02.24.20
Posted in FSF at 11:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“You want to infiltrate those. Again, there’s two categories. There’s those that are controlled by vendors; like MSJ; we control that. And there’s those that are independent. [...] So that’s how you use journals that we control. The ones that third parties control, like the WinTech Journal, you want to infiltrate.”
–Microsoft's chief evangelist
Summary: It’s important to keep the FSF focused on its goals; that won’t be achieved by expelling those who insist on these goals
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Posted in FSF, GNU/Linux at 6:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Original blog post by the FSF's interim co-president
Previously:
Some people try to tell me that the criticism I’ve got, inside the FSF and outside, since the Free Software Sept 11, are not about my being supportive of RMS, but about my making public statements referencing him at all.
That must be the reason why public complaints are passed on to me when my postings are favorable to Richard as much as when they are disfavorable. Uhh, no, I only get such complaints when they’re favorable.
To wit, even before Richard left the board, I posted multiple requests for feedback from people all over the spectrum of opinions about Richard that I’d heard. This was deemed confusing by a number of people, because they couldn’t figure out my own position (by design), but what were the complaints that were passed on to me? You guessed it, about a post that was favorable to him.
Then, Richard left the board, and I, as acting president, posted a short note of gratitude to him, thanking him for his many years of service. Surely nobody would complain about that or give it much thought, right? Wrong!
On Ada Lovelace day, I posted a message praising and encouraging women to speak up against abuse, explicitly mentioning and including any who’d signed a joint statement against Richard, but that had been largely portrayed as against sexism. I got complaints even about that! It was labeled as confusing, because people couldn’t quite figure out how I supported Richard there, but still, somehow I must be doing so, so, bad Alex!
You think that’s funny?
Then, after leaving things quiet down for a while, I get a list of concerns “not about Richard”, in which 5 out of 6 entries are about public posts of mine that are scrutinized, twisted and criticized by the same people who cancelled Richard, for my daring say anything in his favor (or even the opposite, like the Ada Lovelace post), and that were a reason for concern because I was taking a public position divergent from what the board had guided the entire FSF to take.
Behold!, dear colleagues and readers: since I joined the FSF board, and quite possibly before that, the FSF board never made any decision to distance the FSF from Richard, to criticize him, or to celebrate his departure. Quite the opposite, if you look carefully at statements issued by the board, namely those on the relationship between FSF and GNU. Somehow, despite the decision by the board to stay the course after Richard left, the notion that got to FSF staff was that we were to move away from him, silence his supporters and support his silencers. I wonder how that came about…
Maybe it’s for similar reasons that, as soon as I wrote my first public posts after Richard left, despite the request to coordinate all public communications through a single person that wasn’t me, I got a few surprised messages from outsiders who wondered “what was going on, weren’t you guys supposed to keep quiet?!?” While others took it all over? No, I don’t think I ever agreed to that.
But no, it’s not a coup!
Or, as we say in Brazil, “mas não é golpe!” That phrase became popular in Brazil during former president Dilma Rousseff’s ousting and Lula’s judicial persecution, when the most outrageous and illegal moves were portrayed by the mainstream press, favorable to the coup, as perfectly legal and reasonable procedures.
So blong…
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Posted in Debian at 5:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Neutrality when it comes speech means no censorship
Debian’s censored message
Summary: The contemporary tendency to limit people’s freedom of speech (e.g. permission to express political views) means that while people may find software freedom they will lose other essential freedoms
IT HAS been disheartening to read last night’s post as well as prior ones about what Debian’s “elite” does to suppress the mention of Palestine as if it does not exist and should not be mentioned, however politely. This harms the perception that Free software fosters free speech and it prioritises some people’s feelings over others’.
As a Debian user myself, I’d like to see this censorious behaviour coming to an end. We’re all adults, we don’t always agree on everything, and the worst we can do is treat other adults like children who need to be protected (not from physical harm but emotional inconvenience). █
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, FSF at 4:35 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
When you attack Free Speech to supposedly protect Free software (or FSF) you are protecting neither
Free Speech, Free software
Summary: In the interest and motivation of exposing the true nature of things, Techrights will turn its attention to internal affairs at the higher echelons of the FSF, founded more than three and a half decades ago in MIT (where Stallman launched the GNU Project, developed the GNU Compiler Collection and a lot more foundational Free software)
THIS past weekend we highlighted the importance of intervention of some kind. Based on a bunch of recent blog posts from their Board — something that I noticed over at Diaspora — things had gone sour and there’s an effort to silence people to maintain the impression that everything is rosy. They might think that it’s for the better good of Free software, but it is bad for free speech (or Free Speech) and the same thing is happening in Debian right now.
Many people will refuse to talk about this; they want to avoid becoming the next target or persecution, smears, cancellation and so on.
The series won’t be about me or about us. We’ll make sure it’s factual and we invite sources with additional information of relevance to contact us discreetly. 6 years ago we dealt with secrecy at the European Patent Office (EPO), where staff representatives — sometimes even judges — were attacked and fellow examiners were threatened to prevent ‘leakage’ to the media.
“Transparency isn’t so scary a thing when what you’re up to isn’t at all nefarious.”Now, we don’t encourage leaking anything. But as people now know (it’s common knowledge), there’s a degree of secrecy at Debian (secret mailing lists and whispering — akin to secret agencies) and the FSF has a policy — imposed on people at the top (Brad Kuhn spoke about it last year as he departed) — preventing communication with media. This, in my view, is contrary to the values of the FSF. We need facts, not NDAs/embargoes/sanctions. Transparency isn’t so scary a thing when what you’re up to isn’t at all nefarious.
We’ll keep it polite and even cordial. We love GNU, we love the FSF, but some elements inside today’s FSF aren’t there for free speech and maybe not for software freedom, either. █
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