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

Fri Mar 26 18:29:26 UTC 2021

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.

[2] https://twitter.com/n4of7/status/1374160416457232386

Best,
Roman

> Harry
>
> > Of the candidates for this X.Org board election are there people who
> > in the future will push back against the harmful SJW politics of Lyude
> > and the other X.Org board members who have voted in support of this
> > political witch-hunt?
> >
> > Roman
> >
> >> https://rms-open-letter.github.io/>>>
> >> We encourage members of X.org, freedesktop.org, and the open source community as
> >> a whole to endorse this letter and boycott involvement with the FSF and
> >> associated projects.
> >>
> >> Sincerely,
> >>          Lyude Paul - X.org board member and Secretary
> >>          On behalf of the X.org foundation
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> members at foundation.x.org: X.Org Foundation Members
> >> Archives: https://foundation.x.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/members>>> Info: https://foundation.x.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/members>> _______________________________________________
> > board at foundation.x.org: X.Org Foundation Board of Directors
> > Archives: https://foundation.x.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/board>> Info: https://foundation.x.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/board>>
>