Results of Debian Vote On Stallman To Be Known By April 17 (itwire.com) 387
New submitter juul_advocate shares a report from iTWire: The outcome of a general resolution proposed by the Debian GNU/Linux project, to decide how to react to the return of Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman to the board, will be known on April 17, with voting now underway. The original proposal for a GR was made by Steve Langasek, who also works for Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, and calls for co-signing an existing letter which wants Stallman gone and the FSF board sacked. There has been a lot of discussion around the issue.
Six alternatives have been proposed. The proposals are:
- remove the entire FSF board as in an existing letter;
- seek Stallman's resignation from all FSF bodies;
- discourage collaboration with the FSF while Stallman remains in a leading position;
- ask FSF to further its governance processes;
- support Stallman's reinstatement;
- denounce the witch hunt against Stallman and the FSF; and
- issue no public statement on the issue. During the organization's LibrePlanet virtual event on March 19, Stallman announced that he was rejoining the board and does not intend to resign again. His return has drawn condemnation from many people in the free software community. Just days after his announcement, an open letter calling for Stallman to be removed again and for the FSF's entire board to resign was signed by hundreds of people.
Linux giant Red Hat has decided to pull funding, while the 'Open Source Initiative' said that it "will not participate in any events that include Richard M. Stallman," adding that it "cannot collaborate with the Free Software Foundation until Stallman is removed from the organization's leadership."
Six alternatives have been proposed. The proposals are:
- remove the entire FSF board as in an existing letter;
- seek Stallman's resignation from all FSF bodies;
- discourage collaboration with the FSF while Stallman remains in a leading position;
- ask FSF to further its governance processes;
- support Stallman's reinstatement;
- denounce the witch hunt against Stallman and the FSF; and
- issue no public statement on the issue. During the organization's LibrePlanet virtual event on March 19, Stallman announced that he was rejoining the board and does not intend to resign again. His return has drawn condemnation from many people in the free software community. Just days after his announcement, an open letter calling for Stallman to be removed again and for the FSF's entire board to resign was signed by hundreds of people.
Linux giant Red Hat has decided to pull funding, while the 'Open Source Initiative' said that it "will not participate in any events that include Richard M. Stallman," adding that it "cannot collaborate with the Free Software Foundation until Stallman is removed from the organization's leadership."
Missing option (Score:5, Funny)
CowboyNeal
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Spartacus would have been better.
I'm so torn (Score:5, Interesting)
On one hand, I think Stallman cannot lead effectively under these conditions, and given the long history of accusations.
On the other hand, Debian governance gave us systemd.
On the gripping hand, if the OSI says they won't work with the FSF while Stallman is around, that's a huge bonus. Fuck those fraudulent fucks.
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On one hand, I think Stallman cannot lead effectively under these conditions, and given the long history of accusations.
That right there is the problem. Anybody can make accusations, anytime.
This formulation "cannot effectively lead" is just a dodge to avoid anybody having to prove allegations.
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Only because people like you keep spouting this crap.
It's actually because people keep making claims of harassment against him, but way to marginalize them.
The 'has become a distraction' argument has become nothing more than bland cover for cowards who won't stand up to cancel culture but also don't agree.
I don't stand up to cancel culture because I am not opposed to cancel culture. Conservacucks have no right to stand up to cancel culture because they invented cancel culture. I am not a coward, and I do agree. Lots of things should be cancelled.
"Cancelers" need to be called out for the shit-stains they actually are.
Conservatives cancelled alcohol and drugs. They tried to cancel heavy metal and dungeons and dragons. They cancelled thousands of black people with nooses. Now they
Re:I'm so torn (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree, some cancel culture is in order. People like yourself for instance... ;)
Seriously, no, no and a thousand times no! You do not get to talk about marginalizing accusations. Because accusations without a proper hearing before a judge are and will forever remain just some people throwing niceties at someone else they don't like.
Given how much it is en vogue to accuse anyone whose name is known to more than five people of misconduct, an accusation is worth NOTHING!
Obviously it must be investigated properly but until a clean investigation comes up with something establishing at least a somewhat coherent case, and accusation says nothing at all.
If you've got ten accusations you've got a better chance of the case being a valid one but even so the accusations, even if there were a million of them are worth NOTHING.
There is a very good reason most advanced societies have a judicial system and rely on due process. The system is not perfect by far but if we didn't have it, people like you would have either ruined the country or been thrown off a cliff long ago.
And now go ahead and mark me flamebait or troll because I will add that I'm kinda sad I don't get to throw you off said cliff for making society worse.
Re:I'm so torn (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree, some cancel culture is in order. People like yourself for instance... ;)
Go for it. That's the whole point. Freedom to disassociate is done by consensus. If you can get enough people to care, you can all cancel drinkypoo - whatever that means to you. Good luck! The judicial process is for crimes, dumbass. The freedom to say "I don't wanna work with this guy" doesn't require involvement of the justice system. Nobody is proposing that he be incarcerated for his actions and words. The stakes are not high enough and the freedoms of folks like Stallman to go do something else are not curtailed enough to warrant the time and money it costs to use the court system. Your thinking is .. small.
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Freedom to disassociate is done by consensus. If you can get enough people to care, you can all cancel drinkypoo - whatever that means to you. Good luck!
You left off the part of cancel culture where people would dox dinkypoo, try to get him fired, smear him as *ist, go through his digital trash and pull out of context 10+ year old posts, and down-vote-bomb any posts he makes on any subject regardless of merit.
No, I am not supporting cancelling dinkypoo, but we need to be clear about terms of what is being suggested.
Re:I'm so torn (Score:4, Insightful)
Go for it. That's the whole point. Freedom to disassociate is done by consensus. If you can get enough people to care, you can all cancel drinkypoo - whatever that means to you. Good luck!
So you must be okay with DDOS attacks, where a horde of mindless drones attack something just because they can't think for themselves?
And there is more to Cancel Culture [washingtontimes.com] than to just deciding for yourself the you don't like someone and getting your friends to dislike them as well. See, the term "cancel" is actually there because events [breitbart.com] have [reason.com] gotten cancelled [businessinsider.com]. The mentality behind this is "what the speaker is going to say is so abhorrent that NOBODY should hear them." See what they did? They made your decision for you.
Re:I'm so torn (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly nobody is decrying the freedom to say "I don't want to work with that guy"
What we have problem with is people who take it a few steps further. Its I won't work with YOU either unless you also refuse to work with that guy. They than act like its some high minded act on their end when its basically just school yard bullying of the "you can't be my friend and friends with Tommy" sort.
Than there are those that take it even farther than that, YOU MUST DENOUNCE such and such or be considered to be endorsing every bad action on their part, and we are going to go around insisting to everyone that you are part of some conspiracy of institutional-whatever-ism because you won't abuse your position of power to punish someone for some unrelated to your activities thing they have decided is a crime.
THAT is cancel culture and it has nothing to do with justice at all. Its about a bunch of little cowards and cry babies who think the world was unfair to them at some point finding out they can form a mob and bully others. The moment they don't have the mob behind them they shrink away. Which is why they have to build 'safe spaces' etc, because they are only brave when they know there is a nearby rock to cower under if they don't immediately get their way.
Re: I'm so torn (Score:3)
Dumbass yourself.
Whoever doesn't "want to work with this guy" is free to to quit. It's when somebody tries to quit you because they don't want to work with you that things get unfair, and you realise that principles of a judicial system should apply.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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"You don't think you wouldn't be cancelled in a heartbeat if someone selected some of the less refined snippets of your old posts and posted them out of context?"
It has been done more than once and I'M STILL HERE.
I have NEVER treated Slashdot like a popularity contest. I have ALWAYS spoken my mind. I've been here a long time despite people trying to cancel me continuously. People abuse moderation against me constantly and many are often trying to make me look bad with old comments.
It does not work because I
Re:I'm so torn (Score:5, Insightful)
I see in another comment you describe yourself as a high functioning aspergers. I think you are slightly less high functioning than you imagine.
The bit you're missing here is that someone can act very unpleasantly, and make people not want to have anything to do with them, but for their behaviour to not be criminal offence.
Stallman has repeatedly done stuff that makes people not want to have anything to do with him. He's been told specific parts of his behaviour are unpleasant. He, like you, thinks that if he isn't breaking a law, he's allowed to continue that behaviour. He can, but at the same time, that means that some people don't want anything to do with him.
At some point the people running a project need to decide who they want to include and who they want to exclude.
Should they keep a guy who is a creep, and refuses to listen to feedback as to why his behaviour is unpleasant, or do they want to keep everyone else who doesn't want to have anything to do with him?
Re:I'm so torn (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm so torn (Score:5, Insightful)
At some point the people running a project need to decide who they want to include and who they want to exclude.
They did. After his resignation, they apparently realized that allowing him to go was a mistake. So now he's back. They have decided.
This has really annoyed the woke progressives, because it calls into question their ability to infiltrate and dominate organizations through sheer intimidation. I hope and trust that the FSF will stay true to this decision, and keep Stallman despite external pressure.
Organizations like OSI that have condemned his return? I do believe we have found a way to identify which organizations have already been infiltrated.
Re:I'm so torn (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree that the accusations against Stallman should be heard in court.
However, credible accusations have legs even without a day in court.
Stallman himself has made these accusations credible [wired.com], e.g. with his pleasure cards offering tender embraces being handed out at official events.
I note that that link doesn't show the card which is actually and clearly a fairly simple joke business card (and which he handed to everyone, not just women).
It's perfectly reasonable to hand those out at gatherings where you're not a person of influence.
Or where, you know, people actually look at it in context and have a laugh.
When you add to that his apparent endorsement of men in power taking advantage of young women on specious grounds (how the young women were "presented", as if that were relevant) he's really dealt himself the hand he's got to play.
Again, that's not really what's going on. He was asked about how he felt about the accusations against Minsky (which turned out to be nonsense) and in his friend's defence said that Minsky would probably not have known what was going on since the woman's handlers would have ordered her to present herself as un-coerced.
I'd love to hear what you think is the problem with that. It seems like you're trying to introduce legislation about "decent" age gaps in relationships or something. It's hard to tell since even the woman in question said that Minsky turned her down. You seem confused about human relationships generally.
If credible accusations [medium.com] were made against me, I'd expect to have to answer them.
Given that these accusations appear credible enough, I'd expect Stallman to have to answer them. He doesn't appear terribly interested in doing that, and this sure doesn't cut it [lwn.net]. That also makes the accusations seem more credible.
Not being interested in wasting time answering bullshit accusations about things that didn't happen does not transform lies and innuendo into facts.
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and which he handed to everyone, not just women
People keep saying that as if it's some kind of defence. It doesn't matter what the gender of the person receiving it is, it's still completely inappropriate to offer them a "tender embrace".
Re:I'm so torn (Score:4, Insightful)
What's inappropriate changes constantly although that list is getting longer and longer
Re:I'm so torn (Score:4, Insightful)
You incorrectly understand "liberal" to mean more restrictive.
Hate speech IS free speech. A liberal would understand that not everyone shares their personal view. Tolerance. Not punishment.
You people are so doublethink it hurts.
Re:I'm so torn (Score:4, Interesting)
That culture changes over time (and space) should be an argument for toleration.
We ought to be able to realize that maybe it isn't always great when a hegemonic culture imposes their norms and customs as the only moral option.
A few years ago there was, for a very brief time, an ethnicity manipulation filter in the face editing app FaceApp.
There is a cultural taboo against "blackface" in the US, for understandable historical reasons, and to portray someone of another "race" than they are is seen as deeply offensive. That's seen as self evident to you, but still not to most people on this planet. Most of the world don't have or even know this historical context. Probably, most dark-skinned people on the planet would not even know what they were supposed to be offended at in this app.
The Russian dev clearly didn't know about this cultural taboo, because you can't doubt his desire to respect his audience: it wasn't even available for a full day. He pulled it and apologized as soon as he saw the first negative reaction.
Maybe that's good. Maybe we should respect other cultures' taboos to some degree, like the apostle Paul who declared that there was nothing inherently wrong with eating meat sacrificed to idols (a big taboo in his native Jewish culture) but that he would go all-out vegetarian if you seriously thought there was, to not undermine your conscience.
But MAYBE we shouldn't let upper class Americans decide for the whole world what to tolerate and what to not tolerate, damnit.
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I don't stand up to cancel culture because I am not opposed to cancel culture. Conservacucks have no right to stand up to cancel culture because they invented cancel culture. I am not a coward, and I do agree. Lots of things should be cancelled.
You are fucking coward, you know you are fucking coward. You go along with the whims of the mob today because it makes you feel powerful; that is it. You have no thoughts of your own, just bullshit others have put in your head.
Conservatives cancelled alcohol and drugs.
HAHAH funny, nobody would have described the temperance movement as conservative when it happened. Classic progressive gas-lighting right there. Yes conservatives eventually embraced it because turns out progressives were somewhat correct about that one, drugs are bad for society.
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They cancelled thousands of black people with nooses
This person needs to learn history. The KKK in the south was run by a bunch of Democrats. Heck the entire south was. It was the Republicans under Abraham Lincoln that fought the civil war and freed the slaves. It was the southern Democrats that tried to filibuster the civil rights bill. The longest filibuster in U.S. history was 75 days and “took place in 1964, when Democrats tried to block the Civil Rights Act.”
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Canceling metal and rap was Al Gore (Score:4, Insightful)
They tried to cancel heavy metal [and rap]
That was actually Al Gore, and his wife. Seriously, not making this shit up.
Re:I'm so torn (Score:5, Insightful)
They cancelled thousands of black people with nooses.
No offense, and I am NOT a conservative (I’m more liberal than 99% of people who call themselves liberal), but when I read this kind of self-congratulatory stuff, it always strikes me as insincere.
Democrats fought a war to preserve slavery. The Democrats birthed the KKK. They pursued eugenics for much of the 20th century. A Democratic President snubbed Jesse Owens. More Democrats opposed the civil rights act than Republicans. Dems opposed the ERA. Hell, they had an ex Grand Wizard in Congress well into the 00s. Hilary was anti-gay-marriage well into her 60s, yet, you probably voted for her. Obama was publicly against it both times he ran, and you probably voted for him. These same Dems turned around and boycotted the poorest, blackest state in the union for holding the exact same position as the people they elected President.
60% of corruption convictions are against Democrats. Most high-profile police shooting of unarmed blacks have occurred in Dem regions. Few, if any, laws were passed to curtail it. NY is the sole exception.
Your chosen group is not who you pretend that they are, and your self-image is not genuine.No amount of modding people Trolls or Flamebait is going to change that. It’ll just make you feel better, which is really the point of all of this.
Both groups are pretty messed up, and Dems have an abysmal record on human rights. Look at black incarceration rates and living standards since Democrats started pretending to care about minorities. It’s atrocious.
As long as you spend your life pointing fingers at others, it will likely never change.
news for nerds (Score:3)
check your history books, conservatives did try to cancel D&D.
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Yes evangelicals flipped. Temperance was a progressive movement. Abolition was an evangelical led progressive movement. Not all progress is bad! However moving to fast and not evaluating the results critically and carefully is!
The entire notion of individual liberties was pretty 'progressive' by the standards of the mid 18th Century.
Real conservatives are not afraid of change, but they do hold certain core ideals are not subject to change, and prioritize results over appearances.
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Democratic progressives were the party of the KKK, Stalin and Mao. Republican conservatives are the party of Lincoln and the civil rights bills.
Idiot conservatives like to spout things like this while ignoring the fact that the parties effectively exchanged platforms starting in the earl 1900, completing in the late 1960s. History is not your friend.
Re:I'm so torn (Score:4, Insightful)
Republicans used to be the party of Lincoln and the civil rights bills.
Now they are the party of Trump and out competing each other to be more Trumpy, and voter rights restrictions and rollbacks because they just figured out that saying "no" to literally everything when a guy from the other party is in the White House isn't something that really excites voters as much as being FOR something. So instead of coming up with policies and ideas that energize people to vote for them, they've decided to change voting rules at the state level to make it harder for people that won't vote for them to vote at all.
Republicans used to be for fiscal responsibility, but now are only for fiscal responsibility when in the minority as an excuse to block any bill that moves. They have no problem with $4+T budgets with a trillion dollars of deficit built in being suggested by a president with an (R) after his name, but as soon as that letter changes to a (D) they can't stop talking about tax-and-spend bills, running up the national debt, etc. Never mind that the debt is being run up by their own misguided 2017 tax cuts which just double down on the same failed trickle-down economics that has never actually materialized in 40 years of trying.
Republicans used to actually give a damn about personal responsibility, but now are only for personal responsibility when they don't like the person they want to be responsible. If it's one of their own, then it's "cancel culture." For example, we were hearing a lot of crying about Governor Cuomo in New York and how Democrats weren't quick enough to denounce him and suggest resignation for alleged sexual harassment; where is the rush on resignation and denunciation for Matt Gaetz for alleged sex trafficking, statutory rape, illegal drug use, and solicitation of an underage girl among other tasteless and reprehensible behaviors reported?
Republicans used to be the party of "Law and Order" until those laws became inconvenient to holding on to power. Now, the leader of the Republican Party, otherwise known as the only citizen of Florida to be impeached twice, is likely to end the year under multiple criminal indictments, and with several subpoenas served to him to be deposed in multiple civil suits ranging from the violence at the Capitol on 6 January to sexual harassment claims, tax fraud, violation of state election laws, and campaign finance violations including something just reported that sounds a whole lot like bank fraud [nytimes.com] resulting in the return of donations at 5x the rate as the Biden campaign. And what was this money used for? Paying off campaign debt from the campaign that was just lost (and, by the way, what happened to the billionaire candidate self-funding?), and not legal defense or "stopping the steal" or whatever bullshit that was being sold to the donors.
Republicans, by and large, used to be respectable. Now they are flailing about with culture wars, bloviating about Mr. Potatohead and Dr. Seuss trying to find anything that will stick as a wedge issue in order to stay relevant, rather than going the way of the Federalists and Whigs. They've even managed to piss off corporate donors who used to be inseparable from the GOP. Any attempt to try to make our society even a bit more egalitarian results in a refrain about "cancel culture" and "leftist extremism" because the only wrench left in the toolbox is fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
This isn't the Republican Party we need in order to keep the more extreme actors in both parties in check. This is a party that has been taken over by the extreme actors, and then accuses the Democratic Party of the same. These guys are populist windbags in public, and then authoritarian wannabe oligarchs in private who see treating people with dignity and respect as weakness, where compromise should be avoided at all costs, and have no problems with lying and hypocrisy. And if they don't cut the cancer out fast, all that will be left are the tumors.
Re:I'm so torn (Score:5, Insightful)
Only because people like you keep spouting this crap.
Yes, let's deal with this problem by changing the rest of the world world. If we change everyone else but Stallman, Stallman needn't change.
RMS isn't just some hacker churning out code, for decades he has been a politician. That's not a put-down, he has made his most important contributions as a political thinker and leader. As someone with a wacky hacker persona he also gets some slack cut, but it's not *unlimited* slack. This is not a new problem for public figures; the Bible ascribes these sayings to King Solomon: "Even fools are thought wise if they keep silent, and discerning if they hold their tongues." and "Those who guard their mouths and their tongues keep themselves from calamity."
Knowing when to keep your mouth shut and the persona dialed off is a basic requirement for a political leader.
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So you want to cancel the cancellers? Does that make you a shit-stain as well?
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Re:I'm so torn (Score:5, Interesting)
On one hand, I think Stallman cannot lead effectively under these conditions, and given the long history of accusations.
Only because people like you keep spouting this crap. ....
I personally think that Stallman, left to his own devices, would have destroyed the whole concept of Free Software decades ago. It was only in spite of him and because of the heroic efforts of many others (Torvalds, Perens, and Raymond were notable) that we are where we are today. In spite of his undoubted technical brilliance and moral insights, he has been more of an obstacle to progress than an actual constructive force for literally decades.
In the very early period of Linux he was actively attacking the whole concept as necessary, as the Hurd was technically superior and right around the corner. Later on he made his cheesy attempt to co-opt the efforts of others, first by branding "Linux" as "Lignux" and then advocating for "GNU/Linux". To me this was nothing more than a lame attempt to take credit for the considerable efforts of others, in particular when they had accomplished something (building a totally free and working operating system kernel) that he most obviously could not.
Personal story: in the early 90's (pre-linux) I offered to contribute on GCC. This involved tedious weeks of missed phone calls and voice mails, and I flew at my own expense from Seattle to Boston to meet with the Great Man.
He blew off the meeting.
A few years later I reached out again, and in a phone conference call where he finally bothered to show up he shut down the whole idea hard in the first three minutes. Keep in mind that I was offering to contribute to GCC without pay and under the terms of the GPL.
By that time, I could make whatever contributions to Linux I wanted, Linus and Alan Cox would answer emails, and as opposed to Stallman they seemed genuinely interested in the contributions of others and in fact encouraged them. In Stallman's vision only fully vetted coders who met his high standards would be permitted to contribute.
Maybe it isn't fair for me to judge him so harshly on his piss-poor behavior over 25 years ago, but he established to me that he is a High Artist of Assholery and is ill-suited for any kind of leadership position in any organization, and especially so in an organization that needs to encourage people to contribute their time and ideas in the furtherance of a cause, however noble. I think the more recent Epstein/Minsky crap and his well-known history of creeping on women are just more bricks in a pretty considerable wall.
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Just to defend the GNU/Linux thing, without those GNU tools building a usable OS that attracted other developers to work on it would have been much harder. Most people tried to leverage commercial tools like compilers and general software, e.g. by creating an OS compatible with some other one.
GNU really unlocked a lot of possibilities back then.
I agree "has become a distraction" (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem here is that with Stalman's position of power he should be extra careful hitting on girls. To be blunt
RMS failed to lead for may years, decline of GPL (Score:4, Insightful)
On one hand, I think Stallman cannot lead effectively under these conditions, and given the long history of accusations.
Only because people like you keep spouting this crap.
RMS is a poor leader outside of this crap. Look at the decline of the GPL, the one thing which is his original work, his actual accomplishment. Look at the increased disuse of the GPL, in 2020 it accounts for only 24% of projects (down from 39% in 2016) while the more permissive licenses account for 61%. If you look at GPL v3 specifically it only 10%, half the customers rejecting the upgrade and sticking with the older model, v2. That's quite the loss under RMS' leadership. So does the FSF deserve the best and most effective leadership available or is just a plaything for RMS?
Some argue that the tech world has changed, corporations are more involved in open source. Yes, the world evolved, the FSF did not. That's the point. The skill set of the founder of an organization is different than the skill set of someone who leads an organization from a market primarily composed of early adopters to a market primarily composed of the public at large. Founders of an company/organizations often have to be replaced due to this.
Failure to adapt, something that dooms companies and organizations every day. If we can say IBM had poor leadership and failed to adapt and is a shadow of its former self, why can we not say the same of the FSF under RMS leadership? Why can we not say RMS exhibited poor leadership and hurt his organization, just like IBM executives exhibited poor leadership and hurt their company?
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Right, personally deciding not to continue endorsing a brand is the same as essentially running them out of town. Oh wait it isn't. Those politicians are not out there telling everyone not buy Coke. They are not out there passing trap laws to shut down Cokes business. They just are not providing advertising for them any more.
Once again the gas-lighting continues. You are pretending merely choosing not associate with actively threatening others who continue to associate they way the cancelers do. Its not th
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Except politicians are telling people to boycott companies.
https://www.newsweek.com/donal... [newsweek.com]
I guess Trump is a politician now.
Re:I'm so torn (Score:5, Interesting)
They're jealous. "Conservatives" have been pushing cancel culture since forever. Remember (if you're old enough) the Moral Majority? In 1997, the 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention boycotted the Walt Disney company, which they perceived to be too gay-friendly. Two years later, Jerry Falwell Sr., founder of the Moral Majority, famously led an effort to boycott "The Teletubbies," a childrenâ(TM)s television program, because he got an inkling that its Tinky-Winky character was covertly gay. In 2012, the evangelical group "One Million Moms," part of the American Family Association, led a boycott of JCPenney after comedian Ellen DeGeneres, an out lesbian, was named the department store chainâ(TM)s spokesperson.
It goes back further than that. Hell, the TV show WKRP in Cincinatti devoted the final episode of Season 3 (1981) to the subject. From Wikipedia:
Evangelist Dr. Bob Halyers (Richard Paul), a take-off on Jerry Falwell, threatens WKRP with a boycott unless they stop playing songs with "obscene" lyrics.
More recently, the call for boycotting Starbucks when they pledged to hire 10,000 immigrants. The fun part was lambasting the company for not pledging to hire 10,000 veterans -- without knowing the company already had [foxbusiness.com] a program doing that for years, and has well surpassed their stated goals.
The simple truth is conservatives are jealous. None of their calls for boycotts every actually worked, other than generating free publicity for their targets.
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Just because something is legal does not mean no one is allowed to react to it.
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The fact that he also commits distracting unforced errors in totally unrelated areas is just another symptom of his personality, which is poorly aligned to leadership of the FSF or in the free software community.
It's not an unrelated area because he made it relevant. When you are an officer of an organization you are always speaking as an officer of that organization whether that is your intent or not. When you're the public face of something, you are always that face. You retain the right to free speech but The Public is not going to keep you separate from your position in their minds. And the organization has to take that into consideration.
There is no such thing as an unrelated area when you are the public face
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If we are talking about the Minsky email chain, I still think it is ultimately not related to the FSF or free software. It absolutely reflects on him, and indirectly on his fitness for leadership, but Minsky-at-Epstein's-place was a question about Minsky's private behavior.
Historically, The Public was smart enough to recognize that, and to understand that Stallman's comments on Minsky were Stallman's own opinions. Unless the FSF is effectively his pet project, or Stallman indicates he is speaking as an of
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Historically, The Public was smart enough to recognize that
What? When was the public smart?
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A citation for what, specifically? You could start by reading any of the Slashdot threads about Richard Stallman in the last month, because every single fucking one of them features people demanding citations -- and then rejecting them, usually for flimsy reasons.
Re:I'm so torn (Score:4, Funny)
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Since when is Nazi a proper noun ..
At least since 90s, according to Godwin's law [wikipedia.org].
ob. swivel-eyed comment (Score:4, Interesting)
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Something-something cancel culture something-something-something.
Er, right. Because shutting down discussion with logic-less mockery totally disproves the existence of cancel culture, lol.
Re:ob. swivel-eyed comment (Score:5, Insightful)
Something-something cancel culture something-something-something.
The story is literally about someone being hounded out of his job and all positions of influence because of his past "views" and vaguely suggested actions (not any actions that are, you know, actionable and require proof or anything, but, but ... he owned a mattress!).
If that's not cancel culture ... then what exactly would be?
Re: ob. swivel-eyed comment (Score:2)
There should be a three strikes arrangement. Hold three or more reprehensible beliefs that you shareand openly defend and you are shown the door. I think RMS has a strike left.
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The "pleasure cards" he gives out are probably enough on their own. If you were organizing a conference and invited him to it, and he handed one of those cards out, you could be in trouble yourself. It's not like he isn't now well known for it, and I'm sure people would remind you after you announced the booking.
Someone will chime in to say they are a joke, but just being a joke doesn't make them acceptable at your professional event.
Six alternatives! (Score:3)
Apart from the fact that the number of alternatives is 7 (the last one is "do nothing"), the selection of the alternatives and it's number may affect the final result. Suppose the following results, following the order in the summary:
[0, 0, 35%, 0, 30%, 30%, 5%]
With this example outcome, a clear majority (60% = 30% + 30%) supports Stallman, but the winning option is the third one, "discourage collaboration with the FSF while Stallman remains in a leading position", with only 35% of support, roughly half of the votes supporting him.
Vote fragmentation is counter-productive. If the selected option is the most voted one, it is sensible for people with similar opinion to agree on a common option before voting. Alternatively, it would be fair to first analyze the average of the votes, considering them as a Likert scale from 1 to 6 (or the last option, do nothing).
Re:Six alternatives! (Score:5, Informative)
That is exactly why Debian uses ranked-choice voting, specifically a variant [debian.org] (see A.6) of Condorcet's method [wikipedia.org]. It guarantees that there is, in some sense, a majority for whatever choice is selected.
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Thanks for the info! :)
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Of course Debian is set up for ranked choice voting! It is a 20+ years old project which held ALL its important decisions over email. This is not the They have scripts to parse response and tabulate results. They hold on or two of those GR a year.
https://www.debian.org/vote/ho... [debian.org]
So this is what a coup looks like (Score:5, Interesting)
Spanish Inquisition (Score:5, Insightful)
RMS is a weird guy, but well intentioned at his core. The modern day witch trials need to end.
Re:Spanish Inquisition (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a witch hunt because it's not based in fact [wetheweb.org]. Even the ex-president of the ACLU says he is ok, and we ought to support things like equal rights, proportionality of punishment, freedom of association, freedom of speech, and investigating actual facts.
You can tell who is wrong in this situation because they don't care about facts and they are not kind.
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RMS may very well have good intentions as far as the Free Software Movement is concerned, but if he is going to be a major face of said movement, then his tendency to alienate important audiences through his words and deeds very much trumps his good intentions.
This isn't a witch hunt, as witches are not real, but the things about RMS to which people are objecting are very much real. You many not personally care about those things, as is your right, but that d
Re:Spanish Inquisition (Score:5, Insightful)
Remained a stalwart proponent of Free Software model in face of monetization and political winds. Dude has morals, whether people agree with his stand or not.
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I believe Stallman does mean well and try to do the right thing, and will change his views when we thinks he should. Lately he has even worked on things like the GNU Kind Communications Guidelines, which are pretty similar to stuff that other people get attack for because they are too "woke".
Sometimes he misses the mark, like his attempt to suggest some new genderless pronouns: https://stallman.org/articles/... [stallman.org]
Again, odd that he wasn't shredded for being a trans activist Hitler for that one.
The problem is t
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What's the name of the board?
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So your argument is essentially that free software is in such pathetic shape that mere consistent advocacy for it is sufficient to help lead the Free Software Foundation?
If that's true, the FSF should probably dissolve, because it seems to be absolutely ineffective at advancing its cause.
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Considering that his morals led him to advocate for ... legalizing possession of child pornography,
That is not true [wetheweb.org]. You are furthering lies. To quote:
"[Richard Stallman] never said that he endorse child pornography, which by definition the United States Supreme Court has defined it multiple times is the sexual exploitation of an actual minor"
Makes me think you are not interested in actual discussion, just interested in character assassination.
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Please explain this direct quote from Stallman, as presented by your own source:
It's pretty clearly explained in this link [wetheweb.org]. If you were trying to have a balanced understanding, you wouldn't have a problem understanding it, but it seems you're not trying to have a balanced understanding.
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Stallman did nothing wrong. Cancel the cancelers. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Decrying cancel culture while actively participating in it seems a wee bit hypocritical.
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"it's ok when we do it." -everybody
Re:Stallman did nothing wrong. Cancel the canceler (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Stallman did nothing wrong. Cancel the canceler (Score:5, Insightful)
No the way to fight them is not to cancel them back. That does nothing but harden their resolve. The way to fight them is not to entertain their demands.
Ignore or laugh at their demands. Call them out for being the cowards they are. Point out to anyone who will listen that its they who are seeking to marginalize people and deny them the ability to participate in society not us. They are the ones "othering" people. They are the ones making people afraid to express their convictions and ideas.
Cancel Culture is Alive and Well at Slashdot (Score:2)
I've put three posts here:
'If you cite "woke"/"cancel" culture, question:' - https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
'Stallman is guilty of being a dick' - https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
'Why would they take him back?' - https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
That question whether or not Stallman should be in a leadership position of a public facing organization based on his past (and well documented) personal behaviour and comments as well as asking shouldn't the FSF board have been a bit more maze-bright in bri
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So, what are you recommending? Boycott IBM/Red Hat?
A lot of us are already doing that because of their decision to kill off CentOS, but I'd be OK with expanding the effort.
RMS being creepy and sexist is the least of it. (Score:5, Interesting)
The guy was an eccentric has-been in the mid nineties. I get it, he had a great idea a long time ago, and was stubborn enough to hammer it home. Thanks, GPL was a useful contribution. You've done that RMS, and done bugger all since, so maybe just retire, or try writing useful software or something. Why does anyone want him leading anything?
I hate the cult of personality and celebrity in tech. RMS, Linus, Eric bloody Raymond, Musk. OSS is about the masses organically coming together to make stuff that's basically useful and works. It doesn't benefit from celebrity engineers elevated (especially in their own minds) to God like status.
RMS, quite apart from being creepy and sexist, just isn't all that good at stuff.
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Re:RMS being creepy and sexist is the least of it. (Score:5, Insightful)
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We still need him. There will be new threats to software freedom in the future, RMS is one of the best o see them early and clearly. His input will be needed for the next version of the GPL to counter those threats. And his talks are also helpful to help others see matters of software freedom clearly.
I even think that for this role, it makes the most sense to have RMS on the FSF board, but not as President. Just like it AFAIK is now.
New law. (Score:2)
All famous programmers will ultimately come to resemble the cowardly lion from the lion the witch and the wardrobe.
Is Debian run by cowards? (Score:3)
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Debian is a pretty democratic association. My understanding is that about any Debian Developer can trigger a general resolution. I do not think it needs the approval of the Debian Project Leader.
Stalman Stays (Score:5, Insightful)
The governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, sexually assaulted multiple women and chooses to stay. He remains in power to this day, with no sign of being forced out or having to choose to leave.
Stallman had a business card with a kind of lame joke on it and you are asking him to resign? For what?
No.
I call for Steve Langasek to be removed from Ubuntu, for gross misuse of power.
Re:Stalman Stays (Score:4, Insightful)
The governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, sexually assaulted multiple women and chooses to stay. He remains in power to this day, with no sign of being forced out or having to choose to leave.
You haven't been paying attention much, have you?
The NY Attorney General is investigating, and the NY legislature has started the impeachment process.
Stallman had a business card with a kind of lame joke on it and you are asking him to resign?
You haven't been paying attention much, have you?
There's a far longer history of creepy behavior and abuse, with little indication he grasps that there is a problem at all. Much less any desire to change his behavior. In addition, when he publicly stated that statutory rape shouldn't be a thing, he libeled the friend he was trying to defend.
In the background of all this, he has been very ineffective at his job since the 1990s. GPLv3 adoption is abysmal. He's abusive towards contributors and potential contributors. He's an asshole, wants to continue to behave like an asshole, and the job he is trying to do requires someone that doesn't behave like an asshole.
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Here is another, more recent article not just about GitHub:
https://resources.whitesources... [whitesourcesoftware.com]
It sees both GPLv3 and GPLv2 at 10% of FOSS projects each. It also sees a clear trend of decline of copyleft licenses (total of 24%, with LGPL making up the other 4 %).
Interestingly, they state that in 2016, GPLv3 was at 19%. I wonder if the decline is due to new projects choosing Apache and MIT or due to actual relicensing.
Support for Mr Stallman (Score:2)
Pro-Stallman Open Letter Omitted From Summary (Score:3, Insightful)
Pro-Stallman Open Letter [github.io]
Current counts are:
Pro: 5,785
Anti: 3,012
Another interesting figure: The Pro-Stallman letter has been translated into 33 languages.
Prior Slashdot article [slashdot.org] linked both the pro- and anti- Stallman letters.
Counts at that time were:
Pro: 3,632, and
Anti: 2,812 (or thereabouts; prior article counted organizations separately.)
Anti-Stallman Open Letter [github.io] linked for completeness.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Boycott (Score:4, Interesting)
Ruining someone's career over a single sentence is psychopathy
I already know the results (Score:3)
If only there'd been as much of a indiscretion. (Score:3, Interesting)
Well the Clinton era (Monica) showed people's tolerance so why should Trump's be any different?
You left out most of the story (Score:4, Insightful)
> Clinton was impeached for lying about a blowjob.
Clinton was impeached for being *convicted in court of perjury* for lying *during a sexual harassment lawsuit* about whether he was the sort of guy who would try to pressure his subordinates for sex. The fact that he was getting blow jobs from Monica and lying about it in court while *under oath* was the relevant context. This gets left out by his defenders who want to pretend that women who he didn't want to sleep with him to do so by virtue of being their boss. Clinton has also been accused of straight up rape for decades now by Juanita Broderick. More details can be found here [wikipedia.org].
> Trump admitted to sexual assault,
Against which person? If you mean the "grab them by the pussy" comment, he said that it's something women "let" billionaires do, but never admitted to personally doing it against any specific, named person.
> has been credibly accused of raping a 13 year old girl at his good friend Jeffry Epstein's apartment and refused to provide DNA in the case,
"Credible" is a great stretch here given that it was an anonymous accuser who tried *not* to make the case go forward to trial, never put out any evidence, etc. Even liberals like Popehat [popehat.com], who really hate Trump, pointed out this case was sketchy as hell.
> paid hush money to a porn star and a playboy bunny, and lied more than 15,000 times while in office, illegally took money from a charity he started, golfed almost twice as much as Obama after claiming he would be too busy to golf at all, and refused to release his tax returns after stating he would do so AFTER he was elected,
I won't argue with these points, but they have nothing to do with rape or sexual assault at this point.
> and attempted a coup involving an assault on the Capitol after repeatedly lying about the election being stolen, just to name a few.
The "coup" has been subject to all manner of disinformation. It was a riot, to be sure, but the rioters didn't kill anyone and merely stole a few things for which they are being prosecuted, as they should be. Sicknick died of a blood clot in the brain, the fire extinguisher (and flagpole) narratives have been retracted due to there being no head injuries, so whatever caused his death wasn't intentional (and could've been the police's own pepper spray or possibly bear spray from a rioter, there isn't a lot of good evidence on who it even came from), several others died of medical issues or suicide, and the only intentional death was a rioter shot for intruding into a restricted area.
So it was a bunch of stupid angry rioters with no actual plan who decided to steal Pelosi's podium and LARP as a cow/shaman and the "coup" narrative is just so you can pretend that it's somehow more threatening than doing a billion dollars of damage over the summer, which the liberals wholeheartedly supported, even as other rioters claimed an "autonomous zone" free of police where several murders were committed which, somehow, is supposedly far less threatening than a crazy dude LARPing as a cow.
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Jesus said "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone."
I am amazed by how many sinless people there are nowadays.
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Because it doesn't matter if the kernel can compile and solve real-world problems. It's the average skin-color and aggregate sexual preferences of the people in the organization that matters. Thanks for clearing that up for us.