Here We Go Again
wingolog.orgCan we define what opinions are allowed to be held anymore? Just put up a list somewhere with all the opinions that should be banned from polite society and rightly get you fired, so everyone can understand what they are?
Just as an example, the author wrote this a while back (among similar sentiments): "Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man." lol so true
Personally I'm not a fan of people promoting negative stereotypes of an entire race/gender in this way, but I would not support calls for Wingo's firing/"cancellation" for expressing this opinion. If this sort of charity for differing opinions is no longer reciprocal though, I see no reason for it be offered by anyone. We can all just retreat to ideological silos.
Seems like RMS's Achilles' heel is harassment towards women, over the years, even after being made aware of it politely by others.
In that light, these are classic reads on the topic (copy pasting another comment):
[1] Why are There so Few Female Computer Scientists (Ellen Spertus, 1991)
https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7040
[2] How to Encourage Women in Linux (Val Henson, 2002)
https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/
[3] What Happens to Us Does Not Happen to Most of You (Kathryn S. McKinley, 2018)
https://www.sigarch.org/what-happens-to-us-does-not-happen-t...
[4] Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing (Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher, 2001)
https://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Clubhouse-Women-Computing-P...
[5] The Elephant in the Valley (by Michele Madansky and Trae Vassallo, 2015)
https://www.elephantinthevalley.com/
Also the news of RMS coming back seems to have been hidden from even FSF members.
Patricia Torvalds uses Apple products.
These were really good reads, especially the third. Thanks.
just throwing this out there, but like, blatant sexism and racism might be those opinions? tolerating these and promoting people holding them isn't cool either.
> "Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man." lol so true
> blatant sexism and racism
There seems to be a lack of self-awareness here?
Only if you ignore the all-important "punch up/punch down" rules. Because in current racial orthodoxy whiteness is not a race but a privilege class of the racially unoppressed, disparaging remarks about white people always "punch up" and are therefore acceptable.
>Just put up a list somewhere with all the opinions that should be banned from polite society
You betcha, I'll get you started:
- Do not advocate for rape
I don’t see how you can claim that Stallman "advocate[d] for rape." Please read what he wrote carefully - he says that it’s not clear that Minsky had knowledge of or intent to commit a crime. You can argue that Minsky was associating with Epstein and should have known what was going on, and that Stallman is totally unwise in his responses here, but don’t accuse him of something that he has not done according to the evidence presented in this issue.
> I don’t see how you can claim that Stallman "advocate[d] for rape." Please read what he wrote carefully - he says that it’s not clear that Minsky had knowledge of or intent to commit a crime.
His pro-child-rape advocacy was separate from his Minsky-might-not-be-a-rapist advocacy (so you can't read the latter carefully to disprove the existence of the former), and he has since recanted it (not that that necessarily means people must disregard it; it wasn't some ancient error born out of youthful ignorance when he endorsed political advocacy for elimination of all age of consent laws).
Maybe not youthful ignorance, but ignorance just the same. RMS's stance was a libertarian "no harm, no crime"; he reversed it when he learned that there is inherent harm in sex between an adult and a child.
You may argue "That's common sense, he had no excuse", but RMS is... neurodiverse enough to have trouble with "common sense" in situations like this.
Anyway, his former views are oddly enough broadly consistent with those of the foundational philosophers behind gender theory and third wave feminism, including Judith Butler and Michel Foucault, both of whom believed that pedophiles constituted a socially oppressed sexual class much like gays. Which makes it unsurprising that "social justice" types tend to take glee in exposing and shaming alleged pedophiles (or pedophile sympathizers) from the other side, while closing ranks to defend pedophiles found within their own ranks.
> Maybe not youthful ignorance, but ignorance just the same. RMS's stance was a libertarian "no harm, no crime"; he reversed it when he learned that there is inherent harm in sex between an adult and a child.
Even taking that as absolutely true (which I think is quite suspect, circumstantially), it says something about the judgement and credibility of someone who has spent most of their life in public advocacy roles that they would start publicly arguing for legalization of sex with chidren as public policy not later than the age of 50 (the first public statement on the issue I can find is from 2003), and do so repeatedly over a period of over a decade and a half before “learning” that it his harmful to children (Stallman recanted on the issue in 2019).
So many of these nonprofit software orgs seem to be run like small town churches. Board members are selected through some combination of ideological purity, zeal, and nepotism rather than any sensible measure of competence or efficacy.
Andy's complaint seems to me to be that they are selecting for the wrong kind of ideological purity (i.e. yesteryear's free software ethos instead of today's gender issues), and I think this criticism misses the forest for a tree.
> So many of these nonprofit software orgs seem to be run like small town churches. Board members are selected through some combination of ideological purity, zeal, and nepotism rather than any sensible measure of competence or efficacy.
This is somewhat less surprising when you realize that that's pretty much the way virtually every human organization, and especially political/advocacy/ideologically-centered ones (not just “small town churches” but also global churches, national political parties, small-and-large issue- and service-oriented no profits, etc., and even very many businesses, governments of all scales, etc.)
On the specific issue of ideological purity, there are also very good efficacy-related reasons why both purity with regard to the ideology of an organization with an ideological purpose and overt consistency outside of that with the ideology of the target population is an important selection factor for people in prominent public roles with organizations focussed around ideological advocacy.
I am curious as to where did you find Andy mentioning anything about a new kind of ideological purity? Or is this the typical 'SJW' scarecrow to prevent any kind of meaningful change whatsoever?
What if, I don't know, we update that free software ethos and acknowledge its dark history of discrimination and abuse?
What abuse do you allege Stallman participated in specifically?
> Of course I would rather that the FSF wouldn't allow itself to be seen as an essentially misogynist organization. So clean house, FSF!
Yeah OP certainly is pushing an ideological agenda, but although "don't be misogynist" is certainly an ideology, it does seem pretty related to the FSF being an effective force in the modern world. If women don't participate or contribute, the FSF _won't_ be effective (or at least, much less effective than it could be).
From the FSF website: "The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a nonprofit with a worldwide mission to promote computer user freedom. We defend the rights of all software users."
I don't see "make sure RMS feels important and in charge" anywhere in the mission, but I do see "the rights of all software users" in there. Maybe the FSF hasn't noticed women using computers yet?
I think you've hit the nail on the head. When I see a slogan like "don't be seen as misogynist" my brain fills in "don't be seen [by whom?] as misogynist."
Is Stallman actually impeding the FSF's mission, or just pissing off a vocal silicon valley minority who are already on board with the mission?
Is not continuing to employ abusers what you are questioning here and trying to portray as the new gender issue ideology?
Free software and misogyny aren't the same in the way you might think they are, the former can exist without the latter.
You asked "where did you find Andy mentioning anything about a new kind of ideological purity?"
I answered with a line where he specifically demands the FSF get rid of people "perceived" as misogynist. I.e. apply a modern gender issue ideological purity test.
Now you have claimed this is a defense of abusers. That is an equivocation, an intellectually dishonest rhetorical tactic. The discussion up to this point was about perceptions of misogyny, which is not the same thing as abuse.
We're dealing with a man who thinks it's fascist to concern yourself with freedom of speech: https://www.wingolog.org/archives/2017/09/04/the-hardest-thi...
And who has advocated hiring only people who give "correct" answers to an ideological purity test: http://www.wingolog.org/archives/2017/09/05/a-new-interview-...
Hint: The correct answer is structural misogyny. Any accounting for the fact that less than 50% of programmers are women, that does not attribute 100% of the imbalance to structural misogyny, would presumably disqualify you from the role. So there's your Unicru answer key, in case you run into this sort of question in the wild.
Basically, Andy Wingo has certain political positions, and if yours differ, you are racist, misogynist, or otherwise "fash" and toxic to the organization, therefore should not be hired or recognized as a contributor.
I happen to disagree strongly with Wingo on a number of counts -- which is why I'm glad he's around to hack on Guile! But I don't think his advice on who should be included or excluded should be taken by the FSF or other free software organizations.
Here's a suggestion I haven't seen mentioned anywhere:
In situations where two camps ostensibly agree on mission but disagree on execution, why don't we just have two organizations? In this case the "show me the code" camp can collectivize their Free Software efforts and the "diversity and inclusion" camp can do the same, both with the internal rules and leadership structure that appeals to them.
It seems a segment of the community (possibly a loud minority) here is insisting on a monoculture across not just some but all organizations. Obviously that's not going to serve everyone.
Doing this would even let us see objective results about which organizational culture is most effective by various metrics.
> In situations where two camps ostensibly agree on mission but disagree on execution, why don't we just have two organizations?
That's usually the eventual result if the disagreement can't be resolved, but usually seen as suboptimal by both sides, since both would prefer one organization pursuing the shared goal by the optimum approach.
It's been several years of (arguably destructive) culture war; one that shows no signs of abating. Also, being organizationally separate doesn't preclude collaboration on overlapping mission goals.
Side benefit: Those who want to support Free Software can contribute where they feel welcome and where they think their contribution will do the most good. E.g., One might be reluctant to contribute to any organization with a lot of ancillary ideological baggage that distracts from the core mission of Free Software. So, if those ideologues dominate everywhere, now you're left without a home if you only care about user freedom.
> It's been several years of (arguably destructive) culture war; one that shows no signs of abating
But...the opposing sides already have separate orgs here: the signatories of the Stallman letter include leadership of the OSI, Mozilla-as-an-institution, and both leaders of other FLOSS institutions and other FLOSS and FLOSS-adjacent institutions-as-institutions.
And people that are unhappy that are attached to the FSF are leaving over this.
So...what are you advocating for? That these separate entities and separating individuals shouldn't engage in public discussion that highlights their differences so that people can clearly see what each party represents?
The article discusses the issues with this approach in Andy's situation (hosting, rights etc.)
Hosting is trivial. Copyright less so, but forking a project when you don’t agree with the direction of the copyright holder is a long-established tradition in open source. FSF and GNU will forever be associated with rms. If maintainers don’t like that association they should fork and rebrand.
Because the "diversity and inclusion" camp aren't pragmatic, they are dogmatic. The cancelling is more important than the actual work being done.
Because one camp (guess which) won't accept this solution since their actual goal is complete dominance.
Once you kill all your heroes, it's pretty clear that a person (1) can do great things, (2) have completed those things in an environment of exclusion (not to mention Epstein) and (3) might no longer be the best person to lead.
To me RMS doesn't lead the Free Software movement, and hasn't for quite some time -- just a traditionalist wing of the movement. I don't have to agree with him, worship him, or not think he's a weird and unpleasant person to respect the good he did -- and does -- for free software. But there are a lot of diverse views and perspectives within open source and even free software, and RMS is no longer the barycenter of the movement the way he was in the 80s and early 90s.
But the truth is, we need RMS or someone like him around, warts and all, otherwise the Overton window for open source will get dragged further and further toward corporate interests. There's a LOT of money behind this, and you cannot look into the backgrounds and views of the loudest voices calling for RMS's cancellation and NOT conclude that there is strong corporate influence to get rid of him.
>(3) might no longer be the best person to lead.
this is the part I think people are having trouble with for some reason. I respect RMS for what he did, but it's clear he's probably not the right person to lead the movement anymore. It's hard to excuse some of his strange and creepy behavior, but after meeting him, twice on the same day, it isn't entirely unsurprising; perhaps it's unfair for me to say, but I'm pretty certain he has some form of neuro-divergence.
It's a much bigger trending problem. We have entered an era where our leader's flaws can (and probably should) be exposed. There is an old idiom:
Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.
We cannot watch over our leaders like a hawk and dissolve their right to privacy however. The critical problem we now continually face (Here We Go Again and Again) is how do we forgive and re-trust our leaders? Where is the line that eliminates them from leadership?
> it was his insinuation that it was somehow OK if his recently-deceased mentor Marvin Minsky ... had sex with a 17-year-old on Jeffrey Epstein's private island.
Here we go again indeed..
> Comments are closed.
of course they are, they might point out the factual errors in the premise, especially given that no links or quotes of Stallman are provided to suggest what the basis of that premise is.
FYI: https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/
Is there a petition I can sign to support removing (from positions of leadership) people who spread malicious/unsupported misrepresentations of people?
EDIT: two people at least have down-voted this, without providing any kind of rebuttal to my claim that this blog post is spreading misinformation. So, is this because they believe it not to be the case (but aren't keen on rebutting it) OR is it that they don't care if it is true, it is simply an inconvenience to their political outlook?
If I have to choose between Richard Stallman and Andy Wingo, I choose Stallman.
A way to totally miss the point of the article and the situation and come up with an absurd choice I guess?
What situation is that exactly? Be specific.. the article was light on details and seemed like it was trying too hard to influence opinion based on feelings rather than facts.
Here's something, not everything:
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21287006
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20994216
From what I could tell these are literally political attacks taking things out of context. I saw one saying that Stallman said it was okay for people to pester for sex. Then I went and read what he said and no where did he say that.
The problem with attacking Stallman on a lie then saying "Yeah, but there was other legitimate stuff too" is that the initial misrepresentation demonstrates bad faith - which casts doubt on later insinuations.
If there is stuff that Stallman legitimately has to answer for, so be it, but in the context of kicking him while down, Gish-gallop style, this is pure justification after the fact.
> Comments are closed.
So the one time you posted something controversial on your blog, you immediately and preventively shut down any kind of discourse. So much for credibility.
> Comments are closed.
indeed
Well said.
Let's not forget Bill Gates remaining friends with Epstein while we're at it and giving him the opportunity to be the face of good regarding Coronavirus.
Do you have a link?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-...
First result after typing in "Bill Gates Epstein"