X.org calls for the removal of the of the entire FSF BoD

Thu Mar 25 18:05:43 UTC 2021

Hi - I'm not going to dive too far into this discussion for obvious reasons, but
reading through these replies I've noticed it doesn't feel like some people
actually understand the entirety of -why- there is such a large outcry about
this. Describing this as shunning someone 'because of their opinions' is really
disingenuous because while his opinions are extraordinarily creepy and
inappropriate, that's really just the tip of the iceberg here. It gets so, so
much worse then some weird post on the internet.

               Warning!!! There's some REALLY gross stuff here. 

He's also harassed women at MIT on multiple occasions and used to keep a
mattress in his office which people would occasionally lounge on shirtless:

https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec210794

There's the way he's behaved with his assistants:

https://twitter.com/DethVeggie/status/1286748219502985216

How the FSF literally had to unionize because of RMS's behavior at the
workplace:

https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1374499598853545986?s=19

That one time he kept staring at one dude's wife's chest:

https://twitter.com/AlSweigart/status/1374538395372912643?s=19

That one time he licked a woman's arm when they shook his hand:

https://twitter.com/grok_/status/1375049417926053894

And I bet if you spent more time looking, you'd find even more then this. Also,
this doesn't even include the stories that _I've_ heard directly from people who
have worked with him in the past or attended conferences he was at. I've
literally had people tell me he will verbally scream at people in conferences. I
can't change your mind if you're still against condemning him, but know _this_
is the kind of behavior people are trying to say is not a big deal.

On Wed, 2021-03-24 at 23:49 -0400, Shawn Starr wrote:
> 
> 
> On 3/24/21 10:32 PM, Peter Hutterer wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 24, 2021 at 09:29:34PM -0400, Shawn Starr wrote:
> > > 
> > > 
> > > On 3/24/21 8:47 PM, Peter Hutterer wrote:
> > > > On Thu, Mar 25, 2021 at 12:02:05AM +0000, Sérgio Basto wrote:
> > > > > On Wed, 2021-03-24 at 20:49 +0100, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> > > > > > "... and defend a free and open accelerated graphics stack."
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Defense is generally something that's done towards the outside of our
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > own community, for example by clearly distancing us from the actions
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > of the oldest free software foundation there is when they end up
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > dragging the entire free software world into a rather bad light
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > through that.
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > I am strongly against this open letter, I think you have completely
> > > > > missed the point of the values that the X.org and freedesktop.org
> > > > > communities are based on.
> > > > 
> > > > Out of interest: what are those values?
> > > > 
> > > > Cheers,
> > > >      Peter
> > > > _______
> > > 
> > > It's become apparent after seeing the original poster of this thread's
> > > twitter account. That I would like X.org to refrain from politics and focus
> > > on code, just code. Not venture into what people decide is acceptable views
> > > and behaviors.
> > 
> > one of the things about the X.Org Board is that the board **does not define
> > the technical direction**. Sure, the members of the board are primarily
> > developers, but the board itself does not tell anyone what they need to
> > implement. The board cannot focus on code because...it doesn't write code.
> > 
> > The board's main contribution over the last years has been (payrolling) the
> > annual conference, GSoC and EVoC. One goal of those conferences is to expand
> > the developer community, something that has been reasonably successful if
> > you look at the XDC participation alone. The first XDCs I went to had around
> > ~30 participants, I remember the excitement when we first hit 100+ on a
> > regular basis.
> > 
> It has and that is amazing for us.
> 
> > Following from that, it is well within the board's responsibility to make
> > sure the venues provided are welcoming and safe for anyone wanting to
> > attend - because that's the only way to grow or at least maintain the
> > community. Whether an environment is welcoming and safe is primarily
> > determined by public statements public statements about behaviours that are
> > acceptable and behaviours that arent (and the enforcement of those). The CoC
> > is part of that.
> > 
> > Where it (in)directly affects the members such as with RMS who is still a
> > figurehead in FOSS and whose behaviour is used as proxy for others in the
> > FOSS community. That his behaviour is representative of ours sucks,
> > personally I didn't ask for that, but it's a fact of life.
> > 
> 
> Open Source has always had toxic behaviors, if you recall flamewar 
> mailing lists, at least us older to remember.
> 
> I'm not saying it was helpful. But nobody represents Open Source to me. 
> Not RMS, not the FSF, not the GPL license even.
> 
> > So the board says "We reject having him as public leader of a community that
> > we are part of, this is not who we are". That indicates that those that
> > have an issue with his behaviour will not have to deal with this in our
> > community. That, given the implied job of growing the community, is
> > literally what the board is for.
> > 
> > > It is unacceptable for X.org to go after people that is not what Open Source
> > > is. We are not some political movement.
> > 
> > uhm, FOSS itself is a political movement.
> > 
> 
> The FSF and organizations have been the more political side. It is about 
> writing software that breaks us from proprietary software. Allowing us 
> to tinker, control our own machines. Maybe that is political, but I 
> still don't view it as, certainly not left/right considering my own 
> political views they don't fit into any left/right with Open Source and 
> never will.
> 
> You can be a person of the left and write Free Software, or a person 
> from the right.
> 
> I do not distinguish political views when it comes to FLOSS and the 
> community nor should I.
> 
> I view people based on their code, that is the only thing that should be 
> criticized.
> 
> 
> > > My values are to spreading X/Wayland to more people to use, contribute. How
> > > they do so and what their political views, beliefs are none of my business
> > > and is NOT the business of Open Source.
> >   
> > There's more nuance to that. In general, no-one cares about your interests
> > because usually they do not affect the community, e.g. I doubt anyone has
> > quit a FOSS community over someone's crocheting habits. But if someone's
> > habits start scaring people away it *does* affect the community and the
> > stewards of that community will have to make a decision on what is
> > acceptable and what isn't.
> 
> Someone's habits however is not 'the communities' business if the person 
> doesn't attack others with those habits or views.
> 
> > Cheers,
> >     Peter >
> 
> Thanks,
> Shawn
> 
> > > We are to encourage people to participate, being polite, not bashing their
> > > views however correct or incorrect they are.
> > 
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-- 
Sincerely,
   Lyude Paul (she/her)
   Software Engineer at Red Hat

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