r3856283

You don't believe me? That's an extremely weird reaction

Really? Let me spell it out for you. You wrote:

The 100 or so developers all left the talk in silence, mourning the loss of the hero we had imagined him to be.

That is completely not credible on its face. It was a public event. I've been to RMS speeches, seen recordings, and I estimate there was a ~0% likelihood that all the people who attended that event considered RMS a hero before the event and lost that impression through it.

I don't believe your account of this 2009 talk, most definitely do not believe your suggestion of what 100 other people thought is anywhere close to accurate.

To those who say we need him for GNU outreach: we absolutely don't. ANYONE would be better for the job.

But other people are, and you are ignoring them and helping create this supposed problem, which I'm unconvinced is a real or important problem. LWN said that Panos Alevropoulos gave a great speech at this very same event. Why don't you write or promote an article about his talk and leave the people who want to read this article alone instead of heckling them and RMS. I've read this same complaint for many years "Everyone look: we should pay attention to someone else besides RMS for free software (as I also give attention to RMS through this comment, do not pay attention to anyone else, and do not suggest anyone or do anything to help solve this supposed problem)." RMS said things at this event people are interested in reading about, so this got upvoted, and there is nothing wrong with that, and the fact that you didn't like his attitude in 2009 is really not very interesting as a comment on this 2023 speech where he had a good attitude. Is RMS irredeemable? Should someone be primarily judged by mostly anonymous internet commenters who are not actively involved in the activity they criticize and based on things like a grumpy attitude they once saw? I don't think so.

There is a lot misinformation about RMS out there, you've posted some of it. This addresses some of it https://stallmansupport.org/

"Georgia Lyle", there is no such person, the Georgia you are thinking of wrote ~3 tweets, the FSF staff who were her coworkers did not agree that they were accurate. She rarely interacted with RMS, it was not part of her job, she was spreading rumors she had heard (and posted years after she had left the FSF and had no further involvement with Free Software). It looks like she's deleted them since. I think a lot of RMS misinformation has been an attempt to support feminism at his expense, and because his personality/autism tends to make some people rather unsympathetic to him. Note, the current FSF Executive Director (who's job is to work with the board, thus RMS), is currently a woman who was on FSF staff for years before taking that job.

they do represent a floor of acceptable behavior for people working together in a group

Huh? Working together in a group at a company does not imply any kind of standard for behavior, although companies pretend outwardly that there is some professional standard they abide by. The truth is that work places are filled with all kinds of horrible human behavior, always have and always will be.

People work together in bands, on art projects, on house renovations, on family housework, on adventures, on radical political movements, and it is OK for them to have complicated human relationships while they do so and capitalist companies do not deserve to have a say.

I will also point out that this is an anonymous blog post from someone who has published no way to contact them privately and has never posted to the emacs mailing list (at least from the domain of their blog).

It is a one-sided view, and I see at least one important inaccuracy. FSF and RMS were certainly not asked for their view. Given that, would it make sense for RMS or FSF to write anything about this post publicly to give it validity and attention? Very doubtful.

Given all that, I found this bit pretty amusing: "I'd be surprised if he or any of the people with any influence even read it", how would the author ever find out? lol.

It is sad that this person cares about emacs, but dropping a big dis track and walking away without even suggesting any practical solutions really does not help things. Emacs has a very few core maintainers, FSF has a small staff augmented by volunteers, this is not some faceless entity like a big corporation or government.

Update: the author has since published their email address. Good for them.

I went super minimal with it

sometimes you just want them to solve the problem for you as fast and efficient as possible.

Your site displays a blank page without running javascript. You are a long way off from efficient or super minimal.

For all the hand wringing about google amp, one good thing they did was try to require that there be some main content which displays without any javascript.

Did he ever correct his statements about no women volunteering to work on GCC?

He wasn't aware of women working on GCC. There's nothing to correct. I'm not aware of women working on GCC. GNU has thousands of people working on it, he's not aware of most of them. So much criticism of him is taking his comments out of context and misrepresenting them, including so many things that are just complete fabrications that it makes it hard to actually understand what "real" problems there are.

Did anyone ever tell him the Emacs virgins thing is very inappropriate?

Yes, and he agreed and stopped.

And no, it's not normal for adults to be sexually attracted to teens.

K. You totally lost me there. Ever been to a porn website?

He expressed disappointment to a girl in ~1970, in a weird unintimdating way, and it's still haunting him.

The parent was edited. Thanks.

I wonder what you are talking about? He got a ton of bad press that no one wanted to be associated with, but when it came down to the communities he leads, they were largely supportive of him. GNU is a collection of programs that publicly ascribe to ethical principles he advocates for and helps define, but when it comes to the actual work of development, they are lead by their individual maintainers, not RMS. A small minority wanted him to step down, largely because they wanted someone who would lead GNU on issues like technical direction and marketing, and they were told new leadership is welcome, there's no need to remove RMS for that, and wanting a leader doesn't make one magically appear and so it didn't go anywhere. He is a maintainer of Emacs, no one there wanted him gone, and he is a leader of a couple people who are called the GNU webmasters, and none who were active wanted him gone.

Nadine doesn't know all that, but the opinion of an outsider who doesn't have personal involvement skewing their views is extremely worthwhile.

Sorry. Edited.

Not quite. Someone vandalized his name card adding the hot ladies part and took a picture. That was never him. And you turned the quote "pranced around the tables" to "pranced around on the tables." ... why?

He didn't work with or for RMS longer than any other programmer, there are many who have longer. Gerald J. Sussman is a programmer and hired him at MIT and is still on the board of FSF and still working with him, that is over 40 years. And RMS has grown over the years. This is from over 20 years ago.

But after someone read it they spoke to him about it and he realized he was wrong and published a correction right along side it and that was many years ago. You should have mentioned that. If he hadn't said it publicly, and only said it in private to people, that wouldn't have happened. Is that better? I don't think so. Free speech creates counter speech and changes people's minds.