Richard Stallman on the removal of the powers of the president of the SPO Foundation and on leaving the board of directors of this organization. The Foundation began the process of looking for a new president. The decision was made in response to Stallman's comments, marked as unworthy of the leader of the PDF movement. After incautious statements in the MIT CSAIL mailing list, in the process of discussing the participation of MIT employees in
, a number of communities called on Stallman to step down from the leadership of the Free Software Foundation and expressed their intention to sever relations with the Foundation otherwise.
Stallman shifting the blame to underage victims after he spoke on the side of the defense , mentioned by one of the victims among the persons with whom she was instructed to have sex. Stallman entered into an argument about the definition of "sexual assault" and whether they applied to Minsky. He also suggested that the victims were voluntarily involved in prostitution.
In one of Stallman's notes, that raping someone who is under 18 is no less ugly than someone who is already 18 (in the original discussion, Stallman pointed out the absurdity of the degree of guilt in rape varying by country and by minor differences in age).
Later, after a resonance in the press, Stallman also that in his past statements he was wrong and sexual contacts between adults and minors, even with the consent of the minor, are unacceptable and can cause him mental trauma. He also that he was misunderstood and did not defend Epstein, but referred to him as a "serial rapist" who deserved to go to jail. Stallman only questioned the severity of the guilt of Marvin Minsky, who may not have known about the coercion of the victims. But the explanation did not help and the statement became a kind of point of no return.
Neil McGovern, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation, a letter to the Free Software Foundation asking them to terminate their membership in the FSF. According to Neil, "One of the strategic goals of the GNOME Foundation is to be an exemplary community in terms of diversity and inclusion of various members of society", which is incompatible with maintaining the association with the FSF and the GNU project under the current leader of the FSF. Neil argues that in the current situation, the best thing Stallman can do for the Free Software world is to step back from running FSF and GNU and let others take over. If this does not happen soon, then breaking the historical relationship between GNOME and GNU may be the only way out.
Similar Appeal the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), which has pointed out that, given Stallman's past reprehensible comments, his remarks form a pattern of behavior that is alien to the goals of the free software movement. According to the SFC, the fight for software freedom is inextricably linked to the fight for diversity, equality and inclusion, so the SFC no longer has the moral right to directly or indirectly support someone who justifies threats against vulnerable people by rationalizing the behavior of the aggressor.
The SFC believes that compromises on this issue are unacceptable and the best way out would be Stallman's departure from the position of the leader of the open source movement.
Matthew Garrett, a well-known Linux kernel developer and one of the directors of the Free Software Foundation, who at one time received an award from the Free Software Foundation for his contribution to the development of free software, in his blog the question of decentralization of the community of open source software developers. Free software is not limited to purely technical issues and also deals with political issues centered around the freedom of the user. When a community is built around a single leader, their behaviors and beliefs have a direct bearing on the achievement of the project's political goals. In Stallman's case, his activities only scare off allies and it is inappropriate for him to continue to be the face of the community. Instead of concentrating around one leader, it is proposed to create an environment in which any participant can convey to the masses information about the importance of free software, without trying to find themselves more and more perfect heroes.
Source: opennet.ru