DeVault "Closes Down His Mailing Lists Every Time There's a Scandal" and Also Censors Messages

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 02, 2024

Censorious code hosting platform

SOMEONE has told us that Drew DeVault "closes down his mailing lists every time there's a scandal. He did it just after the Stallman Report release, when someone posted all of the claims about him on the sourcehut discussion list." Here is a message sent 13 days ago: (and suppressed, censored)

Unlike Drew Devault, apparently:
https://web.archive.org/web/*/rms-draft-84eb252.drewdevault.com


> This is part of a larger campaign of harassment targetting me stemming
> from the belief that I was involved in publishing a report on Richard
> Stallman, in an effort to harass and discredit me and in particular to
> distract attention away from this report.


It certainly *appears that* the report was written by or maintained by
Drew Devault, given that a subdomain of drewdevault.com is named
rms-draft-84eb252 and contains a draft of the report.  If I'm misreading
the evidence somehow, I'd be happy to walk back my statements, because I
care about the truth more than I care to defend RMS.


Regardless of what you think of Stallman, it is obvious that Devault has
an almost psychopathic obsession with him, with dozens of posts about
the Stallman Report on the Fediverse.


And as for all the other claims made about Drew -- you know which ones
I'm talking about because they were aired on this list earlier today, I
don't want to hear it.  That's incendiary witch hunt fodder.  I will
defend Drew from an online torch and pitchfork mob in the same breath
that I damn him for compiling a juicy anonymous tell-all dossier in
order to incite his own torch and pitchfork mob and then refusing to cop
to it.


Don't worry about banning me; I know where the door is, and I'll be
seeing myself out.

Well, the "server rejected it with a 500 error code," so it was likely monitored and culled.

We've heard from people who canceled their sourcehut account since then (no reason specified because it was not possible).

These attacks on the FSF (it's not about RMS) always backfire. Why don't they learn from history? █