You are making a baseless assumption that it hurts the movement and are using it to push a change in leadership to someone, who is ideologically more aligned with your views (presumably, maybe you have hidden agendas, who knows). To me it seems that politically correct leadership afraid to talk about controversial topics and express controversial opinions is going to hurt free software much more by letting "the mobs", corporate PR attacks, etc. influence them and shape the movement.
Because I think there is some basis in that statement, given the many conversations I've had over the last 20 years I've known of free software, and known of people who dealt with Stallman.
Including my own experience.
I’m not sure how valuable these baseless anecdotes are to the conversation and is one of the reasons why I try to argue on principles.
I’m optimistic that you brought up principles as well as I think it’s important to judge developers based on the quality of their code rather than how popular they are.
Good software isn’t a democracy. Democracy is great for things that are arbitrary, but sucks for things where there’s objective value. I don’t want my surgeon taking a vote on how to proceed while I’m on the table.
However, that doesn’t mean democratic principles have no place. Consensus, discussion, collaboration are all important. But not to the exclusion of skill and responsibility. While I don’t want my surgeon taking a vote that includes the orderly and electrician who happen to be in the room, I hope that they solicit input and consider opinions from others before they decide on the course of action.
I also don’t know of a way to compare individuals for their value and think it’s a waste of effort to do so. People who encourage facilitation are awesome and I think frequently projects can do better with a fun person who attracts participation rather than some hard core coder who pisses everyone off. But not as an absolute rule. I’ve worked on projects with wonderful cheerleaders that never produced anything because they were all happiness and tons of people, but no one actually doing work.
I work on some free software projects and most people don't even know who RMS is. There are multiple Free/Open Source software associations, projects and communities to choose, all with different people working on them, some of them don't tolerate such behavior.
If none of those fit, people can just create their own and choose who to associate with.
This is clearly a fabricated justification. But if such people were to actually exist they would not participate in the free software movement either way due to misalignment of values and ideologies.
Bushnell makes the excellent point that he wasn't pushed out for this email alone, but for the pattern of thought the email indicates when aligned with other behaviors in his career.
https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa...
The movement doesn't grow further as just an old-boys-club, or a tough-emotions-only club. That stuff is, quite frankly, exhausting and detracts from good engineering.
RMS is using his position as a free software spokesman and leader to minimize sex trafficking and defend rapists and you are talking about "cancel culture".
This is a horrific response to this article.
Even though I'm not religiously bound to the GPL, it would be idiotic to refuse props to RMS for having profoundly affected society in a positive way through the FSF.
Are we confident that the FSF doesn't pass on with RMS? How?
What more proportionate response would you suggest?
So far, the only alternative responses I've seen offered are that Stallman is either correct or the true victim, and we should sympathize with him, respect him and let him be.
RMS isn't some random asshole who made a slightly off-color remark, he's a leader whose influence and cult of personality have shaped the culture around F/OSS development and programming for decades, who appears to have troubling issues around the concept of sex and consent with minors. He's also a man known for his intransigence, so the chances of him "learning his lesson" seem low.
To say that he doesn't deserve to be inconvenienced by the social consequences of opinions that would ostracize anyone else isn't proportionate, it's elitist.
I am so disgusted with this community right now.
Wernher von Braun never went to the moon.
This is cancel culture taken to the extreme. Now that everything is built, the builders are expendable. They're "problematic."
We're facing down a new form of puritanism that is a greater threat to civil rights than the "problematic" individuals they seek to destroy.
No defense for RMS' statement, it's absurd, but if there's no moderation whatsoever in regards to a proportionate response (eg. he's either "clean" or "unclean"), then no one else is safe as the mob ratchets up its criteria for existing as a virtuous person.