On 5/13/19 11:57 AM, Christian Imhorst wrote:
Hi,
I support FSFE and not FSF - among other things - because of Stallman.
No question RMS did much good for the Free Software movement. After
all, he founded it and he is one of the reasons why Free Software even
exists. But I don't think he should stay any longer the figurehead of
the Free Software movement. Seems the longer he has any say, the
longer he will poison the well. He hurts his mission with statements
about sexual abuse, dehumanizing disabled people and denigrating women.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean, except that I know RMS has been
criticized for his "Saint Ignucius" stick. I also don't agree on his
position of preferred pronouns for transgender people.
One should note, however, that Stallman is a child of the decade he was
born in and also seems to be quite rigid in his points of view, to the
point where one might suspect a mild degree of autism. If the latter
were to be the case, your comment - and the comments of all of those
people who seemingly like to denigrate, ridicule and bully Stallman on
Reddit - could be construed as ableist.
I have no illusions as to Stallman being any sort of perfect person, yet
I want to note that /not //only/ did he found the Free Software Movement
and contribute s mzignificantly to it through the creation of the GNU
project, he continues to spend all his time travelling the world and
advocating software freedom - and not only that, he still occasionally
comes up with important new contributions.
The most recent example I can think of is this article from The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/03/facebook-abusing-data-law-privacy-big-tech-surveillance
in which he advocates ending the abusive surveillance by the tech giants
by introducing a very simple law: No system is allowed to record data
that are not necessary for its /primary/ purpose.
Such a law could be implemented in the EU and could be enforced with
mandatory, unenforced inspections and draconian, GDPR-style fines. That
would be the end of Google's and Facebook's surveillance, since it would
simply become illegal.
I currently believe that such regulations are the /only/ possible way of
defeating the surveillance regime. Stopping NSA surveillance might be a
good thing, but it's rather immaterial, because the governments are
likely to gain access to the tech giants' data troves anyway, as they
have in China. I'd /love/ to see the FSFE adopt such a proposal and see
it through the EU Parliament.
And while Stallman is still capable of coming up with this kind of thing
I honestly don't think we should ostracize him from the movement. I've
supported the FSF before, and while I currently am supporting the FSFE
and continue to do so, I might easily support the FSF again if I e.g.
had more money.
Best
Carsten
_______________________________________________
Discussion mailing list
Discussion@lists.fsfe.org
https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
This mailing list is covered by the FSFE's Code of Conduct. All
participants are kindly asked to be excellent to each other:
https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct
