On Fri Apr 16, 2021 at 3:47 AM BST, Ian Lance Taylor via Gcc wrote: > This is about work. There are social aspects to free software, but > it's not fundamentally a social activity. It's about getting > something done, and for many people it's their job. For the sake of > argument, I'm going to temporarily set aside all consideration of how > people should behave in a professional setting, not because it doesn't > matter, but just to try to clarify matters. Let's just think about > the project. > > We want free software to succeed. Free software is more likely to > succeed if more people work on it. If you are a volunteer, as many > are, you can choose to spend your time on the project where you have > to short-stop unwelcome advances, where you are required to deal with > "men with poor social skills." Or you can choose to spend your time > on the project where people treat you with respect. Which one do you > choose?
The one where technical excellence is prioritized over social skills, personally. If I have a choice between partaking in a project where I have to walk on eggshells for fear of people coming with torches and pitchforks to expel me because I was a bit too harsh in my critique or posted an opinion on my personal blog which wasn't something they agreed with, or a project where some of the other people are people I wouldn't share a beer with but the technical standard is high and free expression is generally valued, I would choose the latter. This comes down to culture. I did not grow up in a culture where I was taught that other people need to wrap me in cotton wool. I grew up in a culture where arguments were judged on merit and generally as people we accepted other peoples' rights to hold shitty opinions. For many of us, the latter is more comfortable. > Or perhaps you have a job that requires you to work on free software. > Now, if you work on a project where the people act like RMS, you are > being forced by your employer to work in a space where you face > unwelcome advances and men who have "trouble recognizing boundaries." > That's textbook hostile environment, and a set up for you to sue your > employer. So your employer will never ask anyone to work on a project > where people act like that--at least, they won't do it more than once. I have never seen RMS act like that in a technical setting though, and if he did, I think that would be a valid reason to remove him from the mailing list and demand that GNU chooses someone else to represent itself when communicating with GCC. > In other words, having people who act in the way that you describe RMS > as acting is actively harmful for a free software project, because it > will discourage people from working on it. > > (Entirely separately, I don't get the slant of your whole e-mail. You > can put up with RMS despite the boorish behavior you describe. Great. > You're a saint. Why do you expect everyone else to be a saint? I > don't meet with people who act like that, not more than once. Life is > too short. I'll work with them if I must, but not if I don't have > to.) I don't think anyone needs to be a saint, but we do need to be able to collaborate with people from different cultural, political, and personal backgrounds to our own. Enforcing a social code which is exclusive to the coasts of the United States on a global community seems to me to be even more exclusionary than allowing people with poor social skills. >>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<