from Hacker News

John Sullivan resign as executive director of the Free Software Foundation

by _cowb on 3/29/21, 8:57 AM with 403 comments

  • by risky_opinions on 3/29/21, 9:22 AM

    I'm creating a throwaway that I hope won't irk dang. If this breaks the rules, I'm sorry and I'll stop.

    Richard Stallman single-handedly created the free software movement, and he's the reason we all have jobs. Google and Facebook might not have been possible in a world where you couldn't spin up a server for free and compile code without paying a license.

    Richard Stallman has said some sexist and edgy things. He also has Asperger's, which poses challenges many of us do not face. He hasn't, as far as I know, committed any crimes.

    Do we destroy the pillar we've built our entire livelihoods upon to satisfy a mob?

    Have all of us been truly without blame? Who hasn't said something they shouldn't have? Or done something that marginalized someone at some point in time (even if it wasn't on the basis of sex, gender, race, etc.)?

    I don't want to live in a world without American freedom of speech - where we can't be blunt and speak our minds.

    I don't want to live in a world where we can't be forgiven.

    I was reading comments in another HN thread, and one poster suggested that this might arise from raising kids without bullying. Like the immune system, if we don't develop a central tolerance, perhaps we start attacking everything we find unpleasant? No basis in behavioral science, of course.

    And then there's the engagement-driven social media monster. Twitter, in particular. It's destroying careers.

    We're badgering the members of the FSF. We're denying Richard Stallman any chances.

    This isn't good. It's horrific.

    What do we do about this?

  • by Traster on 3/29/21, 11:13 AM

    Personally, I don't think the leader of any organisation is really free to make public comments about controversial issues and expect them not to reflect on the organisation they lead. I don't want to know what the leader of the FSF thinks about rape, the age of consent of the pros and cons of aborting foetuses. Which leaves two options: Either RMS stops publicly talking about those issues, or RMS stop being the leader of the FSF.

    When you want to lead a public organisation you give up certain freedoms in order to serve the interests of the organisation you lead.

    I also think it's quite funny seeing the letter from the people who are being accused of being a mob. It's a relatively unemotional statement of their case with citations pointing to the underlying issues they're referring to. Where the reponse, which is meant to be the balanced rational people supporting an unfairly attacked man is highly emotive, poorly argued and doesn't actually address half the issues RMS is being criticised for. Some of the most obvious arguments against RMS leader the FSF actually come from the letter defending him.

    >His words need to be interpreted in this context and taking into account that more often than not, he is not looking to put things diplomatically.

    Well maybe that's not a good trait for the leader of the FSF.

  • by simion314 on 3/29/21, 9:44 AM

    We almost Linus Torwalds because of the cancel culture, would be a big loss to lose RMS because he is no longer good PR to have him, bonus points if some big business like Google or Red Hat could grab the leadership of FSF and GNU.

    There was a few days back a post for people to support RMS and I admit I did not put my name on the list because i am afraid this could affect my future, cancel culture could get worse and my actions could be misinterpreted as the worse things possible(like I must support pedos if I support RMS).

  • by iseanstevens on 3/29/21, 9:38 AM

    Re: RMS, without passing judgement: - I think people can have great ideas but not be great long term leaders.

    FSF has high ideals, and fundamentally needs buy in from people on a lot of levels for them to succeed. It needs community. They could be really thankful to RMS’s getting things going but I don’t really understand why, now, they would add him back to the board. Is he saying new things that aren’t linear from the creation of FSF where his continued high level involvement is more helpful to the end goals than the community upset I would hope the board was aware of as a possibility?

  • by rich_sasha on 3/29/21, 9:22 AM

    A whole different angle, I wonder how well the FSF folk get on with RMS. For all the defenses people mount of him, no one says he's a nice guy to be around.

    I'm still against the Twitter mob etc., I do wonder though if RMS nuked his own organisation by joining the helm again. Life's unfair.

  • by davty on 3/29/21, 9:38 AM

    It was briefly discussed in this episode of floss weekly https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly/episodes/622?autostart=fa... and I think the guest made an interesting observation in that quite a big issue in FSF is that the board is entirely self-selected, the community is not really involved. Thus, the future of the GPL is entirely in the hand of a few people who picked themselves so to say.

  • by thinkingemote on 3/29/21, 9:59 AM

    I think people should just create their own foundation and get on with things. It seems like the FSF is going to be doing things their way - there's no compulsion for anyone to follow them, listen to them or to agree with what they do. So why not just start your own Foundation?

  • by aboringusername on 3/29/21, 9:26 AM

    I apologize if this particular thread isn't the appropriate forum for this but this type of activity is inevitable at one point or another, and perhaps he just wants to retire of there are politics/shenanigans at play, no organization can be free of politics afterall.

    Yet, there are many examples of software projects with "BDFLs", the Linux Kernel being the most prominent one I can think of. I suspect there are people just waiting, biding their time until Linus retires - who takes over him? How does the governance structure change? Who takes over David M's net stack? Greg's stable trees?

    I find it fascinating to think about and I am very curious when known figures step down and to watch what happens next, how things change. Are they subtle? Are they more obvious? How does this play out in 5 years?

    To me it's one of the more interesting aspects of communities since one person can really make a huge difference (for example, Ballmer/Satya at MS).

  • by ruph123 on 3/29/21, 10:12 AM

    Can we go back to discussing if Rust is better than Go please?

  • by michaelsbradley on 3/29/21, 10:20 AM

  • by Elaine-H on 3/29/21, 11:58 AM

    I signed the support rms letter with my real name.

    I hope you do the same if you want to support him.

    I was born in mainland China and these attacks on rms remind me of the Cultural Revolution.

  • by oblio on 3/29/21, 9:09 AM

    Is this related to Stallman going back to the FSF?

  • by tester34 on 3/29/21, 9:20 AM

    vocal twitter minority reaching their goals again?

    current state of internet is pretty sad,

    I bet you'd just need 30 people/twitter(or reddit) accounts

    in order to create drama of significant size

  • by Number157 on 3/29/21, 9:34 AM

    Never apologize to the mob. It emboldens them.

  • by unrequitedlove on 3/29/21, 3:05 PM

    As an outsider (i.e. someone from a different culture) this is equal parts hillarious, terrifying and englightening to watch. Like, all of a sudden you people can’t say racist, sexist or edgy things, and no one can explain why – it’s some kind of unspoken axiom, it’s just, like, wrong, man, dont’ you get it, it’s not polite. Not halal. Well, who deciced that politeness is halal? Did you people have a vote or something?

  • by prvc on 3/29/21, 9:10 AM

    A little bit more background would be useful.

  • by haunter on 3/29/21, 9:46 AM

    Says a lot about the HN community that a lot of people need to post under throwaways because there are legit others would otherwise go after them or their employers

    Say whatever you want about reddit but at least it's more anonym than this site

  • by natmaka on 3/29/21, 12:09 PM

  • by williamtwild on 3/29/21, 9:56 AM

    Is the quality of RMS's work so good that he is worth all of this effort?

  • by secondcoming on 3/29/21, 9:47 AM

    Some guy wants him removed from the GCC steering committee too [0]

    [0] https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235091.html

  • by bitwize on 3/29/21, 9:30 AM

    I've given a lot of thought to this issue and though I've wanted to give Richard Stallman the benefit of the doubt, I've come to an inescapable conclusion:

    The FSF board of directors really stepped in it bringing Stallman back, especially in the clandestine manner that they did. They have squandered the goodwill of the community by promoting a controversial figure known for his toxic opinions and decades of bad behavior to a leadership position. The FSF is at grave risk of losing its funding and its reputation, both of which it needs to carry out its mission.

    As such, it is appropriate for Stallman and the entire FSF board to resign. John Sullivan has made the right decision. He will doubtless be followed by others -- and hopefully, if Stallman refuses to resign, he will be ousted by the new board.

    All of the leadership in open source does not want Stallman in a leadership role because of the toxic effect he has on the community, in particular driving women -- and more recently, those repulsed by pedophilia -- away. There are times to fight social pressure; this is not one of them.

  • by verytrivial on 3/29/21, 10:00 AM

    So should we eject all Austism Spectrum / Asperger's people from positions of leadership, or just this one guy?

    [Edit] I've worked under at one, perhaps two ASD people, both brilliant engineers, and you're probably using some of their infra software right now -- he's been poached a few times. The one certain guy did not have a diagnosis that I knew of but would come out with the most outrageous opinions regarding world issues. Logical and anti-social. The thing is you could reason him out of these opinions because he valued logic to such an extent that he 'beliefs' were secondary. The problem was he'd share these opinions before testing the waters. He was quite rightly kept away from leadership positions that required communication on anything other than technical topics because of this.

    I've not seen RMS engaged on sharing his 'troubling' opinions. Show me that and I'll change my opinion (the hint being here that many HNers are somewhere on the spectrum, including me.)