Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

Great to know. Out of all the baseless accusations I think the worst thing done here was that RMS announced it himself instead of the FSF.

--RMS addresses the free software community--

by Richard Stallman — Published on Apr 12, 2021 10:24 AM

Ever since my teenage years, I felt as if there were a filmy curtain separating me from other people my age. I understood the words of their conversations, but I could not grasp why they said what they did. Much later I realized that I didn't understand the subtle cues that other people were responding to.

Later in life, I discovered that some people had negative reactions to my behavior, which I did not even know about. Tending to be direct and honest with my thoughts, I sometimes made others uncomfortable or even offended them -- especially women. This was not a choice: I didn't understand the problem enough to know which choices there were.

Sometimes I lost my temper because I didn't have the social skills to avoid it. Some people could cope with this; others were hurt. I apologize to each of them. Please direct your criticism at me, not at the Free Software Foundation.

Occasionally I learned something about relationships and social skills, so over the years I've found ways to get better at these situations. When people help me understand an aspect of what went wrong, and that shows me a way of treating people better, I teach myself to recognize when I should act that way. I keep making this effort, and over time, I improve.

Some have described me as being "tone-deaf," and that is fair. With my difficulty in understanding social cues, that tends to happen. For instance, I defended Professor Minsky on an M.I.T. mailing list after someone leaped to the conclusion that he was just guilty as Jeffrey Epstein. To my surprise, some thought my message defended Epstein. As I had stated previously, Epstein is a serial rapist, and rapists should be punished. I wish for his victims and those harmed by him to receive justice.

False accusations -- real or imaginary, against me or against others -- especially anger me. I knew Minsky only distantly, but seeing him unjustly accused made me spring to his defense. I would have done it for anyone. Police brutality makes me angry, but when the cops lie about their victims afterwards, that false accusation is the ultimate outrage for me. I condemn racism and sexism, including their systemic forms, so when people say I don't, that hurts too.

It was right for me to talk about the injustice to Minsky, but it was tone-deaf that I didn't acknowledge as context the injustice that Epstein did to women or the pain that caused.

I've learned something from this about how to be kind to people who have been hurt. In the future, that will help me be kind to people in other situations, which is what I hope to do.

Impossible.The best thing I have learned in the last 15 years is that there is no medicine for idiots.
Observe some idiots for 15 years and you'll see that they never change.
If your house is surrounded by them, it would be very easy to understand it.
I think I already understood enough this several years ago. I don't see why I need to learn any more about it.
Whether you tell your idiot boss that he's an idiot explicitly or indirectly, nothing will change. In a world where you can't say stupid to stupid, everyone struggles with communication. It is the idiots who cannot clearly say stupid to their idiot bosses who are making the world a place where people cannot clearly say stupid to their idiots, not people who clearly say stupid to stupids.

On Stallman's personal web page, there's a link to a petition to support RMS. Other links are listed below.

https://stallman.org/

https://stallmansupport.org/

https://stallmansupport.org/who-is-richard-stallman.html

https://stallmansupport.org/comments-in-support-of-richard-stallman.html

https://stallmansupport.org/articles-in-support-of-richard-stallman.html

I am very happy to see that Richard Stallman has returned to the FSF Board. I have started donating to the FSF again with my Annual Membership.

I tried to find my old post regarding his leaving so that I could reply to it now that I saw that he has returned and saw that the old topic has been locked. That is just as well, because I was in a very sad place when I wrote that topic.

I was so happy to read about Stallman's return. It's really difficult to try to put that joy into words. In this world, it is basically unheard of for places to do the right thing and bring somebody back like that. I am thirty two years old and have honestly become pretty jaded with the world at this point. I honestly didn't expect that to happen at all and gave up all hope.

It's nice to see that the FSF really does care and that Stallman is working with them again now. It only felt right to me to start my membership again, reading about all that has happened sense they brought Stallman back. It was a choice that cost them a lot sense red hat pulled their funding over it. I want to help the FSF for having the courage do the right thing in the face of the backlash that was no doubt going to fallow.

This is no doubt a trying time for them. But, an organization that is willing to stand for its principles is one that deserves my support. I see hope again in this movement and I feel it is important that I say so here.