On Apr 15, 2021, Aaron Wolf <wolft...@riseup.net> wrote: > That RMS turns some people away is not debatable.
I'm willing to accept that as a premise. It would take more than a saint (which he is ;-) to not turn anyone whatsoever away. Now let's look into the effects of defaming him, shall we? False accusations as the ones that have been made are not taken lightly. People who believe them are likely to be turned away not just from the FSF, but from any public appearance by RMS as leader or regular participant in the movement he founded. If we accept the premise that RMS's misbehavior drives people away, then attributing far worse misbehavior to him drives more people away from the movement. Conversely, people who do NOT believe the false accusations perceive intolerance and a toxic atmosphere being supported by a significant fraction of the movement. If we accept the premise that misbehavior attributed to RMS drives people away, then it's hard to dispute that the displays of intolerance and toxic atmosphere will also drive people away, probably in a larger magnitude. That's why I find it so hard to believe that the poeple carrying out these actions are acting out of love for the Free Software movement. Even if they were sure their actions would manage to deprive the whole movement from RMS's alleged negative influence, getting him to commit suicide or somesuch, we'd lose the "stallman was right" wisdom, and get the negative publicity of being such a toxic environment that the founder was driven to suicide. And since their actions have failed, we're left with a defamed leader, a divided community, and a large number of lying and toxic participants who purport to have acted in good faith for the movement, but that were only competent enough to have caused great damage :-( RMS is forever associated with the movement. The best those who love the movement have to do is to restore his defamed image. Those who don't wish to be associated with him, but that support the ideas behind the movement, are better off finding ways to support the ideas without interacting with him, but also without defaming him. As for those who wish to destroy the movement... I don't really want to give them any useful advice. -- Alexandre Oliva, happy hacker https://FSFLA.org/blogs/lxo/ Free Software Activist GNU Toolchain Engineer Vim, Vi, Voltei pro Emacs -- GNUlius Caesar _______________________________________________ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss