---------------------
Christopher Dimech
General Administrator - Naiad Informatics - GNU Project (Geocomputation)
- Geophysical Simulation
- Geological Subsurface Mapping
- Disaster Preparedness and Mitigation
- Natural Resource Exploration and Production
- Free Software Advocacy
> Sent: Monday, March 29, 2021 at 6:13 AM
> From: "Mark Wielaard" <m...@klomp.org>
> To: "JeanHeyd Meneide" <phdoftheho...@gmail.com>
> Cc: "GCC Development" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>, "Nathan Sidwell" <nat...@acm.org>
> Subject: Re: Remove RMS from the GCC Steering Committee
>
> Hi,
>
> On Sun, Mar 28, 2021 at 10:33:15AM -0400, JeanHeyd Meneide wrote:
> > This is unacceptable. The only reason I was told - as early as
> > yesterday, by Free Software advocates, to my socially distanced face -
> > that Stallman was still here is because he was powerless and had no
> > effect on the project. That it was run by the caring,
> > community-oriented stewardship of the "real volunteers" doing the
> > "actual work".
>
> I do not think those people were lying or trying to deceive you. This
> is what we hope the actual situation is. But...
>
> > Further digging into Stallman's own words and behavior also
> > reveals that he continues to flex this influence throughout the
> > project (and in other places), showing up (generally unsolicited) into
> > places to do this kind of gross and extreme harassment and engaging in
> > canceling our own hardworking contributors that actually write code
> > and do work. This is not a person who is just here for "historical
> > reasons" and who has "no power"; this is an active, perpetual threat
> > to hardworking and contributing members of the Free Software movement.
>
> He does indeed show up randomly claiming authority even if the GNU
> community has told him no. And it is important to say upfront he has
> no authority and that his attempts to cancel the work of hardworking
> GNU contributors is unwelcome. IMHO for the GCC community this means
> to be explicit he doesn't have any authority and he shouldn't be on
> the GCC steering committee.
>
> > I will never, ever contribute another line of code, another
> > proposal implementation[6], another optimization, or another
> > new/better library implementation to GCC and all of its affiliated
> > projects, including the compilers, glibc, libstdc++, the potential
> > upcoming Rust implementation, and more until this problem is not
> > "address", but *fixed*. If you never fix it, I will never return.
> >
> > Wish you and your community all the best in sorting this out,
>
> Thanks. I do hope we can finally fix this and welcome you back.
The attacks against Richard Stallman do not stem from any of his actual
statements. Instead, his statements have been given a subversive context
that fits into your narrative that wishes to smear him, followed a demand
that your interpretation of his words be considered canon — even though
evidence to the contrary summarily disproves your position.
Stallman’s work and advocacy speaks for itself; and this holds true for anyone
in the field of technology, where a person’s work is judged by a system of
meritocracy.
Linus Torvalds was also famously criticized by those who took offense to his
no-nonsense attitude and firm speech. Did the quality of the Linux kernel
suffer? Was being unoffensive a requirement as maintainer? The answer is
NO.
Stallman has never been accused of doing physical harm to anyone, and therefore
any assumptions about the harmful nature or context of his words should not be
conflated with his professional capacity to hold a leadership role within the
FSF,
the very organization that he founded.
> Cheers,
>
> Mark
>
