Ultimately I think things like that extension will do more to drive people to sign the letter in support of RMS than deter people, because the signal it sends is to me far worse than anything RMS has been accused of.
Please, vote for my issue: https://github.com/sticks-stuff/highlight-RMS-supporters/iss...
The hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance among Stallman's supporters never ceases to astonish.
edit: fixed the link.
[0]https://debian.community/molly-de-blanc-arrest-and-prosecuti...
I think you refer to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26722528, if so it is more about giving them the same treatment that they give others. If anything it is hypocritical to say that the extension is fine but giving them the same treatment is not.
>and wanting to see everyone with progressive politics purged from free software entirely
This is... not true. RMS himself has progressive politics. A progressive can still reject insanity caused by other progressives.
>RMS supporters want to have Molly de Blanc arrested for simply writing a petition[0] to begin with.
Just a few corrections:
- It is not RMS supporters, it is a specific timecube-like conspiracy theorist that has been known to debian for a few years now.
- This article is more about the plainly false libel in appendix that molly knew about but has refused to correct.
Nothing more as of now but you should see the support for it on twitter. This rationale is similar to Nothing to hide argument[1]. Path to dystopian future is paved with good intentions. And maintaining a naughty list is definitely not in good intentions.
> and wanting to see everyone with progressive politics purged from free software entirely
Where are you getting this from? Absolutely no one suggested that.
> The hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance among Stallman's supporters
I am not a Stallman supporter, fwiw.
Campaigning to have someone arrested on one end and employing totalitarian tactics on the other comes across as absurd to me. It's practically authoritarian in-fighting.
I'm sure there is a real problem that deserves discussion here, but it's difficult to see through the dense fog of anger.
(edit: I did remove an original sentence from this comment about it being a toxic squabble. I decided that was a bit too dismissive, but you'll still see it in all its glory in one of the responses)
Extremists and activists like this don't want to meet in the middle. They want to move the middle towards their point of view and then they want that middle-ground to be the only acceptable ground to hold.
It's an unreasonable position to hold in a free society, and we as a people should not encourage these individuals by giving them attention or giving in to their demands.
It really is. There have been hundreds of threads just after Stallman's recent reappointment to the FSF board of directors alone, to say nothing of his "cancellation," many with hundreds if not thousands of comments, most of which are just a cesspool of toxicity, trolling and outrage porn.
The truth is that both sides have a point, and both sides are acting in bad faith towards the other.
That nobody is calling for that now does not mean it is not chilling to see someone want to highlight someones political views in a context where they are not relevant. These things have an ugly tendency to start out presented as something much more innocent than what they turn into.
Respectfully, you seem a bit confused. There are three such extensions that I know of. Some people on Twitter already talk about "no hire" lists. Not that I would would care to work for such people and their bullshitware. But it is clear that a lot of supporters are afraid to speak out, while I do not think the same holds at the other camp. I bet that some signatures in the attack letter are only there due to fear. Yet the votes in support are almost exactly twice as many and (important) it is translated in double the number of languages (30+).
Do not forget that the supporters are defending someone. While you may not agree about everything every single supporter says, this is all in response to the other campaign, which is attacking. The attack letter is such an incompetently written and fierce text that I am really baffled. Do they really believe the things they are writing? Did they just do it intentionally? I do not think a single explanation applies to all people related to that campaign. I have at least three in mind. In the end they and their obscene accusations and demands are backed by corporate money anyway. Livelihoods and careers are threatened. Why?
RMS actively supports all these groups that the letter claims he is against. Just look (besides his general character and actual actions) at his thousands of political notes, not just the three that are supposedly bad. He is not paid to write them. And it is not the same generic, colorless, tasteless, mechanically generated copypasta that is thrown around by people that are paid shitloads of money and claim to care about diversity.
Just look at the bigger picture.
Some people advocating for arresting someone for something they did, even if it is way too crazy is quite different than tools that enable discrimination based on an opinion. Remember these people are just supporting RMS, not advocating for slavery or exterminating the Jews (and even then I don't know whether you could support such a thing).
Just take a look at the "yellow badge" [1], the Jewish insignia that Nazis made Jews wear to distinguish them. This extension has far more many similarities with this example than with what you compare it to.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_badge?wprov=sfla1
Also, your link is broken. And please before you speak of "hypocrisy" and "cognitive dissonance" think of the matter at hand a bit more. Your comparing these two issues is so obviously wrong it's not even funny.
It isn't different at all. Both are forms of discrimination based on an opinion. What Molly De Blanc "did" was express an opinion. On the one hand, you have a Chrome plugin that highlights public information, and on the other hand you have Stallman supporters wanting to use intimidation and violence to suppress their political opponents, and here you completely dismiss the latter while you (and many other commenters here) have to twist some macabre hypothetical Nazi allegory from the former, as if it were somehow even plausible that Molly De Blanc actually wants to send Stallmanites to the camps.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.
> In response someone created a Chrome extension that marks repositories owned by a signatory of this support letter with red text on GitHub.
This is incredible worrying. This is basically maintaining a repository of people with "incorrect" opinions. How long before such repositories are integrated in HR systems, tied to you identity for subscriptions/memberships. [1] You have to carry a tag of being not progressive enough across the internet?
[1] https://twitter.com/kmlefranc/status/1221869659139366912