What can we do to support the good dude Richard Stallman really was?
What can we do to support the good dude Richard Stallman really was?
I’ve already stopped my donations to the FSF and I’ll probably be using KDE from now on. Stallman was the lifeblood of these movements and I’m afraid no one will walk the walk so to speak. Maybe the dude should have been isolated in some way if he was really as bad as they say, but trial by rumor mill fire isn’t really appropriate for your only true public advocate.
For him personally? Nothing. His career is over. The media fucked up his reputation for good based on half-truths and exagerations.
What you can do for the movement is to uphold his principles, and to stop supporting the lying media scumbags and hysterical trolls. Fuck them.
We see them as trolls, but can they also see us as trolls?
GNOME and Red Hat, as far as I've seen, are large organizations that give their opinion. There is also a person who develops the Linux kernel, which gives opinions.
What do the FSF people think? I think it's important.
I think it was a smear campaign. Seems to have met its purpose.
Well, for one thing, you could stop talking as if he's dead.
It seems to me that a lot of people can't separate fundamental good ideas from bad. They seem to think they have to worship everything about Stallman to support some of the ideas he had or started. you don't. You can agree with some ideas and abhor others. You do not have to worship him. A lot of you sound like hurt cultists.
They seem to think they have to worship everything about Stallman to support some of the ideas he had or started. you don't.
I've seen mostly the opposite perspective. "You have to hate everything about Stallman and condemn him because he's a toe-cheese eating neck beard who unsettles women and smells bad and has wrong opinions. And he's ruining the free software movement by association, and that's why you should ignore that people have destroyed his reputation on the basis of blatant lies."
I'm going to go ahead and guess that a lot (not all, but a lot) of these people don't actually give a shit about the free software movement. They're just the same alt-right crowd that came out of the woodwork when the Linux CoC was announced. They will soon find another corporate SJW shadow cabal conspiracy to tilt against.
It seems to me that a lot of people can't separate fundamental good ideas from bad
Ironic considering he was canceled because of this very thing.
Personally, I decided to cancel my recurring contribution and let my associate membership expire in January (#114, active since 2002... 'tho I did have a number of years in there where I wasn't financially well off enough to contribute so it wasn't continuous), depending on what happens in the next months.
It looks like the FSF may need our help, as there are calls now for the entire board to resign, equivocating RMS's actions with ... Jacob Applebaum's (you gotta be kidding me). Hopefully they can survive this bullshit, or we might be witnessing the death of Free Software and its replacement with watered down Open Source bullshit.
I'm from the OSS camp, not GPL / Free Software, although I do have respect for Stallman and for his unique acts of civil disobedience for which there are, basically, no alternatives.
The fact that he had these views posted on his stallman.org site on a variety of issues, from having "nasal sex with plants" (in Texas, no less, apparently) to all the rest of the unconventional ideas, is not exactly a surprise to anyone with any sort of a history in the whole FLOSS movement.
Does this make the whole wider FLOSS community — "enablers"? Well, tough luck, you won't be able to find any fresh replacements if that's your criteria for qualification on the new board of FSF.
watered down Open Source bullshit.
You misspelled "open-ish source"
One of the things I find most interesting about all of the outrage:
The post originated on a mailinglist. The person who blogged about it was not on said mailinglist.
Don't we all speak to our groups of friends/close associates a bit differently than we might some random on the street? (As in, you know their level of intelligence and respond accordingly).. Context is always integral in any conversation.
Stallman has said a lot of weird things in the past and is an extremely weird dude with weird viewpoints on some things, but it was evident right off the bat his words were taken out of context and stretched to feed the outrage machine.
He was not apologetic for what his friend may or may not have partook in, he simply explained the logical aspect that his friend may not have been privy to what transpired behind the scenes. Lacking context (or intelligence) once could definitely jump to the assumption "he stuck up for a pedo!" - that isn't what at all went down, in this particular instance.
I did not and will not cancel my monthly donations to the Free Software Foundation. I may, depending on who they have replace Stallman, though.
Honestly if he expected a level of privacy via email then that might be the dumbest part of the entire order.
Actually, this whole uproar illustrates the fundamental problem of focusing on personalities instead of ideas.
You want to support Stallman? Work for his ideas. Don't get hung up on the person, either for good or for ill. Instead, focus on the ideas, because they're what really matters.
The worst thing you could do for him would be to let his ideas get shuffled aside. The best thing you could do for him is carry on his fight, and not for him, but because it's right.
There's a problem with this line of reasoning: you will now be expected to actively denounce RMS or be considered one of his cultists and unwelcome in the community.
It's hard to focus on ideals when one groups demands that you focus on personalities.
