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Richard Stallman has resigned from the Free Software Foundation and MIT

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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
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116 comments
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cprn Sep 18, 2019
LOL, IDK, maybe it's not the right place for this kind of bullshit but I value opinion of people I can relate to, like other Linux users who like games, more than some random internet pulp, so I wish we could make polls here:

I'd love everyone who read the actual mailing thread all this fuss is about to choose one in each of the following polls (@Liam, please make it happen for the sake of thought experiment if nothing else - I don't want to host polls on 3rd party questionable policy services that no one will visit anyway):

Do you agree with what Richard Stallman said?
  • I agree with RMS and I don't mind the way he said it
  • I agree with RMS but don't agree with the way he said it
  • I don't care and I don't mind the way he said it
  • I don't care but I don't like the way he said it
  • I disagree with RMS but I don't mind the way he said it
  • I disagree with RMS and I don't like the way he said it


Do you think he should be forced to resign?
  • Yes
  • No



Last edited by cprn on 18 September 2019 at 8:20 am UTC
appetrosyan Sep 18, 2019
Ok. A newbie pitching in on the discussion.

My opinion: if you're a proffessor, you haven't asked for written consent before having sex with someone, and you haven't asked for ID, you're a moron. Nothing to defend here. If there was no sex act, the slander lawsuit will follow, if there was... not even Kardashian can save you.

His opinion: Stallman has radical views on sex outside of the scandal (he's fine with zoophilia, videos of zoophilia, consensual paedophilia etc., just look at his wikipedia page).

He's not stupid: He errs on the side of freedom and caution, e.g. a parrot has had sex with his hand without him knowing, so should he be imprisoned for keeping a photo?

The situation: He might have had to resign not because of one thing that he said, but because of all the things that he said previously. He's a bad mascot.

The problem here isn't that he was defending a rapist (he wasn't) rather that he voiced a void in the legislation and proposed a fix. People naturally misunderstood him (as usual) and mischaracterised what he said (also nothing new).

On a side note: F?CK GNOME . They owe their entire existence to the distinction between copyleft and opensource. I'm alright with them not defending him; the guy has some antics, and defending everything he does is... well.... impossible. But attacking him so actively is something else entirely, it's like if I started railing on my parents and saying that they should move out of the house they built and I grew up in, because of something that my dad said, when he was drunk.


Last edited by appetrosyan on 18 September 2019 at 10:36 am UTC
Cyba.Cowboy Sep 18, 2019
Quoting: appetrosyanOn a side note: F?CK GNOME . They owe their entire existence to the distinction between copyleft and opensource. I'm alright with them not defending him; the guy has some antics, and defending everything he does is... well.... impossible. But attacking him so actively is something else entirely, it's like if I started railing on my parents and saying that they should move out of the house they built and I grew up in, because of something that my dad said, when he was drunk.

lol

Love the enthusiasm of multiple people attacking GNOME here.

I don't like them (GNOME) and consider them to be a horrible organization, for a laundry list of reasons... Glad to see I'm not alone.
LungDrago Sep 18, 2019
We truly live in a f*cked up world. Just like in the Orwell game. Destroy someone by publicizing a statement out of context. So easy!

2 + 2 = 5


Last edited by LungDrago on 18 September 2019 at 10:47 am UTC
EverLinux Sep 18, 2019
Most seems to have been said on this topic but I'm still so surprised how "an angrier-today 23Y old Selam Jie Gano pseudo-me-too" can triggers the leave of Richard. I fully agree with Patola & others regarding those SJW (that are lurking even right there checking for every little miss steps in our posts).
Long quote from Patola

The GNOME's stand to take benefit of the situation is unacceptable. The tools/techs should remain neutral & that one will never reachs any of my future distros.

Thank you so much Richard for all you hard work and your life's fight to make Linux(Amongst other things) what it is today.

Thank you so much Liam for your every day's Linux dedication & for courageously publishing this article while keeping the comments opens knowing the amount of work moderation requires.

:)
g000h Sep 18, 2019
Quoting: dubigrasu
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: dubigrasuHow can I filter out these kind of not (really) gaming related topics?
I filter out topics I'm not interested in by reading the article's title. Works pretty well.
Yeah sure, but I'm asking specifically about the control panel settings.

I think if Liam added a NON-GAMING tag, and added it to articles like this one, then it would solve Dubigrasi's issue (Not wishing to view non-gaming articles.)
Creak Sep 18, 2019
I don't know if this blog post have been posted here, but here it comes: https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2019-09-17-rms.html

It's a bit difficult to read (aesthetically), but I think it is worth it, at least the conclusion if you don't have the time to read everything.

And, as he says: "it is possible (but unlikely) that RMS is not a harmless sort but a scheming criminal mastermind. Still, one can only work with the evidence as it is presented at the time."
amatai Sep 18, 2019
So many confusion. The facts are: a professor of the MIT send highly problematic comment to a whole departement (students included) while the MIT was in a deep crisis and had to resign from his position of visiting researcher. Folowing its resignation from the MIT, he also resign from the head of the FSF. He still has FSF membership.

Quoting: GuestThey have also given Socrates the poison cup for no good reason. So it's not like the average person has changed.
He was planning a coup, hardly what I call "no good reason".
Quoting: razing32Curios what is the best way to handle this.
Should an organization terminate all contacts with an individual for their opinions ?
That has not happened yet. He is still part of the FSF. For the MIT, Grotendick who was a incommensurably greater genius than Stallman has to break tie with the French college when he starts saying that science should stop at his conference.
Some opinion are incompatible with some function, you have the freedom to voice those opinion and loose your function. It's liberal America, you also have the freedom to die from poverty and malnutrition.

Quoting: soulsourceStallman is not wrong about the fact that laws about this topic are different in different countries. Where I live, Austria, consent between a 17 year old and a much older person is legally possible, unless there is a situation of power or money involved.
Which there clearly was. It's hard to argue that a 70-years old academics has no authority over any 17-years old girl. The distinction is made so that you can have someone 19 and someone 17 having sex without problem.
johndoe Sep 18, 2019
Quoting: Phlebiac
Quoting: johndoeCurrently I don't see anything, that MS or Apple did to enrich the FOSS ecosystem

I'm no big fan of either, but: Apple funds development of projects like CUPS, LLVM, and Webkit (not that Webkit is terribly relevant any more). Microsoft has become a big contributor to Git, and funds the guys who made Mono.

These contributions/funds are a drop in the ocean. None of them are in-house developments.
dubigrasu Sep 18, 2019
Quoting: g000h
Quoting: dubigrasu
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: dubigrasuHow can I filter out these kind of not (really) gaming related topics?
I filter out topics I'm not interested in by reading the article's title. Works pretty well.
Yeah sure, but I'm asking specifically about the control panel settings.

I think if Liam added a NON-GAMING tag, and added it to articles like this one, then it would solve Dubigrasi's issue (Not wishing to view non-gaming articles.)
Yes, that's basically what I asked for.
Through the use of tags, any reader of this site can adjust the content of what he wants/needs to see.
Yeah sure, you can choose not to read what you don't need. But the functionality is there for a reason, and is already used for other topics.
You're an AMD user and not interested of Nvidia drivers/software related news?...use the Nvidia tag to filter out those news.
You do only native gaming and don't wanna hear about Proton?...use the SteamPlay tag, and so on.
Or of course, you can use tags to specifically search for the same subjects. Is just a handy option to have.

So I don't think is an unreasonable request for a tag in this case. What actually the tag name would be, that's up to Liam.
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