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.
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.