Regarding Richard Stallman
By Natan Yellin on Jul 11, 2009 in Uncategorized
I’m jumping onto the meme a little bit late. I go offline for 24 hours and when I come back at least half of Planet GNOME has blue banners.
However, what disturbed me most about Stallman’s speech wasn’t the rabid rant against Mono and it wasn’t even the fact that he showed his incapability to understand the other side. What troubled me a lot more was his sexist attitude and his total lack of political correctness.
It’s easy to deal with Stallman’s opinion on Mono- you simply let the BoycottNovell group scream as loudly as they can and go about your own way without listening. However, the other issues are a lot harder to deal with: For many people, Stallman represents the open source community. Outsiders judge us based on what he says.
I was happy to see that at least one member of the GNOME Advisory Board stood up against it, and does seem like Stallman wont be invited to speak again in the future. However, why is it that no one else thought it worth their time to address the issue? Focusing on Mono might be more practical in the short term, but if we want to increase the number of women in open source software, it’s not enough to simply avoid echoing Stallman’s comments. We need to stand up and make it clear that this is something that wont be tolerated.
STOP sexism by Casey West. License: 
I’m not young or naive enough to think that this is ever going to reach meme status, but I wont simply shut up and ignore it. Shame on you, Stallman.
I want the [...] open source [...] communities [I participate in] to be a dignified, respectful, inclusive, and welcoming place. … We’ve all been witnesses to off-color jokes, misogynistic back channel chatter, questionable imagery and unnecessary, trolling comments. I pledge to do better to stand up and call this behavior out when I see it in conferences, online and other public settings. I don’t expect it to go away but I’m not going to tacitly condone it any longer.
Did Miguel de Icaza indoctrinate you and the half of planetgnome to post that propaganda-crap?
Ricardo Stallamanos | Jul 11, 2009 | Reply
No. I value myself on being an independent thinker and I posted because that's what I believe in.
.NET/Mono happens to be very a well designed and thought out framework. It makes developing fast and robust applications easy. To be honest, now that Mono is covered under Microsoft's Community Promise, I'm not sure what the rage is about. How is using Mono any more dangerous then using Linux or restricted multimedia codecs?
Besides, the Mono issue is the least of my problems with Stallman. Is Stallman so holy because of his war against Mono that he's above criticism?
aantn | Jul 11, 2009 | Reply
DId boycottnovell et al. "indoctrinate" you to post that trolling crap?
-malept (who doesn't particularly care either way about the mono issue)
malept | Jul 11, 2009 | Reply
No. I value myself on being an independent thinker and I posted because that's what I believe in.
.NET/Mono happens to be very a well designed and thought out framework. To be honest, now that Mono is covered under Microsoft's Community Promise, I'm not sure what the rage is about. How is using Mono any more dangerous then using Linux or restricted multimedia codecs?
Besides, the Mono issue is the least of my problems with Stallman. Is Stallman so holy because of his war against Mono that he's above criticism?
aantn | Jul 11, 2009 | Reply
No. I value myself on being an independent thinker and I posted because that's what I believe in.
.NET/Mono happens to be very a well designed and thought out framework. To be honest, now that Mono is covered under Microsoft's Community Promise, I'm not sure what the rage is about. How is using Mono any more dangerous then using Linux or restricted multimedia codecs?
aantn | Jul 11, 2009 | Reply
stallman's comments about mono were just about being cautious; esp. before Microsoft's CP. his other comments (as far as i can judge — i wasn't there) were a inappropriate I'd say; but then again, nothing to loose sleep over. at least he gave many people a chance to show off their non-sexism.
stallman does most definitely not represent the 'open source community'. he is not even part of it.
foo | Jul 11, 2009 | Reply
Do you seriously think that any one is taking this "RMS sexist joke" crap, really? Yeah, yeah we all know it isn't about mono at all, it just happen to be that only mono guys are the ones who care about women, that no non-mono supporter had ever talked about the offending sexist joke, those (KDE, non-mono Gome hackers) hypocrites!
Khaled | Jul 11, 2009 | Reply
I find this public lynching over a poorly delivered joke despicable, a joke which Stallman explained meant no harm toward women. Your so called "meme" is stupid and your rant misinformed. Shame on you, Yellin. Care to detail the, in your own words, "rabid rant" against Mono or are you, as I suspect, simply spreading FUD?
bar | Jul 11, 2009 | Reply
1. Yes, Stallman later claimed that he meant no harm against women. However, I still don't think that what he said was acceptable: Despite whatever you may claim, people were offended, making jokes at the expense of others is not acceptable during public speeches, and his poor taste in humor is exactly what turns woman off from open source. At the very least he deserves the community a public apology- which he has refused to give. [1]
2. I wasn't at GCDS myself, but based on what I've heard from others I think that calling it "rabid" is justified:
(A) He shouted over members of the audience who questioned his stance on Mono.
(B) Stallman claimed that "Microsoft is probably planning to force all free C# implementations underground some day using software patents" [2]
That sounds like FUD to me, not the opposite way around.
[1] http://opensourcetogo.blogspot.com/2009/07/emaili...
[2] http://www.osnews.com/story/21753
aantn | Jul 11, 2009 | Reply
In your mind, everyone who who speaks out against Stallman or posts something that doesn't totally reject Mono must be a vocal member of the Mono community. In fact, I have no association with Mono and aren't even a big Mono supporter. I do think, however, that both users and developers should have the freedom to use whatever technology they choose without being attacked.
"it just happen to be that only mono guys are the ones who care about women, that no non-mono supporter had ever talked about the offending sexist joke, those (KDE, non-mono Gome hackers) hypocrites!"
Can you point out where I said that? Oh wait, I didn't.
aantn | Jul 11, 2009 | Reply
I'm a member of the GCC steering committee, so I've had the privilege/burden/annoyance of working with RMS for many years. The guy is a pain in the butt, and he's borderline autistic (which is why he offends so many people), but he's also made great contributions (starting with the GPL, as well as the original gcc and emacs, and recruitment of the people that built pretty much all the fundamental technology that underlies the GNU/Linux system other than the kernel). His sexist comments were way over the line, and I wouldn't blame any organizations for disinviting him over it.
Just the same, I'm partially sympathetic to his Mono criticism. I think it's great that we have a high-quality implementation of .net/C#, but if we primarily rely on someone else's proprietary technology, which we try to clone, we'll always be behind, and we'll surrender most of the design decisions to Microsoft (and yes, I know that Mono has original features, but the point remains). I don't think it's "dangerous", but I think we'd be in a better position when we in the free software/open source community originate the design specs. That's why Linux has been so successful, because they are willing to break the APIs. That's why Microsoft has been so bug-prone, not because they are bad programmers (they have many brilliant programmers) but because they are locked in to supporting every legacy interface, forever.
Finally, RMS would tell you himself that he doesn't represent "open source": he sees his movement ("free software") as completely different. As for myself, I respect the impulses behind both movements, but they are distinct. For all his faults, RMS has often warned about freedom issues that others didn't see until years later (he raised the alarm about DRM very early, also his lobbying about "the Java trap" helped pressure Sun into making Java completely free).
I think that thanks to recent moves by Microsoft, C# is probably safer than it was before. But if you aren't worried about Microsoft causing damage to the open source movement with patent threats, you aren't paying attention.
Joe Buck | Jul 11, 2009 | Reply
1. It's fine that you think it's not acceptable, even if the intended meaning was taken completely out of context. It's not fine to assassinate Stallman's character over this episode. If anyone is owed an apology is Stallman himself. By the way if you want to defend women you should start by protesting the sexism inherent in all major organised religions (Judaism included) and stop treating women like delicate flowers whose sensitive ears must be protected.
2. Like I suspected, FUD.
3. This stupid "afraid of code" meme, an obvious fallacy of relevance, seems to be exclusively about Mono and not about Stallman's speech like you suggested.
bar | Jul 12, 2009 | Reply
1. If you except the premise that Stallman's behavior was wrong then can you please explain why he deserves an apology. If you don't accept it- or if you think that his behavior was only moderately inappropriate and blown out of proportions- then please say so outright instead of trying to divert the topic to religion. It's not relevant and your answer was a total cop out.
2. Were you at GCDS or are you merely being hypocritical and trying to keep everyone with a different opinion from you from discussing what happened even if they weren't there?
3. I never claimed the meme was originally about Stallman. I decided that he was relevant because of his keynote on the grave danger in using Mono. In contrast to what Stallman said in his lecture, I wanted to point out (as was the point of the meme) that I'm not inherently afraid of people writing code. I generally try to avoid doomsday prophets and Stallman's promise that "This is a serious danger, and only fools would ignore it until the day it actually happens. We need to take precautions now to protect ourselves from this future danger." sounded a bit like FUD to me.
aantn | Jul 12, 2009 | Reply
1. If you except the premise that Stallman's behavior was wrong then can you please explain why he deserves an apology. If you don't accept it- or if you think that his behavior was only moderately inappropriate and blown out of proportions- then please say so outright instead of trying to divert the topic to religion. It's not relevant and your answer was a total cop out.
2. Were you at GCDS or are you merely being hypocritical?
3. I never claimed the meme was originally about Stallman. I decided that he was relevant because of his keynote on the grave danger in using Mono. In contrast to what Stallman said in his lecture, I wanted to point out (as was the point of the meme) that I'm not inherently afraid of people writing code. I generally try to avoid doomsday prophets and Stallman's promise that "This is a serious danger, and only fools would ignore it until the day it actually happens. We need to take precautions now to protect ourselves from this future danger." sounded a bit like FUD to me.
aantn | Jul 12, 2009 | Reply
1. "Behaviour"? I see a poor to begin with joke that bombed and was blown way out of proportion. What other behaviour are you referring to? Maybe you are confusing Stallman with the CouchDB guy? Calling my answer a cop out is amusing.
2. I wasn't.
3. Who exactly is afraid of people writing code? No one, that's who. If you and the rest of the morons spamming planet gnome with that glurge wanted to make the point in an intellectually honest way you'd say you're not afraid of Microsoft and patent litigation instead.
Between Microsoft and the FSF it's obvious where my trust lies and Stallman's position seems plenty sensible to me.
bar | Jul 12, 2009 | Reply
Thanks, Natan! I really value your support on this!
Lefty | Jul 12, 2009 | Reply
Yes but that wasn't the case until last week. There only was an ECMA spec and that doesn't mean squat about patent protection or lack of thereof, which there only was for Novell and its customers.
The boycottnovell.com crowd may be a bunch of screaming idiots but that doesn't mean their — and RMS' — arguments regarding Mono were incorrect. That the Mono devs and C# application programmers were threatened by some individuals is reprehensible, but that and the new promise from Microsoft doesn't make the attacked retroactively correct.
Regarding RMS' joke… well, RMS is known to lack tact and that nothing stands in between him and an issue. He says that he didn't mean harm and I believe him, but there's more to actions than intent. I doubt he will apologise, if anything he will continue decrying the erosion of the community he knew and its values, where sensibilities such as this were disregarded in place of the ideas themselves. That may have been fine when the community was a bunch of geeks in Universities and Usenet, but is clearly inadequate now.
Gabriel | Jul 12, 2009 | Reply
I'd love to see more women involved in open source for the very same reasons that I'd love to see more women involved in engineering, politics, and any traditionally male-dominated field.
It's currently a bit more difficult for women to get involved in open source than it is for men (partially because of issues like this) and if I can do something to lower the barrier (or to lower any barrier which keeps anyone out of open source) then by all means I'll do so.
aantn | Jul 13, 2009 | Reply
1. Thanks for the excellent reply. I don't know Stallman personally, so it's great to hear about why he might have not understood that he was being offensive from someone who has worked with him.
2. You brought up the point that it might make more sense to design an alternative to .NET ourselves, but I don't think that's realistic or makes sense for three main reasons:
(A) .NET seems to be a very well designed framework (from the little that I've seen of it). I don't think it makes sense to try to come up with something new just because .NET "wasn't invented around here." Even if we tried, I'm not sure that we would succeed in creating as good of a product.
(B) .NET compatibility lets companies (e.g. Linden) switch to .NET without rewriting their code for a new framework.
(C) Having a Linux implementation of .NET makes it easier to port programs to Linux. Mono may help, for example, solve the common complaint that no games run on Linux.
In any event, thank you again for commenting- I thought that your reply was well thought and your point about "free software" not "open source" was particularly insightful.
aantn | Jul 13, 2009 | Reply
Just to add one small detail, I checked and it seems that most studies put the number of women involved in open source at 2%.
Might you explain why that doesn't bother you?
Cheers,
Natan
aantn | Jul 13, 2009 | Reply
>> but if we want to increase the number of women in open source software
All other issues aside, could you elaborate on this a little? I've absolutely no problem with seeing women involved in the Open Source movement, bit it seems you specifically to want to increase numbers – can you explain why?
Anonymous Coward | Jul 13, 2009 | Reply
Erm .. can you clarify "why" you would "like" this? I'm all for removing barriers, and to an extent perceived barriers .. what I'm trying to understand is "why" you seem to "want" to see more Women involved .. I don't quite "get it" ?
Men and Women are sometimes good at and have an aptitude for different things. One often finds that men and women tend to have different interests, different hobbies and different preferences. Just for example, my perception is that more men are interested in watching football than women. Should men strive to get more women interested in football ? .. or could it be that the women not interested in football, are not actually interested in becoming interested in football ? Personally I have no interest in football and do not welcome attempts to "get me interested".
If a certain number of women want to be involved in Open Source, and that number makes up 2% of people involved, the implication of "wanting" more women to be involved is that you want to involve women who don't want to be involved … [??]
If I thought it was difficult for Women to get involved with IT or Open Source, I'm sure I would be bothered by this , however in my experience, Women wanting to get involved will often get more help than men. Most OS work and indeed communication tends (certainly in my case) to take place via the Internet .. so why would my gender make any difference as to whether I could become involved? .. in this instance for example, am I a man, or a woman ?
Anonymous Coward | Jul 13, 2009 | Reply
"Men and Women are sometimes good at and have an aptitude for different things. One often finds that men and women tend to have different interests, different hobbies and different preferences."
I don't think men have a special aptitude for watching football or writing computer programs, and in fact, it's a great detriment to our community that some women may have great potential at writing code which is never realized because they are discouraged from doing so.
For example, it is statistically true that men are better at math than women. However, the difference is so small that it would be unnoticeable in everyday society. It would mean that out of a 10,000 mathematicians, maybe 4,999 are women, and 5,001 are men. So why is it that in reality those numbers are more like 1,000 women to every 9,000 men? Because people believe that women are worse at math, a lot worse, and so teachers treat women differently at an early age. As time goes by, women are discouraged from learning math because it's for boys, and so they pursue other careers, even if they might actually be better mathematicians than whatever else they do.
In the end, it's our loss if there are potentially amazing contributors to the (F)OSS community who will never get involved.
"If a certain number of women want to be involved in Open Source, and that number makes up 2% of people involved, the implication of "wanting" more women to be involved is that you want to involve women who don't want to be involved … [??]"
The idea is that many women *want* to be involved, many more than the 2% who involved right now, but they go to a conference and look around the room and see no one like themselves, and then they go to a talk, and the speaker tells them that they need to "lose their EMACS virginity," or makes other degrading jokes targeted at them. Maybe, some women decide in the ends its worth putting up with these problems, but many do not. Instead, they say, I guess this is not for me afterall.
But if there were more women in open source software, it would be easier for women to get involved because there are more people like themselves. Likewise, if key leaders in the movement didn't make jokes at women's expense, then it would be easier to feel welcome and to feel like equal partners in the community.
"Most OS work and indeed communication tends (certainly in my case) to take place via the Internet .. so why would my gender make any difference as to whether I could become involved? .. in this instance for example, am I a man, or a woman ?"
This is an interesting and I think worthy point. However, the internet is not completely gender neutral. I am a man, but I used to play a video game online under the alias, "annie linux." The name was a bad play on words, changing the name of the singer "annie lennox." Most people did not get the joke and thought I was just some women named Annie who loved Linux. They would taunt me, suggesting that I do things like "suck their cock" or calling me a "bitch" every time I beat them at the game. If I were a women, I suppose I could always create a gender neutral alias, but that's hardly a level playing field, to suggest that women should have to hide their identities and pretend to be men so they won't suffer sexist epithets and abuse.
Forest | Jul 13, 2009 | Reply
Mmm, first off I did say all other issues aside, personally I can live without the use of the expression "lose their virginity" in a public speech, regardless of the presenter or context.
I think my issue is the way in which people like yourself seem to have picked up on the speech and hoisted the flag, of your own accord, apparently on behalf of women, who apparently can't stand up for themselves?!
Now, I don't think that men are better than women at math – indeed your own stats use such a small sample as to be totally irrelevant either way… indeed I think the figures are that women are better at math and have on average a higher IQ, by a slightly higher margin than the one you quote.
One of your arguments seems to be that the community is missing out on a potential talent pool. I don't think it is, I think the pool has a mind of it's own and it's mind generally isn't interested in becoming a geek.
"The idea is that many women *want* to be involved…"
Really .. "women" .. all women ? .. and you've spoken to them all ?
Seriously, can we leave this as your opinion and not take it as a statement of fact. There are already far too many men telling Women what Women want … I would *love* to talk to someone who has decided not to involve themselves with computers / programming because they've heard someone within the community say something they consider to be sexist and been sufficiently offended to chose another career .. please, we could have a very interesting albeit short conversation. Women really aren't [generally] as weak / stupid as some of your comments seem to imply.
>But if there were more women in open source software, it would be easier for women to get involved …
Yes, I agree 100%, it would be easier.
The a change in level of difficulty however, IMHO, would have very little impact on that 2%, if you think it would have an impact, I would love to hear "how". Being honest, anyone who gives up THAT easily, how long are they going to last and exactly how useful are they going to be?
>I don't think men have a special aptitude for watching football or writing computer programs
Mmm, watching football is not a skill or a talent, it's a waste of time, and once the context is changed you will realise that this IS something men have a special aptitude for. As far as writing computer programs goes, it's something [relatively speaking] very few people have a talent for (men or women) and IMHO, it's something Women could / can do very well, but often have no interest in doing. I guess in much the same way that men generally have little or no interest in reading Jane Austen.
"annie linux." ::
So, you once pretended to be female and found out how females were treated in the anonymous world of on-line gaming, please "get real". Firstly, it's a minority of ignorant rednecks who talk this way, and typically they're spotty kids who really don't know what a woman is. Secondly, there are MUCH bigger problems visible in such arenas .. as people think (and often rightly so) that what they say is totally anonymous, racist views will often come into play – and in many instances these are comments from more mature players. Frankly some of the things I hear are scary, sometimes people only have to sound black to get an on-line death threat.
>If I were a women …
Yeeeessssss… and there's the rub – you're not .. are you [?]
In which case, do you not think your comments about "what women want" to be a little out of place?
Anonymous Coward | Jul 16, 2009 | Reply
Yeah, that's right, Ricardo. Miguel placed mind-control chips into the backs of our necks at GUADEC last year.
Lefty | Jul 17, 2009 | Reply
Yes, Khaled, a very significant number of people are. And that's a good thing.
Lefty | Jul 17, 2009 | Reply