The Stallman Report

If there was criminal conduct, someone should file a criminal complaint and have it adjudicated in a court of law with evidence, a jury and witness testimony and once convicted the accused should be appropriately punished.

Otherwise, how is anyone going to determine the truth of the allegations?

If the behavior was non-criminal then the decision should be made through normal non-profit governance mechanisms. We have due process of law for a reason which is that people are innocent until proven guilty and there are the proper protections to make sure a fair trial occurs.

Another well known non-profit in the biotech space received a 20 million donation and right after that a group of people kicked out the founder citing perceived sexual innuendo in old emails that did not risen to the level of a criminal offense. The donor wanted their money back, because they had given it to support the founder and his mission, but it was too late.

Having read this, I don't think there is any accusation of criminal behavior in this report.

The accusation is that he made people uncomfortable, didn't do enough to change that when it was raised, and defended criminal behavior by insisting on distinctions that the authors of the report consider immaterial or harmful.

I worked for RMS/FSF briefly and I think there is something about his radical refusal to compromise on anything conceptual (to avoid conflict or misunderstanding, e.g.) that is fundamentally incompatible with running an organization. This is on display here.

So I think it's probably right for FSF and RMS to part ways, but I also think it's positive for the world for him to keep on insisting on moral clarity in his terms.

At the same time, everybody should read the whole report and decide whether they think RMS's insistence on the distinctions rejected by the authors is helpful or unhelpful. I think some of RMS's distinctions could be helpful to the cause of reducing the incidence of sexual abuse.

And this is kind of key to the whole argument. It's not just about his behavior and questionable views on consent and age (though those are the disqualifying issues). Beyond that... The movement is stagnating because its leadership can't compromise and the computing world is moving beyond the era of personal computers and one-org mainframes that Stallman concocted the Four Freedoms in.

How do the Four Freedoms apply when it's not your computer, but a cloud service instead? FSF has struggled to find an answer because it's a philosophically different arrangement than the simpler "I should be able to control my own hardware" argument. Their dominant advice is "Don't use cloud," which is so out-of-touch it's laughable. You might as well tell people in the late 1800s to not use lightbulbs because it gives the electric company too much power over their lives.

> The movement is stagnating because its leadership can't compromise

If you want compromises, join the so-called "open-source" community, full of proprietary blobs. Thanks to Stallman, we have an example of true freedom and a compass showing where to move for it.

Copyleft is a compromise, and one of the most clever, honestly: ideally, the law should compel everyone to have the ability to change the devices they own and directly tell the authors of software that if they try to interfere with that, they can pound sand; their intellectual property rights don't extend to telling other people what to do.

It does not. But it does allow for the author to set the terms of the protection of their intellectual property.

That's the kind of compromise I'm talking about. And the FS movement hasn't figured out how to recapture that lightning in a bottle for the new Cloud era. Cloud is somewhat incompatible with the hardware-ownership-based philosophy of the Four Freedoms; something new and more fundamental is needed and the calcified, old movement can't seem to find it.

And they certainly don't seem to be trying, keeping the old leadership at the cost of turning away new members (with the implication that they value historical accomplishment more than new people). I've seen multiple people suggest that the right solution is to just abandon the FS movement qua the people running it and embrace new approaches; I think there's meat on those bones. It's a longer, harder fight if the old guard is left behind, but if they won't change they can't help.

Why do you think AGPLv3 isn't good enough for that? I've never seen Google and Co using it, while small companies do.

I think your statement answers itself.

No, it's a win for users that large corporations avoid this license.

Most users use those large corporations. I'm afraid I don't follow your thinking on this topic.

Nothing actually prevents those corporations from using AGPLv3. The are only afraid that they can't create a walled garden with it. So users are protected from that, as designed.

Users are protected from interacting with the big corporations they exclusively interact with?

This particular way of creating a walled garden, which relies on free work of free software volunteers, doesn't work thanks to AGPLv3. Whenever this license is involved, it works.

It unfortunately does nothing to prevent creation of a walled garden via creation of proprietary content in a proprietary network fabric on proprietary infrastructure, which... Seems to be all you need, given the popularity of Facebook, X, YouTube, and the multiple cloud service providers supporting something like (depending on who's crunching the numbers) 74% of enterprises.

If the goal was to change behavior... Behavior refuses to change.

Whoever wants, can use Mastodon and others just fine. AGPLv3 works flawlessly here.

What’s your point, exactly? How does the “open source” approach solve this? Surely you’re not putting down the AGPLv3 without also recognizing that “open source” software only strengthens proprietary *wares?

On the contrary, I think open source strengthens everything. Where copyleft leaves users of other people's software looking over their shoulder to confirm they haven't broken the license, with open source licenses I can release some work and not worry about how it's used, and I can use somebody's work without fear that they will come after me later.

It does strengthen proprietary software. It also strengthens everyone else's software. It's the rising tide that floats all boats.

What you're referring to is actually permissive licensing (or as I like to call it... /s). It's a scam.

It works fine for trivial pieces of code that no one cares about. But for bigger pieces of software, you're donating your time to Amazon, Microsoft and Palantir. You're volunteering for them. Why would you do that? If they want you to work for them they should pay you. If not for your wallet's sake then for the sake of hurting bad companies.

Copyleft is easy to comply with. Being scared of copyleft is like being scared of servers (which most programmers are according to DHH!).

> But for bigger pieces of software, you're donating your time to Amazon, Microsoft and Palantir. You're volunteering for them. Why would you do that?

Because "everyone" means everyone. Ask the OpenSSL developers why they do what they do.

> Being scared of copyleft is like being scared of servers (which most programmers are according to DHH!).

... Yep, you got it.

> there is something about his radical refusal to compromise on anything conceptual (to avoid conflict or misunderstanding, e.g.) that is fundamentally incompatible with running an organization.

But its fundamentally compatible with keeping free software free. That is what is important - an unwavering adherance to the core mission.