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Thomas Bushnell, former maintainer of GNU Hurd until his dismissal by Richard Stallman, has opined in a biased blog post that the forced resignation of Stallman from MIT and the Free Software Foundation is deserved.
https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-rms-18e6a835fd84
So Richard Stallman has resigned from his guest position at MIT and as President of the Free Software Foundation. You can easily find out all you need to know about the background from a web search and some news articles. I recommend in particular Selam G's original articles on this topic for background, and for an excellent institutional version, the statement from the Software Freedom Conservancy.
But I'll give you a personal take. By my reckoning, I worked for RMS longer than any other programmer.
[...]4) RMS's loss of MIT privileges and leadership of the FSF are the appropriate responses to a pattern of decades of poor behavior. It does not matter if they are appropriate responses to a single email thread, because they are the right thing in the total situation.
5) I feel very sad for him. He's a tragic figure. He is one of the most brilliant people I've met, who I have always thought desperately craved friendship and camaraderie, and seems to have less and less of it all the time. This is all his doing; nobody does it to him. But it's still very sad. As far as I can tell, he believes his entire life's work is a failure.
6) The end result here, while sad for him, is correct.
The free software community needs to develop good leadership, and RMS has been a bad leader in many ways for a long time now. He has had plenty of people who have tried to help him, and he does not want help.
MIT needs to establish as best it can that paramount are the interests of women to have a safe and fair place to study and work. It must make clear that this is more important than the coddling of a whiny child who has never reached the emotional maturity to treat people decently.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Monday September 23 2019, @03:03PM (17 children)
That line, particularly the word "paramount", was perhaps over the top. But not by much. Sexism is still a huge problem.
For many years, I've wondered why so few women are in STEM. One thing that smelled was that somehow, this question remained a great mystery for decades. All this stuff we can figure out, but not that? This question is not the unproven P≠NP problem! It was very much like Bee Colony Collapse Disorder being reported as a big mystery, when all along the answer was right there: pesticides, specifically neonics. The chemical industry was just blowing smoke up all our asses, again.
Among the speculations was the sexist thought that women just aren't as good at STEM, that their brains just don't work that way. It's not that men are smarter, heavens no, it's that the male brain is better suited for those particular fields. Put that way, this notion could be advanced and simultaneously disavowed of being sexist.
Now, RMS has finally gone too far. There's no more hiding from ourselves why so few women are in STEM. It is the sexism. And now, we finally hear about all the other little things RMS has done over the years, and the covering that has been done, again and again. This isn't just RMS, folks. This is a community wide issue, or RMS would have been reined in long ago.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by meustrus on Monday September 23 2019, @03:20PM (1 child)
I'm on your side, but I respectfully disagree.
RMS is an insensitive clod, but I've never gotten the impression he was more insensitive to women than anyone else. And this issue isn't really about what RMS thinks of women.
When MIT is weighing "the interests of women" versus "the coddling of a whiny child", they're not weighing founded allegations against RMS. They're weighing the PR burden of the scandal - which just takes basic research to realize has been greatly mischaracterized to the point where RMS might actually have the rare winnable USA defamation case - against the value of a man whom it turns out is not that great a leader, and who's probably retiring soon anyway.
When it comes down to it, it doesn't really matter to MIT where the pressure is coming from. RMS has earned enemies over the years for his broadcast insensitivity, and all they needed was ammunition.
I'm sure that if RMS didn't have those enemies and it wasn't so common for him to piss off lots of people for basically no point, MIT would be more interested in defending him.
---
As for why women are not in STEM, data shows that the bias happens before college so people like RMS almost certainly have no direct impact. Which is not to say there is no indirect impact of having all these man-children in FOSS acting as role models for the young men and boys that are interacting with the women who choose not to pursue STEM.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @03:40PM
No, they're coddling women like they are whiny children because this is in women's interests according to Bushnell's logic. Honestly, I'm more concerned about these misogynistic attitudes of "male feminist allies" than Stallman having made a point. Stallman was wrong and made the same argument that delayed proper investigation and prosecution of Muslim rape gangs across the UK. Explanation and moral argumentation are more constructive than expulsion but require good faith engagement which is elusive to third wave feminists.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @03:22PM
Perhabs you are right, we don't know yet.
However when I talk to people who are not working with technology, it shows a huge difference of interest in the field. Much more men are interested in technology. It could be that all the people I have ever met has been a conspiracy to produce those statistics, I don't know, but I don't think just removing the men without social skills from the field is going to make much of a difference. I don't think we have reached a point yet, where we can draw a clear conclusion on the question "why are there fewer women in tech?".
Workplace climate is a different issue, which need a solution separate from "why are there few women in tech" and this issue clearly involves nerds with bad social skills.
I think it is a mistake to just mix the two issue into one big lump if we want positive change.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @03:33PM (11 children)
How, though? If you read the emails, he didn't do any of the horrible things that the stupid media articles accused him of doing.
I worry about who will replace him at the FSF. Will it be some "open source" moron who will compromise the Free Software community into oblivion? It would be nice if we could get someone who is a better leader than RMS, but also just as rigid and uncompromising.
(Score: 2, Funny) by PlasticCogLiquid on Monday September 23 2019, @03:52PM (1 child)
Everything will be alright, Poettering is adding all the OSS to systemd.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday September 24 2019, @02:34AM
So he's dropping Pulseaudio for OSSv4 then? That's rather forward-looking of him.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @04:59PM (6 children)
And this is part of the problem.
There are diplomats, and there are those unwilling to compromise. It is very, very, EXTREMELY rare to find someone that will believe in something with absolute passion, and stick to that belief .. and yet at the same time? Make immense moves towards compromise!
Compromise means altering your position, and yet this is something that CAN NOT happen if one is to stick to a specific, unyielding belief.
Do you think Steve Jobs compromised? What about our buddy at Facebook? What about M.L. King?
Stallman wasn't interested in making his software less free, or writing fewer utilities, or opening up development with licenses that were counter to his goals. He most likely saw immense frustration with the lack of progress, in terms of corporate influence, and licenses, and closed source software.
But.. this is what you want in certain cases.
Do you think anyone else other than Jobs could have taken Apple to eventual profit? Maybe, but we KNOW he did, and we know he wasn't happy go lucky the whole time.
What about Gates? Massive criminal activity, anti-trust issues, and more.. but, would M$ be what it is today, without him?
Would Black rights have progressed as far, without MLK? With someone willing to compromise? To talk about "working together", instead of "standing up"?
Would the world have been better for the US, if Kennedy said "OK, you can leave those missiles there", or what of Churchill?
All of these people, during the ENTIRE TIME they were fighting down the path they chose, ALL OF THEM, had endless friends, people in movements, and people in government begging them to a different course. Talking of appeasement, or compromise, or quite literally giving up!
So, people want this sort of personally it be entirely amicable, yes? Be quiet, reserved, metered in their responses, put great thought into thinking what others care, and so on...
You CANNOT have both. Not in the same person.
And here's the thing. Certain professions attract a certain type of person. And certain paths do too...
My thought on this? If people don't fuck off, and stop crying like children about statements people make, we're going to end up with everyone capable of creating immense change.. gone.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @09:09PM (5 children)
It's called "going Galt". (from the character John Galt, from the novel Atlas Shrugged, where the supposed movers of the world simply stop doing anything) It's already happening -- that's why there's a term for it.
More people are deciding that the amount of crap they get from others, from society, etc. despite the work they're doing -- in some cases because of the work they're doing -- that they're just not going to do it anymore. They don't scream or make a fuss, most of 'em. They just... leave. Retire early. Become an ex-pat. Whatever. They're no longer participating in a society that benefits from what they do, but that society gives only scorn or derision (or sometimes death) in return.
By work, I mean not just paid employment, but anyone doing something useful. Not just the high muckety-mucks or mad geniuses are doing this either, the mid-level folks who don't make the headline-splashing discoveries, but just do the day-to-day keeping the civilization going. Ever wonder why it seems like everything is getting worse? Nothing is made well, regardless of where is was made? Getting anything done is more like setting off on an epic quest of yore? Nobody seem to be able to do their job? It's not just that there's more stupid people everywhere... there's always been stupid people, but there's been quiet, competent people too, to keep the wheels turning. Hard to find the competent anymore... they're going Galt.
Have fun screaming about how horribly oppressed you are, while the people who have the knowledge and capability to keep our civilization going quietly discover that they no longer have the desire to do so, and simply stop.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @09:16PM (4 children)
Quoting Atlas Shrugged, pretty sad times SN has reached.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @11:38PM (1 child)
Any Rand bad owo owo owo
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday September 24 2019, @02:27AM
Just consider this: http://acceleratethecontradictions.blogspot.com/2009/03/going-galt-aftermath.html [blogspot.com] (Bob the Angry Flower)
(Score: 2) by chromas on Monday September 23 2019, @11:43PM
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 24 2019, @04:38AM
Explaining where the term came from is not quoting the book. But sure, just bitch about the source of the term, and ignore what the term is describing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @06:41PM
They can finally make that V4 GPL which can usurp code thanks to all the code license with the 'or later' clause.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday September 23 2019, @10:41PM
I'm not too worried. You can get a pretty good idea of who is likely to take over based on who is making the decision, and you can read the board's resumes [fsf.org] for yourself and draw your own conclusions. For example, I doubt that Bradley Kuhn, who started helping out at FSF in 1992 and is now running the Software Freedom Conservancy, is likely to choose a corporate-friendly anti-copyleft person to be in charge of the FSF.
One of the things I've learned over the years in various forms of organizational leadership is that there's no such thing as an irreplaceable person in a well-established organization. For example, one local non-profit group I was part of had our vice-president suddenly drop dead one afternoon, and while it was a bit rough in the aftermath somebody else stepped up to do his job and the work of the group continued much the way it had while he had been around. I've seen businesses fire people that thought they were untouchable, and again there was some adjusting but ultimately there was nothing major that changed. Smart organizations make contingency plans and distribute knowledge and responsibility as much as they can specifically so that they can handle these kinds of upheavals.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @04:44PM
The answer is right there. Women just don't generally want to do it. The fact that liberals don't like that answer doesn't change reality. Whenever anyone tries to find some reason for it beyond that, it's just not there. Women must be harassed more than in other occupations! (nope.) They must be paid less. (nope, turns out they're paid more). They must be earning less respect at work (nope, turns out code is rated more highly when a reviewer knows the author is female). They must be discriminated against in college! (nope, actually most tech schools roll out the red carpet for female candidates). Maybe they're discriminated against earlier on! (studies can't find any evidence, but feminists love this because you can never prove that it didn't happen, so they don't have to worry about inconvenient evidence getting in the way of their victim narrative).
Remember, if something happens because of what men do, it's men's fault, and if something happens because of what women do, it's still men's fault!
It's funny how you never see feminists complain about women being underrepresented in construction or landscaping or the police (even though studies have shown that female police officers are less likely to be involved in a shooting or misconduct claim despite being just as effective). Dangerous, low paying jobs are men's work. Cushy, high paying jobs are women's work.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the military. Back in the 80s and 90s feminists complained that women were excluded from combat roles. So the military allowed women into combat roles. Now there are still hardly any women in combat roles because feminists realized that combat roles are dangerous and physically demanding. No more complaints, though... Wouldn't want to actually be equal, only complain about the stuff you want.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday September 24 2019, @05:02AM
Nope.
https://www.montana.edu/news/7181/the-buzz-about-colony-collapse-disorder [montana.edu]
https://missoulian.com/news/local/university-of-montana-bee-scientists-may-have-found-cause-of/article_145a34ee-d1a7-11df-a3b1-001cc4c03286.html [missoulian.com]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.