The thing that frustrates me about this is that the #FreeSoftware community wastes so much fucking time on #Stallman. So much time and effort is wasted on the eccentricities of one man, even though anyone with a gram of sense can see that this man is unfit to lead the social movement for our digital liberation.
And we are so utterly beholden to him. So much of our language and framing is Stallmanesque, sometimes undeservedly. My biggest pet hate is the narrative that 'you, the user, will be free if you use Free Software'. No you won't, especially not if you are not technically inclined. We are freed together as a community, not as individuals. The system of collaboration and the sharing of our digital infrastructure makes this thing liberating for all of us, not my ability to patch better Esperanto support into glibc.
And it's not like this movement needs a single leader, or that there aren't already extremely talented and dedicated leader figures in our community.
And it's not like there aren't problems with our community that aren't related to Stallman. There are so many people (men…) who make this community less lovely than it is.
But instead of lifting up other voices, or addressing other toxicity, we're stuck endlessly dealing with this one eccentric man.
The Stallman report
October 14th, 2024 Richard Stallman (aka “RMS”) is the founder of GNU and the Free Software Foundation and present-day voting member of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) board of directors and “Chief GNUisance” of the GNU project.The Stallman report
