RMS and open letter

[Nicolas Fella]

On 3/23/21 9:27 PM, Jos van den Oever wrote:
> Hi Carl,
>
> Does a free internet mean that people should be mobbed for their past
> opinions? On proprietary Microsoft infrastructure no less.
People's actions have consequences and accountability is not mobbing.
This has nothing to do with free vs proprietary software.
> In KDE, there is CWG of which we can be proud that deals with situations like
> this with respect for the people on all sides of a situation.
>
> Society is developing more awareness of differences between people and new
> rules of engagements are coming and going. As humans we muddle on. A quote
> from Hacker News is fitting:
>
> "I think it is strange that, on the one hand, the tech world has been
> advocating for the rights of neurodivergent people – society should accept
> that people on the autism spectrum are different and that’s OK. But at the
> same time RMS has been attacked for some statements very probably stemming
> from his autism that, while they may seem a bit shocking and at odds with the
> mainstream, were not illegal or intentionally offensive."
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26535390
Using the theory of autism to excuse his behavior has been debunked
multiple times by people describing the issue much better than I can,
but TL;DR: Using (alleged) neurodivergence as a justification for
repeated toxic behavior is wrong and harmful for people that are
actually neurodivergent. Also, not illegal does not imply ethical/not
harmful.
> How can you write "RMS has always been a negative force to the Free Software
> movement due to his toxic behavior." when he is the one that started Free
> Software? We have Free Software because RMS thought hard about what digital
> freedom means and how we can make it a reality.
Both "he helped starting something good" and "he had a severely bad
influence on it" can be true at the same time
> Is it sensible of FSF to reinstate Stallman? I've no idea. But I do know that
> we should not damage the FSF but support them. FSF are the stewards of the
> software licenses on which KDE is built.
There are plenty of other organizations fostering the development of
Open Source Software that are worth supporting instead.
> ⤳Jos
>
> On dinsdag 23 maart 2021 20:49:36 CET Carl Schwan wrote:

Cheers

Nico

>> Hello all,
>> like you probably heard already RMS was reinstatement to the
>> Board of Directors of the Free Software Foundation. RMS has
>> always been a negative force to the Free Software movement due
>> to his toxic behavior. There is an open letter asking for his
>> and the current board FSF resignation available at
>> https://rms-open-letter.github.io/.
>>
>> It was already signed by many other Free Software contributors
>> from many organizations (GNOME, OSI, Apache, ...) and it would be
>> a good idea for some us to sign it too.
>>
>> This can be done by either sending a email digitalautonomy at riseup.net
>> or by submitting a pull request at
>> https://github.com/rms-open-letter/rms-open-letter.github.io/pulls.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Carl Schwan
>> https://carlschwan.eu