A Critique of the Open Letter Calling for the Removal of RMS

&gt; The primary author of the open letter, Molly de Blanc, writes on her personal blog:<p>&gt; &gt; There is no space to argue over whether a comment was transphobic – if it hurt a trans person then it is transphobic and it is unacceptable.<p>Ah, postmodernism! Where the words are made up, and intent doesn&#x27;t matter!

&gt; I think a good argument against RMS can be made, but the authors of the letter instead chose to incite as much outrage as possible at the cost of honesty and nuance.<p>My thoughts exactly. I&#x27;m not defending RMS but the original letter was very clearly written in the key of &quot;outrage&quot;.

&gt; A competing letter in support of RMS exists and has accumulated considerably more signatures than the letter condemning RMS.<p>&gt; In response someone created a Chrome extension that marks repositories owned by a signatory of this support letter with red text on GitHub.<p>This is incredible worrying. This is basically maintaining a repository of people with &quot;incorrect&quot; opinions. How long before such repositories are integrated in HR systems, tied to you identity for subscriptions&#x2F;memberships. [1] You have to carry a tag of being not progressive enough across the internet?<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;kmlefranc&#x2F;status&#x2F;1221869659139366912" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;kmlefranc&#x2F;status&#x2F;1221869659139366912</a>

At this point I think the most important thing is that mob rule is shown to not be the way.<p>I don&#x27;t know RMS, I don&#x27;t even know much about RMS... but I have heard enough to know he&#x27;s not the intolerant idiot he&#x27;s been made out to be in these hateful letters. There are possibly other very reasonable criticisms for him being removed from his position, but the mob made that impossible to discuss now due to the overwhelming irreverent bias - so now they should be made to wait for a very long time.

&gt; RMS has (for some reason) tens of thousands of political notes on his website ready to be cherry-picked<p>It used to be quite okay to share your opinions, political or not, on your website.<p>It they concern anything that is of importance, some people will find it disagreeable and even offensive.<p>The fact that we are at a point where expressing this is somehow strange and it’s accepted that you can be subjected to cherry-picking and so should abstain from posting anything that might be considered controversial by some radical;<p>That’s a horrible place for our society to be in. I’m glad the competing support letter has far more supporters.<p>I’m tired but not surprised that we have to include politics in everything.<p>Make software better instead.

I am becoming increasingly skeptical whenever I read claims of transphobia being made. To be sure, there are those who seek to undermine the rights of transsexuals, and who seek to pass legislation accordingly. But at the same time I see issues like this one, or the one with J. K. Rowling, and it does not seem so clear cut at the least, and at the worst is bad faith sanctimony.

I am afraid to put my name&#x2F;email&#x2F;github id in support of RMS because some mob in future will draw incorrect equivalence with whatever they want like &quot;you support RMS then you are an X &quot; where X seems to be a pedo.<p>I am also wondering how many GNU&#x2F;FSF haters are participating in just because they prefer MIT&#x2F;BSD and see GNU as a cancer eating at their money making scheme.

This is a refreshing, level-headed text, signed by the real name of its individual author. It is not intended to stir the mob but as a kind path towards understanding; I like it.

Ok I’m missing a key part of this: Why should I care about this recurring drama? Is the leadership of the FSF even important? I’ve gone my whole life without needing to follow board composition of the FSF.

&gt; RMS has (for some reason) tens of thousands of political notes on his website ready to be cherry-picked<p>That would give me literally nightmares, I really don&#x27;t understand people who write their opinions online (or sharing or liking of other peoples opinions) using their real name. It seems incredibly foolish. Even if you think you are woke enough, chances of getting cancelled in the future seem very high.<p>I have this fear that I won&#x27;t be able to find a job in the future because my absence online will be viewed with deep suspicion.

The &#x27;open letter&#x27; language reeks with the odour of the Komsomol [1] assembly. It was a form of self-governance, where the missteped members were subjected to a court of their comrades, who unleashed their denunciation on the faulty offender, who had to stand in front of them in shame, listening to their dispraisals, and repent from his erroneous ways.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Komsomol" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Komsomol</a>

This reminded me of the Opal incident: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;opal&#x2F;opal&#x2F;issues&#x2F;941" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;opal&#x2F;opal&#x2F;issues&#x2F;941</a>.<p>Regardless of the letter, I have a little story to add. I first heard of RMS back when I was living in an isolated land on this planet (there are only a few of them). A self-made hacker, which was to some extent my mentor told of his communications with him, since he was active in some GNU projects and RMS had assisted him with publishing his work. Not much, but it was a positive move in support of a young man in a remote place.

&gt; In response someone created a Chrome extension that marks repositories owned by a signatory of this support letter with red text on GitHub.<p>why stop there? out with their tongues and off with their fingers, lest they continue to blaspheme.

As much as I like rms, I find it very difficult to move past his comments on child pornography[1].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stallman.org&#x2F;notes&#x2F;2011-mar-jun.html#4_June_2011_(Border_Searches)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stallman.org&#x2F;notes&#x2F;2011-mar-jun.html#4_June_2011_(Bo...</a>

&quot;if it hurt a trans person then it is transphobic&quot; But this is... plain stupid. What&#x27;s her position again?

You see totally different demographics between software design&#x2F;development and the politics of software.<p>In this letter I see names that have never done anything significant, yet they feel entitled to correct one of the forefathers of software development.

&gt; in response someone created a Chrome extension that marks repositories owned by a signatory of this support letter with red text on GitHub<p>Ok. I think I need this extension for Firefox, to know what software is written by decent people.

A critique of &quot;A Critique of the Open Letter Calling for the Removal of RMS&quot;: the author claims that Stallman&#x27;s transphobia is down to Stallman proposing a set of singular, gender-neutral pronouns other than &#x27;they&#x27;, &#x27;their&#x27; and theirs&#x27;. Which Stallman indeed does, but if you read on, Stallman <i>also</i> says he&#x27;ll flat out refuse to use someone&#x27;s <i>preferred</i> pronouns if they disagree with his scheme. To overlook that in a critique of a critique is a massive oversight at best, it not outright disingenuous.

Why this post disappeared from the home page?

Molly de Blanc must be cancelled and removed from all open source projects

People should call for a neutral investigation, not for a mob justice.

You know what I think is the craziest thing about this whole saga: Stallman’s email just accepts, as fact, that Minsky had sex with an underage girl. With one accusation and a dead defendant, why would anyone make this assumption without further corroboration? Did Stallman know it was true or was he just assuming it was?

So RMS thinks &quot;having&quot; child pornography is no harm done to the child, but digitally &quot;having&quot; GPL code in your own proprietary code does harm to the author.

Hopefully besides the China decoupling we also get an USA decoupling. You can have whatever cultural revolution you want but keep your -ism to yourself, please.<p>I think in the darkest communist times there hasn&#x27;t been such foaming mob rhetoric.

SJW cancels another noble person

Using a throwaway ID for reasons that have been stated in this thread over and over.<p>You know what stuff like this makes me think, as someone in Europe? Between Trumpists and SJWs&#x2F;cancel culture the only sane thing to do is have as little to do with the US as possible.<p>That means not depending on organizations located in the US or with a US majority membership, for one.<p>All you americans are doing is further isolating yourselves from the rest of the world. I thought that was the trumpist line, but cancel culture is getting as good as it as they are.

Aprox 10 minutes before dang sees this and deletes it

RMS is a terrible spokesperson for free software. I wish the FSF could just fire him and move on.<p>How do I know he&#x27;s a terrible spokesperson? Because we&#x27;re talking about him and not about free software. It&#x27;s that simple.<p>I want the FSF to focus on free software and I want the discourse around the FSF to be about free software. Not RMS.