"Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones..."

Summary: Zen of Free software isn't possible to attain and also secure when people look to disrupt projects by interjecting into them unnecessary divisiveness that did not exist beforehand (until they came)

Tolerance is a four-letter word (well, not literally) and people keep misusing that word to justify actual exclusion of people, whom they deem intolerant and thus unworthy of inclusion (another four-letter word). People who disagree with oneself will typically be viewed as "shit people" by one's own standards. Society so divisive encourages this kind of thinking. The FSF -- like Nobel committees -- seems to be distributing awards (especially the "Peace" one) for political reasons rather than technical reasons. People on the right like to call that "virtue-signalling", whereas people on the left would gladly ban people for merely bringing up such a term (along with "snowflake" or others).

"This loaded question and controversial post basically suggests/insinuates that a conference about Richard Stallman's movement is "unsafe" because... of Stallman himself?"We don't gravitate towards 'wings' because we prefer to focus on the underlying issues, not on ideological hammers that facilitate the silencing of influential people. In an honest society with open (or frank) debates bad ideas will perish based on their weakness/es. To be very clear, we think Donald Trump is a horrible person (pretty much all of us who are associated with this site agree on that) and had we done endorsements like more political news sites, we'd likely say, "vote Biden in swing states just to get rid of the biggest monster/mobster..."

Back to the original topic now, moments ago we published this article about "CommitChange" (whose change?); again, no 'wings' being accounted for, what we're dealing with here seems like provocation if not trolling. What is this?

This loaded question and controversial post basically suggests/insinuates that a conference about Richard Stallman's movement is "unsafe" because... of Stallman himself? Wait, what?!?!

How does one deal with such non sequitur?

The old saying goes, "don't feed the trolls..."

But leaving this uncorrected can also do/risk harm. To be clear, we're not talking exclusively about Eric Schultz here, we just use that as an example. Oh, and thank you, sir, for reminding us all that Eric is the name of men, not women. The photograph too leaves no room for ambiguity.

The only missing thing here is echoes (like (((Eric Schultz))) or whatever, showing solidarity) to remind us that he opposes Nazis as well. We get it, Eric. You're a very, very, very good and inclusive person. So inclusive in fact that you go out of your way to remove longtime leaders of the Free software world, in the same way IBM did. Unlike IBM, you did not actively help the Nazis. IBM also helped purge black people who dared 'pollute' white genetics (back when eugenics was all the rage).

CommitChange... when white people become a small minority (this from the front page of the CommitChange site):

No men, either. IBM has long insisted that it wants more women and works to incorporate them into the workforce, relying on people's gullibility/laziness (not wanting to check for oneself; IBM hardly lets any woman have a say in the company; it's mostly a marketing/political prop to them).

Honest calls for societal reform need to start with honest discussions about real facts, not a bunch of nonsense like the FSF's event being "unsafe" and the FSF having too few women (they have a lot more than IBM's leadership team and a much higher women/men ratio than GNU/Free software developers).

"Honest calls for societal reform need to start with honest discussions about real facts..."This seems like a growing problem for Free software endeavours; sure, the lack of women and ethnic minorities is a problem, but the exploitation of women and ethnic minorities to oust leaders is also a problem. Can we talk about this issue? Can we bring it up without being slandered as a bunch of testosterone-filled chauvinists? Here's an inconvenient fact to some of these provocateurs (who often refer to themselves as "social justice warriors"): some of our associates are women, most aren't what's considered "white" (a loaded term), and they mostly agree with us on this particular subject. It does no good to antiracists and feminists when their causes are hijacked to create leadership vacuums, ushering in corporate monopolies to fill the gap. The caricature of opinionated, predatory and "dirty" middle-aged men has long been convenient for those looking to dismiss their critics without as much as an open debate (ESR, for instance, was just banned outright). ⬆