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Free software advocates seek removal of Richard Stallman and entire FSF board:
Richard Stallman's return to the Free Software Foundation's board of directors has drawn condemnation from many people in the free software community. An open letter signed by hundreds of people today called for Stallman to be removed again and for the FSF's entire board to resign.
The open letter said:
Richard M. Stallman, frequently known as RMS, has been a dangerous force in the free software community for a long time. He has shown himself to be misogynist, ableist, and transphobic, among other serious accusations of impropriety. These sorts of beliefs have no place in the free software, digital rights, and tech communities. With his recent reinstatement to the Board of Directors of the Free Software Foundation, we call for the entire Board of the FSF to step down and for RMS to be removed from all leadership positions.
Previously:
Richard Stallman Rejoins Free Software Foundation Board of Directors
Richard M. Stallman Resigns
Richard Stallman Deserved to be Fired, Says Fired GNU Hurd Maintainer
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 25 2021, @08:18PM (15 children)
Accusations.
And, what is the purpose of the Board? And is he good at doing that? What I seldom see in these types of discussions is whether the person in question is actually doing a good job or not, and wether the organization or company is doing well, or not.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Thursday March 25 2021, @09:35PM (2 children)
Irrelevant, apparently ,
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 25 2021, @10:48PM
Worse, many of these are adherents of the post-meritocracy movement. They take actually being good at something as a reason to destroy someone, because being good at something is 'privilege' and therefore must be suppressed.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday March 26 2021, @12:34AM
If they kick them all out, they should form a new board. With blackjack! And ... roulette!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aim on Friday March 26 2021, @11:04AM (3 children)
I wonder who the people on the Board are. "Free Software advocates". Leaders of some large projects. Uhm sorry, there would be no Free Software, none of these projects, if it were not for RMS starting the whole thing in the first place. Booting him out for really no reason at all (considering the facts of what he actually said/wrote) reeks of some sort of attempted power grab. Sure, he has some obnoxious sides (hell I know, I've driven him around in my car while he was visiting for a conference), but as for his stance on Free Software, he's spot on, and that's what counts.
He who is without sin should throw the first stone. Anyone? Certainly not these guys.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Friday March 26 2021, @04:53PM (1 child)
Stop saying that! You're going to put the rock polishers out of business.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @08:57PM
Nonsense. There is no shortage of new-age beliefs, and so there will continue to be significant demand for
polished rocks^W^W chakra healing gemstones.(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @07:47PM
I agree. This is almost certainly an attempted power grab. Free as in freedom software is a direct threat to the capability of the bourgeoisie to accomplish large-scale censorship of the internet, while routing around pesky 1A issues, on the eve of World War 3.
The WSWS has been documenting the suppression of left and anti-war viewpoints, and Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (← you are here) is a part of that.
ICFI/Socialist Equality Party—
A brief history of free software until May 2000: The Microsoft law suit, software development and the capitalist market [wsws.org]
More recently: IBM’s purchase of Red Hat highlights growing power of technology giants [wsws.org] - Evidence of Google blacklisting of left and progressive sites continues to mount [wsws.org]
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @06:27PM
No, he isn't useful in the slightest. He hasn't contributed any sort of significant technical leadership in decades. His only role in the modern world is as a spokesman/PR person. And when your PR person is a lightning rod that comes across as a pedophilia apologist, and generates a massive backlash, and a significant chunk of the industry is begging you to throw him out, he's a terrible PR person. That's the opposite of being good at PR. An empty chair would be much better at PR.
If you were an actor who appeared in commercials for a corporation as a spokesperson and said any of the controversial crap that RMS had said, you'd be permanently out on your ass before the newspapers even came out the next morning. The idea of someone like that being elevated to a board of directors position for no damned reason would be unthinkable. No matter what you think of his (actually kinda kooky and extremist) message about software freedom, his ability to convey that message has been utterly pissed away by his controversies and general jackassery. His most vocal supporters are largely people who have never met him, and not had to work with him. Aside from his public disruption as a PR lightning rod, he's also just a pain in the ass to deal with on an individual level, so he'll probably be a net-negative disruption to board meetings in terms of their ability to actually accomplish the FSF mission.
And to be clear, none of that even requires him to genuinely think very highly of pedophilia, or be especially transphobic or anything else. The appearance of being a dismal jackass is more than enough reason to brush aside somebody who's only supposed value is in PR. Again, he's of no practical use as a board member for day to day operations stuff, and he's no technical leader either. PR value is the only axis left to judge him on, and that's clearly empirically negative just from the observation that we are having this conversation.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @11:10PM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @11:25PM (1 child)
Does Redshat have the authority to spend, or not spend, IBM money?
Obviously a takeover attempt. Hope the FSF will stand up to the pressure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @02:20AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 28 2021, @06:07AM
How does he deserve it? It seems they're fighting harder against RMS over complete garbage than they are against proprietary software.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @11:34PM (2 children)
Stallman’s role is supposed to be advocacy. He’s now a pariah. Large organizations like RedHat and Mozilla and Opensuse want him gone.
He can’t do software advocacy when heis toxicity has become the story.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @03:28AM (1 child)
What about the toxicity of Redhat, Mozilla and Suse?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @04:09AM
Mozilla is currently destroying itself.