LWN: Comments on "Richard Stallman and the GNU project"

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

JorgePMorais — Sat, 21 Mar 2020 15:24:46 +0000

First, I am sorry for having taken literally *five months* to reply. I delayed testing (because I don't have a F*k account) and then forgot about it. Now I finally remembered.

Anyway, I have just tested with my wife's F*k account (unfortunately she is used by F*k). The post went through normally and appeared for my father-in-law. It seems, therefore, that either the problem does not affect every F*k used, or it was solved.

Regards

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

dvdeug — Wed, 25 Dec 2019 14:06:54 +0000

If 90% of a group want stuff to go one way, the group goes that way, or collapses; they can just leave and form a new group. Moreover, in a case like that, they could effectively exclude other people; people cursing will be excluded from any but formal discussions they can't be excluded from. Drinkers will be shunned.

> When I encounter difficult people in an organization which I have agreed to be a part of, I both minimize my interactions with them and keep the ones that do happen short and on-topic. However, I would not call for the removal of the person unless they have violated the shared values of the organization.

Cool. What happens when a bunch of people are doing that to you, including many of the more powerful people? Do you stick around?

What's funny is you're advocating for "Diversity, Inclusion, Equity" values. It's not okay for GNU to be exclusionary of non-Christians, but it's okay for GNU to be exclusionary of women.

>> instead you get people passing names and lists of names around on the quiet, people you don't want to be left alone in a room with, lists of people you don't want to be in the same room as even if not alone, etc.

>I don't think conflating RMS with the people who are on the "might rape you" list is productive.

Do you want to be left alone in a room with "difficult people"? If you knew there were people in a group who would take every opportunity to ask you about "your personal relationship with Christ", especially if left alone with you, and you knew the group as a whole didn't care, would you not share their name with others who might get harassed by them?

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

bahner — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 14:12:12 +0000

>> This will not stop because RMS stands down.
>> I mean this as a tribute, but every era must come to an end. Now's the time for RMS's as leader of GNU.

>Why should we surrender to mob rule witch hunts?

I don't want to start a flame war or direct personal attacks. I mean this about your way of documenting. You sound like president Trump. This type of answers shows a gross inadequacy to understand how society has changed - and what is and isn't acceptable.

RMS' behaviour with regards to comments vs. women is not acceptable. It could be OK if he just responded. I am sorry, it won't happen again.

As I said. I don't want to start a flame war or discuss this further. I just wanted to state my opinion - which I also believe to be the opinion of the The Majority™. If you don't understand or accept this, you should take a break and ponder this, as Torvalds did.

Now's the time.

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

flussence — Fri, 25 Oct 2019 07:49:33 +0000

Thanks for sharing, even in spite of the 1 angry troll, that thread's so much more digestible than the discourse on the web.

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

sthibaul — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 13:17:50 +0000

For more details, the actual questions at stake (and not agendas that have been fantasized in the comments above) are being discussed on gnu-misc-discuss https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-misc-discuss/2019-...

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

hippy — Fri, 18 Oct 2019 08:24:39 +0000

Over 85 apparently...

http://www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/dyingage.html

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

zenaan — Fri, 18 Oct 2019 01:04:20 +0000

Thanks... citations are useful.

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

mathstuf — Fri, 18 Oct 2019 00:52:01 +0000

I suppose you're referring to my last statement there. My views are more nuanced than that. It's closer to something like we, as humanity, are discovering these things over time. Observing our collective behavior and modifying as the realizations of the harms of various behaviors come to wider awareness. One can't absolutely condemn those in the past for faults we now find reprehensible, but we can attenuate how much we idolize them on the whole for what they (as we now see it) did do well.

Now is this process finding the "ultimate morality" and if so, is that inevitable? No, I don't think so on either account. But anything that ends up going towards less collective empathy and mutual respect is (in my view) less viable for humanity as a whole in the long term.

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

zenaan — Fri, 18 Oct 2019 00:46:35 +0000

> Using "due process" to refer to anything other than restraints on the actions of holders of institutional power and their agents, particularly but not exclusively those involved in the application of state force, is a recipe for confusion.

It's a recipe for due process.

You want Salem witch trials redux? Then claim, hold and live that we don't need due process any more.

(I have strong opinions about this position you appear to hold, but it is your right to hold this position.)

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

flussence — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 19:30:38 +0000

> I don't see anyone pulling an "I quit" fit from free software because of this. Have you?
Keep a close eye on GNU Guile. The floodgates may be about to open.

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

anton — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 16:09:39 +0000

I have certainly seen claims from *BSD supporters along the lines that they are the real free software people, because they put fewer restrictions (in particular, no copyleft) in their licenses. And I think they would love to take over FSF and the GNU project, and remove the shackles of GPL, GFDL, and LGPL from GNU software.

But we do not need to go there to have an outcome like the Argus one: Consider a scenario where the FSF and GNU are taken over by democratic people who want to be inclusive and listen to what people tell them rather than following RMS' vision, and make small adjustments to the course. We live in a world where corporate interests reign supreme and can afford effective lobbying, and anyway most people at least consider corporate interests legitimate, so if the new leadership does what they hear from people (and they will hear a lot from lobbyists), the small adjustments will be in the direction of corporate interests. And over the years, the sum of the small adjustments may result in a completely different course than the FSF and GNU up to 2018.

I think that this is what happened to Argus and ADFC. They exist in a car-dominated society, and this is reflected in most members of these organizations (many members are car drivers as well as recreational "also cyclists", but even those that are not car drivers often see themselves implicitly as inferior to car drivers, and so do not oppose changes like bike paths that put car drivers' interests above cyclists' interests). So a democratic organization eventually aligns itself with the car drivers' interests that dominate society. This happened to Argus and ADFC, this happened earlier to the Dutch ANWB and the Austrian ARBÖ (both of which used to be cyclist clubs and are now primarily motorist clubs). The British CTC seems to have resisted this development for a long time (not sure if they still do), so there may be something to learn there.

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

nix — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 15:10:22 +0000

Oh sorry, it was LtWorf. Citation: https://lwn.net/Articles/801818/

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

nix — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 15:09:16 +0000

Yep. Few people remain creeped out at someone who apologises profusely and switches conversational mode and/or backs away, even if they seemed potentially creepy at first. Apologies solve a lot. (At least, this works if the accidental creep notices it fast enough, and unfortunately a lag of only a few seconds between signal send and response can be enough to break this. If you assume that most operations around social signalling operate at about 2Hz plus or minus an order of magnitude, you won't go too far wrong. I'm sure *I've* been an accidental creep and failed to notice it fast enough before. I'm *certain* I've been an accidental crashing bore.)

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

mathstuf — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 03:34:55 +0000

I've posted about most of this on other parts of the thread, so I won't repeat them here.

> I don't agree that complaints against Stallman are useless because they are anonymous.

OK, that's good to know.

> All I see is a clumsy and lonely man, and that is not a crime.

Who has said it's a crime?

> But should he be subjected to this online assassination and humiliation, and negation of his life's work?

I'd say the first is a bit extreme, but not too inaccurate description. I'd call it more along the lines of "his behavior has been problematic for quite a while and it took until now for the stresses to break such that people were willing to speak openly about it". The second has been happening for quite a while already (the foot video primarily). With this, I'm not seeing much humiliation going on. Or rather, I don't see anyone doing Ralph from The Simpsons "ha ha" kind of stuff. Maybe there's some more subtle things going on, but I avoid Twitter and those echo chambers.

Negation? Who has called for tearing down Free Software? The FSF? GNU? GPL (other than those who have been doing *that* for years anyways)? EMACS? GCC? I don't see anyone pulling an "I quit" fit from free software because of this. Have you?

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

frostsnow — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 03:30:00 +0000

>I think what we are learning here is that the organization's values are not all written down -- and that if people who should (going by those shared values that *are* written down) find that they cannot join the organization because of violations of some of those unwritten values, they are quite within their rights and in fact justified in saying why this was. If it turns out that a lot of members of the organization agree, those values then become more explicitly stated.
Then you have missed my point entirely. You have conflated the values which the subset of people which you describe hold with the values of the overall group. Finding that "a lot" of members agree on other values does not give them the justification to formally incorporate those values into the organization and purge those who do not hold those values.

I will give an example. It will be a religious one, because the current claim being made against RMS is a moral superiority one, and, like the current claim, the example religious claim will be a moral superiority claim. Suppose, instead, that 90% of the members of GNU found that they all had a strong belief in Christianity. They may claim that others would feel creeped out by Godless heathens and their blasphemies (cursing, licentiousness, intoxicants, &c), and that the project would flourish if only their morality was incorporated into GNU. Their religious ideology does not give them the justification to co-opt GNU for their moral ideals.

There is an expectation that, whatever your moral convictions, you do not try and co-opt unrelated groups for your own moral ideals, even if a large majority of a group's members share those values. You are advocating breaking that expectation. I am advising you against it.

>This is what we're seeing here. (There were very long delays in making this widely public precisely *because* this sort of thing is usually kept under the carpet, because when this sort of thing gets publicised the organization usually comes down like a ton of bricks on the complainer and squashes her into a paste: instead you get people passing names and lists of names around on the quiet, people you don't want to be left alone in a room with, lists of people you don't want to be in the same room as even if not alone, etc.
I don't think conflating RMS with the people who are on the "might rape you" list is productive.

>That you don't realise such things exist is yet another sign of privilege: like me, you are not in the afflicted group and so will not be on the under-the-table friendship networks that pass these things around.
That I do not agree with you does not mean that I am blinded by my privilege, and I do not appreciate your casual dismissal of my argument.

>That you and others on this thread are immediately accusing the accusers of all being liars in the total absence of evidence is an example of the exact sort of squashing into a paste that I'm talking about here.
When did I do that? You seem to be confusing me with other commenters. I do not appreciate your careless accusation, either.

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

mathstuf — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 03:24:33 +0000

Just ignoring that you made a misstep is the problem here. Apologizing and showing actual changes to your behavior is a key factor here. When you ask someone (who you've never met) on a date, get a no, and then just walk away, what is someone supposed to think your goal was? Many people here are acting as if *any* unwanted behavior is a reprehensible, unforgivable offense[1]. The problems are about the whole set of behavior from the "I see nothing wrong, so it must be the other's problem" entitlement to the lack of empathy about how others perceive your behavior and then saying *they* have the problem with their observations (their reactions are a different story, but not completely so).

[1]I certainly don't doubt that such people exist, but I'd be surprised if they were any substantial number.

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

mpr22 — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 01:18:32 +0000

Using "due process" to refer to anything other than restraints on the actions of holders of institutional power and their agents, particularly but not exclusively those involved in the application of state force, is a recipe for confusion.

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

zenaan — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 00:23:46 +0000

It's called due process, arising from duty of care to each other as humans. You can straw man that "away" as much as your preferences dictate, but that won't remove the inherent dignity with which we should treat one another.

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

zenaan — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 00:22:44 +0000

> That you and others on this thread are immediately accusing the accusers of all being liars

Your assertion is prima facie false; thus your subsequent conclusion from this assertion, has no basis in truth.

("Great way to bring balance and objectivity" by the way.)

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

flussence — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 21:29:59 +0000

Having a public all-caps curse-filled meltdown is good for a laugh, but certainly doesn't _add_ credibility to anything else you've said. Go back to wherever that kind of conduct is culturally accepted.

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

NAR — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 11:24:51 +0000

You simply *have* to read the social signals your interlocutor is producing in realtime and use them to dynamically adapt your approach

The obvious problem with this method is that the feedback comes only after the unwanted/creepy approach, so the harm (including to the reputation of the offender) was already done...

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

nix — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 10:15:10 +0000

I think what we are learning here is that the organization's values are not all written down -- and that if people who should (going by those shared values that *are* written down) find that they cannot join the organization because of violations of some of those unwritten values, they are quite within their rights and in fact justified in saying why this was. If it turns out that a lot of members of the organization agree, those values then become more explicitly stated.

This is what we're seeing here. (There were very long delays in making this widely public precisely *because* this sort of thing is usually kept under the carpet, because when this sort of thing gets publicised the organization usually comes down like a ton of bricks on the complainer and squashes her into a paste: instead you get people passing names and lists of names around on the quiet, people you don't want to be left alone in a room with, lists of people you don't want to be in the same room as even if not alone, etc. That you don't realise such things exist is yet another sign of privilege: like me, you are not in the afflicted group and so will not be on the under-the-table friendship networks that pass these things around. That you and others on this thread are immediately accusing the accusers of all being liars in the total absence of evidence is an example of the exact sort of squashing into a paste that I'm talking about here.)

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

nix — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 10:01:32 +0000

Quite. If you're that emotionally overwrought you can't think this through properly. But if I might interject anyway? (Sorry...)

This subthread, and the comment you are responding to in particular, is a wonderful demonstration of one geek social fallacy: that human relations follow precise rules, like law or code, and all you need to do is find the right ruleset and all your problems will go away and nobody will be "allowed" to dispute your approach. Tell us the right rules! Of course, there are none, or rather, the "rules" are a feedback loop of social signalling between the parties involved. The reason the signals *exist* rather than a simple ruleset is that the same exact approach in the same exact situation may appear just fine to one person and horrifically creepy to another. People are different from each other! If you like, they have huge amounts of internal state and this affects everything. There *is* no one set of rules for romantic approaches which will always work and never offend or creep out anyone: there isn't even one set of rules for which it is absolutely certain that if the interaction is widely publicised it won't cause you difficulties. You simply *have* to read the social signals your interlocutor is producing in realtime and use them to dynamically adapt your approach (usually by shifting into a non-romantic conversational mode, because the other party is not interested dammit). (If you can't do that, you're probably doomed at real-world dating and should stick to online matching systems for the first approach: frankly with a huge proportion of the western world meeting each other this way, it's probably a good idea *anyway*. Non-romantic approaches are much less likely to cause offence anyway. Just stick to those.)

If you really want terrifying: the thing RMS did with the "business or pleasure" cards is actually a *recommended approach* in some areas of autism therapy: you hand out cards to your interlocutors before you say anything else saying you've got autism and take it easy etc. I don't think this works well even for normal discussions, because it creeps people out and makes their first impression of you a terrible one. For initial romantic approaches, even in the right context (i.e. *not* a tech conference), it is even more of a guaranteed disaster, but of course if you can't read social signals *and* you're not listening to people telling you it's not working, you're not going to notice...

-- N., tried the card thing (non-romantically). Once. Never again. It's still worth carrying them so you can hand them out if you're massively overstressed and about to melt down and almost incapable of speech and need an excuse to get out into a nice quiet room for a few hours, but otherwise? nooo.

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

frostsnow — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 02:17:49 +0000

>Your argument appears to be that it doesn't matter if someone only upholds some of my moral values, as long as he upholds others -- but it seems that this doesn't apply to all moral values, because it doesn't apply to those which preclude e.g. eating people. So it only involves some moral values.
Close. The moral values which apply are the subset which have been agreed-upon by the group. It is that which allows us to agree in one respect and thus co-operate towards a common goal despite our other disagreements.

The problem with the cannibal example is that the change is so fundamental that all of society would have to be warped to its reality, and the society which would result would be so alien to my knowledge that I could not coherently reckon about my interactions with it.

>You claim your discriminator to be 'is this legal?' but we all know that declaring that legality to be equivalent to morality leads to disastrous consequences, even if it made conceptual sense (does your ethical code really change every time you cross jurisdictional boundaries?). Not all that is legal is right to do.
That is not my claim. The moral values of GNU are not legal values, but they must be upheld within the group.

>(Also... one wonders if this is simply privilege speaking. Would you agree to have someone running an organization you were involved with if that person was creeping *you* out every time you interacted with him? I would presume not. Would you be happy to just leave that organization, even if you valued it, because obviously the guy at the top must be more important than any subset of other members? 'cos that's what you're doing here, except without you yourself in the crosshairs.)
When I encounter difficult people in an organization which I have agreed to be a part of, I both minimize my interactions with them and keep the ones that do happen short and on-topic. However, I would not call for the removal of the person unless they have violated the shared values of the organization.

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

zenaan — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 00:21:02 +0000

A very good foundation! Thank you for sharing such clarity.

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

zenaan — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 00:17:54 +0000

See above:
https://lwn.net/Articles/802287/

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

corbet — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 00:00:05 +0000

Honestly, I don't think this is going to get resolved here. Rather than shouting more, maybe we should just take a step back at this point?

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

zenaan — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 23:53:44 +0000

I wrote:

> > Apparently RMS asked an 18 year old woman on a date.

[And this took all of 15 or so seconds and the topic was never raised again.]

Cyberax wrote:

> Apparently he has a history of this happening consistently. It was not a one-time thing.

So name the damn rule that RMS is not allowed to break! And be VERY PRECISE and CLEAR in your terminology, so that these older "bastards of the community" don't fall foul of the mob when they ask a woman younger than they are, on a date!

Also, be damn clear about whether it is only RMS who is not allowed to ask women younger than "say, 30 years old" on a date, or whether it is "all men over the age of, say 40 years old" - or whatever the hell you rule is that JUSTIFIES THIS PUBLIC LYNCHING OF Richard Stallman, founder of the FSF and GNU!

FFS folks appear so intellectually fraudulent and disingenuous at the moment.

BY ALL MEANS tear one or another pathetic minor detail (in what I've written) to shreds, BUT AT LEAST HAVE THE DECENCY to address the core issue, and do so in a way which RMS, myself, and all other white men in this world can grasp YOUR POSITION so that YOUR RULES are not broken and so that YOU HEREAFTER REFRAIN from justifying these public lynchings.

I expect more from you "Cyberax"! Is this the effing world YOU want to live in?!!

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

LtWorf — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 11:39:17 +0000

Go take a look at the famous opal issue.

Huge amount of trolls who "would contribute if you kick out that guy".

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

nix — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 09:27:35 +0000

That seems like accusation in the absence of evidence. Oh wait isn't that what you're accusing all of *them* of doing? Yes, yes it is, except you have even less evidence.

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

nix — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 09:26:50 +0000

Your argument appears to be that it doesn't matter if someone only upholds some of my moral values, as long as he upholds others -- but it seems that this doesn't apply to all moral values, because it doesn't apply to those which preclude e.g. eating people. So it only involves some moral values. You claim your discriminator to be 'is this legal?' but we all know that declaring that legality to be equivalent to morality leads to disastrous consequences, even if it made conceptual sense (does your ethical code really change every time you cross jurisdictional boundaries?). Not all that is legal is right to do.

(Also... one wonders if this is simply privilege speaking. Would you agree to have someone running an organization you were involved with if that person was creeping *you* out every time you interacted with him? I would presume not. Would you be happy to just leave that organization, even if you valued it, because obviously the guy at the top must be more important than any subset of other members? 'cos that's what you're doing here, except without you yourself in the crosshairs.)

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

LtWorf — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 05:57:45 +0000

Did you ever read my comment?

I didn't say everyone. I said a staggering majority.

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

Cyberax — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 03:08:13 +0000

> Apparently RMS asked an 18 year old woman on a date.
Apparently he has a history of this happening consistently. It was not a one-time thing.

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

zenaan — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 03:05:49 +0000

> "it" happened to me

What I have heard by reading a first hand account: Apparently RMS asked an 18 year old woman on a date. Apparently she was uncomfortable about that. This took all of 10 or 15 seconds, and RMS never went near that topic with her again after that.

And now RMS has been lynched from MIT and the FSF which he founded.

When I used the phrase "All I have seen are opinions, innuendo, and hearsay", we need to add the words "and no facts which in my eyes justify the public lynching to have RMS removed from his positions at MIT and the FSF which he founded." I thought that was obvious at the time I wrote the words, but in hindsight I can see how the point needs to be clarified. Hopefully this is sufficient clarification.

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

frostsnow — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 01:59:12 +0000

I have read my own message. My assessment of my experience still stands.

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

Cyberax — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 01:51:26 +0000

Try to read your own message, but substitute "women" for "black people".

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

frostsnow — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 01:49:15 +0000

We clearly disagree as to the root cause, but I wish you would at have provided a more civilized response rather than snarky implication.

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

Cyberax — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 01:22:50 +0000

> I am okay with women who are both capable and interested in technology pursuing it as a career and/or hobby
Wow.

> but I've seen that fewer women are interested in such things than men.
I wonder why.

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

frostsnow — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 01:15:03 +0000

I disagree. I am okay with women who are both capable and interested in technology pursuing it as a career and/or hobby, but I've seen that fewer women are interested in such things than men.

Richard Stallman and the GNU project

frostsnow — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 01:15:01 +0000

You don't appear to have understood my argument. What is there about using a shared subset of moral values in a certain context that you do not appear to understand here?