Re: Support RMS

[Aaron Wolf]

Jean, I have been to a decent number of conferences and events with many
of the people involved in all this. I have engaged with RMS personally
both by email and face-to-face on a handful of times but not in a
long-term day-to-day fashion. I have worked directly with and been
acquainted with several of the people who have brought up concerns about
RMS, including some who worked at FSF for years and are quite strongly
dedicated to software freedom.

As in all things, situations are far from simple. That RMS turns some
people away is not debatable. But the reasons range from (A) him being
"weird" to (B) him making people uncomfortable *because* he makes people
feel morally shamed to (C) people offended at his political and social
views, no matter how well-thought out they might be, for example his
refusal to celebrate human reproduction to (D) misunderstandings or
exaggerated unfair attacks to (E) RMS just being tempermental in ways
that others are uncomfortable about to (F) RMS being socially awkward
such as the ways he has attempted to flirt or hit on women… and this is
not an exhaustive list.

Here's a key general principle to keep in mind: there are thousands of
ways to be WRONG about something. It's hard enough to determine whether
someone's claims are right or wrong, it's that much harder to figure out
HOW they are wrong if they are wrong.

So, for the sake of rhetoric, consider that some portion of RMS critics
are *wrong* in their critiques. It would be intellectually erroneous to
assume they are all wrong in all the same ways.

I see people in this discussion making this fundamental mistake. A
person posts some concerns about RMS, and some replies are absolutely
interchangeable with critics who are saying quite different things. I'm
sure there's some logical fallacy identified for this. It's the pattern
where you argue that because you can prove some critic wrong, it means
all critics are wrong. It's like science-deniers who find examples of
scientific mistakes and use them to argue that science is overall mistaken.

Both of these things are true: (A) people who don't know RMS just pick
up on exaggerations or misunderstandings of things he's said and go
ahead with concluding unfair and inaccurate things about him and (B)
many (but not all) of the people who worked personally with RMS for
years and know him well *and* agree with his politics and mission have
criticisms of the impacts his leadership has and the costs of his behaviors.

While I've said things criticizing the treatment of B as if it were A, I
also think it has been a serious mistake for the B critics to join in
with anything resembling A. I see people with fair concerns as greatly
damaging their credibility by failing to distance themselves enough from
the unfair attacks.

Jean, I hope this helps as you requested.


On 2021-04-15 11:43 a.m., Jean Louis wrote:
> * Aaron Wolf <wolftune@riseup.net> [2021-04-15 20:59]:
>> Maybe the most productive outcome is some situation where the FSF and
>> RMS do continue with only some reforms and still with RMS' leadership
>> and antagonism dies down over time, and different aspects of the
>> movement collaborate constructively. Maybe it's not absolutely hopeless
>> to end up with RMS continuing to provide his positive inputs without
>> turning people away. Certainly that's my wish, but I don't know that to
>> be realistic.
> 
> Aaron, please help me, do you have personal experience how RMS turns
> people away?
> 
> Or you just echo what somebody said?
> 
> Jean
> 
> Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
> https://www.fsf.org/campaigns
> 
> Sign an open letter in support of Richard M. Stallman
> https://stallmansupport.org/
> https://rms-support-letter.github.io/
> 
>