Re: Support RMS

[Aaron Wolf]

I really appreciate seeing the perspective from Georgia. Thanks also
deeply to Deb Nicholson for engaging here in this space. Obviously,
these negative reports about RMS being presented *here* amounts to the
opposite of an echo-chamber. These voices are bring extremely valuable
perspective — the sort we *lose* if we aren't careful to assure that our
spaces are not only open to anyone but actually in *practice* have them
feel welcome and stay.

The Free Software movement is weaker for every loss of perspective. We
have a duty to be not only gracious but appreciative of people like Deb
for engaging and staying with us despite the tensions.

Georgia's line is exceptionally important: "…the fact that he faced
consequences for his creepy Epdtein-adjacent comments and not the
decades of shitty behavior…"

These are not people who are dogpiling on hearsay or gotcha online
statements or whatever else. Those anti-patterns do indeed happen, and
they polluted and harmed the credibility of the recent open letter
against RMS. But here we have people who fully understand the unfairness
and yet can express from extensive personal experience the *actual*
reasons why RMS's leadership is problematic.

As someone who deeply and profoundly respects RMS for various reasons, I
still don't just simply support his leadership role. I do not want him
banished, I want him to learn and do better on his pain points. I don't
want to be naive though, efforts in this direction have obviously been
done for years and not been enough.

I would like to continue to get RMS' insightful and pointed perspectives
without having him lead the organization. I would like him to live in
the zone where his genius most thrives and he contributes the most, and
I suggest that the other roles he has had would be better filled by others.

If we want a resilient movement, we need to be really open to engaging
with complaints. An organization that defends the status quo against
such critics is like the NSA attacking Ed Snowden and people insinuating
that Snowden is working for Russia (similar to people talking about how
Deb now works for the OSI and the OSI is connected to corporations).

I'm not suggesting deference to the outside unfair critics, the people
who do indeed levy unfair attacks, mine quotes, spread FUD, etc. That
stuff can be real, and we need to defend against it.

But people like Deb are our whistleblowers, they are insiders who are
bringing attention to serious issues. If we ignore or attack
whistleblowers, we will fail to learn important lessons. This attitude
can be fatal to a movement.

In solidarity,
Aaron Wolf
(FSF member since 2014, co-founder of Snowdrift.coop)