Free Software Foundation adds three board members

[Posted June 27, 2024 by jzb]

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has announced the addition of three new members to its board: John Gilmore, Christina Haralanova, and Maria Chiara Pievatolo. This is part of FSF governance changes announced in January 2023. The next step is a review of current board members:

These three new members of the FSF's board of directors are the first to be appointed since 2020, when Odile Bénassy joined. Given the importance of the FSF to the free software movement, and the importance of its board to ensure preservation of the software freedom definition, the board has not taken its task lightly. Next, the FSF will evaluate current board members with the FSF's associate members in August, after which the voting members will review the feedback received and decide if each current board member should remain.

More information on the process, and a short biography of each new board member, is available in the full announcement.

Good to hear

Posted Jun 27, 2024 19:38 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

I had exchanges with all three last summer--on the topic of AI and on the topic of increasing women's participation--during the part of the process which was open to associate members. There were 13 candidates and FSF certainly took their time to evaluate them. These three have been on the board already for three months as "provisional" board members. Overall, I think FSF has done a thorough job and I presume the Board has good reason to believe these new additions will strengthen FSF.

It was a good process, and I wish the new additions the best of luck!

Is it a push to remove RMS?

Posted Jun 28, 2024 8:04 UTC (Fri) by sheepdestroyer (guest, #54968) [Link] (12 responses)

For those who followed this topic closely, is there a chance that the review process is in part targeted at removing RMS?

Is it a push to remove RMS? I don't think it was about him

Posted Jun 28, 2024 11:22 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

I saw nothing to suggest that this was about RMS. I followed last summer's "board-eval" process for the associate members pretty closely and he was barely mentioned. The discussions focussed on how the candidates would deal with various challenges and how to strengthen the community.

Is it a push to remove RMS?

Posted Jun 28, 2024 15:23 UTC (Fri) by atnot (subscriber, #124910) [Link] (9 responses)

Based on historical events, I don't think he is at any risk at the FSF...

(https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/richard-stall...)

RMS will never be removed from the FSF

Posted Jun 28, 2024 23:01 UTC (Fri) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link] (8 responses)

I would tend to agree. Having read Drew DeVault's excellent and quite comprehensive summary of the problem,[1] and considering he wrote and publicly posted it in November and it is now June, I think everyone who was ever open to persuasion and in a position of influence has already made up their mind.

Or maybe nobody reads Drew's blog. But his blog post is about 50% public quotes from stallman.org (plus the Minsky email, which has been widely reported), 40% context for those quotes, and maybe 10% argumentation. Even assuming that nobody reads Drew, anyone in a position of power at the FSF should already be aware of most or all of the (relevant) RMS quotes (i.e. they should be reading the potentially controversial statements that their ex-president is/was publicly making) and should be smart enough to figure out the remaining information (context and how it all fits together) on their own.

Or maybe I'm giving the rest of the FSF board too much credit, and they'll change their mind just as soon as someone emails them a link to Drew's blog. But I'm not holding my breath for that outcome.

[1]: https://drewdevault.com/2023/11/25/2023-11-26-RMS-on-sex....

RMS will never be removed from the FSF

Posted Jun 30, 2024 21:35 UTC (Sun) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (6 responses)

Drew's blog entry is not a summary, it's a compilation of what was used to attack RMS. Much of it is inaccurate, some is wildly inaccurate. There are baseless suggestions, there is missing context, and I checked the source of one quote and found that Drew had chopped off the first sentence and RMS's comments didn't actually match the accusation in which Drew was using that (partial) quote. I presume you wouldn't like if someone did that to you, particularly with the subject matter of the attacks.

https://stallmansupport.org/ is the other side - a collection of texts which give the omitted context and which defend RMS.

But this news item is about the new Board members, not RMS, so I won't reply any further on this.

RMS will never be removed from the FSF

Posted Jun 30, 2024 22:06 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (5 responses)

Even just skimming the start of the blog, I was left with the impression that Stallman's attitude was the perfectly *logical*, anarchic belief that "what's wrong between consenting people?"

As opposed to the opposing attitude of "think of the children!". My American aunt was afraid her son my cousin would get arrested for "statutory rape" with his girlfriend. But if they were over here in the UK they were more than old enough to get married!

The problem is this a political argument, not a logical one, and Stallman cannot play politics ... (and there are far too many Augustinian "sex is wrong" and feminist "all sex is rape" voices in politics :-(

Cheers,
Wol

RMS will never be removed from the FSF

Posted Jul 2, 2024 18:17 UTC (Tue) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] (4 responses)

As much as I want to stay out of this, there's something I think rather important that the "other side" site conspicuously omits. Stallman carefully defines childhood as up to 12 or 13 years of age. (And by "defines", I mean "his website still says this today"). This is relevant because his later "change of mind" carefully ONLY applies to "children".

I'm not going to reply further to this, because if anyone wants to argue that a 12- or 13-year old child can possibly consent to sexual activity with an actual adult, and that this is the "logical, non-political" position... I don't know what I could possibly say.

RMS will never be removed from the FSF

Posted Jul 2, 2024 21:16 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

And all I'm going to comment about that, is that that is approximately the age at which pre-pubescents who are too young / not interested in sex turn into adolescents who are mad about it / want to try it. To treat people on both sides of that line as the same is just plain stupid.

Note also that the ages you have picked are almost exactly the age at which Western civilisations start deeming young people capable of consenting to sex. Britain and America - at 16 and 21 (some states, at least) respectively, are at the higher end of the range.

In other words, the ages you have picked are crossover between "protect the children" and "protect adolescents from themselves / predators" and the latter is very much a political hot potato - to say nothing of the fact that young adolescents are quite capable of being predators themselves.

Cheers,
Wol

RMS will never be removed from the FSF

Posted Jul 2, 2024 21:23 UTC (Tue) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (1 responses)

...and this "hot potato" is far off-topic for LWN. Plus this whole thing has been discussed at great length in the past, I really don't think we need to repeat it all. Please, let's stop here.

RMS will never be removed from the FSF

Posted Jul 3, 2024 9:20 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

I was thinking "Should I let myself get drawn in here?"

But. Something I've noticed seems to be happening more recently - we are getting more new comments in reply to old articles. And if you're reading in "Unread comments" mode, you have no clue what date these articles are.

Given the recent changes made to collapsing comments and all that stuff, is there any chance of the following:

Putting the article date at the top of the thread with the title so we know it's an old article?
Making all articles over three months (picked at random) old moderated?

And a little "nice to have" I've noticed that is nothing to do with the above - when reading in "unread comments plus parent" mode, sometimes there is a reply to the parent's parent as well, which then gets formatted as a completely different thread. I haven't a clue how much work it would be but would it be possible to select all the comments that are going to be displayed, then thread them, so in this case they would all appear to be coming off the "parent's parent" for better context?

Cheers,
Wol

Off-topic for LWN

Posted Jul 2, 2024 21:25 UTC (Tue) by daroc (editor, #160859) [Link]

I think this is probably not the place to have this discussion. I was debating saying as much a few comments ago, and we're now well past that point. Let's stop here.

RMS will never be removed from the FSF

Posted Jul 1, 2024 11:40 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

I'd be careful taking anything from Drew DeVault about RMS at face value. At an absolute minimum, there will be meaning-impacting context that's been stripped out.

Is it a push to remove RMS?

Posted Jun 28, 2024 16:37 UTC (Fri) by atai (subscriber, #10977) [Link]

The FSF needs new blood in its leadership. This looks nothing like what you described.