Debian Votes to Issue No Statement on Stallman's Return to the FSF Board (debian.org) 209
Seven options were considered, with the Debian project's 420 voting developers also asked to rank their preferred outcomes:
- Option 1: "Call for the FSF board removal, as in rms-open-letter.github.io"
- Option 2: "Call for Stallman's resignation from all FSF bodies"
- Option 3: "Discourage collaboration with the FSF while Stallman is in a leading position"
- Option 4: "Call on the FSF to further its governance processes"
- Option 5: "Support Stallman's reinstatement, as in rms-support-letter.github.io"
- Option 6: "Denounce the witch-hunt against RMS and the FSF"
- Option 7: "Debian will not issue a public statement on this issue"
While all seven options achieved a quorum of votes, two failed to achieve a majority — options 5 and 6. ("Support Stallman's reinstatement" and "Denounce the witch-hunt...") The option receiving the most votes was #7 (not issuing a public statement) — but it wasn't that simple. The vote's final outcome was determined by comparing every possible pair of options to determine which option would still be preferred by a majority of voters in each possible comparision.
In this case, that winner was still the option which had also received the most votes:
Debian will not issue a public statement on this issue.
The Debian Project will not issue a public statement on whether Richard Stallman should be removed from leadership positions or not.
Any individual (including Debian members) wishing to (co-)sign any of the open letters on this subject is invited to do this in a personal capacity.
The results are captured in an elaborate graph. Numbers inside the ovals show the final ratio of yes to no votes (so a number higher than 1.00 indicates a majority, with much higher numbers indicating much larger majorities). Numbers outside the ovals (along the lines) indicate the number of voters who'd preferred the winning choice over the losing choice (toward which the arrow is pointing).
The winning option is highlighted in blue.
In that case (Score:5, Funny)
I have nothing to say about this article.
Re: In that case (Score:5, Funny)
I have no words for my sentiments about your comment.
Wonky vote count (Score:3)
How did 420 developers submit 611 ballots and 463 valid votes? Was Russia involved somehow?
Re:Wonky vote count (Score:4, Funny)
4 of them submitted ballots under every single one of their pronouns. One of them did it three times for every pronoun, because they're "non-binary".
Multiple votes can be cast, eliminating older ones (Score:5, Informative)
The Debian voting system allows each developer to vote multiple times during the two weeks the vote is open. If I voted on the day the vote opened, but then thought things better, I could vote again. And then, Stallman produced his "I'm truly truly sorry about my behavior", and I change my mind again -- I can change my vote again. So, 40 such cases happened during the voting period.
Re: (Score:2)
That makes sense, thanks. However, in that case, I think the way the data is presented is less clear than it could be. I would think your thrice-changed ballot should be listed as one vote, not three. If it's deemed important that information regarding the number of changed votes needs to be presented, that could / should be a separate line item.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Multiple votes can be cast, eliminating older o (Score:4, Informative)
Lets... see! Going over the published statistics [debian.org],
- 611 ballots were received, but only 609 were MIME-decoded. I have no idea what those two ballots had
- From those 609, only 474 passed the signature and LDAP checks, this means, were from valid, identified Debian people
- From those 474, 11 were bad ballots -- We are asked to preserve a given format for devotee to parse, 11 people didn't. There were 463 votes tallied, and 463 acks created.
- (611 ballots received + 11 bad ballots)=622. 463 acks were created. So, 148 rejects sent.
- I am not sure of the acks sent/unsent bit, but I think it's because Devotee works with gpg v1, so it does not send acks to people with elliptic curve-based gpg key. I cannot assure this, but IIRC that's what happened
- There were 420 unique voters. And where is the 43 figure between votes tallied and unique voters? It is not published. Every developer can (and should, given how close this election was!) check their vote to be correctly tallied.
Also -- we are not a country, we are a project. There is a high trust on Kurt, the project secretary.
Re: (Score:2)
There were 420 unique voters. And where is the 43 figure between votes tallied and unique voters? It is not published.
It's right here, in one of the links from TFS: https://vote.debian.org/~secre... [debian.org]
Re: In that case (Score:3)
I have no strong feelings one way or the other!
Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Would have preferred them to come out fighting against ther witch hunt, but this is better than nothing. At least Debian isn't getting drawn into it, unlike some.
Stallman has done nothing wrong and the accusations against him are based on selective misinterpretation of his words, and unprovable hearsay from decades ago.
It's good enough (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually support Stallman were least popular ideas (Score:2, Informative)
After all, the kind of asshats attacking RMS see "no comment" as being tacit support of him. Therefore, I will agree with said asshats on this one ...
And you and the asshats would be factually incorrect on this one. The options to support him were the least popular, neither receiving a majority of votes.
"While all seven options achieved a quorum of votes, two failed to achieve a majority — options 5 and 6. ("Support Stallman's reinstatement" and "Denounce the witch-hunt...") "
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
You might want to look at the graph linked from TFS to see which other alternatives were popular among Debian developers (DDs), who are people who actually spend a lot of time contributing to a hardcore "free software" (not just "open source") operating system.
Spoiler alert: The only ones that were less popular than "Further Discussion" were "Denounce the witch-hunt" and "Support Stallman's reinstatement".
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Would have preferred them to come out fighting against ther witch hunt, but this is better than nothing. At least Debian isn't getting drawn into it, unlike some.
Stallman has done nothing wrong and the accusations against him are based on selective misinterpretation of his words, and unprovable hearsay from decades ago.
Not many of the Debian devs agree with you as the two "witch-hunt" options were quite unpopular [debian.org].
I noticed there were 4 options that displayed some variation of a public condemnation though it sounds like Schulze does protect against vote splitting [wikipedia.org] so that shouldn't be a concern.
Either way, I understand Debian devs wanting to stay out of a controversial topic. But it sounds like the vote was anonymous and the actual vote breakdowns suggest very little support for rms coupled with a general desire to stay out of the mud.
And I would say the vote totals are more meaningful than the final result since they do give a reasonable snapshot of the opinions of people who have an actual stake in this.
Overall, I believe this is the most important data point I've seen on the topic.
As expected (Score:5, Insightful)
Not many of the Debian devs agree with you as the two "witch-hunt" options were quite unpopular [debian.org].
I noticed there were 4 options that displayed some variation of a public condemnation though it sounds like Schulze does protect against vote splitting [wikipedia.org] so that shouldn't be a concern.
Either way, I understand Debian devs wanting to stay out of a controversial topic. But it sounds like the vote was anonymous and the actual vote breakdowns suggest very little support for rms coupled with a general desire to stay out of the mud.
And I would say the vote totals are more meaningful than the final result since they do give a reasonable snapshot of the opinions of people who have an actual stake in this.
Overall, I believe this is the most important data point I've seen on the topic.
This is as it should be.
Trait agreeableness [wikipedia.org] is normally distributed, with half the population agreeable and half the population disagreeable, but the vast majority of all people lie somewhere in the middle, in the "don't really care much" position.
Debian will not issue a statement: 2.23
Call fot Stallman's resignation: 1.34
This is in line with the fundamental basis of civilization, that people have implicit rights and we shouldn't interfere with them. In this case, it's the right of free association, and the fundamental basis is that all people have rights and we let an impartial judge wield an even-handed set of laws to correct misbehaviour, not the mob.
It would appear from the numbers above that about 1/3 the population was on a witch hunt, but the majority of people don't care. I suspect that the upper third was unrepresentative of any real problems due to accusation inflation, framing, and mis-reporting. Some accusations are toxic, and used to prevent readers from digging down to find out: if you hear that Stallman got into trouble over definding Minsky you might dig down to hear what he actually said. If you hear that he's a pedophile (actual claim made by some news outlets on the 1st page of Google search) then that's the 3rd rail, and no one wants to touch it. (See also: racist, nazi, and sex offender.)
A small group of people on the high side of agreeableness view anyone outside of the group as a predatory snake, and will use any means necessary to kill it.
You dislike RMS, that's fine. You don't want to interact with him, that's fine too.
You want everyone to join your holy crusade to get him fired?
That... not so much.
Re: (Score:3)
You want everyone to join your holy crusade to get him fired?
Also legal, and also fine, and also free speech.
It would be illegal to throw him in prison without trial (or over something so minor), or incite a violent mob that chants "lock him up", or that sort of thing. I think we can agree that extreme is not OK.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
It's either lack of support for RMS or an even stronger desire to not be the next target (those who protest a cancellation must be canceled).
After all, the big push to cancel rms didn't come until he objected to the cancellation of Minsky.
Kinda like how back in the '50s, objecting to McCarthy's blacklist was a great way to end up on the blacklist.
History may not repeat itself but it does rhyme.
Re: (Score:2)
It's either lack of support for RMS or an even stronger desire to not be the next target (those who protest a cancellation must be canceled).
I believe the vote was anonymous, I don't see how fear of cancellation was a plausible factor in the voting.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They didn't want Debian itself to end up cancelled.
Re: Good (Score:3)
It wasn't anonymous. As per debian's constitution, only the vote for the project leader is anonymous.
Several developers, on both side of the issue, have raised concerns on the mailing list that a non anonymous vote on such a political issues is dangerous and could lead to harassment or worse.
From what I've seen, those concerns were ignored at first, then discussed more, but only once the voting had started.
By that point, both the project leader and the secretary said they'd personally like the vote to be se
Re: Good (Score:2)
Following my other comment, here is the really sheet https://www.debian.org/vote/20... [debian.org]
Now the cancel mob can find is new targets.
Re: Good (Score:3)
"I still don't think the fear of cancellation was significant, a vote doesn't really get you in trouble"
Whether the fear is justified or not, it is a fact that several developers have raised concerns over it. We cannot estimate how it influenced the vote but it's a fact it has.
And considering that people have lost their jobs or livelihood because of a joke, a tweet, or an accusation without any trial of any form, I think the fear is entirely justified.
Remember that the whole situation is not only about dest
Re: (Score:3)
It's either lack of support for RMS or an even stronger desire to not be the next target (those who protest a cancellation must be canceled).
I believe the vote was anonymous, I don't see how fear of cancellation was a plausible factor in the voting.
It's not "who voted" but if successful, new demands for idealogical purity wouldn't be far behind. You could end up with a Google-esque situation where the Leader of the ethics group started scanning everyone's emails to make up an enemies list. After all - she was a SJW, and has a lot of support from the SJW crowd.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
After all, the big push to cancel rms didn't come until he objected to the cancellation of Minsky.
Yep. That's kind of how public relations works. If you're opinionated and run your mouth (regardless if you're right or wrong) you run the risk of people disagreeing with you.
Cancel culture wasn't invented when some braindead person decided to misappropriate the word. The world has remained unchanged on this for 100s of years. The only thing new is that we've started talking more about racism and womens rights instead of if someone is gay or not.
Re: (Score:2)
A more straightforward interpretation is that opinions were split and the majority preferred "mind our own business" to making a statement contrary to their beliefs.
Not anonymous (Score:3)
We discussed whether the vote could be held anonymously, but it would go against the Debian constitution, particularly given the vote was started _before_ that discussion arised. So who voted which way is public [debian.org].
Re:Good (Score:4, Interesting)
Overall, I believe this is the most important data point I've seen on the topic.
As a matter if interest, does the most important data you've seen coincidentally support your own views on this topic?
Sure, there's probably bias at work. Though my actual views are that rms should resign, not to make no statement, so they don't really agree with me.
But I think the most important voices to listen to are the ones who have contributed the most to free software and open source. They're not only the best informed (having either personally interacted with rms or knowing others who have) but they're also the ones who care about the mission of the FSF as opposed to people who are more interested in fighting another front in a culture war.
And if you want to sample those people... well an anonymous vote by Debian devs seems one of the best methods to do so.
Doesn't the FSF deserve good management (Score:2)
FSF and RMS it is then, as they created the movement.
The created it and have done a rather poor job of shepherding it in recent decades. The use of the GPL in new projects has been sharply declining for years, currently its about 20%, the proprietary friendly open source licenses over 60%. GPL3 was largely rejected among those few who did choose the GPL, GPL2 and GPL3 each around 10% of new projects. And all this failure predates the current controversy.
FSF under RMS is in a downward spiral. Is the FSF RMS' plaything or does it deserve good management that
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Would have preferred them to come out fighting against ther witch hunt, but this is better than nothing.
Possibly they were concerned that an explicit statement defending Richard Stallman would also have tarred Debian themselves as witches. This no-comment was a way to do the right thing without putting themselves into harm's way.
Re: (Score:3)
You could also translate this as fear of speaking out about the topic, given today's PC climate... that was the first impression I got from this vote.
Safe spaces. (Score:2)
Well the nice thing about saying nothing is no one can agree or disagree with you.
Re: Safe spaces. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Safe spaces. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Selective misinterpretations of words are better than facts
2. Political correctness must be achieved at any cost to others than myself.
3. All reasonable people are under suspicion because my belief system cannot stand the light of reason.
4. If you are not with me you are against me.
5. If you don't like it, you are next
Re: (Score:3)
"Note: There is no misinterpretation of words. Whether what Stallman said was right or wrong technically has zero bearing on the discussions right now. His position in public defense of Minsky is the sword he chose to fall on. Having public opinions like that is reserved for those people not in positions that are 100% dependent on public relations."
You are part of the problem. Hurry, or you will be late for your womyn's studies class.
Re: (Score:3)
I can't belive this is still in the news. He put his foot in his mouth years ago, was punished, apologized a d explained his stupid nerdy inability to vocalize what he really meant and it came out wrong. I for one Commend him for standing up to these bullies and media hack journalists.
He then unresigned with zero notice or public engagement. That wasn't his (or the FSF board's) decision to make, at least not if they didn't want to cause another big controversy.
I personally would be a lot more willing to accept rms's past statements if it wasn't for the circumstances surrounding the unresignation. Serving on a board entails certain responsibilities to the organization and the community the organization is supposed to server. The FSF board and rms failed to fulfil these responsibilities wi
Re: Safe spaces. (Score:4, Interesting)
apologized a d explained his stupid nerdy inability to vocalize what he really meant
So basically for a figure head and a public persona that is an opinion leader in an industry he basically told everyone he's unqualified for the position he is in.
You seem to think his position demands one of technical excellence rather than one of great public relations. That's your problem. What is happening here isn't bullying, it's a legitimate discussion about the attributes and skills of a leader, a leader who put his foot in his mouth, proceeded to give a complete non apology, and effectively stated this will continue happening.
I frankly couldn't give a shit what he said about whom, but just on that basis alone we're clearly talking about a man not suited for the position people are vehemently defending him in. Heck his mere existence has resulted in big name donors pulling out of the FSF. If he was an employee, even a CEO, he'd have been fired by now.
Re:Safe spaces. (Score:5, Interesting)
The SJWs driving this crap will disagree, because they are "for-or-against" primitives that are unable to respect anybody not fully agreeing with them.
Re: (Score:3)
"I have no strong feelings one way or the other." -- Neutral President of Neutral Planet [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:3)
RMS did not "allow, approve or advocate for no punishment for sex crimes."
Such an accusation against RMS would be an obvious and gross misrepresentation of what he said.
Re: Safe spaces. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So who committed a sex crime? Who advocated for leaving a sex crime unpunished?
As far as I can tell, Epstein DID commit several sex crimes and is now dead so the question of punishment is moot. Nobody under discussion ever suggested that he go unpunished.
Creators vs Destroyers (Score:4, Insightful)
It'd be interesting to see an estimate of just how much the culture war is costing. Probably more than the environmental costs of Bitcoin, for sure...
Re: (Score:2)
"Culture war."
It's called politics, and it's been practiced for millions of years. Some aspects seem to be a stupid waste of time, but on the other hand, they also seem inextricable from the rest. And politics are what allow humans to work together.
Re: (Score:3)
"Culture war."
It's called politics, and it's been practiced for millions of years.
Some aspects seem to be a stupid waste of time, but on the other hand, they also seem inextricable from the rest. And politics are what allow humans to work together.
Draw a bigger box and magically you can justify anything. Amazing.
Re: (Score:3)
Lol. Everyone thinks the time in which they live is exceptional. Today it's culture war. Yesterday it was a war on drugs, the breakdown of the American family, the gays coming for your children, anti-communist hearings, eugenics, religious trials, actual witch hunts, expelling Jews, manifest destiny or Ogg smacking Ugh with a stick.
Warriors of Progress and Defenders of Our Way of Life yelling at each other on Twitter is certainly annoying, but it's not as bad as many of the great conflicts of the day that h
Re:Creators vs Destroyers (Score:4, Insightful)
Hugely surprised about sane decision (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
What this tempest is about (Score:5, Informative)
For those who have perhaps seen the commentary but haven't seen the statement from Stallman that this is all about. Here are his exact words, at the bottom of this image https://bit.ly/2PeBK0y [bit.ly]
The email thread was about Minsky. Stallman said:
--
> Giuffre was 17 at the time; this makes it __rape__ in the Virgin Islands.
Does it really? I think it is morally absurd to define "rape" in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17. I think the existence of a dispute about that supports my point that the term "sexual assault" is slippery, so we ought to use more concrete terms when accusing anyone.
--
He also said:
--
The injustice is in the word "assaulting". The term "sexual assault" is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation: taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y, which is much worse than X.
--
"we ought to use more concrete terms when accusing anyone"
It seems that rather than saying "Minsky raped her", Stallman thought it would be more appropriate to say something like "Minsky had sex with a 17yo who had apparently been coerced by Epstein." Readers can make up their own mind about your own thoughts about that.
Re:What this tempest is about (Score:4, Insightful)
And for more context: Minsky was a friend of Stallman's who at the time Stallman was commenting was dead, leaving a wife and children. A friend wanting to defend him is not surprising, unexpected or worthy of condemnation.
Re: (Score:3)
Giuffre was 17 at the time
I believe that's actually wrong, she was over 19 at that point since she was born in 1983. She may have been 17 when Epstein started abusing her, though.
Re:What this tempest is about (Score:4, Informative)
It seems that rather than saying "Minsky raped her", Stallman thought it would be more appropriate to say something like "Minsky had sex with a 17yo who had apparently been coerced by Epstein."
No. What he was saying was that since Minsky never touched her the term "sexual assault" was pure bullshit.
Re:What this tempest is about (Score:4, Insightful)
And now what this is *really* about: Stallman bringing the FSF into the debate and generating bad PR as a result. Whether he was right or wrong is irrelevant. He's said it himself he's not the most eloquent speaker. Unfortunately he's in a political / leadership position which either depends on him being eloquent or being selective in what he chooses to opine on. Then he proceeded to write an "apology" showing he'd learnt nothing, much less that he should get someone who understands PR to proofread what he says.
He may be a technical genius, so give him a technical role rather than shoehorning him into a position for which he has demonstrated poor qualification and poor outcomes for the FSF.
Re:What this tempest is about (Score:4, Interesting)
That is not the statement the triggered the controversy. That is him doubling down on it.
This is his statement:
The injustice is in the word “assaulting”. The term “sexual assault”
is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation:
taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as
Y, which is much worse than X.
The accusation quoted is a clear example of inflation. The reference
reports the claim that Minsky had sex with one of Epstein’s harem.
Let’s presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it).
The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in
some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing.
Only that they had sex.
We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that
she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was
being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her
to conceal that from most of his associates.
I’ve concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it
is absolutely wrong to use the term “sexual assault” in an accusation.
Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a
specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the
criticism.
Call Epstein's victims a "harem" is nasty. Trying to excuse the victimization of a trafficking victim because they were forced to present themselves as "willing" is nasty. The argument that there is nothing wrong with a 70 year old man having sex with an underage girl who just happens to be at his friend's private island is fine as long as they don't ask any awkward questions like who this underage girl is, is nasty. Then doubling down by whinging about the legal definition of rape in the Virgin islands is nasty.
Stallman is a grown man, he's done this kind of thing enough times and if he is not willing to learn how to make the tech industry not sound so bloody nasty then he should not be putting himself in such a public position.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
This. RMS' defenders are actively trying to reframe the issue as being entirely about the Minsky statement, because a lot of articles have misquoted him about that, but that's a red herring.
I'm glad the voting process didn't settle on the more Gamergatey options 5 or 6 but choosing to do nothing and continue business as usual is still rather disappointing.
Re:What this tempest is about (Score:4, Informative)
For one, the statements about Minsky were what the cancel bunnies trotted out first. When it looked like that might lose steam (due to the minor matter of not being what he actually said), they dug for more. Honestly they didn't find much there either.
WRT underage relations, he questioned if a non-coercive encounter would be ethically wrong. Ultimately he agreed that there can be no non-coercive encounter.
As far as the comments on Downs, his opinion is quite common (but certainly not universal) both among the general population and within the medical community. It's WHY doctors generally recommend early genetic testing when older women get pregnant.
Academia used to VALUE discussion of controversial topics.
Re: (Score:3)
The issue with that is that their encounter was AFTER Epstein had already plead guilty to prostituting a person under the age of 18 and done jail time for it
Their encounter in 2002/2003 was AFTER Epstein pleaded guilty in 2006 and did jail time? Are you SURE about the direction of the arrow of time?
Re: (Score:3)
No. Minsky continued to associate with Epstein in 2011, which makes Stallman's statement that Minsky may have been unaware of what Epstein was doing and innocently associated with him quite difficult to believe. Clearly Minsky knew about Epstein and didn't care.
Ah, I get it (Score:3, Funny)
Coincidence? I think... wait wut?
Voting Data Analysis (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting study of voting processes given the large amount of data and analysis. There is sufficient information in the analysis to determine not only the most popular choice, but also who the winner would be in the absence of certain choices. In particular in the General Resolution (which contains the analysis of the results) at https://www.debian.org/vote/20... [debian.org] there are the "Beat Matrix" and "Pairwise Defeats" sections that can show how individual options fared against each other.
Options 5 and 6 (the two options in support for Stallman) both lose in every pairwise combination, so those are omitted from the Pair-wise defeats section.
As stated in the article, option 7 (no statement) defeats all the other options in pairwise combinations.
Option 2 (call for resignation) defeats all the other options except for option 7, where it is defeated by a margin of 8 votes.
After that, the preferences are a bit less clear. Like option 4 (call on board to improve governance) defeats option 1 (call for board removal), however option 1 defeats option 3 (discourage collaboration while Stallman is in place).
and what of extent (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a conversation that my beloved and I have made routine regarding this sort of issue over the last many years.
No doubt, public figures will/must/shall be held to a higher set of standards -- as perhaps everyone should. That's not the issue.
Also not the issue: certainly, upsetting a large population comes with consequences. I'm really past the entire concept of I-was-within-my-rights-to-do-it. As my parents taught me, when police pull you over, you have no rights whatsoever. Your rights exist ONLY the next day, in a courtroom, with a lawyer and a judge.
So I'm in complete understanding of penalizing anyone who upsets enough people. In this case, we've certainly crossed whatever threshold counts as "enough". Obviously.
So the conversation really comes down to one thing: the penalty.
I've already said that "no penalty" isn't a valid option. So in my mind, we're simply looking for an upper bound.
"Lose the job forever" is certainly one option. It flies in the face of rehab, self-improvement, and any sort of making-up-for-it with existing skill-sets.
"Kill the entire company" is often a legal impossibility, and certainly creates a lot of collateral damage.
I can't help but notice that in this case, RMS already lost his job for 18 months. Whether or not that's enough is certainly subjective. But it is, for sure, a) a penalty; b) not a small one; and c) certainly a deterrent to others in the future.
I wonder if those against RMS could have achieved greater long-term benefits by coming out saying "RMS was bad, we fired him for 18 months. this is our victory. if anyone else is bad, you can expect to lose your job for 18 months too." That's pretty "outstanding" in the traditional sense of the word. Would 24 months have been enough? 5 years? 10? And whether or not it's enough, I wonder if declaring it a success would have been more beneficial than taking an even harder stand -- especially if it fails. After all, we're not talking a capital-punishment-worthy murder here. We're talking about harm and general damages.
So in my mind, the question here, and in oh so many other cases comes down to determining a semi-reasonable penalty/punishment, and then feeling justified that justice was done. I'm old enough to know that a) everyone screws up big; b) there are always false positives; and c) getting past the problem is almost always more important than resolving it.
Personally, I think 18-months of job-loss is significant to anybody. We can make it the standard today, and grow it in the future. I also think that in this case, we're talking about a penalty for words, not actions -- actions warrant more, words warrant a little less.
Re: (Score:3)
Oh, not relevant in this case, but a part of the same debate so I'll include it here.
When a company does something stupid, and there's no one to reasonably punish either because it's a general problem in the company or the directors are above it all? I'm happy to punish the only part of the company that has ever mattered.
It's an easy punishment in my mind. A company left millions of medical records exposed? It's no one's fault you say? Great. The "company" is at fault. You get to change the name to so
Disagree (Score:5, Interesting)
So I'm in complete understanding of penalizing anyone who upsets enough people. In this case, we've certainly crossed whatever threshold counts as "enough". Obviously.
Thomas Jefferson, the founding fathers, the Bill of Rights, and the fundamental moral basis of civilization disagree. As do I.
Essentially you're advocating for the Chinese social credit score. Do you believe that's bad? (Maybe you're Chinese, I don't know.)
We don't allow the mob to judge, and we certainly don't allow the mob to set and enforce sentences.
It's uncivilized.
Think about it as clipping your toenails while dining out at a restaurant.
It's not strictly illegal, but it's uncivilized and not something that should be done.
Setting penalties for "upsetting enough people" is like that: it's uncivilized.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not in China. Not in USA either.
The problem is that your founding fathers were absolutely correct -- within a certain shape and size.
More modern studies peg a "disruptive" population at 10%. That is to say that it takes a population of 10% (a clear minority) to tactically sway a majority.
When it comes to modern society, that is further influenced by the speed of communications -- which today is near-infinite.
In today's world, an organized group of 1'000 individuals can cause mayhem -- legally. Mischi
Re: (Score:3)
None of that is true.
If you act like a buffoon, in public, which is totally and completely legal, your employer can fire you for affecting their corporate image. It's not illegal for you to have done it. And it's not illegal for them to fire you for-cause (no notice).
You're talking about "crimes" and "criminal prosecution" and "criminal punishment". There's an entire world of civil litigation, social litigation, and just plain old consequences that have absolutely nothing to do with criminality.
For examp
Re: (Score:3)
I wonder if those against RMS could have achieved greater long-term benefits by coming out saying "RMS was bad, we fired him for 18 months. this is our victory. if anyone else is bad, you can expect to lose your job for 18 months too." That's pretty "outstanding" in the traditional sense of the word. Would 24 months have been enough? 5 years? 10? And whether or not it's enough, I wonder if declaring it a success would have been more beneficial than taking an even harder stand -- especially if it fails. After all, we're not talking a capital-punishment-worthy murder here. We're talking about harm and general damages.
[...]
Personally, I think 18-months of job-loss is significant to anybody. We can make it the standard today, and grow it in the future. I also think that in this case, we're talking about a penalty for words, not actions -- actions warrant more, words warrant a little less.
Possibly, but the one obvious rule when deciding on an appropriate punishment is that it shouldn't be left up to the perpetrator.
So why was the choice of when (and if) to unresign left to rms and the FSF board to decide in private and be announced after the fact?
I have some empathy for the fact that rms is an awkward person (possibly with Asperger's) who may be unintentionally offensive.
But I have a lot less sympathy for the circumstances surrounding his unresignation. To me that's a sign that the FSF
Re:and what of extent (Score:4, Interesting)
"...it shouldn't be left up to the perpetrator."
I can respect that. Entirely. I'm not sure that in this case I'd consider the FSF to be the perpetrator, exactly, but I'll certainly agree with you that they are too close to be any sort of judge. Arm's length and all that.
But to push my point a little bit further, are you familiar with the standard business partnership severing technique known as a "shotgun clause"? (For those who don't, basically, if two business partners no longer want to work together, and the company isn't share-able/split-able, one (by coin-flip) chooses the value of the company, completely arbitrarily, and the other decides whether to buy or sell.)
So the moment RMS chose to resign, what if we say he chose the penalty. So, since we all agree that infinite punishment is never valid, the community should have immediately said: "good. stay away and think about what you've done. you can come back in N months."
That, to me, would have signaled a victory to all four sides -- RMS, those supporting, those not supporting, and the victims themselves. Justice doled out in minutes. And then, I don't actually care what the punishment is. If he had said "I screwed up, let me pay for it." then the community could have said: "great, the financial penalty is N million dollars". And if he had said "I screwed up, I'll apologize" then the community could have said "fine. in writing, and public, on a stage, on prime-time news, for an hour, while listening to 10 similar victims recount their horrors, and at the start of every FSF meeting for the next year".
Literally, anything, to get past it, with consequences and reminders, and most importantly, a general public improvement of society. Because really, nothing else matters. He's a public figure. It REALLY doesn't matter if he believes it himself. He can make millions of others believe it. In most ways, that's actually even better.
What's important (to me, and I'm arguing to society) is to find a way to move on (and that means improve at the societal level). Fast, expedient, and without months and years of court fees and wasted FSF meeting time, and dozens of tech companies spending countless otherwise-useful hours deciding what to say just to decide that they should literally say that they have nothing to say. That's some mighty-fine fence-sitting.
And even today, it's not too late. If the community said: "stay away for one more year, and then we'll welcome you back", that'd be totally fair. If the community said: "welcome back, we'd like you to pay this much to this cause" that's be fair too. If the community said: "fine, come back. but we want this policy added to the FSF", that too would be perfect.
But I read the open letter; the one calling for the abolishment of everything. I don't even need to think about whether or not it's reasonable. I don't even need to know what RMS did in the first place. I've been on this planet for four decades. That kind of request is simply always ignored because it is simply not doable in reality.
So what's the point in writing it?! You want to scream? Congrats, you screamed, and got nothing. You could have easily and quickly gotten 80% of what you wanted. Instead, people fight for 100%. They usually get 10%. They typically average 50%. But they could have had 80% so fast that they could have fought ten times as many issues.
Maturity, I guess. Took me 41 years to learn it. Here's hoping I can help others do it in only 39. In any confrontational battle, getting 80% is an enormous victory. Fast is an even bigger victory. Together, you ought to be cheering.
Re: (Score:2)
"...it shouldn't be left up to the perpetrator."
I can respect that. Entirely. I'm not sure that in this case I'd consider the FSF to be the perpetrator, exactly, but I'll certainly agree with you that they are too close to be any sort of judge. Arm's length and all that.
I think we can agree on this point. And to further it I did find their explaining their actions to be inappropriately reverential of rms [fsf.org].
But to push my point a little bit further, are you familiar with the standard business partnership severing technique known as a "shotgun clause"? (For those who don't, basically, if two business partners no longer want to work together, and the company isn't share-able/split-able, one (by coin-flip) chooses the value of the company, completely arbitrarily, and the other decides whether to buy or sell.)
Not exactly how I'd describe it but close enough.
So the moment RMS chose to resign, what if we say he chose the penalty. So, since we all agree that infinite punishment is never valid, the community should have immediately said: "good. stay away and think about what you've done. you can come back in N months."
That, to me, would have signaled a victory to all four sides -- RMS, those supporting, those not supporting, and the victims themselves. Justice doled out in minutes.
I don't think that works.
For one, the idea of the shotgun clause is you're forced to do a fair valuation since you don't know if you're buying or selling. The incentive here isn't quite the same.
But the other part, people actually need time to figure this stuff out, you really do need a deliberative decision.
And most importa
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but it really depends on what skills you think are required of a single board-member. Given that it's a board of multiple individuals, you can't expect each individual to have all the skills.
More so, you're not going to say that every member needs to have the same one skill.
So if you're saying that every board-member needs to be a good public role model, you're going to miss out on a lot of specialty skills.
I have no problem with the idea that one person on a team lacks social skills. And every time
Re: (Score:3)
The real question is: what good does it do the FSF to bring him back after 18 months? His initial dismissal was not temporary.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I have no idea. But if they say that he's useful to the community, or to the industry, I certainly have no knowledge to say otherwise. I presume any volunteer is useful to any community.
Everything's temporary. It is always unreasonable in society to make anything permanent, infinite, never-ending, or always. I have no argument with anyone saying that 18 months is too short. But then pick a number.
I've always loved slashdot's restriction, I'll paraphrase because I haven't seen it in a long while:
Re: (Score:3)
No, not everything's temporary. When you get fired from a job for something particularly embarassing, usually they put that in your HR file and the only way you can get the job back is if you wait long enough that they mostly forget who you were. Or new ownership/new management maybe.
Re: (Score:2)
I can't help but notice that in this case, RMS already lost his job for 18 months. Whether or not that's enough is certainly subjective.
The question is not whether or not this is punishment. The question is whether or not he is qualified for the position. To put it bluntly: he's demonstrated he's not a people person, so why shoehorn this technical expert into a leadership / PR position?
He caused this blunder through his opinion, and not practicing good PR (or outsourcing it, I would think he had the resources for that).
In the process the FSF has lost a lot of support and had its name dragged through the mud (the phrase "you had one job" com
Re: (Score:2)
Because in any large population (you get to define large), there are consequences to society for angering them.
Of course, if I, a pissant individual, type something awful here, a slashdot thread, it's going to be hard for me to actually anger thousands of people. Either they won't know about it, or they won't ascribe value to it. But if I'm a public figure, and/or have a public podium, then yes one person can anger a thousand people.
The problem is that if you anger a thousand people, then a thousand peopl
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, as a quick little example, if you're a landowner, and you rent a home to a renter, and there's some dispute between you two, such that it goes to court (small-claims I'd hope), most judges will look at your income.
They'll see that you have two houses (one that you live in, and another that you rent out). They'll see that your renter doesn't have any house of their own. They'll see that you can afford to cover the $3'000 being disputed, and that the renter can't so easily.
The judge will side with the r
Stallman is the rare case the mob got one right (Score:2)
At first, I was rabidly against the mob, but then I realized that this was a rare case where the mob actually found a target who needs to leave. These are two things from his own personal site that show that RMS's views aren't "controversial," they call into question his ethics in a non-political way:
Exhibit A [stallman.org]:
Re: Stallman is the rare case the mob got one righ (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, so cancel-person, we should get rid of anyoe who has ab oppinion and doesn't think like us, right?
Nazi much?
Re: (Score:3)
He's the public facing spokesperson for the FSF. If you publish opinions that a lot people find controversial then don't be surprised when this happens.
Re: (Score:2)
Advocating for violation of the law at the expense of others (who, presumably, can't defend themselves) isn't and never has been acceptable.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"High teens" is still against the law in most states.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Loitering won't get you 1-20 years. Try not to be intellectually dishonest.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, it isn't a red herring.
And it doesn't matter whether he's referring to toddlers or "high teens". The only difference is in how many years you'll do in prison. You don't do prison time for loitering. Loitering is barely even a misdemeanor. Statutory rape is a felony. Aggravated sexual assault is also a felony (which is what you generally get hit with for nailing anyone 13 or younger - sometimes 14 or younger).
He's referring to minors, e.g. those who have not reached the age of majority. Do you real
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Stallman himself felt the need to make the answer to your question clear.
Re: (Score:2)
Really shouldn't surprise you. It's another Dr. Pizza moment: older tech nerd guy rambles on mindlessly defending child sex for years while nobody does anything about it.
https://steemitimages.com/640x... [steemitimages.com]
https://steemitimages.com/640x... [steemitimages.com]
https://steemitimages.com/640x... [steemitimages.com]
Only difference is that Stallman apparently never got around to violating anyone directly.
Reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
I find worrying that the option "call out the witch hunt" got so much downvoted. People need to make a stand toward mobs, withc hunts, and intimidation.
But not saying anything and staying out of people's crusades is ok i guess.
Slow news day? (Score:2)
Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
I am sick of the world being run by propaganda and twitter-storms. Democracy and politicians voting for laws suits me, not lynch mobs.
Atlas will shrug (Score:3)
Re:Flawed decision-making process (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
There's a place for ranked ballots, but as a way to select a course of action – where the middle ground is doing nothing – is not it.
And why is this outcome so bad? Joining the witch hunt would be bad, obviously, but taking a principled stand against it might have put Debian itself into harm's way. This here is a way to say no, but without incurring any undue risk. A wise decision.
Re: (Score:2)
This is the fundamental problem with two-party systems. They're motivated to appeal to the extremes, to "leave out the wishy-washy do-nothing middle." That's also why they hate voting systems that aren't pick one of two.
Re: (Score:3)
The numbers beneath each option on the diagram represent how well that option did against "Further discussion", I believe, so they don't indicate a majority in favour of expressing disapproval with the FSF. The majority were in favour of the winning option of not issuing a statement. It was close though--the winning option was only 1 vote above "Call on the FSF to further its governance processes".
I'd say it would make sense for a statement to require a super majority over issuing no statement, though. I
Re:So...um...Slow News Day? (Score:4, Insightful)
So...um...Slow News Day?
Old nerd on staff has has some confused takes on modern sexuality, and is still at the company.
I mean - that's basically every company that size that's existed for that amount of time.
It news because in this instance sanity eventually prevailed: one large group decided to not participate in the witch hunt that so many others joined.
Re: (Score:2)
The one thing Americans agree about: sex is bad.