Thomas Bushnell

AFACT, the strongest argument in favour of the removal of RMS is by Thomas Bushnell[0]. The best counter-argument to that, which I could find, is by Thomas Lord[1][2]. I haven't found any replies to the latter. (There's also the meta-issue that rule-by-lying-journalists-and-misinformed-mob is terrifying and despicable, but it doesn't affect the object-level question of whether RMS significantly contributed and/or contributes towards making MIT and the free-software world unwelcoming to women.) [0] https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-r… [1] https://twitter.com/thomas_lord/status/1174433645110513664 [2] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1174433645110513664.html

Companies have cultures and legal constraints that get coworkers fired for perpetually hitting on their coworkers. That's a positive for a lot of people (myself included). Bushnell makes the excellent point that he wasn't pushed out for this email alone, but for the pattern of thought the email indicates when aligned with other behaviors in his career. https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-r…

From https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-r… > I feel very sad for him. He’s a tragic figure. He is one of the most brilliant people I’ve met, who I have always thought desperately craved friendship and camaraderie, and seems to have less and less of it all the time. This is all his doing; nobody does it to him. But it’s still very sad. As far as I can tell, he believes his entire life’s work is a failure. This is also a very sad epilogue, and the FSF board is to blame for not being able to explain to RMS why reinstating him was an awful idea. At the same time, it's also sad that the open latter calls out RMS for ableism, when it's obviously clear that he is in turn not able to understand the situation that has arisen around him and the problem that he constitutes for the FSF. To be 100% clear I am not saying that this should excuse or justify rms's misogynism or his well-known (by now) views on sexuality. But all this contributes to my feeling of sadness and I am pretty sure I am not the only one that feels like that. So I am torn. I agree that the FSF board has failed, and I wish RMS would resign from his other leadership positions (including from the GNU project, which has been so instrumental to my career), but this open letter leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. See also https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-project/ (Joint statement on the GNU Project, October 2019) for something that instead I…

Haha, wow. I totally forgot I wrote that one. When I wrote that I was unaware of some of the Sort Of Creepy stuff. I recognize that some of the allegedly creepy stuff is sorta misquoted. I think that matters. But I don't think it changes my overall conclusions, which is that RMS was acting in a way that he could reasonably predict would hurt or distress people, and he didn't think it was important to change this. But I also note that, completely unaware of any of the allegations now being discussed, I thought he was bad for the development of free and open source software because he was bad at treating people in ways conducive to positive outcomes, and I knew many people who worked on free or open source software, or worked with the FSF or on FSF projects, who also felt that way. I believe quite a few of them had told him of these concerns. I wrote about the specific more-recent RMS stuff last year: https://www.seebs.net/log/post/2019/09/21/rms-minsky-and-the-search-fo… Thomas Bushnell wrote about this, too, and honestly his post was much better: https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-r… It is perhaps worth noting that, maybe thirty years ago, I had some run-ins with Thomas Bushnell, and I thought he was sort of a jerk at the time, but when I called him out on an example of that, he acknowledged it and apologized and said he'd try to do better. Nothing external to RMS was preventing RMS from doing that if people said…

>Do you have sources for the "well documented" views that pedophilia is not harmful and that children can give consent and should be allowed to engage in sexual intercourse? Because the blurb above certainly does not say any of that. Apart from the appendix linked to in the open letter being critiqued in the OP, there is this often mentioned quote by the man himself: “I am sceptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren’t voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.” [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21287006 [1]https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-appendix... [2]https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa... [3]http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html

Many people who have worked directly with RMS for many years say he knows, he understands, but he doesn't care. https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-r…

Thoughts by someone who -- unlike most commentators on the subject -- has actually worked with Stallman for years: https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-r…

Here[0] is a post by someone else who (by his own account) "worked for RMS longer than any other programmer." While he obviously has had a long relationship with Stallman, one of his key takeaways was: "RMS’s loss of MIT privileges and leadership of the FSF are the appropriate responses to a pattern of decades of poor behavior. It does not matter if they are appropriate responses to a single email thread, because they are the right thing in the total situation." Which I think is very well said. So while Paull's assessment that people's reaction to some email quotes is out-of-proportion, this is really just the proverbial straw on the back of the camel. [0] https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-r…

One, I am seriously disheartened even now people do the he said, she said routine. Two, https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-r…

> people that have worked with/for him that have tried and failed for years and years to resolve issues privately Is this about Thomas Bushnell? Because I feel this is about Thomas Bushnell[1]. Bushnell is currently a friar in a religious order and works for google, and there is nothing wrong with that[2]. I can easily work with devout religious people and respect and accept them for their superior knowledge of the matter at hand (say, Don Knuth), but there's nothing wrong with politely declining their opinions when it comes to "issues" or how to become a "better" person. Again, no disrespect to Bushnell, who I'm sure did a fine job, but I'm not willing to take his assessment of the personality of an avouched atheist at face value. [1]https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-r… [2] well, working for Google can be debatable depending on what you do there.

For those who do not know RMS personally: "I worked for RMS longer than any other programmer. ... This was an own-goal for RMS. He has had plenty of opportunities to learn how to stfu when that’s necessary. ... I can confirm the unfortunate reality that RMS’s behavior was a concern [in the 1990s], and that [Marvin Minsky's] protection was itself part of the problem. He was never held to account; he was himself coddled in his own lower-grade misbehavior and mistreatment of women. He made the place uncomfortable for a lot of people, and especially women. ... RMS’s mere presence on the scene in this way has served to make it harder to deal with other cases of bad leaders’ bad behavior. It is time for the free software community to leave adolescence and move to adulthood, and this requires leaving childish tantrums, abusive language, and toxic environments behind." — Thomas Bushnell https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-r…

> So expressing sincerely held beliefs in a personal forum like his own website is in and of itself "toxic"? That's a loaded question... it looks like you're making some wild assumptions about whether I think Stallman is toxic, and the reasoning for that. > Many of RMS's beliefs are indeed well outside the mainstream, but as far as I'm aware nobody has ever accused him actually doing anything abusive to anybody. So, I'll share a couple articles. https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-r… > RMS’s loss of MIT privileges and leadership of the FSF are the appropriate responses to a pattern of decades of poor behavior. Speaking of the FSF / GNU project leadership itself... I think it's clear that the GNU project needs a code of conduct, and if the leader is opposed to the idea as much as Stallman is, then it's correct to replace him. He has a vision for software freedom, but he's to averse to good community management (which is what the GNU project needs).

Yes, many of them were. Here's the lead developer of the HURD: https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-r… Here's someone who spent about two decades of his life at the FSF, including as executive director, and won the FSF's award for contributions to free software on the same day that RMS announced his return: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html Here's a whole bunch of GNU project maintainers, publishing a statement on gnu.org: https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-project/ Here's a couple of high-profile GCC contributors: https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235091.html https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235096.html

> A group of random people consisting of professors and students A group of random people with a certain radical ideology, most of which work at google[0][1][2], the military[3], or have personal issues with him due to their history[4][5], etc. I certainly do not believe that it is a conspiracy - ie they are being honest on the fact that they do not like him (not necessarily on why they do not like him though) and that they are not being paid by someone to do it, but they are far from random people. Also, I personally saw no professors being involved, although I might be mistaken. [0] https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-r… [1] https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1172422966904160257 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20995556 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21090851 [4] see 0 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bushnell#GNU_Hurd [5] https://twitter.com/migueldeicaza/status/1173981287037751297 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza#Advocacy_of_Microsoft_op…