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

[Peter Hutterer]

Hi Roman

On Fri, Mar 26, 2021 at 07:29:26PM +0100, Roman Gilg wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 24, 2021 at 7:46 PM Harry Wentland <harry.wentland at amd.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On 2021-03-24 2:16 p.m., Roman Gilg wrote:
> > > On Wed, Mar 24, 2021 at 5:56 PM Lyude Paul <lyude at redhat.com> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> Hello. As many of you are already likely aware, yesterday Richard M. Stallman
> > >> rejoined the Board of Directors for the Free Software Foundation. This is an
> > >> incredibly disappointing decision, one which runs contrary to the values that
> > >> the X.org and freedesktop.org communities are built-upon.
> > >>
> > >> Richard M. Stallman, or RMS for short, has an infamously well documented history
> > >> of causing problems both for the FSF, it's associated projects, and open source
> > >> as a whole. On numerous occasions he's exhibited seriously inappropriate
> > >> behavior and views that are transphobic, ableist, and misogynist among many
> > >> other things that are wholly unacceptable and which have no place in the open
> > >> source community. In doing so he's set a dangerous and irresponsible precedence
> > >> for the open source community that has tarnished its reputation for ages.
> > >>
> > >> As well, the board for the Free Software Foundation must also be held
> > >> accountable for his actions and presence back on the board. While RMS himself is
> > >> a huge problem, he would not be able to hold a place on the FSF BoD without the
> > >> board being complacent with his behavior and allowing him to return. This is
> > >> also part of a long recurring pattern with the FSF board encouraging RMS's
> > >> behavior and refusing to hold him accountable. It is not enough for RMS to step
> > >> down again, the entire board of directors must step down.
> > >>
> > >> It is for these reasons that the X.org foundation's Board of Directors have
> > >> overwhelmingly voted to join in the call for the FSF's Board of Directors to
> > >> step down, and additionally for RMS to be removed from all leadership positions
> > >> including the GNU project. You can find our endorsement of this along with more
> > >> information here:
> > >
> > > I assume you think it's righteous what you do. But cancelling oddballs
> > > like RMS for voicing unusual and sometimes disturbing opinions is not
> > > how you spur creative thinking and progress. On the opposite you will
> > > demolish any open platform for discourse and collaboration or if
> > > necessary honest critique. RMS reminds me of Sokrates who had to drink
> > > the hemlock cup for wrong-think and speak.
> > >
> > > And with your absolutistic take on political correctness you ensure
> > > that it becomes even more difficult for people from lower social
> > > classes and non-western cultures to join established open source
> > > projects like X.Org, as they will most often feel alienated by it.
> > >
> >
> > Thanks for respectfully sharing your opinion.
> 
> Hi Harry,
> 
> thanks for your respectful reply, too. :)
> 
> > In my humble opinion it is exactly for the reasons of inclusion that the
> > large majority of the X.Org board supports the open letter to the FSF.
> > I've personally not experienced that a larger proportion of people from
> > lower social classes and non-western cultures express toxic behavior and
> > views. Rather the opposite.
> 
> My immediate evidence is like yours rather anecdotally. I gathered
> this impression from conversations with people in my rural community
> without higher education and back when I was at university with fellow
> students from Eastern Europe or Muslim countries. In these
> conversations I usually morphed quickly into being the left-leaning
> progressive defending the rights of gays, women, refugees and so on
> while the political opinion of my discussion partner ranged from
> social exclusion to genocide.
> 
> For a statistical view you could take a look at something like [1].
> Similar statistics are most certainly available for other social
> topics like women rights or other regions outside of the western
> hemisphere, but I haven't looked them up. Of course even if my
> anecdotal evidence correlates with a statistical difference, that
> doesn't mean every individual from such a region or social class
> shares these views.
> 
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_in_Islam#Public_opinion_among_Muslims
> 
> > In an effort to encourage the largest pool of contributors to
> > open-source, no matter the social class, place of origin, sexual
> > orientation, or any of a myriad of other factors that people like to
> > discriminate upon it is important we make everyone feel comfortable to
> > participate. At times this includes the unpleasant task of calling out
> > those that are doing the opposite.
> 
> I agree that everybody should feel comfortable to participate, but
> this includes people with conservative viewpoints, often from poor
> families or from cultures that did not yet fully go through the last
> 50 years of sexual revolution in the West. What is a huge pool of
> potential contributors and is also morally the right thing to do as it
> enables social mobility and racial inclusion.
> 
> How this can be done such that on the other side also sexual
> minorities feel safe is not an easy question to answer. But I am sure
> it is not done through silencing the voices of either side of this
> social divide.
> 
> Yesterday I read some post on Reddit about the RMS pandemonium and it
> included a link to a Twitter post by Leah Rowe. I applauded her genius
> self-description in one of the follow-ups tweets as a SJD, a Social
> Justice Diplomat, instead of a SJW [2]. I believe this is the right
> approach to furthering acceptance and social inclusion of sexual
> minorities and still allow people with conflicting opinions to feel
> comfortable in our community, which includes them being able to
> participate in the public discourse without fear of social
> stigmatization.
> 
> This is all only about RMS sharing some controversial opinions online
> though. There was also criticism of his behavior in social circles. I
> can't say much about that as I don't know him personally and I'm
> always sceptical when personal experiences and hearsay is used in the
> public court against somebody else. In any case such personal issues
> are not something that should be dealt with on an institutional level
> in my opinion. Anecdotes like him handing out not so subtle "pleasure
> cards" or staring at someone's wife's tits during dinner do make him
> look like a person with poor social skills and insufficient control of
> his sexual impulses but I find it to be equally weird trying to deal
> with such peculiarities in a public setting like Twitter and now in
> this petition on GitHub.

Just a few comments I'd like to add here:

The context of the open letter is RMS being reinstated to the board of the
Free Software Foundation, one of the most visible organisations in the FOSS
space. This context is particularly important, it's not about RMS as a
private person and the the letter explicitly calls for "Richard M. Stallman
to be removed from all leadership positions".

>From my understanding of the timeline so far: RMS has had decades of
questionable behaviour, some of which was an open secret well before 2019.
His comments on pedophaelia in 2019 led to the first outcry and him being
removed from the FSF board. Note that these comments were merely the final
straw, they are, as Lyude said in her email, merely the tip of the iceberg.
There are many accounts of inappropriate behaviour and these accounts range
from co-workers to even long-term friends of his. IMO we can reasonably
assume that a good subset of those are accurate. Stallman has not, to my
knowledge, denied any.

Many of those incidents, were they to happen at an X.Org conference (or any
other org with a similar CoC), would result in immediate removal from the
conference.

So, and now back to the context of the letter. RMS is and will always be one
of the most prominent and visible people in the free software community. But
that is not the same as acknowledging that he should be in a formal
leadership position. The position of a formal leader is that they represent
the community and reflect the type of person the community members should,
in general, aspire to be. Stallman is very definitely not that person.

Cheers,
   Peter