Red Hat statement about RMS’s return to the Free Software Foundation board

https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-statement-about-richard-stallmans-return-free-software-foundation-board

by jacobsee • 5 years ago

91 78 5 years ago

redhat.com

bondarchuk• 5 years ago

flagged in 3.., 2.., 1...

__blockcipher__8• 5 years ago

I hate that you’re right. What is it with people flagging as an uber downvote?!

chomp• 5 years ago

There's been SO MANY Stallman articles the past few days, by this point there's nothing new to add. Everyone is just rehashing the same arguments and there's nothing new or interesting here. There are over TWENTY of these that have hit the front page in the last week. There's plenty of discussion to be had on those if you are looking for input on this development. We don't need a new front page article for each company or organization or blogger trotting out their for/against statement on Stallman at this point.

liaukovv6• 5 years ago

Shouldn't it be "corpse of red hat"?

disposekinetics• 5 years ago

This is an effective way to kill off the last bit of goodwill I had for RH.

pieter_mj• 5 years ago

Exactly. It's not Red Hat anymore, it's IBM.

5424584• 5 years ago

The FSF seems to be burning goodwill at an alarming rate. Honestly, they would have been better off either taking RMS off the board for good or doing nothing at all - this back-and-forth just ensures everybody is unhappy with them (and is probably another sign that their leadership could use a shakeup).

__blockcipher__8• 5 years ago

I don’t know if it’s fair to say that the FSF is burning goodwill so much that the culture war has fully consumed tech and this is just the next battlefront.

We have organizations openly advocating for discriminatory hiring based off race/sex/gender identity/sexuality. It’s a bit deeper than RMS not wanting to use the singular they or him asking the questions about pedophilia / consent that good neurotypical people know not to ask.

IDK, I get what you’re saying that they chose to reinstate him. But this feels more like a moral panic than a victory for ethics to me.

You might not be surprised to know that most people at my organization are very in favor of all this stuff so I recognize I’m in the minority here

mrverify• 5 years ago

I would call this more of a culture self-implosion than war. The end game for the winning side is a civilization where nobody can interact for fear of running afoul of ever changing--potentially ex-post facto--rules.

pm905• 5 years ago

This is the right move by Red Hat.

It is appalling how tone deaf this move by FSF has been in light of the circumstances that we live in today. Its genuinely disturbing to see this wellspring of the modern computing ecosystem become corrupted like this. They had an opportunity to change which they seemingly took in 2019 but I guess they didn't really mean it.

liaukovv6• 5 years ago

What circumstances are these?

Mobs going around digging up whatever they can to bully people?

pm905• 5 years ago

Mobs going around digging up whatever they can to bully people?

Vulnerable parts of our community coming forward with their experiences allowing us to understand the pain they experienced due to tone deaf comments and actions by those that were held in high esteem.

I would like the community to be welcoming to people of every background. Actions and comments that constitute harassment absolutely should not be tolerated, especially from those who are entrusted with power.

frakkingcylons• 5 years ago

It’s not like you have to root through garbage cans to find the things that RMS has said. They’re all on his blog, the whole time.

tittenfick2• 5 years ago

If you think the stuff he said about pedophilia is OK, I don't know what to tell you. This is not a mob, these are normal people who are disgusted.

I quote: "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."

metalforever• 5 years ago

Everyone is for diversity until we get to an autistic person, then they go act surprised when an autistic person predictably has a social lapse and demonize them because their disability was on display.

None of this excuses the weird statements and viewpoints and offense people have felt but we should ask RMS what he actually meant and have him describe before making the call. A lot of it is probably a misunderstanding and he will continue to offend people because that is the nature of his disability. It’s not intentional malice. He probably doesn’t harbor any ill will or desire to offend.

This is just something that happens when you are autistic. It can trigger a personal investigation process where one tries to figure out the social mistake, but they still slip up .

undefined12• 5 years ago

people have forgotten that intent matters.

also,

“It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what." Stephen Fry

antattack• 5 years ago

Virtue signaling is part of corporate DNA.

betwixthewires2• 5 years ago

We look forward to working with the FSF and others to enable the FSF to once again become an effective and trusted advocacy organization in line with its chartered non-profit mission.

Translation: cave to the mob if you want our money.

mc324• 5 years ago

If he committed a crime then he should suffer consequences, but this kind of politicking and posturing is unproductive.

You’ll end up with spineless yes people who don’t push back and also do nothing but do PR (virtue signal the latest fad).

5424584• 5 years ago

There's a lot of room between "things that are crimes" and "things that alienate to wide swaths of the population, and therefore make you a poor choice for an ambassador".

dvfjsdhgfv5• 5 years ago

If he committed a crime

If he committed something, and this something was actually a crime and not just something that some people don't like, then it is up to the court to decide about it, not Twitter mob.

__blockcipher__8• 5 years ago

You’ll end up with spineless yes people who don’t push back and also do nothing but do PR (virtue signal the latest fad).

Yup. And if you haven’t noticed, that is exactly who is running almost every major institution in Western society currently.

The enlightenment has died not with a bang but with a whimper.

undefined12• 5 years ago

is Red Hat themselves caving to the mob or have they been internally compromised by totalitarian activists?

betwixthewires2• 5 years ago

Probably both. This ideological cancer has been metastasizing in software development for over a decade.

__blockcipher__8• 5 years ago

Much more the latter. It’s not really “caving” because this is what top brass actively wants.

The political commentator Dave Smith has a great point where he views “wokism” as essentially a corporate plot. Post-2008 we had hordes of angry people occupying wall street, and however ignorant the footsoldiers may have been of basic economics they left a real mark. Fast forward ten years later and the corporations, big banks, and the CIA et al have all embraced woke identity politics and here we are arguing over the usage of the singular they and trying to decide if Aunt Jemima is racist or not. Viewed through that lens, wokism is the perfect performative ritual with which to placate the masses. And the beauty is it works on both sides. The left focuses on being woke instead of opposing the wars (both foreign and domestic) and the national “security” apparatus, and the right is busy fighting against the woke while they’re banned from going to church (COVID) and while their gun rights are gradually whittled away.

Reality is obviously not that simple but there’s a real kernel of truth there.

castis• 5 years ago

For the uninitiated: why was this a bad move by FSF?

liaukovv6• 5 years ago

Corporate masters didn't like it.

pm905• 5 years ago

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/free-software-ad... has more context, from a fairly neutral publication.

sildur• 5 years ago

That "article" is anything but neutral. These articles are a better source: https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/ https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web

caeril3• 5 years ago

Because they haven't yet learned that we live under the boot of a new authoritarianism.

This move should be sufficient to get them to understand who their masters are, and to get back in line, though. RMS will be out by month's end, and all will be well again.

5424584• 5 years ago

Some time ago Richard Stallman became a controversial figure due to several things:

* His written defenses of "consensual" pedophilia and defenses of ownership of child pornography, as well as calls for parents of babies with disabilities to have abortions

* An email around the definition of "Rape" with regards to Marvin Minsky allegedly having sex with a 17 year old member of Epstein's harem

* A sign that was on the door of his MIT office decalring him to be the "Knight for Justic (also: Hot Women)"

* Allegations from several women that he would aggressively hit on them and not take no for an answer

After the controversy, the FSF took him off the board. The FSF has now flip flopped on this and put him back on the board.

elric2• 5 years ago

His written defenses of "consensual" pedophilia and ownership of child pornography

Just to be clear: the parent commenter doesn't mean to say that RMS owns child pornography, but is instead referring to RMS commenting on other people's possession of it.

dvfjsdhgfv5• 5 years ago

His written defenses of "consensual" pedophilia

Just to be clear: (1) he was quoting a newspaper describing an actual study (that was quite shocking, but nevertheless it was a study) that has some strange conclusions, (2) he backed down later and apologized for his previous opinions.

wazoox• 5 years ago

See previous comments:

* he never, ever defended paedophilia in any form.

* he defended the memory of Minsky who never had any sex with any member of the Epstein harem.

* the sign on his door was a prank and wasn't his doing anyway.

The only real thing is that as a neuro-divergent, he has an awkward way to propose, and often behaves inappropriately in public. Knowing that it's pretty rich that the same woke crowd accused him of "ableism".

This all reeks of corporate propaganda. It's incredibly similar to the way Assange has been smeared for years about things he didn't do. It's an agenda to de-fang the FSF, kill Free Software and make it all nice and Microsoft/IBM friendly.

Therefore, my opinion is that it's a plot against Free Software, the FSF and RMS. And I'll fight vehemently against that.

See http://techrights.org/2021/03/27/objective-look-at-phony-sca...

You'll even have a nice picture of some guy named Bill Gates with his good friend Epstein...

amanzi• 5 years ago

These are the best two links I've found that put all the accusations into context:

https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/

https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web

dvfjsdhgfv5• 5 years ago

This is actually a very interesting story. Two years ago one victim of Epstein said Epstein asked her to have sex with Minsky. She didn't say whether anything happened or if she even had to chance to say anything to Minsky - only that she was asked to do that. Now, on an internal email list at MIT someone was very upset about Minsky. RMS sensibly said we can't conclude from the above statement that anything happened, and if Epstein really wanted anything to happen, he would need to convince the victim to pretend that she really wants it to happen on her own (the implication being that if Minsky had any suspicion she is forced to do it, the probability of his agreeing to such a thing would be low).

At this point one of the participants was appalled and asked RMS if he is aware that the contents of this internal list may leak to the press and if he knows what would happen. He answered[0]:

The 's' in CSAIL stands for 'science'. The job of scientists is to evaluate evidence and seek truth. We have a social responsibility to do that as well. I hope that we scientists will never evade our social responsibility to seek and defend the truth out of fear that the press will misconstrue our search.

Then someone sent these discussions to the press saying that "Stallman is defending Epstein." Many media outlets published these pieces attributing to Stallman things he didn't say. Most importantly they claimed that his opinion was that the victims were "entirely willing." Nobody ever apologized to him for this and many people still believe this, even on HN.

Moreover, Minsky's wife later said nothing could have happened because they were always together when visiting Epstein's property. But nobody cares anymore, this false story was just used to drown Stallman as many people didn't like him for other things.

[0] https://trisquel.info/files/09132019142056-0001.pdf

vbezhenar• 5 years ago

That's disappointing. I love RMS and I love Redhat. I guess I'll just switch to Windows. Does Microsoft love RMS?

pm905• 5 years ago

Does Microsoft love RMS?

__blockcipher__8• 5 years ago

I find it cute that they even uttered that question non-ironically.

Hot of the presses: a pawn of IBM on the one hand and Microsoft on the other both oppose a free software advocacy group that fought against everything Microsoft/IBM stand for! Shocking, I tell you!

b0sk• 5 years ago

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/diversity/default.aspx

i think you should write your own OS

rvz2• 5 years ago

Well that's a good idea. Perhaps an OS that just works is a start.

joecot• 5 years ago

Maybe try out NetBSD, I'm sure you'll love Theo de Raadt

elric2• 5 years ago

TDR was booted from the NetBSD team back in 1994 ... He then founded OpenBSD and has been working on it since.

uncledave• 5 years ago

Between the horrible centralisation of Linux under red hat, the treatment of centos users, jumping in bed with Microsoft and selling out to IBM, I have no appetite for a round of moral high grounding from a cookie cutter corporate mouthpiece.

rvz2• 5 years ago

The witch/wizard hunting has already begun and it is lead by the individuals at those companies who are on their moral high horses digging for old tweets, interviews and blog-posts to cancel anyone for their past sins.

At this point, it is not going to ever stop until it happens to them.

tittenfick2• 5 years ago

I can't believe how many people in every comment section there are who defend RMS.

He's a genius for sure, but the dude is just an awful public figure, there is a reason he's being memed to death and it's because he takes every chance to make a fool out of himself when is presenting something.

The stuff he said about pedophilia is frankly disgusting and the things about homo- and transphobia just shocking.

He is extremely intelligent, but only in this highly specific area. He is completely oblivious to everything else around him and just awful with people. Quite the important skill for somebody in a representative position.

SamReidHughes• 5 years ago

The policy Red Hat urges the FSF to follow is to discriminate by race, sex, and national origin when appointing its president and members of its board.

Does Red Hat also do this when hiring its own employees?

crazypython• 5 years ago

It's not a matter of whether they use his software. It's a matter of, he posts hundreds of posts on his personal blog condemning rape, and they cherry-pick the one post where he argued for a different definition of rape.[0]

He is accused of being transphobic despite asking everyone to "honor their preferences about their gender identity" with respect to pronouns: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26584613

After Stallman condemned the rape of a 17 year old girl in the Epstein case, Marvin Minksy had sex with the girl, unaware the girl was being coerced by Epstein. In accordance with the law of Canada and most U.S. states, it is legal to have sex with a 16 year old girl. Nonetheless, the open letter accused him of pedophilia.

The letter also claimed that for thirty years, had an unacceptable way of asking women out on dates. He can be taught a better way to ask women out. He has never been accused of groping or sexual assault.

The "sexual harassment for decades" Stallman did was asking out women in a creepy way. The original open letter's Appendix has two true claims (and one false claim I won't address here):

- In 1999, he had a mattress in his office which he slept on. This made some women avoid RMS because they considered it abnormal and creepy.

- In 1985, he told a woman he'd kill himself if he didn't date her.

[0]: Ctrl-F this for "rape": https://web.archive.org/web/20210325013942/https://stallman....

mc324• 5 years ago

It’s such hypocrisy going around. We still have “rape-rape” Whoopi Goldberg on TV but that’s okay.

dvfjsdhgfv5• 5 years ago

Marvin Minksy had sex with the girl

No, you can't claim that! It gets repeated everywhere but so far we only know that [0]:

Virginia Giuffre testified in a 2015 deposition in her defamation lawsuit against Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell that Maxwell directed her to have sex with Minsky among others. There has been no allegation that sex between them took place nor a lawsuit against Minsky's estate. Minsky's widow, Gloria Rudisch, says that he could not have had sex with any of the women at Epstein's residences, as they were always together during all of the visits to Epstein's residences.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Minsky#Association_with...

bitwize2• 5 years ago

Once again.

MINSKY DIDN'T HAVE SEX WITH EPSTEIN'S GIRL.

She propositioned him, he turned her down. He was very close to his wife and they went everywhere together.

ezoe• 5 years ago

It's really absurd that the claim RMS was condemned about is a proposition that an act without intention is not a crime. That is, if a Mavin Minsky had a sex with a person whose age is less than the legal age without knowing a person's age, it's not a crime. At least, that's true in my jurisdiction.

And there still is no proof Marvin Minsky had a sex in Epistein's place. Nobody claimed that, even the victim women at that time.

Social Justice Warrior movement is gone extreme in RMS's case.

angry_octet• 5 years ago

@dang -- Flagging a statement by Red Hat about their position on governance of the FSF is ridiculous.

Topics can be vanquished by a little libertarian clique here on HN, but it doesn't make them go away in the real world.

paulcarroty• 5 years ago

I think removing RMS should be done fast. Otherwise it destroys the reputation of FSF and GNU entirely - just be realistic.

anuraaga• 5 years ago

How could an official post by Red Hat be flagged?

Red Hat statement about RMS’s return to the Free Software Foundation board

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