Personal website ofMartin Tournoij (“arp242”);writing about programming (CV) and various other things.
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Contact atmartin@arp242.net orGitHub.
Personal website ofMartin Tournoij (“arp242”);writing about programming (CV) and various other things.
Working onGoatCounter andmore –GitHub Sponsors.
Contact atmartin@arp242.net orGitHub.
Written on 25 Mar 2021
So Richard Stallman is back at the FSF, on the board of directors this timerather than as President. I’m not sure how significant this position is in theday-to-day operations, but I’m not sure if that’s really important.
How anyone could have thought this was a good idea is beyond me. I’ve longconsidered Stallman to be a poor representative of the community, and quitefrankly it baffles me that people do. I’m not sure what the politics were thatled up to this decision; I had hoped that after Stallman’s departure the FSFwould move forward and shed off some of the Stallmanisms. It seems this hasn’thappened.
To quickly recap why Stallman is a poor representative:
Actively turned many people off because he’s such a twat; one of the betterexamples I know of is from Keith Packard, explaining why X didn’t use theGPL in spite of Packard already having used it for some of his projectsbefore:
Richard Stallman, the author of the GPL and quite an interesting individuallived at 5405 DEC square, he lived up on the sixth floor I think? Had anoffice up there; he did not have an apartment. And we knew him extremelywell. He was a challenging individual to get along with. He would regularlycome down to our offices and ask us, or kind of rail at us, for not usingthe GPL.
This did not make a positive impression on me; this was my firstinteraction with Richard directly and I remember thinking at the time,“this guy is a little, you know, I’m not interesting in talking to himbecause he’s so challenging to work with.”
And so, we should have listened to him then but we did not because, we knowhim too well, I guess, and met him as well.
He really was right, we need to remember that!
His behaviour against women in particular is creepy. This is not a crime (hehas, as far as I know, never forced himself on anyone) but not a good qualityin a community spokesperson, to put it mildly.
His personal behaviour in general is … odd, to put it mildly. Now, you canbe as odd as you’d like as far as I’m concerned, but I also don’t thinksomeone like that is a good choice to represent an entire community.
Caused a major and entirely avoidable fracture of the community with theOpenSource movement; it’s pretty clear that Stallman, him specifically as aperson, was a major reason for the OSI people to start their own organisation.Stallman still seems to harbour sour grapes over this more than 20 yearslater.
Sidetracking of pointless issues (“GNU/Linux”, “you should not be using hackerbut cracker”, “Open Source misses the point”, etc.), as well as stubbornlyinsisting on the term “Free Software” which is confusing and stands in the wayif communicating the ideals to the wider world. Everyone will think that anarticle with “Free Software” in the title will be about software free ofcharge. There is a general lack of priorities or pragmatism in almostanything Stallman does.
Stallman’s views in general on computing are stuck somewhere about 1990.Possibly earlier. The “GNU Operating System” (which does not exist, has neverexisted, and most likely will never exist[1]) is not how to advance FreeSoftware in modern times. Most people don’t give a rat’s arse which OS they’reusing to access GitHub, Gmail, Slack, Spotify, Netflix, AirBnB, etc. The worldhas changed and the strategy needs to change – but Stallman is still stuck in1990.
Insisting on absolute freedom to the detriment ofmore freedom compared tothe status quo. No, people don’t want to run a “completely free GNU/Linuxoperating system” if their Bluetooth and webcam doesn’t work and if they can’twatch Netflix. That’s just how it is. Deal with it.
His views are quite franklyridiculous:
If [an install fest] upholds the ideals of freedom, by installing only freesoftware from 100%-free distros, partly-secret machines won’t becomeentirely functional and the users that bring them will go away disappointed.However, if the install fest installs nonfree distros and nonfree softwarewhich make machines entirely function, it will fail to teach users to say nofor freedom’s sake. They may learn to like GNU/Linux, but they won’t learnwhat the free software movement stands for.
[..]
My new idea is that the install fest could allow the devil to hang around,off in a corner of the hall, or the next room. (Actually, a human beingwearing sign saying “The Devil,” and maybe a toy mask or horns.) The devilwould offer to install nonfree drivers in the user’s machine to make moreparts of the computer function, explaining to the user that the cost of thisis using a nonfree (unjust) program.
Aside from the huge cringe factor of having someone dressed up as a devil toinstall a driver, the entire premise is profoundly wrong; peoplecanappreciate freedom while also not having absolute/maximum freedom. Almost theentire community does this, with only a handful of purist exceptions. Thiswill accomplish nothing except turn people off.
Crippling software out of paranoia; for example Stallmanrefused to make gccprint the AST – useful for the Emacs completion and other tooling –because he was afraid someone might “abuse” it. He comes off as a gigantictwat in that entire thread (e.g.this).
How do you get people to use Free Software?By making great software peoplewant to use. Not by offering some shitty crippled product where you can’t dosome common thingsyou can already do in the proprietary alternatives.
Luckily, the backlash against this has been significant, includingan openletter to remove Richard M. Stallman from all leadership positions. Good.There are many things in the letter I can agree with. If there are parliamentaryhearings surrounding some Free Software law then would you want Stallman torepresent you? Would you want Stallman to be left alone in a room with somefemale lawmaker (especially an attractive one)? I sure wouldn’t; I’d be fearfulhe’d leave a poor impression, or outright disgrace the entire community.
But there are also a few things that bother me, as are there in the generalconversation surrounding this topic. Quoting a few things from that letter:
[Stallman] has been a dangerous force in the free software community for along time. He has shown himself to be misogynist, ableist, and transphobic,among other serious accusations of impropriety.
[..]
him and his hurtful and dangerous ideology
[..]
RMS and his brand of intolerance
Yikes! That sounds horrible. But closer examinations of the claims don’t reallybear out these strong claims.
The transphobic claim seems to hinge entirely on his eclectic opinion regardinggender-neutral pronouns; he prefers somepeculiar set of neologisms (“per”and “pers”) instead of the singular “they”. You can think about his pronounsuggestion what you will – I feel it’s rather silly and pointless at best – buta disagreement on how to best change the common use of language to be moreinclusive does not strike me as transphobic. Indeed, it strikes me as theexactopposite: he’s willing to spend time and effort to make languagemoreinclusive. That he doesn’t do it in the generally accepted way is nottransphobia, a “harmful ideology”, or “dangerous”. It’s really not.
Stallman is well known for hisexcessive pedantry surrounding language;he’s not singularly focused on the issue of pronouns and hasconsistentlyposted in favour of trans rights.
Stallman’s penchant to make people feel unconformable has long been known; andshould hardly come as a surprise to anyone. Many who met him in person did notleave with an especially good impression of him for one reason or the other. Hisbehaviour towards women in particular is pretty bad; many anecdotes have beenpublished and they’re pretty 😬
But … I don’t have the impression that Stallman dislikes or distrusts women,or sees them as subservient to men. Basically, he’s just creepy. That’s notgood, but is it misogyny? His lack of social skills seem to be broad and notuniquely directed towards women. He’s just a socially awkward guy in general. Imean, this is a guy who will,when giving a presentation, will take off hisshoes and socks – which is already a rather weird thing to do – will thenproceed torub his bare foot – even weirder – only to proceed to appear toeat something from his foot – wtf wtf wtf?!
If he can’t understand that this is just … wtf, then how can you expect him tounderstand that some comment towards a woman is wtf?
Does all of this excuse bad behaviour? No. But it shines a rather differentlight on things than phrases such as “misogynist”, “hurtful and dangerousideology”, and “his brand of intolerance” do. He hasn’t forced himself onanyone, as far as I know, and most complaints are about him being creepy.
I don’t think it’s especially controversial to claim that Stallman would havebeen diagnosed with some form of autism if he had been born several decadeslater. This is not intended as an insult or some such, just to establish him asa neurodivergent[2] individual. Someone like that is absolutely a poor choicefor a leadership position, but at the same time doesn’t diversityalso meandiversity of neurodivergent people, or at the very least some empathy andunderstanding when people’s exhibit a lack of social skills and behaviourconsidered creepy?
At what point is there a limit if someone’s neurodiversity drives people away? Idon’t know; there isn’t an easy answer to his. Stallman isclearly unsuitablefor a leadership role; but “misogynist”? I’m not really seeing it in Stallman.
The ableist claim seems to mostly boil down to a comment he posted on hiswebsite regarding abortion of fetuses with Down’s syndrome:
A new noninvasive test for Down’s syndrome will eliminate the small risk ofthe current test.
This mind lead more women to get tested, and abort fetuses that have Down’ssyndrome. Let’s hope so!
If you’d like to love and care for a pet that doesn’t have normal human mentalcapacity, don’t create a handicapped human being to be your pet. Get a dog ora parrot. It will appreciate your love, and it will never feel bad for beingless capable than normal humans.
It waslater edited to its current version:
A noninvasive test for Down’s syndrome eliminates the small risk of the oldtest. This might lead more women to get tested, and abort fetuses that haveDown’s syndrome.
According to Wikipedia, Down’s syndrome is a combination of many kinds ofmedical misfortune. Thus, when carrying a fetus that is likely to have Down’ssyndrome, I think the right course of action for the woman is to terminate thepregnancy.
That choice does right by the potential children that would otherwise likelybe born with grave medical problems and disabilities. As humans, they areentitled to the capacity that is normal for human beings. I don’t advocatemaking rules about the matter, but I think that doing right by your childrenincludes not intentionally starting them out with less than that.
When children with Down’s syndrome are born, that’s a different situation.They are human beings and I think they deserve the best possible care.
He also made a few other comments to the effect of “you should abort if you’repregnant with a fetus who has Down’s syndrome”.
That last paragraph of the original version was … not great, but the newversion seems okay to me. Itis a women’s right to choose to have an abortion,for any reason, including not wanting to raise a child with Down’s syndrome.This is already commonplace in practice, with many women choosing to do so.
Labelling an entire person as ableist basedonly on this – and this is reallythe only citation of ableism I’ve been able to find – seems like a stretch, atbest. It was a shitty comment, but hedid correct it which is saying a lot inStallman terms, as I haven’t seen him do that very often.
Phrases like “a dangerous force”, “dangerous ideology”, and “brand ofintolerance” make it sound like he’s crusading on these kind of issues. Most ofthese are just short notes on his personal site which few people seem to read.
Most of the issues surrounding Stallman seem to be about him thinking out loud,not realizing when it is or is not appropriate to do so, being excessivelypedantic over minor details, or just severally lacking in social skills. This canbe inappropriate, offensive, or creepy – depending on the scenario – but that’sjust something different than being actively transphobic or dangerous. Ifsomeone had read only this letter without any prior knowledge of Stallman theywould be left with the impression that Stallman is some sort of alt-right trollwriting for Breitbart or the like. This is hardly the case.
I think Stallmanshould resign of newly appointed post, and from GNU as well,over his personal behaviour in particular. Stallman isn’t some random programmerworking on GNU jizamabob making the occasional awkward comment, he’s the face ofthe entire movement. Appointing “a challenging individual to get along with” –to quote Packard – is not the right person for the job. I feel the rest of theFSF board has shown spectacular poor judgement in allowing Stallman to comeback.[3]
But I can not, in good conscience, sign the letter as phrased currently. Itvastly exaggerates things to such a degree that I feel it does a gross injusticeto Stallman. It’s grasping at straws to portray Stallman as the most horriblehuman being possible, and I don’t think he is that. He seems clueless on sometopics and social interactions, and find him a bit of a twat in general, butthat doesn’t make you a horrible and dangerous person. I find the letter lackingin empathy and deeply unkind.
In short, I feel Stallman’s aptitudes do not apply well for any sort ofleadership position and I would rather not have him represent the community I’ma part of, even if he did start it and made many valuable contributions to it.Just starting something does not give you perpetual ownership over it, and inspite of all his hard work I feel he’s been very detrimental to the movement andhas been a net-negative contributor for a while. A wiser version of Stallmanwould have realized his shortcomings and stepped down some time in the late 80sto let someone else be the public face.
Overall I feel he’s not exactly a shining example of the human species, but thenagain I’m probably not either. He is not the devil and the horrible person thatthe letter makes him out to be. None of these exaggerations are evenneeded tomake the case that he should be removed, which makes it even worse.
It’s a shame, because instead of moving forward with Free Software we’redebating this. Arguably I should just let this go as Stallman isn’treallyworth defending IMO, but on the other hand being unfair is being unfair, nomatter who the target may be.
A set of commandline utilities, libc, and a compiler are not an operating system. Linux (the kernel) is not the “last missing piece of the GNU operating system”. ↩
Neurodivergency is, in a nutshell, the idea that “normal” is a wide range, and that not everyone who doesn’t fits with the majority should be labelled as “there is something wrong with them” such as autism. While some some people take this a bit too far (not every autist is high-functioning; for some it really is debilitating) I think there’s something to this. ↩
I guess this shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise, as the only people willing and able to hang around Stallman’s FSF were probably similar-ish people. It’s probably time to just give up on the FSF and move forward with some new initiative (OSI is crap too, for different reasons). I swear we’ve got to be the most dysfunctional community ever. ↩