RMS and open letter

[keziolio123 at gmail.com]

I'd like to point out that what started all of this, in 2019, was a large
misunderstanding, followed by a storm of out of context reporting and clickbait
titles. In the original email he was describing Giuffre as "willing" from the
point of view of Minsky, not Giuffre herself. This is not an important detail
in itself, everything that happened in that place was absolutely disgusting, but
it's important in this case because all the narrative around the "Stallman
defends Epstein", that exploded one year ago, was completely a lie, and it
completely derailed public discussion.

Regarding the open letter, it's clear as day that the tone is inflammatory, the
text is crafted to bring out emotion and anger, instead of discussion, KDE
should not taint its name with this kind of messaging.

There is an enormous, ever increasing, _multi-bilion-dollar_ economic interest
in discrediting the FSF and RMS, the GPL license, and the various softwares made
with that license, in favour of the usual tools and software promoted by FAANG,
with a total disregard to user freedom, privacy and ownership of our devices,
and what are we discussing today? About picking on Stallman because he used the
wrong pronouns?

What I find particularly disgusting is the use of pronouns like "we" or "us",
referring to the "free software community", in a letter published in GitHub by
Microsoft, authored by a Twitter-using, LinkedIn-having blue haired individual
that has never written a single line of code in their life. I'm prone to assume
that the authors and first supporters of the letter have no clue on who Stallman
is, what the FSF is or what it does, and the history and the reasoning behind
the GPL license they chose for that website.

Is Stallman the ideal representative for the Free Software community? Absolutely
not, not by a long shot.
Is there a person that has an higher moral standard on the things that _actually
matter_, like using and advocating for Free Software? Probably not.


Regarding the accusations, I am amazed that adult, sane people are pulling their
hairs on something like this. Stallman is very probably not neurotypical, this
has been known and argued about for years, I don't care if he describes himself
as neurotypical, while eating stuff from his foot in public.

We are literally arguing that a semi-autitic, 50/60yo individual had a
naive/wrong opinion on the internet. He doesn't have a criminal record, he has
not committed violence, he has not advocated for violence, he has not advocated
for discrimination, he just happened to write very stupid stuff about a topic
that hurts the feeling of some people, in a way that, even when taken literally,
causes no direct harm to anybody. The amount of mobbing that RMS received for
this is absolutely insane.

I'm, again, amazed that adult people waste their time arguing about what
Stallman should or shouldn't think, should or shouldn't say, retroactively
analyzing every mailing list post and website page about any phrase that is
worded naively or wrongly, then dumping it all, out of context, on a website.
The real world is bigger than the internet, we have billionaires and politicians
that were directly related to Epstein's actions.

The accusations about transphobia are nonsensical, the discussion is basically
around RMS not knowing or not using pronouns
(https://github.com/rms-open-letter/rms-open-letter.github.io/issues/401),
again, adult, sane people wasting their time and crafting a letter, asking for
an entire board to resign for this?

Regarding the "misogynism", again, a neuro atypical 50-60yo guy that says
inappropriate stuff in public? more news at 11
If it's true that he seriously harassed girls, I'll let a judge decide on that,
and then I'll decide if I want to waste my time arguing about this on the
internet.

Regarding the "ableism"
1) I'd like for the authors of the letter to try what is like to have a child
affected by down syndrome
2) even if RMS said the most brutal and unethical thing (he absolutely did not),
why should I even care, as a free software user and ex FSF member, about the
opinion of RMS about those things? RMS is not the head of some hospital, a
support teacher, a nurse, the minister of health or something like that, he is
not in a Political or legislative position, why should we even waste time to
parse the opinion of Stallman in something that is not related to free software?
(this is valid for all the original criticism).

Unless we want to maliciously throw mud on his organization?

I'd like to ask everyone that signed or supported the letter about their opinion
on all those and other topics, and then ask them if they are prepared to
permanently lose their job and reputation if one of those opinions is not
sufficiently mainstream. Are you alright with that?

Why should RMS be treated worse than a nazi, just because he excercised his
right of free speech, and his worldview is not directly and precisely aligned
with the latest left libertarian trends?

Y'all should be ashamed of yourselves

Stallman is a bad representative for free software, but it just so happens that
he created all of this, kicking him from the community is a net loss for Free
Software and the industry as a whole, because, again, his moral stance in the
things that actually matter (free software), is and has always been more
pristine than anybody else.

Il giorno gio 25 mar 2021 alle ore 08:11 Sune Vuorela
<nospam at vuorela.dk> ha scritto:
>
> On 2021-03-24, Jos van den Oever <jos at vandenoever.info> wrote:
> > The GitHub organization that initiated the letter is anonymous:
> >    https://github.com/rms-open-letter
>
> It might be anonymous in the organization, but the people behind it is
> our friends at OSI, our friends in Gnome and our friends in Debian and
> some others. It is the first group of people in the actual letter.
>
> And during the last 24 hours, organizations like Gnome Foundation,
> Mozilla, Tor Project and X.Org foundation has also signed it as
> organizations.
>
> The wording might not be perfect, and the execution also not perfect,
> but it still conveys the important thing:
>
> When our idols and leaders fail us, we should stop idolizing them and
> let them lead us.
>
> And the path to redemption is not staying low for a year or two hoping
> we forget what has happened.
>
> /Sune
>