Wow… I didn’t even know there was a character limit… :P

Once again, very reasonable response(s). Honestly I think we fundamentally agree in most of the arguments, to the point that I’m running out of things to add -says as he proceeds to drop another column-

I’m sorry but in my quote-posting I’m gonna cherry-pick specific parts, not because I want to misrepresent you but because I don’t want to make it unwieldly. However, please call out at any point if I’m missing something important you said or misinterpreting something.

there should’ve been an internal investigation, but that didn’t happen. The problem then though is: What now? As with allegations of (sexual) abuse, those things are hard to proof to the public.

This is the part that still seems strange to me. If these episodes are so frequent and blatant there must be plenty of testimonials, it wouldn’t be impossible to record conversation, an email thread… or someone could prepare a public interview with him where he’s confronted about controversial behavior, maybe giving opportunity to the victims to talk (anonymously maybe even, just a recording without the face, maybe even altered voice) and see RMS reaction and response to it. Specially for things that you said were recurrent and he has not fixed for years. Confront him about the fact that those have not been fixed for years and show it to him, then show the public what he has to say.

Just having these kind of things exposed might actually spark change already, even without the need to collect signatures.

I understand that it’s still a lot of effort and it’s not as easy to prove as more public forms of abuse, but I find it hard to believe that there would be no witnesses willing to give a testimony or some form of evidence. Specially in the world of Software, where a lot of communication happens electronically, even internally. If the issue is privacy policy, RMS could be publlicly asked for permission to show his private responses in such interview… if he actually refuses then… well, that’d already look fishy and uncooperative which is something that’d be good to get exposure on.

If RMS had rejected to participating in such interview then… well, that’s something that could have been in the letter. If they cannot provide anything solid at the very least they should be convincing about why that is.

Sure, but then it’s bad rep for mostly him and the Free Software movement (bad enough), but the FSF could easily do something like distancing themselves from him. This would do them very good in all such occasions.

It would give good rep with those who were exposed to the proof. And at the same time it would also give bad rep with those who think that the removal was undeserved. This is why it’s important to be convincing.

Had the FSF listened to the letter, removed RMS and completelly changed the entire board, it would not be a total surprise to me if the same motivation that pushed for the anti-anti-RMS letter ended up giving birth to a new alternative movement, more welcome to RMS and the directors from the previous board. Maybe a new foundation would have been created, in a similar way as how the Open Source Initiative differentiated itself from the FSF. Creating more division in the movement and taking a bite of the FSF cake.

Maybe many in the OSI are secretly happy about all this drama, I wouldn’t be surprised if they got at least a small bump in supporters. After all they exist as a more pragmatic alternative to Stallman’s FSF. It’s also interesting that 4 out of the 16 people who appear as authors of the open letter are directors or former directors of the OSI.

Obviously it’s important to treat malice different from unintentional things when it comes to judging (and I know, you read the letter as judging and I didn’t but I see where you’re coming from and admit that it’s bad that it could be read that way). However, if you read the letter just as a demand to remove him to stop further harm (my reading) then, this is pretty much irrelevant

That’s sensible. I agree.

If it isn’t read as an accusation of being “misogynist, ableist, and transphobic” (although if “internalized” had been added then I’d not argue), then you are right. If I do the exercise of reading it as only a demand, that would take away most of my criticism about the “wording” of the letter, and the only thing that would remain is my criticism of whether what was demanded actually stops further harm.

People pressed for changes, but nothing could be heard over the deafening presence of RMS.

And yet this time the pressure was much louder. Why is it that? Is it because of the wording and demands they made this time? Or is it because they actually tried this time to make it more public, wrote an open letter and use their influence and position in several organizations to push for it in social media, asking others to support and sign the petition at a time when RMS was already in the news for being readmitted? Why did they not do that when they were demanding him to change?

It feels like people only decided to take a more serious and public action when they were angry and mad, misdirecting their demands by applying punishment as a form of poetic justice rather than thinking of an actual solution that could fix the problem.

Maybe the best criticism of the FSF is that it’s just “The RMS Society”. Which isn’t necessarily bad, but it means that we have gap there, where an FSF that wouldn’t be “just RMS” would be.

I agree it would be good to see a new flow of progressive change. But the sad thing is that there has not really been any loud voice inside or outside the FSF that introduced any new strain of philosophy as groundbreaking as the initial movement was in the 90s. The thing is that we aren’t talking about a new approach, we are talking about the respect for others that already has been claimed. What we are talking is not being progressive but being consequent with values we already are meant to defend.

The issue is the question “are these values not being respected?”. There’s division on the answer to that, and if the division is not solved and it keeps scalating then ultimatelly it could mean the FSF itself could divide, with a new organization appearing or maybe the OSI taking over the banner.

The problem here is that both sides see each other as the enemy (this is very clear when seeing twitter), one side dehumanizing the other, as in a sort of ideological warfare. Dehumanization sparks dehumanization. And it’s hard to talk with someone about shared ideals when they have already dehumanized us.

We will see. My hope is that RMS & the FSF will both see the mess and try and take the kind of measures that the open letter should have requested in the first place and it didn’t (things like making sure RMS controversial behavior is under leash, communicates only in written form externally or internally with those outside the board, never go to any event without some form of caretaker that knows how to deal with him, etc… or whatever measures would actually help with those problems that the letter didn’t explain). And then hopefully this whole war will slowly be forgotten.

But it could also happen that they don’t manage to address the right problems (I’m still skeptical on whether it’s true that the FSF & RMS know / understand what the problems are, since the letter wasn’t specific about them) or that even if they did address them, they are already dehumanized and the ideological war against them will never stop no matter what RMS & the FSF board do (other than removing themselves not only from the FSF but from all interaction with the community).