I can tell you for a fact that Chris Webber, one of the signers on that list, does indeed give a fuck about personal freedom as much as stallman does. Indeed it is precisely because these people believe in such freedom that they are standing up for the women who no one has chosen to listen to and its beyond gross the reaction of every fool who's never so much as filed a bug report or attended a meeting spewing out hate for them.

I really don't hate these people, especially not Andy Wingo. But if the likes of him or Chris Webber were to assume leadership of the GNU project, they would be one minor slip-up away from being purged themselves.

As far as I can tell, your substantive comments are mostly getting upvoted while your flamewar comments are mostly getting downvoted and flagged. That doesn't seem ideologically motivated.

Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and using HN as intended? Regardless of how right you are, perpetuating flamewar is destructive here.

There are lots of us who care. We can preserve software freedom with the same stubborn, uncompromising attitude without having to also alienate the very people we wish to help.

you are reframing (weakening) the OP's standard.

the standard is not "care", it's "gave as much of a fuck about software and personal freedom as Stallman did/does".

RMS used an absolute garbage computer because it was, in his words:

> the only laptop one could buy that could run a free initialization program and a free operating system.

i'm certainly not taking it on some contributor's word that these 20 or so odd people are as principled as RMS that i trust the project to be led by them. my guess is a large fraction are pragmatists (like most normal people) who use a nonfree BIOS setup for productivity, or have an iPhone/android because "normal", etc.

so, while certainly more like normal people, they aren't as principled. and what you want in a position like RMS's is someone so principled that they basically are immune to attack and inspire others to take on those principles. nobody's taking RMS seriously if he's giving talks from his macbook air.

as far as i can tell, RMS is so principled that it actually hindered the long term success of GCC. it would have behooved the long term strategic goals to make GCC the best/"only" compiler by making a BSD/MIT style version, so as to accept more liberal contributions, but he didn't.

he seems to be principled to a fault. is this group of 20 or so people as consistent as he was? i sincerely doubt it.

I completely agree with you. Moreover, I witnessed the same scenario in other projects, and it always ended the same way: once the charismatic leader was eliminated, people gradually lost motivation and everything dwindled. When people realized it was not worth it, it was already too late. Now that we lost Stallman it will be extremely hard to find a person even remotely as principled as he was.

One of Eric Raymond's innovations was to establish clear principles for the OSI at its outset, and then retire from the board out of a desire not to become one such "Jesus nut" for the movement.

The entryists have a response for this too: call for the removal and replacement of all the leadership of relevant organizations, as they have already done with the FSF.

That's the thing: "open source" is not a movement. And ESR wouldn't be a particularly charismatic leader (he's more of a controversial one).

Open Source would never be where it is now without the Free Software movement (which is an ideological one). Maybe some corporations would still promote the OSS approach due to its economic benefits, but probably not. It likely wouldn't have the same midshare among developers that it has today.

Stallman as the modern day st. Francis?

It would be valuable to see your group put up a statement articulating the specific actions taken by Stallman and how they have caused "those who [you] want to reach out to" to be alienated. You may think that some collective consciousness is both aware of these actions and fully in agreement with this statement, but as the comments here will indicate, it's entirely possible that either one of these or both isn't true. It may only be a court of public opinion, but I believe the accused deserves to know what they're accused of.

That's already been publicized ad nauseum by others in the past few weeks. I don't think the authors owe anyone any duty to reiterate it.

Considering that a big chunk of what was publicized was lies and deliberate misquotes, I think it'd be best if the GNU project said specifically what their issues are.

At this point the truth or falsity of the minutiae, or whether the conclusions are fair or not are irrelevant. Once a former leader no longer has the political capital to be seen as effective, or their involvement proves to be a greater distraction than it's worth, no more needs to be said.

You're legitimizing character assassination campaigns. But only as long as they're successful.

Have we really stopped being human beings at this point? Does even truth even matter anymore or just the shouts getting most retweets?

> We can preserve software freedom with the same stubborn, uncompromising attitude without having to also alienate the very people we wish to help.

You have already failed. I, for one, feel extremely alienated by your "joint statement".

And when one of you will make someone uncomfortable(without even realizing it) will you resign?

That may never, ever happen. Don't you know that only old awkward male hippy sin^H^H^H (are reported to) make/say unacceptable things?

And when it's your head that Sarah Mei and Sage Sharp are calling for, will you hold the line?

They'll never call for my head because I wouldn't suggest that minor-aged victims of sexual assault could have been engaging consensually.

Neither did Stallman. What he said was that it likely appeared that she was engaging consensually. And he was certainly no fan of Epstein, whom he called a serial rapist.

Lest you think this is a niggling distinction, Sage Sharp pronounced Linus guilty of inciting violence by making a humorous comment about his friend Greg Kroah-Hartman's height. (Something like: "Greg is a giant; watch out or he might squish you.")

That's how they operate. They go digging to find the six words that will hang you, and if you don't capitulate they go to your boss (read: corporate sponsors if you have your own project).

"They." You'll have to be clearer which conspiracy you're talking about; I don't have a binding for that pronoun.

By "they" I mean the principals involved in social-justice entryism into free software. None that I know of are signatories to that list. They include:

* Coraline Ada Ehmke

* Sage Sharp

* Aurynn Shaw

* Valerie Aurora

* Sarah Mei

* Matthew J. Garrett

* Steve Klabnik

These are some of the loudest voices calling for the removal and systematic reputational destruction of key free-software developers based on behavior which ranges from bad but not worth a purge to downright innocuous.

The list signatories, near as I can tell, are doing damage control on the optics of being affiliated with Stallman and are, to my knowledge, not themselves calling for purges the way the above named individuals and their fellow travellers are.

(Edited to include Klabnik. He expressed the need for a "tech antifa" and approved of the use of violence by the same. I think he counts.)

So,

* Former GitHub Community Management senior developer

* Linux kernel contributor

* Eiara Limited founder

* ext2 dirty bit, ChunkFS developer

* Chief consultant at DevMynd

* Linux contributor and winner of the FSF Free Software Award

* Frequent Hacker News contributor, author of "The Rust Programming Language," member of Rust core team.

Seems like some solid contributors to the ecosystem and people who have earned a seat at the table defining what the community looks like; not sure why we're singling them out. Or should we also disapprove of the time rms founded an entire Free Software Foundation for the purposes of putting political pressure on various institutions, organizations, and people to respect the Four Freedoms?

Are you sure you disagree with the methods of the people you listed? Or do you merely disagree on what behaviors someone's reputation should suffer for?

Yes, I'd say that there's a world of difference between setting up a project and a foundation to attract people with like-minded goals and practice advocacy while always showing your hand and keeping a focused scope for your activism on the one hand, and a long march through the existing open source institutions on the other with the aim of subverting and controlling them and assuming their moral authority to redefine what open source is and what our values are, and to drive out all dissenters, on the other. It is literally the difference between a startup and a hostile takeover.

Or the difference between an entrenched status-quo closed-source commercial software ecosystem and an industry-disruptive open-source free software movement, perhaps?

the downside to revolutions is that sometimes the revolution gets away from the control of those who start it. ;)

Indeed; sometimes you just want to overthrow the cruel Tsar and the Bolsheviks end up taking over. Case in point: https://i.imgur.com/g3cD5C9.png

Here's Sarah Mei declaring her intent to character-assassinate Uncle Bob and have him written out of programming history. And for what? Well, apparently Uncle Bob made some remarks that "C++ is like testosterone", meaning that C++ programmers take an overly "macho" attitude to their work and look down on other programmers. Sarah interpreted this as toxic masculinity.

This is where we are today. The old standards of discourse between speaker and audience have passed away. Instead, you must now assume that your statements will be interpreted in the least charitable way by the least reasonable person on earth -- and that person has the phone number of your current employer and every future employer you might apply to.

This is how Bolsheviks operate. The means of production (in this case, open source and the discipline of programming in general) belongs to the proletarian vanguard party (the social-justice left purporting to speak on behalf of women, PoC, LGBTQ, etc.) and any kulaks (old-time hackers, overrepresented by straight white males) still clinging to their piece of it must be crushed without mercy.

"But silly bitwize," you may counter, "You are comparing losing your reputation in open source with being killed or sent to the gulag. Surely a ridiculous comparison." Apparently Jon Sterling, one of the other thought leaders you admire so much, was "only 30% kidding" about sending his political opponents to real actual gulags: https://i.imgur.com/rlqa73W.png?1

But you will maybe have an unpopular opinion in private and is leaked to the public(like it happened with Mozilla CEO) or you used some bad words 20 years ago or made someone uncomfortable and they will remeber it tomorrow.

Private opinions of CEOs have repercussions. But in Eich's case, it went beyond "private opinion;" he contributed $1,000 to support Proposition 8.

Eich didn't get forced out for having a "bad private opinion;" he got forced out for supporting something materially that would cause material harm to Mozilla staff, then making clear his opinion on the topic was unchanged. Staff that had a lack of confidence in his continued leadership were entirely justified.

It is complex situation but as a CEO or project leader or random open source developer that I am not that well informed with the latest social media culture how do I know what is a controversial opinions?

I am legitimately asking this, say maybe I think that X feature is nature not nurture, and there is a discussion at an event about X , what do I Google to know if I should talk about X or not. The problem is more complicated if my opinion today would be controversial in the future.

I think you're looking for guarantees in the social world.

There are no such guarantees (much as there are no guarantees in the tech space... That, say, your favorite language today won't be obsolete in five years and therefore diminish the value of all the time and effort you invested in memorizing its quirks). There are some useful heuristics, such as "try and be a good person, minimize your judgement of others, avoid speculating on things that other people have concrete experience with." Also, be informed about the latest social media culture; Proposition 8 was huge in California (and around the U.S.) and it should have been self-evident to Eich that supporting it was a bad call (I'm a lot less forgiving of Eich than some people are, because it's real hard for me to see his behavior and interpret it as anything other than "He put money behind his convictions and mis-estimated how much political power homosexual people and their allies had in his company to hold him accountable to putting money behind his convictions," which isn't exactly a stellar review of his behavior).

We in tech seem to like to believe that the technical world is above politics. It's not; technology serves people, so politics is, of course, part of the story. Politics is just what happens when people interact.

Thanks for the response, but I get the feeling that you need to censor yourself and if you are asked and forced to tell your opinion on X you should probably give a political response. Should I express my personal opinion on abortion,drugs,prostitution,religion, alchool, smocking or should I censor myself.

It depends on your goals and how much you trust the people you're communicating with (or the medium) to not turn your words against you.

"I should always speak in an uncensored fashion" is, honestly, one of the poison memes of the modern internet. It's never been wise in any human interaction, and moving to the Internet didn't change that fact. It did, for a brief time (until de-anonymization and search caught up with the technology available) let people obfuscate opinion origins behind a sea of anonymity and momentarily disrupt the words from the responsibility of having reputation tied to them. But when you go looking at the most anonymity-enabling communications channels on the Internet, you don't exactly find humanity at its best. Words divorced from reputation have yet to be proven as a net positive. Hell, even on Hacker News, our handles have karma points attached.

We social creatures developed concepts like "reputation" and tools like "memory" for a reason, and it wasn't a bad reason. Like any tools, they can be abused or over-applied, but no; saying exactly what you think all the time isn't virtuous (it is yet another tool, which can be abused or over-applied).

this sucks, Internet was supposed to be place where I can meet people and discuss different topics including some controversial ones,I am not talking about racism but more intellectual things like abortion, differences between male and female , gender topics. I may have an opinion on x and someone could make an argument and change my mind (in general most of us are ignorant and have a single point of view)

There are places on the internet where such things can be argued in a more intellectually supportive way. Just not all of the internet.

The internet is not just a place for meeting people and discussing opinions.

For many, many people, the internet is a socially supportive space, and an activity space, and those things don't work if challenging discussions are constantly taking place in them.

For what you've just asked for, specifically about making arguments that might change your mind, may I suggest you might enjoy: https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/ and https://changemyview.net/subreddit/ (I haven't used them myself, just read about them.)

I will check those reddits, though should people create a different account when going there?

I haven't used those reddits, and I don't have a reddit account anyway.

I think the fact it occurred to you to ask, suggests an answer. If you would feel safer testing the water with a different account, then I'd recommend you do that.

People have an annoying habit of attributing expressed thoughts to a person long after the person has openly changed their mind, as well as misunderstanding the intended meaning of a stated view anyway. Same if the person was just constructing an argument for the purpose of thinking things through (for example as in devil's advocate).

Personally, I would also recommend a "listen first" approach.

Question is (at least in case of Brendan Eich), when does an opinion stop being an opinion and start being just harmful hate? Surely we can all agree that there is a line to draw somewhere.

The problem is can we measure and who measures what is harmful or uncomfortable. I am sure if it was just an opinion he would have shared with a group of people and then leaked would have had a similar effect. I do not agree with the guy opinion but I dislike when social media mobs put pressure on organization to fire people.

Setting/measuring what's considered harmful is (or should be) society's job (with the help of journalism).

I don't see it very critical when society puts pressure on an organization to fire a high-profile leader (and decision maker!) who publicly does something harmful. But I do acknowledge that this could generate a dangerous dynamic if spun in the wrong direction. It's a tradeoff: Either you allow cancel culture or you allow bad actors in powerful/influental positions.

Question then. Why has it taken the airing Stallman's dirty laundry to step forward? What has stopped you (that is, the "we" and "us" from your statement) from standing out on your own merits before now?

I'm going to go with: So women can participate without having to be asked out on dates? So they don't feel harassed? You want to run cover for people do it in your own org man. This is beyond obtuse.

> So women can participate without having to be asked out on dates?

What is so wrong about being asked by a man for a date? I (a man) have been asked lots of times for a date by women I worked with, some of them my superiors. Mostly I said "no", because I generally don't like mixing love life with work life, but the best relationship I've ever had was the time I said "yes". I don't see why RMS couldn't look for such a relationship.

In $CURRENT_YEAR it's considered harassment for a woman to be asked on a date by an insufficiently attractive man.

If Stallman looked like Chris Hemsworth, women would join the GNU Project for the opportunity to ask him on a date.

Actually, in a spooky way RMS _does_ look like Hemsworth in the last Avengers film.

This answer has nothing to do with the questions I proposed. I'm asking why these people who proclaim to be as good as or better than Stallman are only now stepping up.

What Stallman's dirty laundry is has been thoroughly discussed.

"these people" have been in free software for decades champ. I met Chris Webber in chicago, at free software events literally 10 years ago. Andy Wingo is similarly long term involved. Keep eliding everything actually about this to throw up straw men. Its clarifying, as I noted in another thread. And, his "dirty laundry" is driving women out of spaces supposedly dedicated to freedom. Not sure why thats so difficult.

It being open source means that you can in fact fork any part of it or even all of it. You can make OSAG (our software aint GNU) tomorrow and people might make fun but nobody will deny your freedom to do so. It's just that fracturing resources more based on ideology might not be terribly beneficial.