Red Hat Pulls Free Software Foundation Funding over Richard Stallman's Return

https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/26/redhat_fsf_funding_richard_stallman/

by tasubotadas • 5 years ago

72 91 5 years ago

theregister.com

downrightmike• 5 years ago

Stallman is a skeevy person, but he's been right about all the bullshit big tech would do.

notananthem• 5 years ago

Skeevy people shouldn't serve on boards, there's not one person alone in a void that knows how shitty big tech is

astrophysics• 5 years ago

No more RedHat for my organization, then.

mark_l_watson• 5 years ago

Well, I just made a small donation because of his return.

We all get to have separate opinions.

blacktriangle• 5 years ago

Funny, I just started playing around with BSD on my servers this month, thanks for even more motivation to do so RedHat.

bifrost• 5 years ago

HN runs on FreeBSD, start there :)

2pEXgD0fZ5cF• 5 years ago

They did not even give the FSF time to react, huh? All very convenient for Red Hat/IBM.

I personally agree that putting rms back into place was maybe not the best move. But why is he not even allowed to participate at all? Why not aim for a compromise?

I am very confused by the sheer toxicity of this whole reaction and it feels more like the big players were just waiting for an excuse to finally openly bash the FSF.

wrycoder2• 5 years ago

The point is to force the FSF to eject Stallman again and be totally disrupted in the resulting split of their supporters. Then RH can step in and pick up the pieces.

Edit: I hope they don't give in to the howling mob.

detaro5• 5 years ago

Just as the FSF didn't give LibrePlanets top sponsor (RedHat) or projects that had clearly indicated they wouldn't want to participate if RMS was involved (Tor) any headsup they were going to use LibrePlanet to announce RMS' return? It's not like the pushback is a sudden unexpected event, so additionally blindsiding others with it probably doesn't help.

stonogo2• 5 years ago

They didn't even inform the organizers of LibrePlanet this was happening. The whole thing is extremely poorly-handled.

jacques_chester3• 5 years ago

The big players are not threatened by the FSF. The FSF is background noise to paying customers. There's nothing to gain or lose by bashing or not bashing.

Sometimes you have to take at face value that Red Hat is made of people, who can have principles and act according to them.

Disclosure: I work for VMware, ostensibly a mortal enemy, and they are so far on the correct side of history here that I'd be proud to wear the crimson fedora today.

ossusermivami• 5 years ago

why do you have the feeling that the company you work fork and its competitor are mortal enemies to you ? It's just a job to make money or humm more money at the end of the day, isn't it?

gentleman112• 5 years ago

In another hn story about stallman, I found this link was interesting. It is a discussion about why a group continues to work with him, and quotes a former president of the aclu who weighs in. She makes some interesting comments, eg

But a number of the ideas for which Richard Stallman has been attacked and punished are ideas that I as a feminist advocate of human rights find completely correct and positive from the perspective of women’s equality and dignity!

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

staunch• 5 years ago

CTO Chris Wright tweeted overnight: "I am really outraged by FSF's decision to reinstate RMS. At a moment in time where diversity and inclusion awareness is growing, this is a step backwards."

What does "diversity and inclusion" have to do with Stallman returning? Is the Wokeist subtext here that "we don't need yet another white male" on the board?

RMS is the reason most of these people have the jobs they have. He is very far from being "yet another" anything. As long as RMS has done his best to correct any mistakes, they should be extremely grateful he is willing to return.

Red Hat seems more and more out of touch with Free Software and Open Source.

Veen• 5 years ago

In woke speak, they're implying that because he said something "problematic" his presence may make certain people feel "unsafe", thereby harming "diversity and inclusion".

wrycoder2• 5 years ago

They don't have any idea if Stallman has made any changes during his year in the wilderness, and they don't care. They just want him out, because it weakens the FSF and the Free Software/GPL movement.

Edit: weakens the FSF if Stallman is gone, that is.

DC1350• 5 years ago

What does "diversity and inclusion" have to do with Stallman returning?

It’s very obviously because he makes women uncomfortable. This isn’t really a woke thing. I love crazy woke people drama as much as any other techbro, but this is a big stretch.

HeckFeck• 5 years ago

Hmm, this just makes RockyLinux and the other CentOS forks look better.

bovermyer• 5 years ago

My opinion of Stallman aside, this appears to confirm my belief that Red Hat has strayed from the path.

I think I'll write a blog post about why I feel this way.

liaukovv3• 5 years ago

They got acquired by IBM.

There is literally nowhere further from the path a company could go.

dgellow2• 5 years ago

They could have been bought by Oracle!

Barrin92• 5 years ago

Exactly what I thought would happen. Not only was reinstalling Stallman going to alienate institutional supporters, it's also really a slap in the face of a lot of newer free software supporters, young women in particular given Stallman's past behaviour and comments.

Also very interesting to see the difference in commentary compared to the reddit admin fiasco.

drenvuk2• 5 years ago

I don't think the leader of the FSF should be making as many public comments about unrelated matters as Stallman has so I don't think he should be reinstated, but I also find that many of his comments are wrongfully interpreted. Logically and administratively, if quite a few of those ideas were followed through with we'd be better off as a society.

Have you read them? Every single one of them is freedom bent.

ianmacd4• 5 years ago

Why should "the leader of the FSF" not make "as many public comments about unrelated matters as Stallman"?

This seems to suggest that a leadership role results or should result, ipso facto, in a reduction of its occupier's freedom of speech.

I don't follow that rationale at all, which isn't to say that I don't acknowledge that such comments can and obviously do in some cases lead to public distraction from the actual work of said leader, shifting the focus to the leader's perceived identity and moral fortitude.

That's a lamentable development to be sure, but to advocate abstention from public discourse as a precaution against the danger of becoming a distraction from the cause you advocate seems to be a clear case of blaming the victim. Stallman is not at fault here.

liaukovv3• 5 years ago

So how many young women did they attract vs how many old men they have alienated? Any numbers?

iujjkfjdkkdkf• 5 years ago

I only have limited perspective, but the people I know who are really interested in free software (including most notably my girlfriend) are really not interested in the other aspects or RMS or anyone else's politics, in relation to FOSS. There is this perception that people are sitting around saying "oh, well I like free software, but thay movement is dominated my mysoginists or whatever, there's no place for me". I don't buy that. Positive contributors are drawn to FSF over free software advocacy. Other personal/ personality issues only matter to most people when they are made so distracting they can't be ignored, and that just breeds apathy.

So tldr, I agree with you, this may be appeasing people who have just taken an interest to make trouble, and sponsors that dont want to get involved, but it is completely alienating people actually interested in free software.

null-shell• 5 years ago

So what has Richard Stallman done? I get that generally he's a bit of an unpleasant person but is there an actual reason?

rvz• 5 years ago

Ah yes, the financial suffocation move. Very tactical. /s

For Red Hat to choose a side wasn't really the smartest move especially also calling for the whole FSF board to resign for the sake of 'diversity and inclusion'.

I mean, Red Hat going to IBM already meaning it was on the way out. Probably better off anyway.

ofrzeta• 5 years ago

Semi-serious question: diversity is meant only in respect to genders and colors but not in opinions?

Animats2• 5 years ago

This is overkill. Stallman is not accused of doing anything illegal. He just expressed an unpopular opinion.

Get angry about something real, like Georgia voting to keep poor people from voting.

Austin_Conlon• 5 years ago

What was the opinion?

LukeShu• 5 years ago

In fact, RMS' views and statements posted on stallman.org about sexual morality escalated for the worse over the last few years.

-- Bradley Kuhn (at-the-time FSF board member), http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html

On the original blog, every word in that sentence is a link to a different post on stallman.org

simlevesque• 5 years ago

He's said: I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children.

He regretted saying it later, because he misunderstood the concept of grooming.

andrepd• 5 years ago

Several. They are quoted in some detail in the open letter. Some are patently silly, such as disagreeing with the use of "they" as a gender-neutral pronoun, since he simply prefers other alternatives and has indeed been attentive to that problem since before it hit the mainstream in recent years.

I guess the most unpopular ones are his comments regarding relationships with minors... Regardless of strongly disagreeing with him, I lean towards freedom of speech on this one.

EDIT: I also must say I haven't read his comments in full, so it's possible he said things about this which I'm not aware of.

tapoxi• 5 years ago

Red Hat isn't donating money to Georgia.

travismark• 5 years ago

fake news, show us proof, don't just believe what you hear. it's still easier to vote in GA than TX, which doesn't allow no-excuse absentee ballots. is getting a free ID such a burden?

viraptor2• 5 years ago

This is whataboutism. We're perfectly capable of being angry about more than one thing at a time.

gtpeter3• 5 years ago

I no longer see any occupy-wall-street anger. Quite convenient and safe for multi-nationals to feign Victorian moral outrage instead.

sjansen2• 5 years ago

This isn't about a single event. RMS has been alienating even his strongest supporters for decades. The tone of his return to the FSF board made it clear that he still hasn't learned why and isn't interested in learning.

krapp• 5 years ago

Stallman has also been accused of sexual harassment, unwanted physical contact and verbal harassment for years. But his supporters dismiss every such report as a lie made up by Marxist feminist agitators because that sort of thing is harder to defend than "unpopular opinions."

dgellow2• 5 years ago

From the article:

Stallman suggested Minsky might somehow not have known she'd been forced to do so.
In the same thread on MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory listserv, he also referred to Epstein's victims as a "harem."

Is that the full story? That sounds very mild comments to trigger such a strong reaction. I don't really understand what is awful here, the first comment seems to say "Maybe Minsky wasn't aware", which sounds plausible (though, I wouldn't personally bet on it...) and doesn't invalidate the woman's claims or justify Minsky or Epstein actions. The second one seems to use "harem" to design how Epstein was behaving around his victims by surrounding himself with young women that he was exploiting, which sounds insulting against him and not them.

Am I missing something here?

Edit: fixed some typos

jstanley• 5 years ago

No, I don't think you're missing anything.

People are reacting to what they've heard others say about Stallman, rather than what he actually said.

sjansen2• 5 years ago

If you haven't met RMS in person, it's hard to understand what a raging asshole he is. Frankly I'm surprised it has taken this long for him to be called to account for his behavior.

foobar333333• 5 years ago

Pretty much. If you read the letters and news articles, he seems horrible but when you read the source material its much much more tame.

He is being called a transphobe because he wants English to contain a new word which is singular and non gendered because he doesn't think 'they' is appropriate since it has historically been collective. Since he uses his new invented word for this purpose, he is being called transphobic for not respecting peoples choice to use 'they'.

When you look in to the details of what rms is being grilled over, he looks like someone who is honest and well intentioned but fails to communicate in a non controversial way.

detaro5• 5 years ago

Here's a long-term FSF insiders perspective: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html - that specific instance was just the thing that pushed it over the edge in the end. And now they surprised everyone with this return announcement out of the blue, with little to nothing indicating any commitment to change.

gentleman112• 5 years ago

Off topic, but Bradley (and Karen) has an interesting podcast about free software legal issues called “free as in freedom”

detaro5• 5 years ago

And another source detailing previous instances of trying to do something about it, more quietly: https://www.harihareswara.net/sumana/2021/03/26/0

stonogo2• 5 years ago

Stallman has a long trail of accusations of mistreating women at MIT, as well as a long history of adopting some extremely unpleasant opinions. Many of these instances didn't get much attention until he was scrutinized for defending Minsky. Stallman and his defenders like to frame this debate in terms of a single email to a mailing list, but people associated with the FSF see it as a longer-running problem with his personal behavior. I am not comfortable repeating any of the stories about this, but they have painted a fairly consistent picture for some time now.

Finally, his return to the board came as a surprise to everyone outside the FSF board, including sister organizations like FSFE and even voting members of the FSF. Now it looks like the current FSF president is planning to step aside for Stallman to assume the presidency, all with no apology or even expressed remorse for the behavior which led to his resignation in the first place, and I think that's adding fuel to the outrage.

Rapzid• 5 years ago

You're missing the miss-characterization of his words by every news media outlet on planet that continues to this day:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/red-hat-withdraws-fr...

after a two-year hiatus due to his own highly controversial remarks about his perception of Jeffrey Epstein's victims as "entirely willing."

RMS didn't get cancelled for his words, he got cancelled for what everyone thought his words were.

jrm43• 5 years ago

Okay. This is the excuse, not the reason right? As in, the real reason is the FSF is generally incompatible with the way in which most of these companies and organizations want to make money, and blaming Stallman is the current easy out?

dragonwriter2• 5 years ago

This is the excuse, not the reason right? As in, the real reason is the FSF is generally incompatible with the way in which most of these companies and organizations want to make money, and blaming Stallman is the current easy out?

Yes, that's why plenty of nonprofits orgs and their leadership have also complained about the same things, and why an FSF board member resigned over it. All the complaints about Stallman are false-flag objections by people with a covert agenda of making money undermining software freedom.

That's much more likely than that Stallman, like so many other prominent figures in a number of fields, is genuinely being impacted by society’s reduced tolerance when it comes to broad subject of sexual harassment.

jrm43• 5 years ago

I'm not saying all those people are lying or false-flagging, I'm saying there exist quite a few other parties that perhaps don't care much about harassment but would like to see his ideas suppressed, and might find this convenient and play it up.

What I absolutely will not do is presume guilt based on what might be something of a metaphorical lynch mob. I expect and require something that looks like due process, and so I'm continuing to watch how this public conversation goes.

detaro5• 5 years ago

How is the FSF fundamentally incompatible with how the FSF Europe, the Tor project, the Software Freedom Conservancy, ... want to make money? IMHO there's too many people who have worked a lot and deeply for Free Software goals against him to explain it as an attempt to make Free Software weaker.

If I'm being cynic, if you are a large company wanting the FSF to be less relevant, you should probably encourage them to let RMS alienate more people. To quote a recent HN comment of mine: "RMS came to speak at my university. He probably did more damage to general student perception of anything associated with the FSF than industry-ass-kissing professors did in the 3 years prior in that one day", and my impression is that the FSF is worse off to achieve its stated goals with him at the helm.

foobar333333• 5 years ago

The GPL license is incredibly corporation hostile.

bondarchuk• 5 years ago

if you are a large company wanting the FSF to be less relevant, you should probably encourage them to let RMS alienate more people.

Perhaps they want to steer the direction of the free software movement to be more corporate friendly, i.e. get people to write software for free but none of that pesky copyleft stuff. More directly, there is an optional "or any later version" in the GPL, so if they can get the FSF to make the next version of the GPL more corporate friendly that also includes a lot of existing software (although I don't know how popular this clause is in practice).

jrm43• 5 years ago

It's a marathon, not a sprint; I'll bet the pure Streisand effect of more people even simply knowing who RMS is could likely outweigh any of this short run "alienation."

ianmacd4• 5 years ago

Can you direct me to the thread in which you detail what Stallman did to damage "student perception of anything associated with the FSF" at your university?

I have seen Stallman speak at various universities over the years, and I have witnessed the same speech and its intrinsic message fall flat on its face at, say, Stanford, whilst receiving a rapturous response from students at Berkeley just a week later.

The prevailing student culture has much to do with how well a message is received, particularly in these politically charged and volatile times when people so easily get distracted from the message by the messenger himself, or even third-party reports regarding the messenger's past.

wmf• 5 years ago

Red Hat specifically seems quite compatible with the FSF.

gtpeter3• 5 years ago

I'm close to the point where I'd recommend IBM to revive AIX and devote all resources to that. /s

This is another power grab by RedHat, which has been infiltrating many open source projects in the past decade.

Their representatives are dominant and operate in groups. If you contradict them even on technical matters, they'll remember for years to come and make your life difficult.

RedHat has been a net harm for several projects, this is another political move to grab even more power.

jacques_chester3• 5 years ago

this is another political move to grab even more power.

What power? The FSF is decrepit and its influence long spent.

gtpeter3• 5 years ago

Ok, I somewhat agree. But apparently enough influence for RedHat to donate until now.

In general I think that dragging other issues like "Stallman should have pushed the AGPL earlier" as a justification for calling for his second resignation is not fair (not attacking you here, but people on the web who did that).

These issues have been out there for decades and could have been brought up much earlier.

I also find it immensely hypocritical to see members of old-style distributions piling on Stallman now. Apart from RedHat I saw a high ranking SuSE person who got rich off other people's GPL software signing the anti-RMS petition.

These people have known exactly what exploratory and non-mainstream views Stallman expoused (held might even be too strong).

All of a sudden the "see the light" and throw him under the bus.

dvh• 5 years ago

Stallman said [1]:

    The announcement of the Friday event does an injustice to Marvin Minsky:

    “deceased AI ‘pioneer’ Marvin Minsky (who is accused of assaulting one 
    of Epstein’s victims [2])”

    The injustice is in the word “assaulting”. The term “sexual assault” 
    is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation: 
    taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it 
    as Y, which is much worse than X.

    The accusation quoted is a clear example of inflation. The reference 
    reports the claim that Minsky had sex with one of Epstein’s harem. 
    (See https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jeffrey-epstein-sex-trafficking-island-court-records-unsealed.) 
    Let’s presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it).

    The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, 
    in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. 
    Only that they had sex.

    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.

    I’ve concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it 
    is absolutely wrong to use the term “sexual assault” in an accusation.

    Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with 
    a specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism.

Media said [2]:

    Computer scientist Richard Stallman, who defended Jeffrey Epstein, 
    resigns from MIT CSAIL and the Free Software Foundation

Stallman reacted to media [3]:

    I want to respond to the misleading media coverage of messages I 
    posted about Marvin Minsky's association with Jeffrey Epstein. 
    The coverage totally mischaracterised my statements.

    Headlines say that I defended Epstein. Nothing could be further 
    from the truth. I've called him a "serial rapist", and said he 
    deserved to be imprisoned. But many people now believe I defended 
    him — and other inaccurate claims — and feel a real hurt because 
    of what they believe I said.

    I'm sorry for that hurt. I wish I could have prevented the misunderstanding.

[1] https://itsfoss.com/richard-stallman-controversy/ [2] https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/16/computer-scientist-richard... [3] https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...

awa• 5 years ago

He also said: “I think it is morally absurd to define “rape” in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17.”

Source: https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21...

He is defending a 73 year old who had sex with a 17 year old. He doesn't know the 17 yo in the situation, is calling her a part of a harem and saying that it's not "really rape" even though legally it is. All this in a mailing list containing undergrad students who are of that age.

cyberge99• 5 years ago

They’ve always wanted to. This announcement gives them a graceful exit.

JoeyBananas• 5 years ago

Many people are far too quick to label RMS as an X, Y and Z. He's just a person who has political views. Everyone get over yourselves.

jangid• 5 years ago

I have long waited for a Pure GNU OS. Redhat's, oops sorry, IBM's move gives more motivation to use Guix.

billyjobob• 5 years ago

Unfortunately Guix also want Stallman out: https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-pr...

The entire free software community seems to have turned on their own founder - I don't think there's anyone sane left.

taylodl• 5 years ago

Remember that IBM owns Red Hat. So really this should read 'IBM Pulls Free Software Funding over Richard Stallman's Return." The corrected headline reveals a possible hidden agenda.

Red Hat Pulls Free Software Foundation Funding over Richard Stallman's Return

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