https://www.zdnet.com/article/return-of-stallman-to-fsf-sparks-outrage-among-open-source-and-free-software-leaders/

https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-statement-about-richard-stallmans-return-free-software-foundation-board

FSCI's statement on Richard Stallman's rejoining the FSF board

Free Software Community of India is deeply disappointed to learn that Richard Stallman rejoined the FSF board. The way it was announced without any apology or assurance of any change of public behavior of Richard Stallman is also disturbing. The decision was taken without any broader community engagement or transparency[Tweet link here].

We believe that this step will be harmful to the free software community and also makes us doubt the decision making process of FSF board.

Richard Stallman seems oblivious towards feelings of other people interacting or working with him and when others provide feedback about this conduct, he doesn't seem to acknowledge the shortcomings in his behaviour. This makes his public conduct discouraging for many people to participate in activities of Free Software which involves him.[1][2][3][4][5].

Over the years, many people close to RMS tried to explain him the consequences of his words and actions at a leadership position.

Bradley Kuhn who worked for over 20 years with RMS said "I attempted to argue with him at length to convince him that some of his positions were harmful to sexual assault survivors and those who are sex-trafficked, and to the people who devote their lives in service to such individuals. "

Matthew Garrett says "I've spent a lot of time working with him to help him understand why various positions he holds are harmful. I've reached the conclusion that it's not that he's unable to understand, he's just unwilling to change his mind."

FSCI ensures that people in the community feel welcomed and ensures inclusivity. How does FSCI makes decisions?

[1] https://nitter.mastodont.cat/thebaughj/status/1374882579325673472?s=20

[2] https://nitter.snopyta.org/paulnivin/status/1374499598853545986

[3[ https://nitter.tedomum.net/FOSSfirefighter/status/1374139049468919809?s=20

[4] https://opensourcetogo.blogspot.com/2009/07/emailing-richard-stallman.html?showComment=1247268813706#c27106541698438970135

[5] Bradley Kuhn's statement http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html

[6] Sam Hartman finally broke his silence on RMS https://hartmans.livejournal.com/100652.html?

[7] Matthew Garrett https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html

[8] FSF Europe statement https://fsfe.org/news/2021/news-20210324-01.en.html

[9] Statement by EFF https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/statement-re-election-richard-stallman-fsf-board

Richard Stallman shows no sensitivity towards other's feelings and does not consider other's feedback which makes his public conduct discouraging for many people to participate

This can be
Richard Stallman seems oblivious towards feelings of other people interacting or working with him and when others provide feedback about this conduct, he doesn't seem to acknowledge the shortcomings in his behaviour. This makes his public conduct discouraging for many people to participate in activities of Free Software which involves him.

Also, a very important point - "The way it was secretively announced ". It was not secretively announced, in fact it was announced live in LibrePlanet conference. We could say that it was suddenly announced and the decision was taken without any broader community engagement or transparency. You can also link the tweet/toot by FSF stating that even any libreplanet volunteer or staff member didn't know that this was going to be announced.

Can you please give me the tweet link here? And I have made the changes according to your comments. Thanks.

Further question: Should we add something on how it affects the free software movement? because many people say it does not matter as you can go on promoting free software in your life.

@Pirate Praveen I have written a statement. I think my statement can be improved. The main thing I have done is adding references to the statements of some close friends of RMS.

I think you can make this as a proposal and see which one get more votes.

I am not very enthusiastic about my statement. I would like to suggest that it is very important to add references to back up your claims. Especially, adding statements by people who worked with RMS.

Bradley Kuhn said "When the escalation started, I still considered RMS both a friend and colleague, and I attempted to argue with him at length to convince him that some of his positions were harmful to sexual assault survivors and those who are sex-trafficked, and to the people who devote their lives in service to such individuals. More importantly to the FSF, I attempted to persuade RMS that launching a controversial campaign on sexual behavior and morality was counter to his and FSF's mission to advance software freedom, and told RMS that my duty as an FSF Director was to assure the best outcome for the FSF, which IMO didn't include having a leader who made such statements." http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html

Sam Hartman said "Rms has demonstrated that he cannot hold to standards of respect for others, respect for their boundaries, or standards of community safety. We need those standards to be a welcoming community." https://hartmans.livejournal.com/100652.html?

Matthew Garrett said "I've spent a lot of time working with him to help him understand why various positions he holds are harmful. I've reached the conclusion that it's not that he's unable to understand, he's just unwilling to change his mind." https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html

Further, we can show agreement with Matthew Garrett on this point

The argument that in a pure technical universe Richard Stallman's insensitivity is irrelevant and we should instead only consider what he does in free software is bullshit.

If you would like to accept comments by autistic people(we have no way on knowing that they are autistic) then https://nitter.snopyta.org/HickeyWriter/status/1172674056828661764 says that being autistic is not an excuse for bad public behaviour.

I have added some of these quotes and references.

Thanks. I am personally fine with the RedHat statement but I think it is better not to put that(people will say they are IBM funded so why take risk if you can do better?) in the final write-up on the website. It is however good to add EFF, FSFE, Debian, KDE statement in the final write-up.

"If I were to follow the argumentation that Stallman's contributions are so immensely important that it excuses everything else, that would be disrespectful both to him and to everyone else in the community at the same time, because it'd treat him like an idiot who we have accepted to be incapable of normal social behaviour but tolerate because he's still useful to us, and it'd send a message to everyone else that unless they reach a similar level of "productivity", they are disposable." - Simon Richter https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2021/03/msg00380.html

I would like to make sure that the "idiot" does not look unfriendly in the context. Otherwise, it is fine. Can anyone please explain?

https://wwahammy.com/on-safety-at-libreplanet/

This reference is very reliable and I think you should add this. My suggestion is that you can write: Richard Stallman clearly says in a LibrePlanet session that the usual rules of community interactions does not apply to him because he is the president of FSF https://wwahammy.com/on-safety-at-libreplanet/

In view of Akshay's comments, let's not add this one.

Would you like to add a line about how FSF holds critical infrastructure? Like GPL. So this will counter the argument when people ask :People who have problems with Richard Stallman can choose not to collaborate with him. Since, FSF holds a lot of critical infrastructure of free software movement, it is overall harmful for free software community. This argument is important as people fail(or pretend to fail) to see how this decision affects FSCI.

I would not bring up such specific instances like when Richard says "I am the president". I would say there are some rules which are just for logistical reasons and can be bent or broken (not just by president, but even by the hall manager of an event). In this case, it appears to be one such rule about timing of event. From the little that could be heard about that segment, it appeared like there wasn't going to be another event in that hall and therefore it wouldn't have hurt anyone if that event didn't end exactly on time. The people who would have been hurt by that are 1) the hall manager who was talking to Richard about overtime - Richard could have used kinder words like "it is okay <name of the hall manager>" and 2) the people who wanted to attend another event somewhere else but who would have thought it would be rude to leave an event before it is over or who feel like they will miss a good discussion

Anyhow, using such specific examples makes the whole discussion go in a different direction.

Anyhow, using such specific examples makes the whole discussion go in a different direction.

Agree. You replied to my comment on adding point on how FSF holds critical infrastructure. So I thought how your reply applied to what I said.

@Pirate Praveen Another suggestion is to add this article https://www.wired.com/story/richard-stallman-and-the-fall-of-the-clueless-nerd/ . It is not a media propaganda type news article and the arguments are up to the point. The author also knows Stallman. I am adding some quotes. You do not have to add these quotes in our article itself but they justify why this qualify as a reference,

Instead of considering the pain of a young person treated in such a manner, he nitpicked about whether such a case would be a proper instance of “sexual assault,”

This shows insensitivity. Because people think that nitpicking the definition of sexual assault is a logic thing to do.

When he travels to give speeches, he likes to stay with hosts rather than at hotels. A few years ago, a list of instructions emerged for those lucky hosts.

His inability to understand the hurt that comes from insensitivity led to his expulsion from the world he knew and loved.

There is no single person that is so deserving of praise their comments deprecating others should be allowed to slide. Particularly when those comments are excuses about rape, assault, and child sex trafficking.

While adding the quotes and references, we should add a line " These are some quotes from people who have interacted or worked with Richard Stallman. These quotes denote the problem that we are trying to highlight, and we would need RMS to act upon these issues." Of course if somebody has better wording please add that. Right now the quotes begin abruptly in the letter.

Regarding FSF's statement about the announcement. Have any of us mailed them to enquire? If not we can write that "Even after the stir that the announcement has caused, the FSF has not made the process or reasoning for the way in which RMS was reinstated public. We would like to ask FSF to make it clear so that we would know the reasons or their side of the story which resulted in the sudden announcement. We are still awaiting the response from them" Again please suggest better wording.

@raghukamath What do you think of my write-up https://codema.in/d/Xdi7EPS9/statement-on-richard-stallman-rejoining-the-fsf-board/16 ? I have already added those quotes there. In my write-up, I think I should add about how FSF holds critical infrastructure https://www.fsf.org/about/about-the-free-software-foundation .

Check now, added a paragraph suggested by @Ravi Dwivedi and rephrased by you before that and I think it fits now.

@Pirate Praveen Add a few lines on how FSCI makes decisions so that how we avoid this kind of move by FSF here. In particular, your write-up can , as an outline, answer these questions: 0. What is the decision-making process of FSCI? 1. How does FSCI decision-making is transparent? 2. Who gets involved in its decisions? ; 3. Who can join FSCI?; And further some comments on how FSCI ensures inclusivity. How did FSCI handle this hostile situation? Nobody left FSCI after this event(at least I don't know) while many other organizations(I know FSCI is not an organization) saw resigning of members including FSF itself.

I am forwarding a comment by Aiswarya on this proposal.

She said that we should remove the comments from Sam Hartman, Bradley Kuhn etc. which I posted to back up our claims of misconduct by RMS. She pointed out that there are testimonies by people who support RMS.

She said:

If people who support rms add positive comments from his collegues like this one https://whoisylvia.medium.com/richard-stallman-has-been-vilified-by-those-who-dont-know-him-a3907b25b4c7. Then the statement is weak again.

I think

He takes everything literally and doesn’t necessarily take feelings and the reactions of others into account when making statements that are outside the bounds of his expertise in free software.

is a good one to quote from this person who knows Richard.

I don't think it is an opinion poll. Even if 100 people say RMS was good to them, that does not invalidate even a single testimony of bad behavior and we have many such testimonies from people with a track record of Free Software contributions.

While reading the linked blog. I understood these points.

• The author doesn't deny the fact that RMS doesn't understand that there are feelings and emotions involved while interacting. So this doesn't counter our point that RMS is oblivious towards feeling of others. They say he hasn't developed a shield which all of us apparently have and takes everything literally.

• The author has worked as his publicist, their view can be taken as biased or has conflict of interest since their job is/was to handle Richard's publicity.

In almost every testimony and blog or argument I see that the people who support RMS fail to show empathy or fail to even acknowledge the fact that Richard may have done harm. They do not give any solution or try to redress the complaint of the opposers. They counter it by using their own good view. We all can say some good things about some famous person that doesn't mean they may have behaved the same way with all the people. If we keep on ignoring the weaker party or the party which is been hurt then I don't know how we will support or solve their issue.

To solve this dilemma we can include a line which acknowledges that some people view Richard as good person.
"While some people have had good experience while working with Richard, we can't discredit the complaints by others. FSF and RMS should listen and address the complaints of the people who have been hurt"

We have already included that in the letter by praveen. We say that Richard is oblivious towards the feeling of others.

Agree to all your points @raghukamath .

While some people have had good experience while working with Richard, we can't discredit the complaints by others.

@raghukamath This does not achieve anything. A person behaved good with everyone and murdered one person, then people don't say that he was nice to everyone else.

Hurting people does not mean everyone gets hurt.

FSF and RMS should listen and address the complaints of the people who have been hurt

This one is good

@Akshay first of all, thanks for drafting the statement. i appreciate your patience and efforts behind coming up with a statement like this after talking with many people in the community.

btw i have a doubt, what does the last line of the statement actually mean? i'm not sure if that should be taken literally or symbolically. taking the literal meaning indirectly implies that building/creating free software is the most important activity of a free software community and it kind of ignores the importance of contributions other than code contributions. imo, in order to avoid confusion, it may be better to use a different term than "building" or rephrase that line altogether.

Does "strengthen" help? I used "write" first and then intentionally changed to "build" to stand for more than just writing activities. The idea for that sentence is to suggest that we need to progress on the software front too (including code, documentation, bug fixing, user support, and all other kinds of contributions that make up (or build) software)

yes, "strengthen" seems to be an apt word to convey that meaning 👍

I've made this change @Pirate Praveen @raghukamath @Ravi Dwivedi

How about 'improving free software' or 'strengthening free software community'?

@Pirate Praveen current change looks good. 'strengthening free software community' is fine too, it's just that the focus will change from free software to community.

It can be both, "strengthening Free Software and its community"

Final statement https://fsci.in/blog/statement-on-rms-rejoining-fsf-board/