Federal Felony: OSI President promoted Civil Disorder at FrOSCon (Molly de Blanc again)
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock.
With International Women's Day on the horizon, the equality of women should be at the front of our minds. One of the more interesting cases of equality is the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage. Some people expressed total opposition to the death sentence for any criminal, regardless of gender. At the same time, there was a lobby to see Ethel given a lighter sentence or presidential pardon on the basis of her gender.
Many people petition the US president for pardon and very few receive a response. In this particular case, Eisenhower suggested that if Ethel Rosenberg was permitted to live and eventually freed, the Soviets would recruit future spies who were female.
From time to time, I've drawn attention to the drawing the OSI President created and displayed in a talk at FrOSCon, Germany in 2019. The prosecution of Donald Trump supporters for the US Capitol riots of 6 January has created fresh awareness of the federal felony crime of Civil disorder. Here is the legal definition of the crime:
A public disturbance involving acts of violence by assemblages of three or more persons, which causes an immediate danger of or results in damage or injury to the property or person of any individual.
That is exactly what the OSI President drew for us.
Three people pushing a real developer.
Three people pushing an elected representative.
Three people pushing their boss. Three people pushing their landlord. These are all crimes. They are all a felony.
The riot resulted in multiple deaths. Four police officers subsequently committed suicide. We have deaths and suicides in the world of open source too and pushing was a factor.
One of the Trumpists convicted of the crime was Taylor James Johnatakis. The judge told him that his defense was Gobbledygook. We can say the same thing for the snake-oil approach to human relations that is poisoning the free software community under the guise of having a "Code of Conduct".
Here we can see much the same thing, three Trumpists are pushing a police officer:
Thanks to the strong words of the judge, the Gobbledygook case was widely publicized in the media. Many of the news reports described Taylor James Johnatakis as somebody who didn't physically attack the police himself, he stood back with his megaphone and egged on other rioters. Using a megaphone or using the name of the OSI as a platform is much the same thing.
Here is the video of Molly's words:
We can use our collective power to push others