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