Re: Support RMS

[Yuchen Pei]

I agree with you we should take feedback seriously, however:

> Georgia's line is exceptionally important: "…the fact that he 
> faced
> consequences for his creepy Epdtein-adjacent comments and not 
> the
> decades of shitty behavior…"
>
> These are not people who are dogpiling on hearsay or gotcha 
> online
> statements or whatever else. Those anti-patterns do indeed 
> happen, and
> they polluted and harmed the credibility of the recent open 
> letter
> against RMS. But here we have people who fully understand the 
> unfairness
> and yet can express from extensive personal experience the 
> *actual*
> reasons why RMS's leadership is problematic.

In the same Twitter thread, she also told people that she signed 
the "open letter", which is based on hearsay and gotcha online 
statements.

> As someone who deeply and profoundly respects RMS for various 
> reasons, I
> still don't just simply support his leadership role. I do not 
> want him
> banished, I want him to learn and do better on his pain 
> points. I don't
> want to be naive though, efforts in this direction have 
> obviously been
> done for years and not been enough.
>
> I would like to continue to get RMS' insightful and pointed 
> perspectives
> without having him lead the organization. I would like him to 
> live in
> the zone where his genius most thrives and he contributes the 
> most, and
> I suggest that the other roles he has had would be better filled 
> by others.

If we do not take a stand against character assassination, we may 
lose the organisation and RMS's ability to provide insightful and 
pointed perspectives.

> If we want a resilient movement, we need to be really open to 
> engaging
> with complaints. An organization that defends the status quo 
> against
> such critics is like the NSA attacking Ed Snowden and people 
> insinuating
> that Snowden is working for Russia (similar to people talking 
> about how
> Deb now works for the OSI and the OSI is connected to 
> corporations).
>
> I'm not suggesting deference to the outside unfair critics, the 
> people
> who do indeed levy unfair attacks, mine quotes, spread FUD, 
> etc. That
> stuff can be real, and we need to defend against it.
>
> But people like Deb are our whistleblowers, they are insiders 
> who are
> bringing attention to serious issues. If we ignore or attack
> whistleblowers, we will fail to learn important lessons. This 
> attitude
> can be fatal to a movement.

This is a terrible analogy. Ed Snowden was risking his life 
spearheading a fight against a powerful government body, but 
accusing a person from a safe distance while that person is being 
attacked in all directions is a different matter.

> In solidarity,
> Aaron Wolf
> (FSF member since 2014, co-founder of Snowdrift.coop)

Again, I agree that we need all perspectives and we should value 
all feedback, including those from Deb and Georgia that are not 
based on falsehood. But I also don't think it is helpful to raise 
concerns about someone who is besieged.

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