The FSF unionised because of RMS
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It seems like the age of consent is political, or the age would be identical everywhere.
There is a bell curve for the start of human sexuality. Here in Sweden the age of 14 is the median for girls, 14.4 for boys, and the age of consent is set to 15. Does that mean 15 is a good age of consent? Should the age of consent be the median age, the 10% (12y), or the 80% (16y)?
Personally I prefer the "half the person's age + 7" rule (for the partner's minimum age), but I don't know any country that has that as an age of consent.
A similar argument could be made about driving. At the age of 16, the impulse control is severely underdeveloped, likely by evolutionary benefits. New experiences invoke a much stronger endocrine response than for fully matured individuals, and with faster depletion rate. A driving license should really be around age 20+ if one would follow mental maturity. Sweden have set it to 18.
We have so many different age lines. Driving, drinking, military service, voting, consent, crime, legal responsibility. 25 would be a great line for it all based on medical data. In Sweden we expect young people to have the mind around 15 to start having sex with each other, but we don't trust that they have the mental capacity to drive before 18. Is the numbers that the US use better? Worse? Is the answer political? I would say yes.
By that rule (guideline), a 50-year-old should not be in a relationship with an 18-year-old, even if 18 is the age of consent.
Now I don’t have an opinion on how great or terrible the guy is but if 50% of the country supports him, then that’s indicative that there isn’t really any consensus on age differences when dating.
Personally I think there is no reason to look down on consensual relationships between two adults. Especially true if they are far beyond the age of consent.
Having said that - the issue at hand right now is whether RMS should or should not be on the GCC steering committee, not managing the FSF. And "leadership" is an even more diffuse term.
Also, one should bear in mind that Stallman has (AFAICT) Asperger's syndrome or High-Functioning Autism (a.k.a. neuro-diversity). That does not excuse much in itself - and in fact, is an argument against making him a powerful singular boss of people - but should be taken into consideration when you think about how this sort of situation develops.
The FSF is a startup that never grew beyond the "scrappy entrepreneur in garage" phase. Starbucks has a much better chance of surviving collective action than your average neighborhood kombucha café place.
And what's with the abuse? One makes strange remarks about women and abhors soap, and the other manages you out a few months before vesting cliff. That isn't even the same league.
Sure, he denied raises too. But that's not why people are upset with his reinstatement, and not anything more than one single example in the story being discussed. It feels deceptive to focus on that one detail and ignore everything else that makes RMS a bad person to work with.
"prior cost of living adjustments were a battle and not annual" - the federal minimum wage has not changed since 2009, and millions of workers across the US have not gotten a raise for over a decade. For businesses making a profit - not a non-profit like the FSF. So staff getting COLAs once in a while sounds good in comparison.
I don't know if staff of the FSF non-profit were being paid fairly or not, but he does not seem to be living in the real world.
Someone else writing a diatribe against Stallman said he made MIT an "non-safe space" because he took naps in his office on a mattress as opposed to a couch.
Even though I usually disagree with his vision of how software should be made, I feel sorry for him being target of this insane witch hunt.
However, does the FSF need RMS anymore? Or is it better off without him?
If you're passionate but spend your time being abusive to others then you're not a leader, you're a dictator. And that is what RMS is - we've seen time and time again he expects his opinion to be the law, and anyone with whom he disagrees is wrong and should themselves be expelled.
I’m sure there are good ideas but all I can think of is cult leaders.
He produced amazing results. He's definitely not someone I would ever recommend attempting to emulate in general. These two facts can both be true at the same time. He was an extremely polarizing figure.
Importantly, though, from what I've heard (so take with appropriate seasoning), his worst excesses were more toward the earlier parts of his career, and as he got older, he became less abusive and unreasonable, while honing his visionary side. If he had lived to today, he might have changed how people think about him....
...or he might have shown himself to be just as bad as the worst people think, and been "canceled" himself.
Hell yeah. And RMS didn't do that.
Which he didn't do.
> We formed a union to help protect ourselves from RMS — he controlled our pay, benefits, and workplace conditions.
> RMS did not believe in providing raises... RMS believed that if a precedent was created for increasing wages, the logical conclusion would be that employees would be paid infinity dollars and the FSF would go bankrupt.
Is he really that bad at math, or is he being misrepresented?
How would you feel if this where about you? HN is usually better than this.
In general, they wouldn't be able to say that I had mistreated people serially over the course of years with no apology, made a long string of bigoted and degrading statements about a wide variety of marginalized groups, and generally made an asshole of myself in public with no apparent understanding of why it was bad and no apology for it.
I mean, what, did you think "how would you feel if they talked on Twitter about what you did at work" would result in similar stories for everyone?
2. RMS is a public figure by his own choice. This is not the same as your average HN commentor.
3. HN is definitely the place to discuss the public actions of organizations and people in tech
4. Please take the holier than thou, shaming attitude back to Reddit.
RMS has said, all along, that no one needs to work with him. He shares his stuff and anyone can make a better version of it.
It's wild how often, and for how long, every criticism of him ends with "and thats why RMS should go away and leave us all the cool things he built".
The "FSF" at heart, at first, was a way to get this unemployable geek paid so he could continue working for the good of the world even when no one particularly cared who he was. If it became more, great. If the "more" needs to be something better, than someone go build the something better.