Reviewing the posts published by my colleagues and myself, what stands out in March is the chronology of a betrayal. It is true that there could not be a more suitable month. Many years Christians commemorate the death of Jesus facilitated by Judas in March, and it is also when Julius Caesar claims that Brutus participated in his murder.
Of course I am not making comparisons between them and Richard Stallman. I'm just saying that if you're going to betray someone, you couldn't pick a better time of year.
My long held opinion is that Richard Stallman being great as a programmer and second to none as a broadcaster failed as a leader. For too long, the Free Software Foundation focused on criticizing the evils of proprietary software-based products instead of creating competitive free software products.
But, that doesn't mean we can do without Stallman. And much less by false accusations propagated by people who have another agenda and for whom free and open source software is only a means to achieve it.. For all his flaws, Stallman is still the best of us all (with the possible exception of Linus).
Chronicle of a March of Betrayals
It all started when during the LibrePlanet 2021 conference, the creator of the GNU project and founder of the FSF said:
I have to make an announcement. I am back on the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation. We were working on a video to announce it, but it was difficult. We had no experience with this kind of thing, so we didn't finish it, but here's the announcement. Some will be happy with this and some will be disappointed, but who knows. In any case, it is so. And I'm not going to resign a second time.
Stallman had resigned because an MIT student didn't like that he defended Marvin Minsky, the pioneer of artificial intelligence. It is proven that Minsky said no to a sexual offer from a woman instigated by millionaire Jeffrey Epstein (More details in related articles.
The student in question, whom no one will remember in the future, wrote:
At least Richard Stallman is not accused of raping anyone. But is that our highest standard? The
standard to which this prestigious institution abides? If this is what MIT wants to advocate; If this is what MIT wants to represent, then yeah, burn it to the ground...… Remove them all, if necessary, and let something much better be built from the ashes.
Is your Open Source Initiative?
The first entity to oppose Stallman's return was the Open Source Initiative, which counts among your sponsors to various companies defending proprietary software that. Curiously, they also support other associations that opposed Stallman's return.
Richard Stallman recently announced that he will return to the FSF Board of Directors, a statement that the FSF has not denied. We believe it is inappropriate for Stallman to hold a leadership position in the free and open source software community. If we don't speak out against this, our silence could be misconstrued as support. The Open Source Initiative calls on the Free Software Foundation to hold Stallman accountable for his past behavior, remove him from the organization's leadership, and strive to right the harm he has caused to all those he excluded.
In a public letter, the GNOME Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, Software Freedom Conservancy, the Apache Software Foundation, the Wikimedia Foundation, and others with the same sponsors as the OSI, wrote:
Richard M. Stallman has long been a dangerous force in the free software community. He has been shown to be misogynistic, empowered and transphobic, among other serious accusations of impropriety. These types of beliefs have no place in the free software, digital rights and technology communities. With his recent reinstatement on the Free Software Foundation board, we are calling for the entire FSF board to resign and for RMS to be removed from all positions of responsibility.
The boycott was later joined by the Mozilla Foundation, Creative Commons, GNU Radio, OBS Project and SUSE. Less striking is the case of Red Hat, an IBM division that actively participates in many of the entities that opposed Stallman.
The reaction
Fortunately, there are still people who know where their allegiance lies, and a campaign was immediately launched to support Stallman.:
Richard M. Stallman, also known as RMS, has been a driving force in the free software movement for decades, with contributions including the GNU operating system and Emacs.
There have recently been vicious online attacks seeking to remove him from the FSF board for expressing his personal views. We have already seen this happen in an organized fashion with other prominent free software activists and programmers. We will not sit idly by at this time when an icon of this community is attacked.
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