FSF's core principles cannot be defended if there's no one willing to defend them.

RMS has been directly responsible for scaring away people from the core mission of the FSF. Not just because of what other people have mentioned, but because he directly insults and threatens other individuals when he doesn't get his way. He's been doing this for decades now [1], long before anyone can claim the current furor is because of 'cancel culture' or whatever. And the end result is a more and more irrelevant FSF.

[1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/12/12/23/1945248/gnu-grep-an...

> but because he directly insults and threatens other individuals when he doesn't get his way.

Given the last attempts to remove Stallman, I'm confident that he isn't alone in OSS having these traits.

The attempts to remove Stallman involved people bringing up stories and incidents of how awful he is to work with or even generally be nearby even beyond the most popular incidents. In turn, multiple open source and FSF organizations cut ties with him and the org when he came back to the FSF which is the whole 'you need people to defend the organization' problem comes from.

And so the FSF becomes more irrelevant because they're more interested in the cult of personality rather than the actual principals of free software.

Personally, i'd rather have RMS stay in place despite all of this than allowing a character assassination to work out. Because i consider the latter more awful.

Edit: First commit of the rms-open-letter is by Molly de Blanc. TIL she is an ethics moralist like Coraline Ada Ehmke, which paints the whole RMS controversy in a new light.

Then you have chosen for the FSF to die on the hill of the cult of RMS. You've clearly staked your ground and nothing can convince you otherwise, even though there are vast instances of the things RMS has said and done from people that have worked with him and around him.

And I hope you realize the deep irony in you complaining about character assassination while you set out to do the same thing to try and prove an irrelevant point.

Reciting her already public twitter bio is not character assassination.

which is somehow different from reciting stallman's emails and public behavior? the latter being "character assassination"?

I mean what was written on https://rms-open-letter.github.io/ :

> Richard M. Stallman, frequently known as RMS, has been a dangerous force in the free software community for a long time. He has shown himself to be misogynist, ableist, and transphobic, among other serious accusations of impropriety.

I think if someone wrote it themselves as a comment here on HN it would constitute flaming and would get flagged.

These complains are brought up by people that never actually worked with Stallman and are ridiculous nonsense.

Why are you supporting and repeating such vile accusations that have repeatedly been debunked by people that actually worked with Stallman?

https://whoisylvia.medium.com/richard-stallman-has-been-vili...

https://meribold.org/2021/04/07/critique-of-rms-open-letter/

The story you link makes no mention of "insults or threats" and does not back up your claims.

Exactly. This claims are unfounded rumors spread by people that don't like RMS and want to see him gone. Not because there's actually any objectionable behavior from his side.

Yes, I get it - he's weird. So what?!

> but because he directly insults and threatens other individuals when he doesn't get his way.

Why do you spread this nonsensical rumors?

The link you posted doesn't even reference whatever behavior your vilely imply - instead is all about "technical and administrative disagreements".

If the FSF has a bad reputation, it's because of people like you spreading FUD about Richard Stallman's behavior and person.

Why don't you stop with this crap and just take RMS as the kind and flawed human being he is?

What does advocacy of free software have ANYTHING to do with

1) Age

2) Race

3) Gender

Why is it ok to be ageist, sexist, AND racist in this context?

No one was, in the remotest sense, being ageist, sexist, or racist above… seeking to widen the appeal of something beyond an old white male audience isn’t, in any way, to anyone but an absolute dimwit, seeking to discriminate against that old white male audience.

Or, in other words that might make sense to a programmer:

   assert (old && white && male) + (!old || !white || !male) >= (old && white && male)

Why is it not?

Advocacy of any sort typically involves 1) understanding your target audience and 2) making an appeal to them.

If the composition of your organization does not reflect the composition of your target audience then both of those tasks become a little harder. This is not specific to the FSF and is why many organizations hire at least a few people who match their target demographics to do things like research, marketing, messaging, and outreach.

That's what the FSF does.

It's target audience are human being. The organizations composition reflects this; all of the FSF coworkers are human beings.

Terrible, racist, ageist attitude. Hiring people for some superficial attribute is just as bad as not hiring them. It’s dumb.

Free Software already speaks to everyone. There is no limitation around the use by anyone. This isn't womens' clothing, this is software.

Clearly not, if you take a look at the demographics of the free software community and how it compares to tech more broadly.

Ah, so a white female cannot represent free software to a yellow male or a red trans? How incredibly racist, sexist and bigoted.

The composition of a group does not limit what it can do or stand for. Anything else would imply that some humans are more valuable than others.

Those are the demographics of "the software community", not "the free software community". Why did you think all those white guys got into the "free" one to begin with?

> and how it compares to tech more broadly

Big citation needed

Attempting to socially engineer your way out of that is a potentially impossible road, lined with injustices.

Fwiw, though, the creator of Bash is black: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Fox_(computer_programmer...

Can you first explain how free software currently fails to speak to anyone but old white men?

I can see how you'd think this if you thought that the FSF's role was to "speak."

I think of the FSF as doing something entirely different and the work that it does is valuable in and of itself and also, in addition, enables benefiting humans regardless of anything including what they think or what they say.

That said, Emacs is still rubbish, vim all the way.

You confuse the messenger with the message.

Accept that you'll never find the perfect messenger. There's always someone more alienated, someone more disfavored and someone more ignored, someone even less privileged. You can keep finding "better" messengers, but that's just a distraction.

Focus on the message.

Free software generally has pretty good internationalisation support.

Making the FSF even less inclusive seems like it would further hamper their efforts to encourage more people and organizations to choose libre licenses, software, and hardware.

Stallman is nothing like the caricature from the slanderous hit-pieces, but in their zeal to defend him from both fabricated and legitimate complaints the FSF seems to be cultivating a smaller but more fanatical audience. Turning the FSF into a cult of personality centered on Stallman may be good for donations but it may also prevent them from achieving their mission.