg. Someone removed write permissions from key contributors (or contributor. I forget) and just about everyone sided with those contributors, thus the instigators were forced to rename their project. The development effort stayed on FFmpeg, even as the libav people tried porting back the changes. Eventually libav passed into irrelevance as it failed to acquire mindshare and distributions stopped including it.
- Xenoamorphous 3y ago
  It's been a while since I read the story but I believe it did prompt some changes in ffmpeg management, that's why I was saying it was a hostile fork success story.
  - dralley 3y ago
    glibc would be a better example in that case.
meinersbur 3y ago
libav was the fork [1], and libav is dead now [2,3] (and many developers returned to ffmpeg). libav was forced to rename their project because Fabrice Bellard, still owner of the trademark and the ffmpeg.org domain, did not hand it over. ffmpeg put in much effort retain compatibility with libav, mostly by merging all their changes wholesale, while libav ignored ffmpeg, including and most crucially, their security fixes [4]. [1] http://blog.pkh.me/p/13-the-ffmpeg-libav-situation.html http://blog.pkh.me/p/13-the-ffmpeg-libav-situation.html [2] https://www.libav.org/ https://www.libav.org/ [3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/FFmpeg-Back-In-Debian https://www.phoronix.com/news/FFmpeg-Back-In-Debian [4] https://j00ru.vexillium.org/2014/01/ffmpeg-and-the-tale-of-a-thousand-fixes/ https://j00ru.vexillium.org/2014/01/ffmpeg-and-the-tale-of-a...

xoac 3y ago

The only thing this fork promises is even more drama.

Georgelemental 3y ago

The Rust Foundation (responsible for trademark drama) and the Rust Project (at fault for conference drama) are separate entities.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lelanthran 3y ago
> The Rust Foundation (responsible for trademark drama) and the Rust Project (at fault for conference drama) are separate entities. They both appear to share the same tone-deafness, though.

andrewflnr 3y ago

It's clear that there's some collosal incompetence, but malice is not at all clear. Most of the recent drama plausibly boils down to communication failure. They're going to fix this, eventually.