You can sign up to get a daily email of our articles, see the Mailing List page.
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

Richard Stallman has resigned from the Free Software Foundation and MIT

By - | Views: 59,578

Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation has resigned and he's also left his position in CSAIL at MIT.

Why is this significant? Stallman and the FSF were responsible for the creation of the GNU Project, widely used GNU licenses like the GPL, the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and more that were used in the creation of Linux.

Posted on the FSF website last night was this notice:

 On September 16, 2019, Richard M. Stallman, founder and president of the Free Software Foundation, resigned as president and from its board of directors. The board will be conducting a search for a new president, beginning immediately. Further details of the search will be published on fsf.org.

Stallman also noted on stallman.org how he's stepped away from MIT as well, with the below statement:

I am resigning effective immediately from my position in CSAIL at MIT. I am doing this due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations.

The question is—why? Well, an article on Vice picked up on comments Stallman made around convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Unsurprisingly, this caused quite a lot of outrage inside and outside the Linux community.

Not long after Neil McGovern, the GNOME Executive Director, made a blog post about it where they said they asked the FSF to cancel their membership. McGovern also noted that other people who they "greatly respect are doing the same" and that GNOME would sever their "historical ties between GNOME, GNU and the FSF" if Stallman did not step down.

McGovern of GNOME wasn't the only one to speak out about it, as the Software Freedom Conservancy also put out a post calling for Stallman to step down and no doubt there's others I'm not aware of.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Misc
19 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
116 comments
Page: «5/12»
  Go to:

rustybroomhandle Sep 17, 2019
Quoting: Patola
Quoting: rustybroomhandle
Quoting: PatolaAnother victim of cancel culture...

Nobody who uses the phrase "cancel culture" with a straight face can be taken seriously. Off to the kids table with you.
QED. This is a hallmark of cancel culture, there is no discussion, simply personal attacks, sometimes quite vicious ones. Some subjects cannot be discussed. Some opinions cannot be uttered. This is the new, more radical form of making something taboo. It has grave personal consequences.

No, holding people accountable for their actions, and then having a horde of apologists hop on board by dismissing it as "cancel culture" as if this is somehow a valid argument.

It's just a simple case of "someone did a bad and got rapped on the knuckles". There's no greater conspiracy or oppression of free speech or whatever the heck else.
SirLootALot Sep 17, 2019
Quoting: EikeSeriously?!? :O
This is generally interesting to read.
Nevertheless Sep 17, 2019
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: spayder26Actually he was not defending Epstein (he called him rapist), but declaring his opinion against laws against consented paedophilia, which is somewhat much more controversial.

You seem to have information differing from mine.

I read that he found the "most plausible scenario" that the girls have been "entirely willing".

Does anybody find it appropriate to do such talk about possible severe crimes without any knowledge of what actually has happened?

Just to add to my previous post: I know absolutely nothing about the above!
chr Sep 17, 2019
Quoting: namikoBeing "canceled" means being too offensive to work with, associate with or even to be spoken positively about at the worst.

Are some things so offensive as to make it necessary to remove someone from the public sphere, sometimes permanently? (banning, firing, refusing to associate with, maybe even being fined or arrested depending on where you live, etc.)

I don't know where the boundary on offense should be because I can't predict the future, times change, laws and policies also change in a waxing and waning of liberal to conservative and back again (in a general sense, no political parties implied). If this kind of de-personing is going to be the default, we're isolating a lot of people. There's a dark path to be gone down when we start thinking people are permanently irredeemable, even if they sincerely apologize. Or even if they are accepted again, can we say they're sincerely accepted, or is there a permanent, invisible "scarlet letter" of sorts that will hang over their heads indefinitely?

It feels good to be a part of a group that's "better" than the "bad" one(s), it's a rush that's probably chemically addictive. That's why I can't see "cancel culture" stopping anytime soon, it just feels too good to be more "right" than the person or group being accused.

If there's no road to forgiveness, can any of us honestly say that we're above reproach when it comes to our words or actions? Whether or not we think what Stallman's done or said is acceptable doesn't matter, it matters because we'd want a chance at forgiveness if we were in his shoes.

I think you have some great points. But at the same time I think this is a small piece of a very large unsolved puzzle.

I definitely think "canceling", as you defined it, is a social evil. Even if cancelled people would hypothetically all be "evil", for one, shunning them from society wouldn't make them disappear - they would still be causing problems the rest of us - thus not being a sustainable solution. Analogy should be made here to our prison systems. Reintegration is the answer ofc.

But on the other hand whose responsibility is it to educate and reform people that perform actions worthy of social condemnation? People who (usually unintentionally) invalidate or terrorize the existence of others? I think nobody wants to deal with that.
To give a (possibly insensitive) example: black people are often probably tired of educating people who are ignorant of some past atrocities and make some highly insensitive comments due to that. So black people try to ignore it and only when it becomes unbearably hideous do they speak out.

The phenomena of feeling superior due to being more right that you mentioned, might motivate some people, but in my speculation and in my experience that is very rare. Any "social justice warriors" or people demanding for "political correctness" are usually motivated by their internal sense of morality being highly alarmed by what is going on. I'm willing to believe that there are some who just like to shit on other for being in the wrong. And I'm willing to believe that there are many different motivations for behavior that can be put into the aforementioned groups, but in my admittedly limited experience I have not encountered insincere behavior thus far. But I'm 100% certain that exists.

I do really care a lot for reintegration of people who have made poor decisions and for social unity as a whole. But I think we shouldn't ignore the fact that despite this being almost always a sincere concern, there are also those who are just hiding their intentionally malign anti-societal behavior behind pretending to be a victim of some global mass movement of silencing and censorship. I do get it that some people sincerely feel this way.

All of this liberal-conservative conflict is a big mess of not enough communication and everyone being afraid of something and it being in no-one's direct interest to educate the other side about your fears and worries. And who would even want to do that with the lack of trust - maybe sharing my fears will be used against me by those evil evil internet trolls who get kicks out of harming others?
chr Sep 17, 2019
Quoting: wvstolzing
Quoting: NanobangHeadline:
Famed Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As 'Entirely Willing'

What Stallman actually wrote:
Quoting: StallmanWe can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing.

Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.

Exactly this discrepancy has been bothering me since yesterday -- on THIS SPECIFIC POINT there does indeed seem to be a mischaracterization.

I agree... mostly. For some reason the word "mischaracterization" conjures up images of intent (or can do for some people). So I would add my assumption that the misinterpretation of Stallman's intent there is almost certainly accidental. I admit to having made the mistake of misreading that sentence (multiple times, no less!) myself:

actual:
Quote...that she presented herself to him as entirely willing.
actual meaning clarified:
Quote...that she pretended to be consenting.
I read:
Quote...that she presented herself to him entirely willingly.
I read meaning clarified:
Quote...that she was 100% super consenting to this.
I read implied:
Quote...people in sexual slavery can and do consent.
BAM - reason to be pissed that another person with significant power can say whatever-the-fuck-they-please about people going through suffering. How can they get away with shit like this? Why is no-one doing anything about this?"

Now imagine someone read this who has in general suffered a bit in the male-dominated ignorant world. Easy mistake to make, no? That said, it is sad that this outcome happened as a result of this seems-to-me-like-a-mistake-in-multiple-parts. Of course RMS could also have worded that bit much more clearly (takeaway lesson here). I haven't spent the necessary hours to get the full context here whether RMS is entirely innocent of socially horrible behavior or not and what should therefore ideally have happened and not have happened. But more trust (maybe sometimes?) and more empathy and more calming down and being friendly is what we all need.


Last edited by chr on 17 September 2019 at 12:40 pm UTC
amatai Sep 17, 2019
It is not because some of the english-speaking newspaper have a terrible coverage of the issue that a professor who relativizes rape on a mailing list containing its student don't have to resign.
Even with plenty of bad faith, that part can't be defended.
Quote>Giuffre was 17 at the time; this makes it rape in the Virgin Islands.

Does it really? I think it is morally absurd to define "rape? in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or
whether the victim was 18 years old or 17.
I think the existence of a dispute about that supports my point that
the term "sexual assault" is slippery, so we ought to use more concrete terms when accusing anyone.
Then, he keeps going after a student ask him to stop. When he calms down and realizes what he has done, he was to resign.
Bloombery Sep 17, 2019
Quoting: rustybroomhandleFor those rushing to RMS' defense. This is just one thing in a long list of things. For all the good he has done, it's really not the person that you should want as the face of free software.

Why not?
MayeulC Sep 17, 2019
Can't we just have nice things? Why does it always have to be political, and not based only on technical merit?

On the other hand, the FSF is a political institution as well... :S:
Tuxee Sep 17, 2019
Quoting: kaiman
QuoteWe can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.
But even that lacks the context of the whole, without the original source, so take it with a grain of salt.
Are we talking about a 17-year-old girl and a 70+-year-old geezer? And this is supposed to be the "most plausible scenario" in RMS imagination? Yes, there might be cases where a young girl presents herself as willing under such circumstances. But I would call them "most implausible".
minidou Sep 17, 2019
Quoting: MayeulCCan't we just have nice things? Why does it always have to be political, and not based only on technical merit?

Welcome to the world of code of conduct.
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.