Anyone major player in efforts to eliminate the idea of copyleft from their conception of an open exploitation source community must be drooling over this divide.
Indeed. This is a dark day for the free software movement, and I am concerned about the future of the FSF (RMS or otherwise).
For the record, I have always admired RMS as a hacker and philosopher, and consider him one of the most influential people, of the last 40 years, in tech. That said, after careful investigation of the facts I have come to the same conclusion as this letter, that he is doing more harm than good and the FSF and wider free software community should have distanced themselves from him in 2019. Now that the FSF has reversed its decision and brought him back, we have this to deal with now.
However, while I agree with the criticism of RMS presented by this letter, I can’t bring myself to sign it. Specifically, I am concerned with what they credit him with (emphasis mine):
While these ideas have been popularized in some form by Richard M. Stallman,
They do a fairly good job of minimizing his (very important, IMHO) contribution to free software and tech in general. Also note the “in some form” phrasing, which to me implies that they take issue with the way RMS actualized the movement (that he founded). Contrast this with Guix’s statement from 2019,
We, the undersigned GNU maintainers and developers, owe a debt of gratitude to Richard Stallman for his decades of important work in the free software movement. Stallman tirelessly emphasized the importance of computer user freedom and laid the foundation for his vision to become a reality by starting the development of the GNU operating system. For that we are truly grateful.
My worst fear is that the writers of this letter, and some or many of its signatories, see this not as a way to preserve the GNU/FSF founding philosophy while moving forward, but the first salvo in a damnatio memoriae campaign against RMS and his philosophy. I would have liked to believe we could leave RMS the person behind while holding true to the founding philosophy and principles (copyleft, the four freedoms) but I lost all hope of that with this letter.
Well put. That guix letter escaped me previously and respect for his efforts lends much to their credibility imo.
Personally, I need to do more research on the issue. The original history up through the split around netscape ipo, oreilly and linus is familiar but the last 20 years is not. On the surface it looks like extinguish is working.
As the issue has been more and more unpacked I’m also hearing there are agendas for wanting to bring down the FSF itself by other role-players (there is a growing ethical software movement that is at odds with no holds barred open source, as well as increased commercialisation of open source). RMS of course always steps straight into a controversy and is very binary about what he believes in. This has been good, as well as bad, for open source. Because of this too, he was not the best spokesperson for FSF, as he did not even engage on platforms that were proprietary in any way, yet those were the folks that needed to hear his message.
Times and feelings have changed and the binary attitude just does not go down well. That said, I believed his heart has always been in the right place regarding open source, and I’d certainly want to have heard more detail about why he said what he did (remembering that RMS is rather direct and not very empathetic in his way of expressing himself). Knowing his personality and way of speaking in general, I’m just wondering if he should not rather have had some counselling instead, versus being banished altogether. He’s obviously made a lot of enemies along his journey as he never pulled any punches whether it was a government, BigTech, or others he was addressing. Clearly he should not be thinking out aloud. I don’t agree with what he said but am not sure he deserves the same censure that child molesters and rapists have received. I really think he needed support in terms of changing the way he thinks about some non-OSS matters especially when it comes to human beings.
Anyone know if he made any statement at all about what he said? Maybe I missed that.
His heart’s in the right place (with much needed self-criticism regarding super regressive shit he’s put out in the world) in general, but when it comes to free software there’s the incredibly relevant problem of his unwillingness to recognize the contribution of women to the field and FOSS in particular. In an 07 interview:
I don’t have any experience working with women in programming projects; I don’t think that any volunteered to work on Emacs or GCC.
That was bullshit then, and it’s bullshit now, and if you don’t think you can trace a straight line from that sort of shit to the over-representation of cis white men in tech idk what to tell you.
Between that and the decades of interpersonal harassment that many women experienced at MIT, sorrynotsorry he’s not redeemable at least when it comes to being a worthy representative.
Anyone major player in efforts to eliminate the idea of copyleft from their conception of an open
exploitationsource community must be drooling over this divide.Indeed. This is a dark day for the free software movement, and I am concerned about the future of the FSF (RMS or otherwise).
For the record, I have always admired RMS as a hacker and philosopher, and consider him one of the most influential people, of the last 40 years, in tech. That said, after careful investigation of the facts I have come to the same conclusion as this letter, that he is doing more harm than good and the FSF and wider free software community should have distanced themselves from him in 2019. Now that the FSF has reversed its decision and brought him back, we have this to deal with now.
However, while I agree with the criticism of RMS presented by this letter, I can’t bring myself to sign it. Specifically, I am concerned with what they credit him with (emphasis mine):
They do a fairly good job of minimizing his (very important, IMHO) contribution to free software and tech in general. Also note the “in some form” phrasing, which to me implies that they take issue with the way RMS actualized the movement (that he founded). Contrast this with Guix’s statement from 2019,
My worst fear is that the writers of this letter, and some or many of its signatories, see this not as a way to preserve the GNU/FSF founding philosophy while moving forward, but the first salvo in a damnatio memoriae campaign against RMS and his philosophy. I would have liked to believe we could leave RMS the person behind while holding true to the founding philosophy and principles (copyleft, the four freedoms) but I lost all hope of that with this letter.
Well put. That guix letter escaped me previously and respect for his efforts lends much to their credibility imo.
Personally, I need to do more research on the issue. The original history up through the split around netscape ipo, oreilly and linus is familiar but the last 20 years is not. On the surface it looks like extinguish is working.
This mirrors my thoughts exactly. I was going to sign it until I saw that nearly half the authors are OSI/Debian folks.
As the issue has been more and more unpacked I’m also hearing there are agendas for wanting to bring down the FSF itself by other role-players (there is a growing ethical software movement that is at odds with no holds barred open source, as well as increased commercialisation of open source). RMS of course always steps straight into a controversy and is very binary about what he believes in. This has been good, as well as bad, for open source. Because of this too, he was not the best spokesperson for FSF, as he did not even engage on platforms that were proprietary in any way, yet those were the folks that needed to hear his message.
Times and feelings have changed and the binary attitude just does not go down well. That said, I believed his heart has always been in the right place regarding open source, and I’d certainly want to have heard more detail about why he said what he did (remembering that RMS is rather direct and not very empathetic in his way of expressing himself). Knowing his personality and way of speaking in general, I’m just wondering if he should not rather have had some counselling instead, versus being banished altogether. He’s obviously made a lot of enemies along his journey as he never pulled any punches whether it was a government, BigTech, or others he was addressing. Clearly he should not be thinking out aloud. I don’t agree with what he said but am not sure he deserves the same censure that child molesters and rapists have received. I really think he needed support in terms of changing the way he thinks about some non-OSS matters especially when it comes to human beings.
Anyone know if he made any statement at all about what he said? Maybe I missed that.
His heart’s in the right place (with much needed self-criticism regarding super regressive shit he’s put out in the world) in general, but when it comes to free software there’s the incredibly relevant problem of his unwillingness to recognize the contribution of women to the field and FOSS in particular. In an 07 interview:
That was bullshit then, and it’s bullshit now, and if you don’t think you can trace a straight line from that sort of shit to the over-representation of cis white men in tech idk what to tell you.
Between that and the decades of interpersonal harassment that many women experienced at MIT, sorrynotsorry he’s not redeemable at least when it comes to being a worthy representative.