Bonum Certa Men Certa

Letter of Support for Richard Stallman - Doing Better in Community

From Karrie Peterson[1]



Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 4.0) for this page, albeit Peterson's article may be licensed differently.



How do you support someone you’ve known for years who is unfairly attacked and publicly maligned? Subjected to a mass campaign of accusations and name-calling by people who demonstrably don’t know or purposely disregard the facts? How do you contribute to fairness and understanding without just “joining a side, let’s see who wins?”



This letter of support for RMS is my effort. Public support in the face of unfair public attack seems necessary to me, and my hope is to put some energy toward better community dialog.



My letter is for people who are still struggling, as I am, to find the way forward, to learn from this painful and harmful series of events. To heal and redress. To nourish a welcoming and inclusive community rather than hurl names at one another and ostracize people.



I’m not addressing the way journalists misrepresented RMS, that seems unquestionably wrong and not debatable. I’m focused instead on the painful consequences for our liberation movements of leaping to judgment, weaponizing buzzwords and treating accusations as evidence.



What happened to RMS, in the maelstrom following the Epstein scandal, struck me as a disinformation campaign. The loudest attacks on RMS followed patterns I’ve experienced myself in some subcultures. Those patterns of “winners vs. losers” and macho name-calling, pushing for “taking sides” rather than for understanding and reflection. All of this was re-upped in the same vicious manner in March 2021, when Richard’s return to the FSF was announced.



Richard, on the other hand, has reflected, admitted his own concern for harm he may have done, and never resorted to any name calling despite the cost he has personally borne as a result of the attacks on him.



My letter addresses two topics, my personal experiences with RMS and my sense of community fairness.



Personal experience



When I first heard Richard Stallman speak, in San Diego in 2002, he was on a platform with Lawrence Lessig. When RMS spoke, I thought “This is genius.” RMS thinks about and works on stuff I will never fully understand but in his presentation that day, he drew me in with his uncompromising principles, ability to think through systems and their consequences, and the directness and simplicity of his language—no academic jargon or superiority. His tone was “and you can do this too, you can join in.”



As a newbie librarian, what I was hearing at my university library was that these monopolistic publishers putting human knowledge behind paywalls and proprietary platforms were our friends and that libraries—whose social mission is to share and preserve knowledge—could no longer fully lead our own mission in the digital age, we’d have to give over core parts of our mission to for-profit companies. In the face of suffocating, neo-liberal, “let’s be realistic” horribleness that dominated those conversations, RMS represented a lifeline, and I began to find others who had a vision of freedom I could share.



Long after I heard RMS speak, I got a job at MIT. I saw RMS on campus one day and, I introduced myself and gushed in a kind of goofy way about how much his work had meant to me as a librarian. RMS was so kind! I don’t actually remember how we re-connected after that, but I found he was open to being friends and sometimes including me in his social gatherings or sharing work-in-progress writing.



And of course, RMS pushed me to do more than just support free software in the abstract—he got me reading, joining the FSF, and enlisting other people to support free software.



I didn’t always relate to Richard’s style at first, and I remember being puzzled by the “pleasure card” until he explained the peculiar humor in it. I treasure that card now, maybe it’s an age thing but I love his sense of humor. I also eventually came to find his absolutely logical approach quite relaxing, e.g. when he would say “I can’t answer your question, it doesn’t make sense to me.” With so much illogic about, logic can be wonderfully relaxing. In our conversations, he might say something like “that’s just wrong” and yet it never struck me as arrogant because he would explain and hear me out. Over the course of being his friend, I moved from kind of tolerating his different way of thinking to embracing and valuing the way his mind works. #card



When the maelstrom erupted, I reached out and was personally supportive to Richard as you would be to any friend in need. At the same time, I am a feminist and committed to social justice, so I dived in and read what I could, tried to figure out for myself what was happening. After all, Richard is my friend and an intellectual mentor, he is not my cult leader. So I wanted to understand before I engaged.



I made myself read a lot of things aimed at RMS that disgusted me and made me sad, some stories that made me feel sorry for people, and many things that made me angry. I read new things and re-read old things RMS has written. I didn’t see anything that justified the virulent attacks, all I saw was a lot of dirty fighting.



Personally, I’m just left with this worry: that we’ll refuse to listen to, consider and benefit from diversity of opinions in our movements because, well, we just don’t want to.



I’m asking myself, can we really learn to be inclusive when thinking differently is involved?



Opinions about community and the struggle for freedom



Will we achieve a free society without free software? I don’t think so.



Does ubiquitous free software require a strong movement? Yes, I believe this, given what we’re up against. Fighting ubiquitous surveillance and the dangers of proprietary software is a global struggle.



When conflict within liberation movements is not principled, I think it’s dangerous. What I observed in the ad hominem attacks on RMS looked a lot like clique behavior and, in some cases, made mewonder about people using personal attacks to try and prevail in political differences.



I don't agree with stuff like this: arguments with RMS that were formulated as attacks, as if no reasonable person could be allowed to disagree. Equating expression of opinion as being personally harmed. Taking on the mantle of speaking for whole populations, unasked. I’m not repeating the postings I saw because aggression like that is traumatizing. Like so many others, I am soul weary of being oppressed by the system and then further drained by cliques, vile name-calling and divisive infighting.



Disoriented communities and divisiveness serve somebody’s agenda, I wonder whose. Especially when dialog, and learning and growth are an option.



I want to see Richard’s leadership affirmed, his principled and revolutionary thinking understood, his humanity acknowledged and respected, and his contributions used and built on. I want that because I want free software to be normalized as essential to our liberation. The movement needs the best thinkers working together and resolving differences in principled ways.



The Establishment puts pressure on freedom movements in ways that are sometimes hard to detect, but that pressure is felt and has its desired effects. Historically, that pressure lures some of us away with rewards, drives others out with calumny and viciousness, and creates distrust and disorientation to undermine our organizations. We have all seen this over and over again. With AI and machine learning on the rise and spreading rapidly into surveillance of our civic and personal lives, the stakes for free software and transparent computing are incredibly high.



Freedom struggles depend on the ability of people to come together, in solidarity, for a common purpose. The revolutionary ideas of free software will help us get free if we learn and grow together and fundamentally get along with mutual respect.



It’s always been up to us, how this story goes.






1. With a background in political and community organizing, Karrie Peterson (she, her, hers) is the Head, Liaison, and Instruction & Reference Services at MIT Libraries[2]. Her support for gender fluidity goes back more than 50 years, her understanding of intersectionality comes from the original publishing of the Combahee River Collective Statement, and she has been a socialist feminist and supporter of land back and indigenous peoples’ sovereignty since she was a teenager in the 1970’s.



Peterson has stated: The opinions expressed here are my own, I am not speaking for anyone else.






References and Notes





  1. ORCID - Karrie Peterson. (Archived)

Recent Techrights' Posts

Promoting Microsoft Windows With LLM Slop
What is the policy at BetaNews regarding LLM slop?
Alex Oliva, the Potential 'Successor' of RMS, Has a New Web Site
More freedom for Alex Oliva
 
Links 16/02/2025: Nostalgia for Physical Media and the US Government Actively Promotes Pro-Kremlin Politicians in the EU
Links for the day
Gemini Links 16/02/2025:Life, Cynicism, and languages
Links for the day
Links 16/02/2025: Oligarchs "Collect Your Data and Control Your World", Global Temperatures Shoot Up
Links for the day
Links 16/02/2025: "Microsoft Is Laying Off Employees" and Internal Dissent Brewing at Facebook Over Regime Complicity
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 15, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, February 15, 2025
Links 15/02/2025: Harms to Health, Public Domain, and More
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/02/2025: On Autistic People, AuraGem Over HTTPS
Links for the day
The Cyber Show (C|S) Speaks of the "Rise of the Nerd Reich."
This 'Valentine Episode' is quite good
Azure is Turning 17 This Year, Still Losing Money and Staff
Hallmark of pyramid schemes, deriving "value" out of things that do not really exist?
Strong Momentum for the Free Software Foundation (FSF) as Winter Approaches Its End in Boston or in the Northern Hemisphere
FSF's founder, Richard Stallman, gives another talk in Italy in 9 days from now
The 'Drunken Plagiarists' Are Harming Journalism About GNU/Linux
They lessen the incentive to do real journalism abut GNU/Linux
Female Nazis and racist Swiss women
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Richard Stallman on RISC-V and Free Hardware
Invidious is under attack by Google
Links 15/02/2025: Erasing of American Science and Tesla SLAPPing Critics
Links for the day
IDG 'Reviews' of GNU/Linux Now Contain LLM Slop
It's typically ads or commercials... or sometimes spin disguised as news
Gemini Links 15/02/2025: Spectacles and "Before Sunset", Moving Domains Out of the US
Links for the day
Microsoft Has Only $17,482 Million Left, "Cash on Hand" Sank 40 Billion Dollars in 2 Years
Microsoft runs low on money in the bank
YouTube Layoffs Mean That YouTube is Still Losing a Lot of Money (Net Income or Profit Almost Definitely Negative)
In more recent years Google defunded many vloggers
In Gopher and Gemini Protocol People Abandon Services Based in the United States
There's no resistance whatsoever
Python and Microsoft: Pandas Should Have Known OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Microsoft Excel Are Different and Competing Things
now we're meant to think that in order to open ODF files we need some functions with "Excel" in their name
Not Only Windows, Surface, and "Hey Hi" PCs; Microsoft's Hardware Ventures Are a Dumpster Fire; HoloLens Mixed Reality Hardware Now Axed Altogether and Staff is Miserable
Microsoft is in a terrible state
Certificate Authority (CA) Let's Encrypt Now Down to TEN (0.3% of the Whole) in Geminispace
The number of capsules that use Let's Encrypt is, according to Lupa, about to fall to single-digit figures
Links 15/02/2025: University Price Hikes and Copyright Action Against Slop Companies
Links for the day
Slopwatch: All Those New 'Articles' Are Fake and Crafted by Chatbots (LLM Slop)
Google News is promoting these as "Linux" news; they're not even made by humans
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 14, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, February 14, 2025
Gemini Links 14/02/2025: Mysterious Friend and "Eight by Eight"
Links for the day
They Will Never Leave Linus Torvalds Alone, Rust is Just Another Way to Cause Instability and Infighting in Linux
We already identified the Rust "community" as troublemakers more than 5 years ago and we wrote about the evidence
Apple: Social Justice or Social Nationalism?
Remember to buy Apple, folks
Links 14/02/2025: Mass Layoffs at Sophos, Chatbots Failing Very Badly, "DOGE as a National Cyberattack"
Links for the day
Moving Away From Certificate Authorities (CAs) Like Let's Encrypt Means Taking Away From the US Government the Power to 'Censor' Sites by Revoking Certificates
Gemini capsule is cheap to run and easy (easier than a Web site) to maintain. More people disillusioned and frustrated with social control media flock to it.
BetaNews' Managing Editor Wayne William Took Charge of GNU/Linux Articles and His Articles Are Real (He Actually Wrote Them)
We are frankly relieved to see that Wayne William recognised the problem and did something about it
Links 14/02/2025: Publicity Rights Violated (ByteDance), Bribes to Trump Passed via Social Control Media 'Settlements' Again
Links for the day
Gemini Links 14/02/2025: Constitution, Cosmic DE, and More
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Anti-Linux Articles Published by Bots, Dominating Google News
So a lot of the Web is Microsoft chatbot-generated anti-Linux FUD
Links 14/02/2025: Measles Outbreak in Texas, Zelensky Warns Russia Will Attack a NATO Country
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, February 13, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, February 13, 2025