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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 25 2021, @08:18PM (35 children)
s/t
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday March 25 2021, @08:40PM (26 children)
https://rms-open-letter.github.io/ [github.io]
After that, 2304 and counting individuals, some of prominence, some anonymous cowards.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Informative) by krishnoid on Thursday March 25 2021, @09:32PM
Then there's this analysis [github.io] as well. Maybe he should go on Fox and see if both sides can make it through an interview about cancel culture. I'll reimburse you for a package of microwave popcorn if that ever happens.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 25 2021, @09:41PM (12 children)
All of those need to be minimized.
No, I won't be switching to MacOS or Windows, but I'll make a reasonable attempt at boycotts and bans.
Maybe the next step is to generate a list of alternatives. For each item on the list, what is the next-best thing that might need some help? Possibilities include code, monetary donation, and PR effort. Let's show toxic people a dose of their own poison.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 25 2021, @10:15PM (11 children)
> Let's show toxic people a dose of their own poison.
I totally agree. Toxic people were nice enough to provide a list of themselves by signing this petition. Let's try to remove them from positions of power.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 25 2021, @10:44PM (10 children)
per the usual the incels have no integrity, just reactionary bullshit with their faux victimhood
is muh cancel culture bad, or just when it is done to you?
is discrimination bad, or just when it happens to you?
saw a funny post about a libertarian who became a liberal after trying MDMA and finally comprehending that other people have feelings
so short an anecdote yet so poignant
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @12:06AM (9 children)
> waaaaah how dare you use our tactics against us
You fight violence with violence until potential opponents think twice before using it. Pacifist protests actually working are an exception in human history, not a rule.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @01:02AM (8 children)
Pacifistic resistance is highly effective if your opponent has a sense of ethics and/or honour because their own moral code will restrain them. It is not only completely ineffective but entirely self-destructive if your opponent has no morals because because their own code of conduct says to take full advantage of you.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @01:18AM (7 children)
This is a warmonger's myth. Non-violent resistance totally disables the evil opposition, because they actually depend on the kindness, and tacit compliance, of others. All power if based on the consent of the governed, and if the governed withhold consent, there is no power.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @02:37AM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Friday March 26 2021, @03:05AM (3 children)
It would be a better world if that were true. But it's not.
Non-violent resistance is the best method when it can work, but it does require some humanity on the other side to work. Maybe not at the top - but among the rank and file. The enforcers on the street.
As long as they remain human, they can be reached, they can be shamed, they can resist orders to commit murder. Resisting them non-violently puts them in a psychological bind; torn between obeying their superiors and obeying their conscience. This is the point - to tear them free of the control of their superiors.
But once it gets to the point where the enforcers are no longer human, this does not work anymore. They have no human instincts to call out. They will exterminate or be exterminated.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anti-aristarchus on Friday March 26 2021, @06:28AM (2 children)
No, Arik, you are a coward, just like Runaway and khallow. You would collaborate rather than resist at the risk of your life.
If no one cooperates, the trains do not run on time, the busses go nowhere. the power to the death camps is shut off, and the Internet goes down. It's a goddammed general strike, Arik! And the "other side" can do nothing without the cooperation of a large proportion of the populace. This is why we kill collaborators in quite nasty ways, because they are cowards and traitors. There was a woman running for office in Lithuania, the granddaughter of Nazi collaborators, and the youngsters could not understand the reaction against her. We understand, don't we, Arik. The ones who turned in the Jews, the ones who tortured their fellow citizens, for a pittance and some food? Cowards, traitors. I really get the feeling that people have forgotten what fighting fascism is like. Prepare to die on your feet, or on your knees! And as Gandhi said, if you are not strong enough to be non-violent, being violent is better than being a coward. Suck it up, Arik!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Arik on Friday March 26 2021, @07:06AM (1 child)
Was the real-fake-ari-banned? I don't think so. Parsimony suggests you are the fake fake ari, and I probably shouldn't even reply to you.
Still;
"being violent is better than being a coward."
No. For anyone reading, no.
Being a coward is a personal failing you need to work on.
Being violent implicates everyone in the vicinity. And forces us to be violent in our responses, in some cases. You don't do that unless you're not only very certain you're right - but also that you can win and make things better instead of worse.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @05:35PM
Even when you can't win, sometimes especially then, when the only thing you can do is make oppression cost more, then fighting to the last is all you have left. "Give me freedom or give me death."
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @11:46PM (1 child)
Bullies have no care or use of governance, and being a pacifist just rewards and reinforces their behaviour. A good punch in the face works wonders to enlighten them of the errors of their ways.
Stallman has always been a bully, a misogynist, and a freeloading bum. And now he’s getting the metaphorical punch in the face, along with the useless leadership of the increasingly irrelevant FSF.
When iconic projects like RedHat and openSUse and Mozilla publicly denounce Stallman and the FSF board for reinstating him, and cut financial ties, you can scream cancel culture all you want, but the guy is toxic, and what goes around has finally come around. Karma is a bitch, ain’t it?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @03:35AM
> iconic
Fucking "iconic", fuck me, pin me in the ass and cuck me with my wife before I accept that. Greasy corporate whores, money grubbers, people I'd happily shit upon while shielding Stallman.
Why don't you, Mozilla, RedHat and Suse fuck off?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tokolosh on Thursday March 25 2021, @10:14PM
"Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
Joseph Welch
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @12:33AM (1 child)
"To sign, please email digitalautonomy at riseup.net or submit a pull request."
riseup.net: "Riseup provides online communication tools for people and groups working on liberatory social change." "This site is run by Riseup, your friendly Ⓐutonomous tech collective since 1999"
Considering how much some of them have been badmouthing the FSF, these radicals are sure eager to tell them how to run things.
I scanned the list and found at least three people I knew personally. Graduates within the last 20 years of a private university, probably 90% drawn from well-to-do families.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @11:54PM
And that is the ongoing pattern.
The people that hold these opinions are from one of two camps.
Either people with well established office careers, and thus would not know the hardships of service jobs, or newly minted graduates, often with social science degrees, with a upper middle or higher class background.
that term, class, is the one term USA do not talk about (except when fretting about "middle class", as if the nation was made up of only that). Possibly because even taking that into their mouth risk labeling them as communist.
Thus they will yak endlessly about race or gender (never mind that they conflate gender and gender roles, to avoid considering how rigid said roles are in USA, thus resulting in the whole trans-gender bruhaha) but ignore that more people are joined by class than anything else (or they know, and want to avoid it lest the working class will band together against them and take away their skimmed lattes).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by driverless on Friday March 26 2021, @01:46AM (2 children)
A random list of people I've never heard of who no doubt contributed nothing of note to anything.
I guess this is their attempt to make up for it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @02:06AM (1 child)
Including Microsoft employees. [newspunch.com]
(Score: 0) by Anti-aristarchus on Friday March 26 2021, @06:31AM
How many Microsoft Employees? All of the Linux Foundation? Oh, what a tangled web they weave, when first they try to FUD Linux. Always wondered why Ncommander was so into retro-Microsoft stuff, like installing DOS 3.3, or whatever, instead of actual free and open software. They got to him early?
(Score: 3, Funny) by shortscreen on Friday March 26 2021, @04:43AM
FreeDOS WTF? That's it I'm switching to DR-DOS.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @10:16PM (1 child)
yeah, a bunch of twitter and linkedIn whores who are fine with discrimination as long as it's "positive discrimination". IOW, frauds and cultural marxist agents. You know who's not on twitter and linkedIn? fucking RMS, that's who.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @11:52PM
RedHat , openSUse, and Mozilla are hardly “unknown “, and their action are more significant than just signing a petition.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/26/redhat_fsf_funding_richard_stallman/ [theregister.com]
Stallman is a bug squished on the windshield. All that’s left is scraping him off. Will the FSF survive? It’s multiple choice: yes, no, who gives a shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @11:57PM (2 children)
One can't help wonder how much of that is ass kissing to a potential future HR search.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 28 2021, @12:18AM (1 child)
Identifiable people on the other list are already being threatened.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 28 2021, @03:31AM
Interesting, but not surprising. Have a link to more information?
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday March 25 2021, @08:42PM (7 children)
Oh, and NCommander signed:
1556. Michael NCommander Casadevall (Ubuntu Core Developer, former Debian Developer, former FSF Savannah Administrator)
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Fnord666 on Friday March 26 2021, @03:09AM (6 children)
NCommander's take [youtube.com] on the issue.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by darkfeline on Friday March 26 2021, @03:25AM (2 children)
With all due respect to NCommander, he can fuck right off. I only bothered to waste 3.5 minutes at 2x speed on his video. He briefly cites all of the malicious libel around the Epstein issue, and I suspect his reference to RMS being hard to work with is because RMS refuses to compromise on free software, e.g., disallowing linking GCC with closed source software. We need someone to take a hard stance for free software, and I say this as someone who uses lots of proprietary software. I don't care about the FOSS community being welcoming if it means attracting subversive elements (whether due to lack of ability or socially destructive delusions).
I do agree that having done good doesn't excuse bad actions. Thank you for SN, but fuck you.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @10:26PM (1 child)
fat, soy-sweating bitch who posts his videos on youtube. Who cares what you have to say about Free Software, you fat bolshevik bitch. I'm going to oil my lamps with your tit fat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 27 2021, @01:34AM
How dare you malign soy sauce, female dogs, tofu, people who struggle with their weight, men suffering from gynecomastia, and the Bolshevik Party by comparing them to NCommander!
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by Arik on Friday March 26 2021, @03:26AM (1 child)
One silver lining though - he currently works on Ubuntu. One distro we could simply consign to the memory hole and lose absolutely nothing of value.
I'm still just reeling though. It's still a shocker to see such a longstanding and generally respected member of the community spewing transparent garbage and hatred.
Shame on you, NCommander, shame on you.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 26 2021, @06:55PM
Never knew much about NC, but given how SN is run are you really shocked? Really really?
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday March 26 2021, @03:43AM
https://soylentnews.org/~takyon/journal/7354 [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]