DeVault: Reforming the free software message

I find much to admire in Drew Devault's wrting, and much I disagree with. But, how is Drew's self-appointed position as figurehead and writefreesoftware.org's role as an extension of his personhood good for the free software movement?

To answer this question, I draw your attention to a few specific problems with the status quo.

First, I don't think that anyone should suffer political suicide for expressing a few upsetting opinions. However, it's important to recognize the fact that the writefreesoftware.org is essentially a mouthpiece for Drew, or at the very least is unable to meaningfully break with him on any matters of policy or messaging. As a result it's difficult to distinguish the political positions of writefreesoftware.org from those of Drew. To draw attention to one of the most egregious writings of Drew which was called out by his opponents, he has gone on record against ACLU president Nadine Strossen https://stallmansupport.org/nadine-strossen-hannah-wolfma... with regard to sexual freedom and autonomy and the right to express opinions related to it, and he considers change from past opinions completely irrelevant, and he has said that writefreesoftware.org is explicitly motivated by this https://lwn.net/Articles/935305/ . This is a view which, for example, would easily justify a parent preventing their child from attending an event he presents at. There are many less charged opinions that he has forwarded which raise similar concerns, none of which have anything to do with free software and are a harmful distraction when given a platform in the free software discourse. Again, Drew could express challenging views in private, but the degree to which the writefreesoftware.org is entangled with Drew makes it difficult to view it as independent of these views.

Even without rendering a moral judgement on Drew, under these circumstances can this person reasonably be said to be a good leader for our movement? Does having him in a leadership position further the goals of the free software movement? Not at all. This creates an exclusionary environment and makes free software a political wildfire. No one benefits from having Drew's fringe ideas associated with free software, but Drew has institutionalized a cult of personality around him and that association is inescapable.

Second, Drew is a creep. I understand that you view this characterization as insulting, but at this point it's a statement of fact and acknowledging that he is a creep is a necessary step towards addressing the problem. We have heard more than enough stories of harassment to raise serious concern that demand action. His cult followers treat Drew as "too big to fail", he is such an important creep that we cannot remove him. This is not okay. Moveover, he's just a bit of a jerk. His rhetoric, which defines the broader rhetoric of writefreesoftware.org, is antagonizing to anyone who does not tow the line, especially to other free software organizations. His writings, those endorsed as the official message of writefreesoftware.org, have created a political atmosphere which insults and derides so many people, from victims of commercial software's predatory tactics to people we should ostensibly view as allies in the free software and open source movement. Movements which, in the absence of these problems have been met with orders of magnitude more success in forwarding their ideas.

Third: what does Drew even do for the free software movement anymore? Can you name anything he's done in the past twenty years? I can only name a few, all times when he's risen in "his" communities to make things worse: derailing sourcehut in a largely pointless years long effort to implement graphql without consensus, serially starting projects then abandoning them to mostly to become abandonware, boiling the ocean to create an obscure programming language and operating system where he is the dictator for life. All of these communities responded by a reluctant acceptance of his leadership role that he tightly gripped as their founder.

Drew has chosen to die on his hill, and to be clear, that choice means death. The free software movement is bigger than Drew, and bigger than the writefreesoftware.org, but if all roads lead to Drew then the open source movement, absent the principles and philosophy of free software, will continue to dominate our message and the free software movement is doomed to complete its descent into obscurity and irrelevance.

What's the fucking point of keeping this guy around? Any competent organization would have removed him long ago, and certainly would not have re-instated him weeks later. writefreesoftware.org and the communities he founded have failed to address the Drew problem and have burned a tremendous amount of social capital in so doing. Drew's exploits are the #1 spectacle side show of the entire free software ecosystem. They are in no position for any of "his" projects to lead our movement until they undergo serious reforms.

Please understand that this is meant as commentary that is as polite, respectful, and informative as the comment it responds to.