Linus eventually realised that his abuse of contributors was a negative contribution and agreed to change. RMS has .. not got to that point.
I've seen the accusations against RMS. I've seen the RMS emails in the thread[1].
RMS' emails bemoan wishy-washy reporting, and are centered around calls for clarity and precision. With some insensitive words.
In response we got even more wishy-washy reporting - weasel words were used, misleading summaries instead of quotations[2], and focus was placed on how people felt outraged. People who weren't part of the discussion.
This isn't the way to build great software. This is tribes warring on social media.
>They're a negative contribution, and they contribute to driving away other contributors
Riddle me this: which drives away contributors - private email threads, or social media wars of attrition?
Is my judgement right? Maybe I am missing something big, that happens. Nonetheless I decide to side with somebody I've seen reliably exhibit the same character over decades, rather than with out-of-character accusations. I decide to side with somebody who delivered great projects[3] over decades - rather than with a social media conflict.
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[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-091320191420...
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/d5a4dz/richard_stall...
[3] notably RMS delivered not only software projects, but also organizational/legal projects, and social/cultural projects
The "insensitive words" seem the issue for me, from my reading of his emails, and referring to them as just that seems an understatement.
> The announcement [...] does injustice to Marvin Minsky. The injustice is the word "assaulting". The term "sexual assault" is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation; [...] The accusation quoted is a clear example of inflation. The reference reports the claim that Minsky had sex with one of Epstein's harem. [...] The word "assault" presumes that he applied force [...] but the article says no such thing.
Yes the above words are insensitive (calling such accusations "vague and slippery" by definition does a massive injustice to anyone who's ever suffered such a fate), but much more objectively, they're also blindly or wilfully false. The article he links as a reference opens with the following words:
> A victim of billionaire Jeffrey Epstein testified that she was forced to have sex with MIT professor Marvin Minsky
There is no more direct contradiction of RMS' statements than the opening words of the article he links in his email. There's absolutely no question of his communication on this being appropriate.
RMS words can not do massive injustice as they are words not judges, besides his words are actually expressing an attempt to correct a perceived injustice of misqualifying some accusation toward a dead guy that cannot defend himself.
Actually the headlines fits exactly the point RMS is making, that if she was forced, Epstein was the one not Minsky. Then again do not stop at the headline, read the whole article and read the source used for the article, there is no mention of the use of force, the only mentions of her being forced to have sex are with different persons and contradicts her earlier 2011 allegations (page 33). The part mentioning Minsky does not even confirm she actually had sex with him, only that she was sent to by Ms Maxwell (page 182). So I guess you are right there's absolutely no question here, but not in the direction that would fit your narrative and opinion.
It doesn't contradict what RMS is saying.
> The word "assault" presumes that he applied force [...] but the article says no such thing.
"He" here means Marvin Minksy and the part of the article you cited doesn't imply that Minsky forced the victim.
Also I haven't seen sources that claim that the victim had sex with Minsky and seen at least one source that claims that he turned her down [0].
Neither of them seems hugely socially savvy. Perhaps someone/something helped Linus get there and RMS hasn't had a similar experience.
— Matthew Garrett (https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html)
The SJW / You Can't Say That crowd also drives away contributors, so who is more right?
Linus bent the knee to identitarian extremism. RMS did not and the FSF forced him out so they could bend the knee to identitarian extremism. If Linus had not bent the knee then the Linux Foundation would have forced him out.
Open Source and Free Software is being attacked on 2 fronts
Corporatism that is taking over and promoting "Open Source" Libraries and Licenses that are very restrictive to User Freedom
The Authoritarian / identitarian left that want to cancel any programmer, dev, or person in software development that does non conform to identitarian Political agenda
I came in to Free Software because it was a libertarian movement, now everyone is trying to drive out all the libertarians and it will kill the movement. Free Software and authoritarianism are not compatible
One barely known person wrote an opinion about a person who's well-known in a specific group and who is respected and has appropriate power, and suddenly all the corporate media write about it. And it happened multiple times.
I think that the biggest problem is that people in the field don't give violent resistance each time it happens. Bad actors are everywhere, you have to fight them. People don't call these people what they are - corporate prostitutes, they don't even say "Je suis Stallman/Linus, etc." They see what happens and just cowardly accept it.
It's the most plausible explanation.
Adjust your tinfoil hat, please. Jesus christ.
And now there's good Linus, there's no RMS anymore, but we have this
https://developers.slashdot.org/story/19/08/30/1529201/npm-b...
Which world do you prefer?
Secondly: their strong leadership brought us an hacker community devoted to the product and correctness of the result, regardless of their personality, as technical leader they excelled and when they went over the line it was for the benefit of the community, never for their ego.
Now we have weaker leadership, attention has moved from being right to being popular, salaries are valued more than technical skills, corporations have infiltrated open source communities changing the meaning of `free` in free software from "free as in free speech" to "free as in free beer" and we ended up with package managers that install trojans or display ads.
If NPM leadership was made by pedantic, ruvid, sometimes assholes, the like of Linus and RMS, this would have never happened.
