Nadine Strossen, former ACLU president, on canceling RMS (2020)

Here is the thread in question: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1172283772428906496.html

This is how societies work when there's no rule of law (or no respect for it, or insufficient coverage or enforcement of the issue). Things get really ugly really fast.

I think that this is just an attempt at explaining away toxic behavior without taking responsibility for it.

People in the OSS community can, at times, glorify toxic behavior. I know people who take it as a badge of honor to "speak the truth", "speak directly", or "have no filter". Speaking directly and speaking the truth are good ideals to have, but if you really want to PROVE that you speak the truth and don't fear social pressures, what better way to do it than to be rude or insensitive to people?

Take Mr. X, who is outraged by Microsoft's behavior and refuses to buy Microsoft's products, tells other people about his problems with Microsoft, and tells everyone to use FOSS alternatives? Now, Mr. X also thinks that it's stupid to believe in god, and is not afraid to say it to everyone he meets. He's suddenly changed from "FOSS advocate" to "toxic workplace on legs".

This is by no means exclusive to the FOSS community. Think of the product manager who styles himself a Steve Jobs type, who abuses his staff in the style of Steve Jobs. These aren't examples I'm picking out of a hat; these are real people.

That's a fascinating take, but I don't think it's particularly related to what actually happened. I wasn't toxic because of some Microsoft FUD, I was toxic because I was a teenager with low empathy who hadn't learned things yet. I grew out of it.

Lots of people in open source were never particularly toxic, and there's no reason they should have been. Even granting the existence of the external stress (and it really was NOT that big a deal), not everyone reacts to stress by treating people badly. Furthermore, people who didn't grow up around those OSS advocates have exactly the same problems sometimes, for the same reason that people in every field of human endeavor have those problems sometimes.

Hmm. I think RMS’s anti-establishment push was so much earlier (mostly against Bell Labs, etc.) that “the 90s” don’t really apply.

If anything, it’s just his personality: he takes hardline positions and holds onto them. You might be right about hardliners being the only folks who have enough persistence to come through (vis a vis survivorship bias), but then you’re also just including the leaders of those companies you mentioned: Bill Gates and Larry Ellison were famously combative, competitive, and all sorts of other words.

TBH, I has been participating in open source since the 1990s, and I never seen the actual stigma like you describe. Yes, OSS projects were laughed at, dismissed as hobbyist and unserious, insinuated to be low quality and "worth exactly how much you pay for it" - all that happened all the time. But implying OSS people are mentally ill... maybe somebody did it, but I've never seen it. And I did work with people from Microsoft, Oracle, etc. - albeit from the parts that were more OSS-friendly. But I think if it was indeed that widespread I'd hear about it. RMS certainly had a reputation to be an unusual character - even in OSS circles - but I didn't see it wielded as a weapon agains OSS - at least not until the cancel culture started.

And yes, there were plenty of assholes in OSS (as there were outside) and it was mostly young people, many of whom confused being rude with being honest and direct, but I don't think it had anything to do with either Microsoft or mental illness. It had to do with being young and unexperienced and trying to form a new culture online where none existed before.

Careful now, the world missed out on all of her genius open source in the 90s, and are obviously much worse off.

Working with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is definitely not a “PC allocade”. They are the main organization that tries, from a legal perspective, to protect people from being canceled for their speech at colleges in the US.

It shouldn't be, but it surely helps to not be eaten by piranhas immediately. Somebody without this kind of shield - especially somebody, say, having a misfortune of being a male and of European descent - might be. I personally have been told many times that I do not get to have opinion about cancel culture and ideology because of my identity. Having credentials that even PC zealots can't deny surely helps to make it harder to dismiss her.

Once again, brevity is the soul of wit. Well played.

epic comment :)

Stallman clearly has issues as many have attested. But reading these specific excerpts of his now... they just read like tone-deaf pedantry. Sarah Mei's response to someone else who pointed this out in a leveled, non-confrontational manner, of

> That means you are also racist, misogynist, and a colonial apologist. Nice job

just comes off as needlessly toxic escalation intended to shut down dialogue.

I have several autistic friends and see this sort of interaction now and then. They will state some observation or make an argument rooted in logical pedantry, not pushing any political agenda (or, supporting certain politics but trying to cast it in a more logical framework). Someone takes offense at this and accuses them of being racist/misogynist/whatever. They are hurt. The conversation is not advanced. Both sides lose. Chalk it up to "normies" just... completely not understanding the autistic approach to the world I guess. I wish political activists were less reactive against those who just want to explore -- and ultimately strengthen -- ideas.

Nadine's point was that people should not be unduly punished for making intellectual arguments for or against anything. "Being punished for what they say" is precisely what happened to Stallman.

>People need to be accountable for what they say, not what people believe they think.

This sounds like a very Orwellian way of saying people shouldn't be fired for wrong-think if they profusely apologize afterwards. Is that what you mean?

Yes. https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa...

(Above is a piece by someone who worked with RMS for years, explaining why it was not this one event that got him canned, but a long pattern of poor behavior, which he partially bore witness to)

The dude absentmindedly eats toe jam. He's um... touched. It really shouldn't be a surprising he lacks social cues, and probably has no idea how to interact with women besides blurting out the first dumb thought that comes to his head. If he isn't sexually or physically assaulting people, cut the guy some slack, and realize some of our genius are kinda nuts.

Actually, it just comes off as ex-post-facto rationalization of doing something hasty and mean.