[geofft]

Matthew Garrett, who served on the FSF board of directors, wrote about the "not being neurotypical" hypothesis two days ago: https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html

In particular, he says he did try to do the compassion and gentle correction work, and Stallman had no interest in it.

Stallman's job has a job description - leading the Free Software Foundation. If he's not leading it effectively, it is important for his own cause that he step away, and it is important that the FSF Board do their job by finding someone more effective at it. If he's not suited for it for reasons outside of his control and never will be, that's all the more reason that we should compassionately and gently get him to find another job.

(Also, I think this argument is deeply unfair to the many neuroatypical people in this world who still manage to not say the things Stallman does - which is in most cases not merely a matter of "tact," but even so, many of whom put conscious, learned effort into having tact. I have friends with all sorts of things going on in their brain who are wonderful people and in many cases also wonderful free software authors, and I think this argument does them a disservice.)

[ajxs]

Anyone who knows who Richard Stallman is, much less cares about his opinions, could probably be classified as 'neuroatypical' in some regard. I don't think there's any point to discussing the utility of 'neurodivergence' in the context of this scandal.

I'd agree with Matthew Garrett here. Some of Richard Stallman's statements in the past have bordered on being outrightly indefensible for various reasons. Not necessarily indefensible as the opinions of an individual, as controversial as they may be, but certainly inappropriate as the opinions of a person representing an organisation. I doubt that Stallman's various eccentricities have done much to hamper the FSF's mission, but Stallman himself would certainly do little to endear it to anyone.

[mantap]

Stallman is to the FSF as Elon Musk is to Tesla. He is not its leader, he is the FSF - its human manifestation, for better and for worse.

Edit +1 hour: this comment certainly aged well...

[partialrecall]

I think it should go without saying that atypicality is not a binary matter.

[geofft]

Sure. I know people "on the spectrum," I know people with various forms of PTSD, I know people with bipolar, I know people with ADHD, I know plural folks, etc., and none of them act like RMS. I know very friendly, conscientious, and kind neuroatypical folks. I know brusque and tactless neuroatypical folks with whom it's draining to interact in certain ways. They still don't act like RMS.

So the (implicit) argument "This is just what you expect with neuroatypical people" / "If we want to be welcoming of neuroatypical people, we have to be welcoming of people who act like RMS" is even less true because of how diverse the category is. We know RMS isn't being excluded because of his (hypothetical) neuroatypicality because there are so many neuroatypical people who aren't and wouldn't be excluded.

If you want to argue that the problem with RMS is he is in the narrow category of people who act like RMS (and I would say that not even Linus Torvalds is in this category), that's a fine argument to make, but it's a bit circular to defend his inclusion on such grounds. Is this category the sort of category, like race or class or neurological makeup, that is beyond (or mostly beyond) one's control and has little correlation with whether you can do good work? Or is this a category like "asshole"?

[partialrecall]

I know a lot of people who's actions, quirks, opinions and beliefs are unique. Stallman is the only person I've ever known to eat toe-cheese, let alone do it in public. The fact that other neuroatypical people I know don't eat their toe cheese does not suggest to me that eating toe cheese isn't behavior attributable to neuroatypicality.