On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 10:31 AM David Malcolm via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> wrote: > > I still admire much of what RMS has written, and have spent much of my > career trying to implement part of a vision inspired by him. I'm sad > about the way things have turned out. Twitter seems to turn everything > into a pitched battle between two camps. I hope there's room for a > nuanced view of him - the good and the less good. I don't know what > role he should have, but I think it should not be a leadership one, and > I think the FSF and GNU need to greatly change to stay relevant, > including on governance and on succession plans. None of us are > getting any younger, and the vision of the FSF and GNU seems to me to > be stuck in the 1990s (or earlier).
Thanks, that is well put. That describes my own feelings as well. To be very blunt, I don't know how to read https://www.fsf.org/news/rms-addresses-the-free-software-community and think "the person who wrote this should be in a leadership role." I don't think RMS is a bad person. I think that RMS can still have a great deal to contribute to free software as a programmer and as a philosopher. But those are not the words of a leader. Leadership is about people: understanding what people need, understanding how to motivate them toward a shared goal. What I see in that essay is somebody who doesn't understand people very well, and is not all that interested in learning. Ian
