Re: Truth matters when writing software and selecting leaders

[Jacob Bachmeyer]

Akira Urushibata wrote:
> Richard Stallman recently announced at LibrePlanet that he would
> return to the FSF board.  Soon after this announcement, many articles
> appeared online stating strong objection to his return.
>   

Does there appear to be some form of hidden coordination behind these 
articles?

As I understand, RMS always thought that proprietary software companies 
would make some kind of large legal attack on the GNU project, so he was 
very particular about setting up the FSF and arranging for copyrights on 
many GNU packages to be held by the FSF.  If we interpret the SCO mess 
as that attack, the strategy seems to have worked:  SCO did not attack 
GNU, but instead attempted to attack the Linux kernel project.  
Ultimately, they failed but I now wonder if we may be seeing a different 
angle of an attack on the GNU project that RMS did not anticipate.

> I have read several of them and I do not like what I see.  Repeatedly
> I encounter the false claim that RMS "defended" Jeffrey Epstein.
> I also see voices which criticize RMS employing vague terms such as
> "bad behavior" which those not properly informed would interpret as
> being fond of Epstein and antagonistic toward women who fall victim to
> sexual exploitation.
>   

Do we have properly documented refutations of these claims?  That is not 
to say that I believe a word of them, but can we actually prove that 
each one is false?  As in refuting "RMS said X at ABC" with "no, RMS 
actually said Y at ABC; Y != X", ideally with video of RMS saying Y at ABC?

> In response to the storm of criticism, the FSF Board has decided to
> vote to determine whether RMS should return to the board.  I observe
> that both sides have initiated petition drives:
>
> https://github.com/KenjiBrown/rms-open-letter.github.io/blob/main/index.md
>   

That one is interesting; the only minor quibble I have is that we really 
do need to have some kind of plan for "after RMS" because that will 
happen some day...

... and the part about using GitHub pull requests to sign the letter, 
which is a bit of a problem from a software freedom standpoint.  At 
least it also provides an email address to send signatures to, unlike 
the other letter it mentions at 
<URL:https://github.com/rms-support-letter/rms-support-letter.github.io/blob/master/index.md>.

> https://itwire.com/open-source/foss-developers-launch-petition-to-push-out-stallman,-fsf-board.html
>   

According to that article, the whole thing started from a clearly true 
statement about sexual assault being a broad category?  Wait... were 
those also the remarks that were taken out of context from an internal 
private mailing list?

> In my opinion the FSF leaders are not doing things in the right order.
> First they should make an official statement saying that there are
> serious errors in recent news articles.  They should also consider
> legal action.  The decision whether RMS belongs on the FSF Board
> should wait until those who are spreading misinformation are brought
> to justice.
>   

Unfortunately, freedom of speech here in USA protects even blatant lies 
to some extent.  (If I remember correctly, it was Fox News that took a 
case all the way to our Supreme Court arguing that our First Amendment 
protects what we now call fake news... and Fox News won the case and the 
precedent is set.)

> I say this because I know from experience that I can't fix bugs in
> software I work on in the absence of accurate information.  Any
> programmer that responds to unfounded claims about misbehaving
> programs will end up wasting time, or worse, breaking a program
> that works fine.
>   

That is why we write testsuites.  :D  (And *that* was how I got involved 
with DejaGnu development and ended up on a bunch of GNU mailing lists...)

> Truth is important if you want to write good software.  Dishonesty
> invites poor quality.  I cannot stress this too much.
>   

"Quoted For Truth."


-- Jacob