Re: Women and GNU and RMS (was Re: something else)

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Sandra Loosemore, 31/10/19 01:22:
> For those of you who don't already know me, let me introduce myself: I'm 
> Sandra Loosemore, I am female, and I've been involved with the GNU 
> project since 1991, when RMS hired me to write the GLIBC manual as a FSF 
> employee.  Nowadays I am a maintainer for GCC and Binutils and an 
> occasional contributor to GDB.

Nice to hear from you! Can you please ask to be added to 
<https://www.gnu.org/people/people.html>? I think several names from the 
early 1990s are missing but FSF told me they prefer to add only people 
who ask themselves.

I'll just comment on a couple things:

> If the CEO of a corporation made such controversial and 
> offensive statements, the board would likely demand his immediate 
> resignation as part of damage control. 
> [...]  So I think it is probably ultimately the FSF's 
> responsibility to protect their brand and decide who they want to put in 
> charge of overseeing it.

It's fine to think of analogies, but corporations are hardly a model to 
follow blindly. Their only aim is to maximise short-term profits and 
stock value; people and ideas are disposable cogs. If you like Chomsky 
(Brooklyn is all over the place in this conversation!), you'd say that 
corporation are totalitarian structures.

Same with the brand, or any other asset: it's supposed to be a tool for 
a purpose, not a purpose in itself. I've often seen in Wikimedia that, 
whenever the board and staff proclaim they're acting on their "fiduciary 
duty", ultimately it means they're just letting themselves be cogs in 
the quest for maximum dollar values in the bottom line and balance 
sheet. Disaster invariably ensued.

Federico