While justified in this case by a recorded pattern of behaviours we can agree are unacceptable, I have to point out that de-platforming certainly can be bullying. Yes, leaders should be held accountable, and some things from other areas of their lives can certainly affect the impact of their work vs our shared goals. No, we cannot deny that de-platforming is often used as a tactic to silence people with whom we might disagree - it just historically goes in the other direction.
We should speak the truth to power, but we should also speak the truth about Stallman in this case. It doesnât excuse previous behaviours, but he most certainly did not say this, as has been pointed out. I agree with the rest of the post, but this was a factual error. Can you please edit or revise this statement from up-thread?
Neilâs message to the FSF on behalf of the GNOME Foundation has also been discussed in other fora, but Discourse is a far more competent platform for doing so, so I am re-posting my comment here.
Neil speaks with the support of the GNOME Foundation board and received dozens of thanks from the GNOME community for adopting this position on behalf of the project.
We are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive community, and a pre-requisite to that is calling out and distancing ourselves from people who are unable to conduct themselves without alienating, threatening and excluding others.
Fundamentally there are two things going on here; one is the internal tensions of the free software community and our individual culpability in allowing Richard Stallmanâs previous contributions and achievements to excuse his conduct. There are so many examples of this, but Sage Sharp has assembled a reasonable collection on Twitter.
Secondly are his hurtful and ill-conceived comments which were widely (and poorly) reported and brought a great deal of external attention to the free software movement.
The reason they connect is because everyone realised; this is what the world sees of us when RMS speaks on our behalf. And this is why we must act. Deb Nicholson wrote it very well in a mail to libreplanet-discuss.
I donât think a situation where many people associate the free software
movement with misogyny and pedophilia is doing the movement any favors. And
thatâs where we are. I do feel emotionally about this because it is a huge
waste of my time to try and bring new people to this movement and then
later have to apologize for the ton of unchecked sexism that happens in
many of our spaces and mailing lists.
Iâm done with allowing one personâs pedantic compulsions and gaping blind
spots around how tech treats women continue to hamper the work of
empowering users. Itâs time to separate the sexism and â the erasure of
victims of pedophilia â from the free software movement. I wonât be
encouraging people to participate in free software communities that wonât
commit to doing better at that extremely low bar.
Right, and the ones who dared express their disagreement were cornered by those thankful people, not encouraging any more of them to share their feelings on the topic publicly. So who knows how many of them there is out there? I can also say that some of them thanked me in private for my stand against the statement, but again that doesnât help showing that this position was far from unanimous.
Right now I donât feel very included, and Iâm pretty sure I didnât alienate, threaten or exclude anyone. I didnât take side of anyone doing such things either.
And what can we say about the use of a threat against the FSF when supposedly we stand against threatening individuals?
It could look only that, but if youâre inside mailing lists where you need to daily or weekly deal or read what he writes, itâs very clear whatâs his opinion. And theyâre not healthy. He may be the creator of GNU (and many other things), but this doesnât allow him to play as âGodâ (Judger of Ethic and Moral).
Itâs been a common thing that Stallman writes a lot of unnecessary things, and itâs also a common thing to people usually ignore him, but what happened in September was like @nmcgovern said, the last sparkle to ignite the fire. The whole thing was super disrespectful, and even the MIT had to remove him from his position as Guest Researcher.
