#50

Let’s look at his own words, from 14 September 2019:

Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it.

Through personal conversations in recent years, I’ve learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per [sic] psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that. I am grateful for the conversations that enabled me to understand why.

“Adults should not do that” is a pretty weak phrasing from someone we certainly know is able to make strong statements. But, there’s something else here, something worse than one might take from a plain reading, which is that Stallman has repeatedly said that he does not believe teenagers are children, especially in cases which involve sexual assault (a term I am using because it is appropriate, but which he does not) by adults. For example, 30 April 2018:

It sounds horrible: “UN peacekeepers accused of child rape in South Sudan.” But the article makes it pretty clear that the “children” involved were not children. They were teenagers.

What about “rape”? Was this really rape? Or did they have sex willingly, and prudes want to call it “rape” to make it sound like an injustice? We can’t tell from the article which one it is.

So, the use of “child” in this apology cannot be read to apply to be meant to apply to children who are older than 12 or 13. This is from Stallman’s “Anti-glossary” — it is definitely not an accident.

In this full light, even the most charitable reading of Stallman’s defense of Minsky — who is not accused of “harassment” but rather a 16-year-old victim of Epstein says she was instructed to have sex with him — does not look good at all. At the very least, it needed a real apology and greater understanding, not a statement that basically says “I’m sorry I was misunderstood.”

But, it isn’t really all about this one incident. Listen to women. Listen to the Free Software Foundation staff. Listen to the FSF people who resigned. This isn’t coming from outsiders. It’s not from people who want to “bring down the FSF”, or people who are against the GPL. It’s coming from people who know.

7 Likes
#51

I’ve, recently, became aware of this article: Fedora Council statement on Richard Stallman rejoining FSF Board - Fedora Magazine and felt such disappointment; made worse, even, by the comment section being deactivated.

I cannot believe @mattdm reacted in such a way before even trying to become aware of the facts. I invite you, Mathew, to read a bit here: https://stallmansupport.org/ or to, in an independent manner, confirm the claims made.

It seems to me that letting inertia define our posture isn’t the way to go. I expect more of Fedora’s leaders. At the very least, maintaining the project away from such politics and reactions. I don’t see the Friends value in that. rms has been a good friend of the community for a while now. I met him at LinuxCabal: Richard Stallman en Guadalajara | Linux Cabal - YouTube and gnu.cabal.mx/RMS20151130.php en Guadalajara, Jalisco, México - Un Lugar Donde Confiar. He’s a kind, respectful and intelligent man; not as, Fedora’s statement, claims him to be: an abuser and a harasser.

I for one, deny this posture and object strongly to the statement made in Fedora Magazine. Please, I ask you to remove it and publish an apology statement instead.

He has been taken out of context. Parts of the story have been exaggerated and, some others, just made up.

He is socially awkward. He is a nerd. He isn’t perfect. Who, among us, is? Certainly not me. Yet, we decide to burn im at a stake just for a few mistakes made in the past? I am sure nobody would survive such scrutiny.

Shame on Fedora for posting that (and disabling comments). That’s not Freedom. That’s not Friends. That’s plain old censorship and stabbing, figuratively, Dr. Stallman in the back; while benefiting from his work and ideas. Shame on everyone that let’s this slip. This is not how one should be or act.

Lastly, apologize for my imperfect English since it’s not my primary language.

2 Likes
#52

Comments are not disabled, merely slowed down due to some egregious mishaps with others way before you can here to comment.

#53

@suppaman , he point that comments are disabled on the blog itself, and that’s because the Fedora council didn’t want to impose burden on the Fedora magazine volunteers to moderate those (and discourse is a better way to discuss, IMHO, richer interface, etc). It might be a good idea to explain that somewhere, since I do not know where I read that (I guess in the council meeting).

Disabling comments is also a convenient way to detect early where people come from. Saying this is censorship is a weird position, since people can still post here and everywhere they want so I can’t make sense of that argument. The only way it would make sense is if people consider they have to post directly at the same level as a official position of a elected body. That would be like saying that your government is censoring you because you can’t go on TV when your president announce something, and really it doesn’t make sense.

@ renich , you seems to not have used Discourse that much since there is a popup about your last post being “3 years ago”, but the 50 comments before on the discussion are related to the topic and they address your points (cause unsurprisingly, you are not the 1st ). I would recommend to review what was said as it would be more productive for everybody than asking others to debunk again arguments.

5 Likes
#54

Fedora really shouldn’t have waded into this controversy. We should exercise a bit more caution before we vote people off the island. Words do matter, but what matters just as much, if not more, is intent. The evidence I’ve seen doesn’t exhibit malicious intent - and you need to be mindful of having the punishment fit the crime, otherwise sanctions become meaningless and you run the serious risk of bad actors manipulating the situation and the good intention of others for their own destructive agendas. Meanwhile, those who really need to be held accountable remain, rendered invisible by the distraction they encourage.

5 Likes
#55

OK, first of all @misc, thanks for the suggestion, but @mattdm moved my topic, which was independent to this thread; and which I knew nothing about, here. So, this is why it seems to ignore the conversation completely.

Now, since there is a 1 hour show posting in effect, I will have to answer to some of the replies here, in no particular order, since I am not willing to wait 1 hour between replies.

Please, don’t quit the project @sergiomb, we need diversity and, IMHO, this community is very centered around the USA culture of late. They completely ignore the Latin American approach to things. I understand completely where you come from. I live in México and I, too, think alike. This is major ungratefulness or maybe even betrayal towards rms from the Fedora project for all the wrong reasons. We need people like you that balance out and keep this community from transforming into a monoculture echo chamber.

Now I’d like to raise the issue of using twitter as a definitive source of truth. I read this post that @mattdm posted as evidence of misbehavior by rms: https://twitter.com/georgialyle/status/1374513404488994818 and, when she was asked for evidence of what she pulls the “sealioning” card. Quite convenient. Who needs evidence, right? Just take her word for it.

Every time this happens, people in the USA bring out this “micro-agression” thing. They get offended so easily by anything. This isn’t true, yet at least, here. This isn’t valid where I live.

The bottom line, please, don’t use twitter as a source of truth. It isn’t. People, even women, are human beings that might lie, exaggerate, misconstrue and go with the hurd (ironically ;D) when it comes to mob situations, like it’s happening with rms, iMHO.

Also, take the time to read the link I already posted. Especially the “debunking” section of it. I, too, support the argument that rms is, constantly, being put out of context and people ignore how he is. He’s, usually, thinking out loud. That should be, always, permitted. That’s the way to get to real conclusions. That’s how scientists did it before, right? I mean, Galileo saying the world is round and stuff. It was forbidden to do so, yet, he did.

When it comes to him being impolite to women or even harassing (this is completely overstated, in my opinion), he is a nerd. In the USA, it seems to me, people like to think of public figures as asexual. Their biology doesn’t play a role in their behavior at all. Well, where I live, nerds don’t get enough sex… by far. In the LUG I go to (LinuxCabal) you can see this clearly. Mostly men go there. When women show up; and especially, when they’re attractive, the guys, either, cramp up in a corner in fear (super funny if you ask me) or cannot stop staring at the floor, even when talked to, to avoid looking at the woman’s body. Anyone that doesn’t get this is just avoiding the issue. This happens to nerds. It’s well know. Now, if rms stared at some women’s breasts, well, I get why. I don’t condone it, but I will never cancel him for something like that.

Also, when it comes to his commentary on pedophilia, well, again, people choose to take him out of context and to “read between lines” when convenient, and be super objective when not. As far as I read in this thread, it isn’t enough for him to state he changed his mind. He has to do it vehemently or, otherwise, it doesn’t count, right? Not. You don’t see any bias there?

Someone wrote, somewhere, people focus a lot on what he says instead of what he has done. He hasn’t committed a crime. He hasn’t touched any woman, kid or animal, as far as I am concerned, in any “funny” or wrongful way. Why is he being judged so harshly? Socially awkward? Yeah! He is! Totally! Not a criminal. Stop treating him as if he was.

Then, there’s the, very convenient, part of this situation where Fedora cancels rms but keeps using his license and tools. I don’t have a word for this… it’s just so shameful. Now, Fedora, doesn’t want to have anything to do with rms, but will keep using the GPL and it’s variations, it will keep using gcc and emacs; and distributing them. How is this OK in any way? Shouldn’t Fedora throw away these and forget about them as well? Dump the man, outcast him but keep the tools and keep benefiting from them. Not OK.

Now that I think of it, why didn’t Fedora issue a statement when Theodore Ts’o had his sexual harassment scandal? We kept using ext4 as well.

What about Mr. Reiser. He went as far as killing his wife and we still distribute ReiserFS:

[renich@introdesk ~]$ cat /etc/os-release 
NAME=Fedora
VERSION="34 (Workstation Edition Prerelease)"
ID=fedora
VERSION_ID=34
VERSION_CODENAME=""
PLATFORM_ID="platform:f34"
PRETTY_NAME="Fedora 34 (Workstation Edition Prerelease)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;38;2;60;110;180"
LOGO=fedora-logo-icon
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:fedoraproject:fedora:34"
HOME_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/"
DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/34/system-administrators-guide/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicating_and_getting_help"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT="Fedora"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT_VERSION=34
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="Fedora"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION=34
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:PrivacyPolicy"
VARIANT="Workstation Edition"
VARIANT_ID=workstation

[renich@introdesk ~]$ grep -i reiser /boot/config-5.11.12-300.fc34.x86_64 
CONFIG_REISERFS_FS=m
# CONFIG_REISERFS_CHECK is not set
CONFIG_REISERFS_PROC_INFO=y
CONFIG_REISERFS_FS_XATTR=y
CONFIG_REISERFS_FS_POSIX_ACL=y
CONFIG_REISERFS_FS_SECURITY=y

Why, because we’re a tech organization. We stay out of politics. At least we did. We never issued statements in those cases either. But, hey, let’s just cancel rms, eh?

That takes me to the fact that free software was created so you could use it with “any purpose”. Literally, any. This means you can use it for bad things as well. Well, what if Fedora goes further and starts deciding this isn’t right and that we should act. I mean, it’s getting into that right now, aren’t we? Where will we put the definition of “bad”? In our wiki? Who will be able to edit it? You see where this is going? We should never have stepped into the politics of anything.

I, for one, will not. I’ve been here since Fedora Core 1. Not the Fedora Council nor Mathew MIller speak on my behalf in this matter. I have collaborated with the Fedora Project for along time; yet, in small ways, and I strongly, categorically and utterly oppose the Fedora Council’s decision and statement completely.

I, also, reject your position about representing Fedora in any event that the FSF hosts; even if Dr. Stallman is there. I identify as a Fedorian; a Fedora User. And I will keep on doing so and support rms. I understand the “not officially” but, then again, I could never do that. I will, however, use my Fedora t-shirt, talk about Fedora and propose people to use Fedora in every event of the FSF I attend to.

2 Likes
#56

I can see how this cancel culture could be used for company raids. I can see how the cost of bringing down the FSF with its GPL could be as low as $100k paid to those who enjoy spurring chain reactions of social justice.

No.

There is no grand conspiracy. No “cancel culture” mob and by no means a paid one. I don’t think anybody in the support of the removal of Richard Stallman wants to see the FSF fall (anecdotal, however if you can provide substantial proof otherwise I’d be surprised.) Quite the opposite, actually. His leadership position is a threat to the growth and prosperity of the FSF, and the free software community as a whole. Whether it be corporations pulling funding, his comments and actions pushing women and minority groups away from the community, or any of the other direct consequences the FSF have and will continue to receive because of his role. We are trying to protect one of the most important organizations in open source, and the free software community as a whole.

2 Likes
#57

His leadership position is a threat to the growth and prosperity of the FSF

I’ve heard the story that many non-profits fail to deliver they goals when they pivoted towards their own prosperity. Which attack is used to take ownership and maximize the profits - doesn’t matter. If you’re unhappy with this guy company - start your own. You probably already have Linux Foundation, OSI, SPDX (who are erasing public domain with their specifiers, by the way), SFC, EFF… The list doesn’t end here. Maybe FSF doesn’t matter and you just want to attack this guy, because his “Free as something” thoughts hurt your feelings?

And yes, there is no conspiracy, but yes - there is a cancel culture and you can see it the same way you see a graffity on the wall.

3 Likes
#58

It is wrong to police thoughts and censor speech. I don’t agree with Stallman but I agree with his right to think and say what he feels is right, because I don’t want my right to free speech censored either. Red Hat and Fedora have punished Stallman for exercising free speech. And they haven’t really provided any evidence of any other wrong doing. They just say he mistreats women. I would be on board with that, if it is true. But without presenting any evidence, you’ve convicted him without a trial and without transparency. How can you expect anyone to accept that decision? It is not reasonable to ask people to accept that. Why would I want to be a part of an organization which might do the same for me for no apparent reason other than they don’t like some opinions I hold? Also the punishment does not fit the crime, to completely remove someone from their life’s work just because they said something stupid.

3 Likes
#59

Richard Stallman is being cancelled, and by a mob, which is everyone who signed the petition to have him removed. Are you going to cancel everyone who says something stupid, who is a free thinker, who exercises free speech, who asks a woman out on a date, or who acts a little weird? If there really is evidence of a valid problem, maybe restricting him from holding a leadership position would be more reasonable than completely cancelling him?

2 Likes
#60

If you read my answers, you will see that for at least one of the incident I quote, the Marianne Corvellec talk at Libre Planet 2017, I was in the room. You can look up the program of the event, my name is there (3rd talk of the 1st day).

If your argument is “do not rely on your own memory”, there is a name for that, that’s gaslighting.

But even if I couldn’t rely on my memory, I can also rely on others. My partner, who co-organized LSM a few years ago, also had some anecdotes about RMS from that time. Another friend of mine reminded me of the policy among organizers to not let RMS without someone watching 24/24, and not in a body guard way, more like in a nanny way.

If you look at the people who signed the open letter for RMS, you might see there is folks who were active in the FSF (Stefano, Molly, etc). I counted around 60 people that I personally know from my free software activity, and maybe more now. I truly doubt those 60 peoples (some who had personal experience with RMS as well) are all deluded or lying.

And given I regularly heard stories about RMS behaviour since my first years of free software activity (Libre Software Meeting in Metz, 2003), I really see no reason to doubt others people testimony.

That’s why no one is asking him to go to prison. You seems to think that saying “we do not want that person to be in charge of this” as being treated as a criminal. This is not. Unless situation changed recently, RMS is not in jail. He is not stripped from his voting rights in the US, he would be able to leave the country (pandemics aside).

No one asked that, and to me, it look like a straw man argument. If you are arguing in good faith and want to convince people, I do not think that’s a winning strategy, especially one that is easy bebunked.

And “not convincted of a crime” is really a low requirement.

Why wouldn’t it be ok ?

RMS didn’t wrote most of the code for tools of the GNU project and that the ones he wrote 20 years ago have likely more code from others than him, and have surely been rewritten 2 or 3 times.

For example, the GPL wasn’t made only by him, especially the version 3.

Ignoring the contributions of all others people is really weird and kinda creepy to me. Creepy because that construct RMS as some kind of messianic figure, and usually, that do not end well.

Are you aware that you are undermining your own argument ?

The fact that no one asked to remove Reiserfs show that the removal of RMS is not linked to anything related to crime or anything, because here, there is a crime and no one did anything. Again, RMS is not accused of a crime, so arguing against how we should do nothing seems like a fallacious argument.

Free software, especially the FSF, is about politics, as a quick look at the Libre Planet schedule can show. For example, in 2017:

  • “When we fight we win: Technology and liberation in Trump’s America”.
  • “Meet them where they are: Free software and social justice today”
  • " Move fast and break democracy"
  • " Accessibility, free software and the rights of people with disabilities"
  • " Civilian Code Conservation Corps: Free software for governments of all sizes"
  • " Beyond unfree: The software you can go to jail for talking about"
  • " The surreptitious assault on privacy, security, and freedom"
  • " Freedom and loathing on the campaign trail '16"

But the question of whether free software is apolitical or not is not the point.

The point is whether RMS is a good leader or not, and whether people want him as a leader.

Even if Fedora was totally out of politics (which is not possible, by virtue of being in a society and having a impact on it) or trying to stay away as much as possible, the question of RMS in the FSF would still be very relevant to Fedora, because that’s relevant to the free software community at large and we are part of the community.

When RMS do something crappy, we pay the price.
When RMS drive people away due to his decisions (and I gave some examples ), we all lose.

Now people can choose to say "he didn’t said that’ and “you can’t trust people”, but in the end, that’s not answering the question of whether RMS is a good leader or not.

1 Like
#61

As you point out, people have free speech rights. So Fedora, Red Hat and others have exercised their free speech rights to say what they think about the situation, and to act based on what they think.

I mean, free speech work both way, you know ?

3 Likes
#62

maybe restricting him from holding a leadership position would be more reasonable than completely cancelling him?

This is exactly what the Fedora Council is asking for…

As for evidence:

https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-appendix-a-a7e41e784f88

https://web.archive.org/web/20210325013706/https://stallman.org/archives/2018-jul-oct.html#23_September_2018_(Cody_Wilson)
https://web.archive.org/web/20210325013844/https://stallman.org/archives/2017-sep-dec.html#13_November_2017_(Jelani_Maraj)
https://web.archive.org/web/20210325014131/https://stallman.org/archives/2014-jul-oct.html#26_October_2014_(Prison_for_cartoon)
https://web.archive.org/web/20210325014348/https://stallman.org/archives/2016-jul-oct.html#31_October_2016_(Down’s_syndrome)
https://web.archive.org/web/20161107050933/https://stallman.org/archives/2016-jul-oct.html#31_October_2016_(Down’s_syndrome)

That is just the tip of the iceberg.

2 Likes
#63

I’m really not sure there’s a lot more to say in this thread that hasn’t been said already. I’m starting to see a lot of repetition. I do appreciate people keeping the tone civil, and I appreciate thoughtful (and passionate!) responses, and therefore am going to provide a few hopefully-final replies. I’m also going to move this topic to the Council Discuss category, which I think is more appropriate. (Let’s keep this category for talking about cool things openSUSE and Arch are doing, Arduino hacking, Linux on Mars, etc.)

I certainly understand this sentiment, but the fact is, we’re part of the Free Software world — and proudly so. We could have chosen to not say anything, but that isn’t really staying out of it. It would just be a different kind of statement.

I’m glad you don’t believe that I reacted before being aware of the facts, because … I didn’t. Nor did the rest of the Fedora Council. We take this seriously, and after the surprise announcement, took time to discuss and be sure, following our normal consensus process to come to the statement we released on April 2, quite a bit later than many other free and open source software organizations put out statements or even co-signed the letter.

The narrative that this is a rushed, pop-up mob of people who aren’t involved just doesn’t hold water. I read the link you provided, and frankly, I don’t think it’s very compelling. It’s got dramatic rhetoric, but it’s all very one sided, and presents a clearly-not-true narrative that free software advocates in general support their position.

I’m glad that you had a positive experience in meeting Stallman in person. Unfortunately, that is not a universal experience.

As Michael notes, that is literally what we’re asking for. I asked further back in the thread that people not throw the word “cancel” around, because other than being a hot thing to say on twitter that sounds really bad, I’m not sure what it actually means, and if some people think it means one thing and others another, at best we’re either talking past each other or arguing about semantics. And I don’t want to do either of those things.

5 Likes
#64

I posted lots of stuff, but I can’t take credit for that tidbit, that was @nickavem who rightfully pointed that.

3 Likes
#65

I wanted to say that but didn’t want to be that guy :sweat_smile:

1 Like
#66

OK, so we’re a political organization then? How do you feel about the fact that killers, drug dealers and criminals of all kinds use our distro for all kinds of purposes? Should we do something about it too? Based on who’s morals? Of which culture? …

My ReiserFS example was to point out that we didn’t post a position at the time and; yes, we keep distributing his software. Put in other terms, let’s say the cancellation is on you. We drive you away from fedora, forbid you to work here and/or hold any leadership position; all this while we use your life’s work to do whatever.

Yeah, gcc is rms’ project. As much as linux is Linus’ project. They haven’t contributed any code to those for a while. So what? It’s still theirs. They started it.

That’s all I have to say for now. Doesn’t seem like there is anyone paying attention anyway. Do as you please. This changes my opinion of Fedora. A political organization… what a tragedy.

2 Likes
#67

You seems to oppose to Fedora being “a political organization”, without really defining it.

However, you have no problem with the FSF, who is clearly branding itself as political (cf the talks at Libre Planet as I pointed out). I can’t reconcile the contradiction coming from theses 2 facts, and really, this make hard to understand your position.

You keep speaking of ReiserFS, but as far as I know, Hans Reiser is in jail for murder. I do not think RMS murdered someone, so that’s really hard to understand why you are trying to compare. There is a lot of nuance between “put people in jail for 15 years minimum” and “people write a letter to say to not give leadership”.

Linus continue to show technical leadership, check code, write patches, and delegate.
The last time Linus committed on the Linux git repository was 3h ago:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=89698becf06d341a700913c3d89ce2a914af69a2

RMS last commit on GCC is gcc.gnu.org Git - gcc.git/commit

That’s from 2003. To just put thing in perspective, Fedora didn’t exist yet.

The one before is
https://gcc.gnu.org/git/?p=gcc.git;a=commit;h=58a1b05a2f8f7de2d3ebd6a81c84b2c0e1688dc4

It date back to 1997. In 1997, the latest Debian version was 1.3 (and back in this days, they were releasing every 6 months, and skipped 1.0).

But you know also what happened in 1997, besides Debian release and Titanic in theatre ?

People forked GCC to create EGCS, because the FSF (e.g., RMS) was a bit too controlling, and so developpers decided to units all the fork since the FSF wouldn’t accept them. This proved so successful that 2 years after, in 1999, the FSF dropped their branch of GCC, and decided that the fork would be called the official GCC.

So we can’t really say that GCC is RMS project, because when he acted as project leader, people forked so much that it killed his branch, and he didn’t contribute again as we have seen.

2 Likes
#68

I wouldn’t say Fedora is a political organization, no more than any other business or organization. Fedora business is obviously not politics. All Fedora did in this instance was publish an opinion, which is their right and actually is a good thing. Generally speaking, we need thoughtful participation in society. As I mentioned earlier, I would have advised sitting this one out. That said, the best way to support the FSF at this point is to donate or join if you have the means, and/or make your support visible. Start using your FSF email address, wear a t-shirt or a hat. Much of this is a tempest in a teapot and will blow over. You’ve got to pick your battles.

1 Like
#69

In reply, thank you for focus in the two questions that are important (IMO) .
Words of RMS and acts of RMS , about the words what I read is “the punishment have to fit in the crime” , RMS not say that isn’t a crime, it says that is a less punishable than what they paint . Of course this can be very offensive for the family of the victims, for example. But applying the same principal (the punishment have to fit in the crime) , in my point of view these opinions are personal views and thoughts and not what the organization defends as important, so one thing is the organization defend and spread these ideas as the right thing, other (less punishable) is personal comments and different points of view.
We can read Political Notes Archives - Richard Stallman without web.archive, I don’t find any difference and the tip of iceberg is very repetitive it seems to me is more a storm in a glass of water.
About acts and behavior I don’t know .
Finally, I completely agree with GBCox (first comment)