[r3trohack3r]

A different take: Microsoft, Oracle, et. al. waged a war against OSS in the 90s. They went as far as using mental illness as a weapon against the community (equating participation in the commons as an equivalent to mental illness).

It’s not a coincidence the class of human that weathered the storm looks like Stallman, Linus, ESR, et. al. That’s what it took. The toxicity in these communities is a result of what was leftover. These humans grew up amongst OSS activists that also weathered the storm.

They carried the flag when no one else would. Vilifying them now, at a time where Microsoft just purchased the two largest infrastructure/tooling providers for the commons (npm, GitHub) is concerning to me. Without them, the commons wouldn’t be what it is today.

[seebs]

That's a fascinating take, but I don't think it's particularly related to what actually happened. I wasn't toxic because of some Microsoft FUD, I was toxic because I was a teenager with low empathy who hadn't learned things yet. I grew out of it.

Lots of people in open source were never particularly toxic, and there's no reason they should have been. Even granting the existence of the external stress (and it really was NOT that big a deal), not everyone reacts to stress by treating people badly. Furthermore, people who didn't grow up around those OSS advocates have exactly the same problems sometimes, for the same reason that people in every field of human endeavor have those problems sometimes.

[prvc]

>I was toxic because I was a teenager with low empathy who hadn't learned things yet. I grew out of it.

Participation in political mobs can serve as a surrogate replacement for empathy. A change in political allegiance is far easier to enact in an individual than a change in personality.

[AdmiralGinge]

That's very succinctly summed up something I often struggle to articulate.

[dudeinjapan]

Deep insight. Seriously. Happening across society.

[dguaraglia]

Would you agree then that participating in the 'anti-anti' mobs is also a possible form of feigned 'empathy'?

[lmm]

To the extent there is an anti-anti mob, sure.

Be skeptical of any actions that are hateful on their face, regardless of how impeccable the argument justifying them is. Judge people by whether they actually make your project nicer to be part of, not some theorycrafted definition of inclusivity. Common sense and human judgement are an infinitely better way to decide who to welcome, who to tolerate, and who to exclude (because some people have incompatible cultures, so any space will exclude some people), than any amount of political theory.

[prvc]

>Would you agree then that participating in the 'anti-anti' mobs is also a possible form of feigned 'empathy'?

You have misread the comment twice over. I wrote nothing that would preclude your scenario from being a possibility, and I also wrote nothing about assuming a false pretense. In my opinion, wrt "empathy", most of the mob participants are just fooling themselves, and the cynical drivers of these controversies tend to lean on empathy as an explanation less often, in favor of more opaque theoretical constructs.

[dguaraglia]

> You have misread the comment twice over.

I didn't.

> I wrote nothing that would preclude your scenario from being a possibility

That's kind of my point: there's a lot of questioning the motivations of the 'cancel culture mob' around these parts recently, but very little questioning of the motivations of the 'anti cancel culture mob'. It almost feels like there's a gaping blind spot there.

Unsurprisingly, a significant percentage of the 'anti cancel culture' controversy seems to be driven by a tiny fraction of people. One could even argue that both the 'cancel culture' and 'anti cancel culture' mobs are tiny. And yet, somehow, Hacker News seems to heavily favor the 'anti cancel culture' angle.

Go figure, huh?

[SpicyLemonZest]

I just don't agree with the symmetry you're drawing here. Pointing to a group of people and saying "I think they're engaged in a moral panic" doesn't make me part of an equal and opposite panic. If I were going around saying we've gotta ostracize the cancellers before they cancel us, that would certainly deserve some serious introspection - but I'm not, and neither is the original commenter.

[boulos]

What, if anything, would you update in your post from a decade ago [1] on Steve Jobs, RMS, and empathy?

(My guess is not much, other than maybe a personal preference on the empathy side?)

[1] https://www.seebs.net/log/post/2011/10/11/why-steve-jobs-did...

[seebs]

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...

Thomas Bushnell wrote about this, too, and honestly his post was much better: https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa...

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 his behavior hurt or distressed them.

The idea that we couldn't try to do better because we were being threatened by Microsoft is honestly sort of condescending and insulting in and of itself.

[preommr]

Is seebs someone that's particularly famous? The parent comment seems to imply they were part of the "Stallman, Linus, ESR, et. al."

And their profile just says "that seebs".

[seebs]

I don't know about "particularly" famous but I know that I've talked to people whose family members were programmers who reacted with "wait you know SEEBS!?!" when they mentioned me, so apparently some people have heard of me. I used to be fairly active in Usenet discussions of C, and I've published some stuff, most of it now lost to the mists of time.

[klodolph]

I think that this is just an attempt at explaining away toxic behavior without taking responsibility for it.

People in the OSS community can, at times, glorify toxic behavior. I know people who take it as a badge of honor to "speak the truth", "speak directly", or "have no filter". Speaking directly and speaking the truth are good ideals to have, but if you really want to PROVE that you speak the truth and don't fear social pressures, what better way to do it than to be rude or insensitive to people?

Take Mr. X, who is outraged by Microsoft's behavior and refuses to buy Microsoft's products, tells other people about his problems with Microsoft, and tells everyone to use FOSS alternatives? Now, Mr. X also thinks that it's stupid to believe in god, and is not afraid to say it to everyone he meets. He's suddenly changed from "FOSS advocate" to "toxic workplace on legs".

This is by no means exclusive to the FOSS community. Think of the product manager who styles himself a Steve Jobs type, who abuses his staff in the style of Steve Jobs. These aren't examples I'm picking out of a hat; these are real people.

[DubiousPusher]

That may be but there is something to the OP's point. The big 5 personality test which is the only personality test rally taken seriously in clinical psychology, has an aspect called agreeableness.

Having high or low agreeableness has a tremendous correlation with all kinds of outcomes. It's highly tied to success in corporate, church, and government settings. It's very likely that to be set enough to go against the majority in your field and build an alternative infrastructure in the face of a great deal of obstacles is going to attract a higher amount of diaageeable people. Now if you ask me, it's possible to be quite diaageeable and remain polite but I wouldn't be surprised if these sort of outsider niches often have an abrasive personality edge.

And when the elites start telling you to tilt you moral compass a certain way, you probably start bumping into some oppositional defiant disorder which correlates with low agreeableness.

A similar thing can be seen when substances are prohibited. People who normally would not do a more serious crime begin doing them because their desire for a drug already brings them outside the law.

Obviously finding ways to build alternative communities with a welcoming and conciecous spirit would be a great problem to solve. But I believe we will always bump into this.

[dTal]

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

--George Bernard Shaw

[Clewza313]

So expressing sincerely held beliefs in a personal forum like his own website is in and of itself "toxic"? 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.

[Arainach]

https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-appendix...

>I recall being told early in my freshman year “If RMS hits on you, just say ‘I’m a vi user’ even if it’s not true.”

>Richard Stallman told me of his misery and that he’d kill himself if I didn’t go out with him.

There's also his office door at one point: https://miro.medium.com/max/1050/1*lDSkAjF1958TpEafxuJsLg.jp... (source: https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21...)

Even before his indefensible statements about Epstein, RMS was toxic and there's no denying it.

[boomboomsubban]

>I recall being told early in my freshman year “If RMS hits on you, just say ‘I’m a vi user’ even if it’s not true.”

The idea that Stallman would only violate women who use emacs is cartoonish levels of absurd. Personally, I'd expect he'd be thrilled they're at least using free software.

Besides that, the door thing seems to have been graffiti. And though I agree the dating anecdote makes him look bad, but also sounds like the actions of a person suffering from some mental illness.

[seebs]

There is a big difference between what's reasonable and acceptable in random people and what's reasonable and acceptable in people who are established or establishing themselves as Community Leaders. We expect leaders to model good behavior and take additional steps to avoid modeling harmful behaviors, because other people will emulate them.

He's been accused of things that are at the very least Somewhat Creepy. "Abusive" is a pretty high standard to reach, but I also think it's irrelevant. The way he treated people, coming from a person with power or authority, was likely to make people feel unsafe, and he was unwilling to recognize that the desire to have that position of social authority implied an obligation to mitigate such behaviors.

I think the community would be richer and better (and probably noticably more diverse in a number of ways) if either he'd changed his behavior and recognized the importance of these effects, or he'd been considered a non-leader of the community and merely an active contributor with strong opinions.

It's easy for people not familiar with these dynamics to massively underweight how much implied social pressure comes with being hit on by a person in a position of power within an organization. My usual assumption for someone with as much implied social authority as he had at MIT would be that it would basically be generally inappropriate for them to be hitting on anyone who wanted to be in or work in the lab or department they were affiliated with, because even if this specific person genuinely wouldn't abuse their power, many other people in comparable situations would and it's not really reasonable to expect people not to react to the possibility when it's such a widespread problem. (And yeah, that can sorta suck if you're lonely but in a position that makes it hard for you to hit on people without making them uncomfortable or afraid. One alternative is not to pursue or remain in such a position if it's a problem for you.)

[rtpg]

How is there any controversy to judging people for what they believe? This seems so normal! At every level of society we judge people for what they think, for their sort of moral philosophy. That's morality on some level (or some sort of meta-morality).

Though I think the added point here is that people who believe something _and_ have some power over other people can effectively apply these beliefs. If I say "I don't think that hiring women is a good idea cuz they might go on maternity leave" and I'm also the managing director of some non-profit, well... I feel like suspicion about my capabilities in that role are judstified!

[klodolph]

> 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-depa...

> 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).

[Rule35]

>> RMS’s loss of MIT privileges and leadership of the FSF are the appropriate responses

> I think it's clear that the GNU project needs a code of conduct

Why? It seems from your quote that people can be removed without a code and, as the FAANGs show us, a written criteria just gets gamed. A code of conduct is redundant and problematic. It victimizes the trustworthy.

> if the leader is opposed to the idea as much as Stallman is, then it's correct to replace him

The ultimate crime - even above anything in a code of conduct - is not wanting a code of conduct? Is anything else an absolute?

[klodolph]

> Why? It seems from your quote that people can be removed without a code [...]

Just because someone can be removed from a position of power without a code of conduct does not mean that the process was correct. You can also throw people in jail without a trial, but you shouldn't.

The code of conduct provides a process for people to address grievances. I believe this makes it more likely that grievances get addressed, and reduces the amount of personal bias.

> ...as the FAANGs show us, a written criteria just gets gamed.

I don't think it's easy to game a code of conduct. Could you explain, or give an example?

> The ultimate crime - even above anything in a code of conduct - is not wanting a code of conduct? Is anything else an absolute?

You're confusing "crime" with "not doing a good job". I said that he should be replaced because he wasn't doing a satisfactory job.

His job was to run the FSF and the GNU project. He was doing that job poorly. Therefore, he should step down and let someone else run it.

Honestly, I think that some of these problems could have been avoided if he made a stronger distinction between the GNU project and the FSF. He could have handed management of the GNU project off to someone else and focused more on the FSF, which is where his strengths lie.

Not wanting a code of conduct is not a "thoughtcrime". It's just bad policy for large projects. "Bad" as in "incompetent", not as in "morally wrong".

[Rule35]

> The code of conduct provides a process for people to address grievances.

No, that's the general procedure for handling adding and removing board members. It's the same procedure you'd follow if someone was arrested in the middle of the meeting.

A code of conduct is about the specific conduct. Picking your teeth, insulting tall people, etc.

> I don't think it's easy to game a code of conduct. Could you explain

If there is a written code it has to declare where the lack of gender recognition offense is compared to screaming at someone, for instance. If the code lists your pet offense above screaming, which they all do, then you can scream at people about your pet issue all day with zero risk.

If none of this is mentioned then it all falls back to the law. This is better because more skilled people have done more work on it, and because it's outside of the group's mandate so they can let members deal with it outside of the group. I can't follow you through a 7-11 yelling at you so you can apply the same rules to our official interactions and call the police if I act unruly in a meeting, no vote required.

Also, how does voting work when not only the level of offense, but the standard of offense itself is subjective. Does an accused director get to vote on whether the claimed offense falls into a listed class, but then have to recuse themselves for the vote on the seriousness of the specific claim? Or are they expected to recuse themselves from everything? How many directors do you need to accuse at once before quorum is you alone?

Generally nobody sees why you can't tell people about the specific anti-fraud rules until they work in a fraud-rife industry and watch the arms race. If you haven't been involved with multiple non-profits you might not have experienced this yet.

> I said that he should be replaced because he wasn't doing a satisfactory job.

But the thing he wasn't satisfying you by doing was enacting a code of conduct?

> I think that some of these problems could have been avoided if he made a stronger distinction between the GNU project and the FSF

Good point. I think everyone running things should try not to co-mingle their jobs. But this isn't a code of conduct issue, it's more appropriate as one of the basic requirements for a director. No conflicts of interest.

> Not wanting a code of conduct is [...] just bad policy for large projects

No, a code of conduct is a kiss of death. It adds nothing that honest members of the group need but gives trolls and ideologues a field day.

A group should never have rules about things outside of its core tasks, unless it wants 90% of its time to be spent arguing about things outside of its core tasks.

[Clewza313]

I'm asking you a genuine question. I note you didn't call RMS out by name, but you certainly seem to be imply it.

Re: the article you shared, I didn't really see much evidence either way there? It's clear that RMS is, to put it mildly, "difficult to like", but there's a big difference between that and being straight up abusive, particularly given that it seems quite obvious that the mens rea is missing: as far as I can tell, most of the time RMS genuinely has no idea when he is being offensive.

[klodolph]

> I'm asking you a genuine question. I note you didn't call RMS out by name, but you certainly seem to be imply it.

I don't think the question is interesting or relevant, so I'm not answering it. I explained that I considered the question to be a loaded question. If you want me to answer a question, you will have to ask a different one.

> ...as far as I can tell, most of the time RMS genuinely has no idea when he is being offensive.

Someone who genuinely has no idea when he is being offensive should not be at the head of an organization like the FSF. "Mens rea" is a term from criminal law. It's used for figuring out the difference between murder and manslaughter, for example. It's not relevant to figuring out whether you are good or bad at your job.

[manigandham]

The word "toxic" has been so overused as to become meaningless.

[klodolph]

Strongly disagree. While people do misuse the word, it has meaning and can be figured out from context.

[SpicyLemonZest]

The problem is that the meaning blends together subjective offense and a desire for professional sanction in a way which makes the term very hard to actually engage with. Challenging whether some particular behavior is toxic comes across as nitpicking, while challenging whether people should get in trouble for toxicity comes across as minimizing legitimately bad behaviors.

[klodolph]

> Challenging whether some particular behavior is toxic comes across as nitpicking, while challenging whether people should get in trouble for toxicity comes across as minimizing legitimately bad behaviors.

There are strategies to challenge accusations of "toxic behavior" without coming across as nitpicking. These strategies can be learned, and if you are worried about this scenario, I suggest you learn them. It is a great tragedy that dispute resolution and effective communication are poorly taught in school. These strategies are not difficult to learn, but it is much more effective to learn them in person. If you know someone who is effective at mediation and dispute resolution, see if you can ask them to demonstrate techniques and strategies for you.

There are also books. I personally recommend Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg and Crucial Conversations by Patterson, Grenny, et al. Nonviolent Communication may seem a bit hokey and the book is a bit padded out but I vouch for its effectiveness.

In the context of organizations like the GNU project, one of the ways to keep discussions about behavior sane is to have some kind of formal dispute resolution process. This can be done with a code of conduct. Here is the Python project's code of conduct as an example: https://www.python.org/psf/conduct/

Asking whether people should get in trouble for "toxicity" is kind of vague, because the term "toxic" is vague and mired in opinion. That is okay. We need vague words because we need the ability to communicate vaguely. "Vague" is not the same thing as "meaningless".

[manigandham]

I find your disagreement to be toxic.

[Torwald]

> People in the OSS community can, at times, glorify toxic behavior.

I wouldn't go so far as to glorify toxic behaviour, but some of what is seen as toxic by some is IMO just frankness or a tactic to bring the conversation back into a realm of technical discussion.

[klodolph]

In my experience, people who have technical discussions are often blind to their own emotions and the effect that their words have on the people around them. In good this can be solved. In bad cases, people talk about "discussing technical issues" and "directness" as a shield for their poor behavior.

An example from real life: A student, Y, was having a problem with her CS lab assignment, and talked to her professor, Prof. Z. She described what she had done and he said, "Well, that was stupid." In his mind this was just something that you say about bad code you've written. However, he was a professor, and he was saying this about a student's code, and he didn't think of the incredible negative impact that his statement made on his student.

In real life, this interaction took the "good path". They had a conversation, he apologized, and he changed how he spoke to students.

The "bad path" (which didn't happen) is where he justified/defended what he said or minimized/ignored the student's feeling.

Everyone comes to these decision points over and over again in their lives. It's inevitable. We all hurt other people. If we always defend our actions as being in the interest of "technical discussions" or state other reasons why our behavior is correct, is it likely that we are simply good people who never say bad things? Or is it likely that we are ignoring/justifying our poor behavior, and failing to learn and grow?

[SpicyLemonZest]

The "bad path" you're describing is what I and many others like about working in software. When I'm meeting with other technical people, we can have a frank discussion about problems we're facing and solutions to them, which comes much more naturally to me than constantly analyzing the feelings and relative status of everyone in the room. I completely understand why other people prefer more empathy-driven conversational norms, and I try to meet them halfway when I can, but I can't support the idea that their preference is fundamentally superior to mine.

[klodolph]

> The "bad path" you're describing is what I and many others like about working in software.

This is not true of software in general. Software companies are diverse, and they are run in diverse ways. (Maybe not as diverse as other industries... but there is still a lot of variation.)

> When I'm meeting with other technical people, we can have a frank discussion about problems we're facing and solutions to them, which comes much more naturally to me than constantly thinking about the feelings and relative status of everyone in the room.

There are a few things I'd like you to consider.

1. Software companies face problems with people. Good managers shield engineers from people problems as much as possible, but if you are only having discussions about technical problems and not people problems, then you are probably not having frank discussions.

2. The fact that it does not come natural to you to constantly think about the feelings of others is not unusual nor is it a fundamental part of your job to constantly think about the feelings of others. If that were the case, there would not be so many good software engineers on the autism spectrum. I have worked with several.

3. It is not expected that you intuit when people are hurt, never say anything hurtful, or think about people first when you are having a technical discussion. However, it is expected that you are aware that your behavior can have a negative impact on other people in the organization and that you make reasonable attempts to correct your behavior if necessary.

> ... but I can't support the idea that their preference is fundamentally superior to mine.

This isn't a dichotomy. An organization needs a combination of strong technical skills and strong people skills in order to succeed. Those skills are, of course, not distributed equally. There is no expectation that a software engineer have the same people skills as an engineering manager.

However, consider this.

An engineering manager primarily works on people problems but would suffer greatly if they had zero technical skills. An engineering manager with zero technical skills is a liability. Likewise, a software engineer with zero people skills is a liability.

[tester34]

on the other hand the Prof gave to student one of the best lessons, the lesson of life

Kinda kidding, but the faster you learn how to handle critics, the better for you.

[klodolph]

And the faster you learn how to give good criticism, the better for you. Being cavalier about other people undermines your ability to effectively communicate.

[tester34]

It's way harder to change other people

[bill_mon]

> Take Mr. X, who is outraged by Microsoft's behavior and refuses to buy Microsoft's products, tells other people about his problems with Microsoft, and tells everyone to use FOSS alternatives? Now, Mr. X also thinks that it's stupid to believe in god, and is not afraid to say it to everyone he meets. He's suddenly changed from "FOSS advocate" to "toxic workplace on legs".

What's toxic about this? Two perfectly sensible points of view and you think Mr. X is dangerous to be around?

[klodolph]

> What's toxic about this? Two perfectly sensible points of view and you think Mr. X is dangerous to be around?

Not sure where the word "dangerous" comes from.

Just to explain things. If you tell people at work that it's stupid to believe in god, you are probably going to get fired, and rightly so. It's not dangerous, but it is toxic (belittling people for their religious beliefs).

[bill_mon]

Toxic means dangerous.

[klodolph]

"Toxic" does not mean "dangerous" in this context. The lingustic phenomenon is called polysemy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysemy

It's like how when I "execute" a program, you understand that I am not killing the program as punishment. Even though the word "execute" has that meaning, it only applies in other contexts.

[bill_mon]

Toxicity is a serious thing. We label toxic chemicals with labels and warnings because they're dangerous. Serious business.

When we apply "toxic" to a person or his behaviour, we borrow that seriousness. That's why we choose that specific, strong words with a well-known meaning.

I oppose calling "I disagree with your world view" toxic. A serial killer might deserve the term.

[danielheath]

This hypothetical Mr X is going to take all of a week to get the entire helpdesk & IT procurement team (and every religious coworker) to avoid him and his need to criticize some aspect of their lives.

That's "toxic" because now you have a staff member who people won't communicate effectively with.

[bill_mon]

Now you're inventing more personality for Mr X. He doesn't like Microsoft and doesn't hide it. He thinks Santa Claus is for children and doesn't hide it. He's not the problem here.

[mckirk]

He is, though, because his opinion on Santa Claus should be completely irrelevant to his interactions with his co-workers. But if he prioritizes being hostile by correcting and insulting people over being humble and accepting that others might believe differently, he is being toxic -- he's poisonous to be around.

There are different ways to stand by one's beliefs. One is to keep them to yourself and let them guide your decisions silently, but defend them vigorously if they are actively challenged. And one is to feel the need to rub them into everyone's face constantly, because there is only Right and Wrong and you can't deal with somebody being wrong (i.e., of a different opinion than you) without feeling personally attacked and going on the offensive.

[bill_mon]

I can agree. But this means that we can never talk about anything other than specific, technical issues at work. We can never reveal any opinion or outside fact about anything. I suppose that's a solution.

In this scenario, our guy wouldn't accept that others might believe differently, because he'd never know, because they never say. Fine by me.

> being wrong (i.e., of a different opinion than you)

That's not what wrong means. Opinions are personal and subjective and can't be wrong or right. Religious ideas a not opinions, they are fact claims about the universe.

[smsm42]

TBH, I has been participating in open source since the 1990s, and I never seen the actual stigma like you describe. Yes, OSS projects were laughed at, dismissed as hobbyist and unserious, insinuated to be low quality and "worth exactly how much you pay for it" - all that happened all the time. But implying OSS people are mentally ill... maybe somebody did it, but I've never seen it. And I did work with people from Microsoft, Oracle, etc. - albeit from the parts that were more OSS-friendly. But I think if it was indeed that widespread I'd hear about it. RMS certainly had a reputation to be an unusual character - even in OSS circles - but I didn't see it wielded as a weapon agains OSS - at least not until the cancel culture started.

And yes, there were plenty of assholes in OSS (as there were outside) and it was mostly young people, many of whom confused being rude with being honest and direct, but I don't think it had anything to do with either Microsoft or mental illness. It had to do with being young and unexperienced and trying to form a new culture online where none existed before.

[r3trohack3r]

Here is a nice document about their approach to “evangelism”

http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/Comes-3096.pdf

And some nice documentation on patent trolling to make the commons financially unviable, this destroyed lives: http://techrights.org/2007/10/22/lasuit-evolution-linux/

And examples of when they paid folks to go spread a bunch of misinformation about the commons: http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/AstroTurfing

[smsm42]

I know there was a concerted FUD effort and much dirty playing, including all the stuff you are pointing out. What I specifically didn't see is usage of mental illness as a weapon against OSS.

[r3trohack3r]

It’s part of their documented strategy in the evangelism document. Section 11: Mopping Up.

I’ll update my comment to read “mental deficiency” instead of mental illness for accuracy. I overstated.

(Update: I’ve lost my edit button on the original post)

[surbhinahtajain]

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[boulos]

Hmm. I think RMS’s anti-establishment push was so much earlier (mostly against Bell Labs, etc.) that “the 90s” don’t really apply.

If anything, it’s just his personality: he takes hardline positions and holds onto them. You might be right about hardliners being the only folks who have enough persistence to come through (vis a vis survivorship bias), but then you’re also just including the leaders of those companies you mentioned: Bill Gates and Larry Ellison were famously combative, competitive, and all sorts of other words.

[r3trohack3r]

“What was left” certainly applies. These are predominantly the personality types, and socio-economic groups, that made it through this time period in open source.

It isn’t easy being on the receiving end of this: http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/Comes-3096.pdf

[jarfil]

On the other hand, following that logic, in times of peace the soldiers of yesteryear are out of work.

I'm not a fan of cancel culture, but it might be just a sign that priorities have changed for people. Maybe the basic software liberties are enough for most, and it's no longer enough to fight for OSS, but instead time to consider "how" to fight for it. In a sense, it could be seen as a victory.

[r3trohack3r]

“Good times breed weak [humans]”

But I see it differently. I feel the wolves are in sheep’s skin, and are trying to convince me the sheep are wolves.

[_euac]

I'm always curious about this line of thinking. What exactly do you think people are gaining by - say - denouncing sexism or other kinds of awful behavior? What's so wolfish about that?

[strken]

People who denounce sexism because they've got a moral framework or intuition that tells them sexism is bad are principled actors. People who denounce sexism because they're trying to get likes on social media, because it grants them social approval, or because they've made a job out of it are acting out of self-interest. Not everyone who is in the second group knows what their motivations are: people usually come up with seemingly altruistic reasons for self-interested behaviour, and genuinely believe those reasons, even though they wouldn't behave that way if they weren't getting anything out of it.

As per the article, "punishment should be proportional to the offence", and punishments should ensure the offender will "constructively come to understand, repent, and make amends for an infraction". The first group can be relied upon to see transgressions in light of their broader moral principles. They won't always seek punishments that are proportional and restorative, because those are moral principles in themselves, but they'll at least be trying to do what they believe is a good thing.

The second group is scary because they just don't stop. They'll keep doing things in order to get the reward of social approval or social media, for as long as that reward lasts. Even worse, because they don't have good introspection about the underlying rewards that incentivise them, they'll reward each other for escalating. They'll tear people's lives apart without a shred of guilt, because they're getting something out of it, which is why they're seen as predators.

[dguaraglia]

I understand your argument, but wouldn't be the opposite be true too? Aren't RMS's comments defending Minsky just a form of 'clout seeking' and being argumentative for arguments sake?

If people are making the case that RMS is neurodivergent and therefore his behavior should be tolerated, shouldn't we be making exactly the same argument about the people you put on the latter group? Or is it only people we agree with that get the benefit of being 'neurodivergent'?

[strken]

The argument was explaining why Twitter mobs form and what they're getting out of it, not in favour of RMS. I think the general principle of scepticism towards people who benefit from the stance they hold applies to you and I, to RMS, and to his detractors.

That being said, I don't think he expected to benefit socially from the opinions that got him cancelled in general, or from complaining about the term "assaulting" in particular. His autism is less relevant than there being no real gain for him. It being a costly opinion for him to express is evidence he genuinely believes it. Whether or not he should be tolerated is another question, but I don't think he's the metaphorical wolf here.

[TheOtherHobbes]

They improve their social status, which potentially makes them more powerful and influential within their tribe.

Unfortunately this can be entirely orthogonal to making genuine improvements in how humans relate to each other.

You're dealing with some deep seated flaws in human social psychology, and the polarised morality of cancel culture doesn't leave room to explore potential solutions which are based on that uncomfortable truth.

You're either an insider who agrees with The Cause or an outsider unbeliever who must be reeducated or destroyed.

This can feel great for participants, in a slightly manic way. But there's no space for a more nuanced view, and that makes stable solutions unlikely.

[dguaraglia]

> You're either an insider who agrees with The Cause or an outsider unbeliever who must be reeducated or destroyed.

This can be also said of the 'anti-anti' crowd. Their whole objective is to moralize about how bad the 'anti' crowd is and telling them to shut up, while throwing a number of perfectly valid concerns out the window in the process. While most people in HN might leave it at denouncing the behavior, people have been doxxed, harassed online and in person for 'canceling' someone or something before.

BTW, I hate the 'cancel culture' term. I hate how it is used by people who - given the opportunity - would 'cancel' LGBT rights, immigration, etc. Every time I see someone using the term, I can't help but feel they've fallen for Propaganda 101.

[r3trohack3r]

Here is how a wolf would disrupt the commons: http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/Comes-3096.pdf

[readflaggedcomm]

Or apparatchiks inevitably replace enthusiasts, enabling mainstream influence.

[Mc91]

> The toxicity in these communities is a result of what was leftover

Toxicity relative to what? I have worked in a number of places much more toxic than Stallman's GNU project, or Linus's Linux kernel etc.

As has been said before - the difference between open source communities and closed source companies is that open source communities are open - we can see the flamewars on public mailing lists. There are plenty of toxic Jira pull request code review comment threads out there, resulting in lots of meetings with managers over turf wars or whatnot, which the world will never see because it's private.

[wayneftw]

> They went as far as using mental illness as a weapon against the community (equating participation in the commons as an equivalent to mental illness).

They went as far as fantasizing about associating those who used competing tech with mental deficiency.

Here is the quote from page 55 of the document you cited [0]

> Ideally, use of the competing technology becomes associated with mental deficiency, as in, "he believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and OS/2." Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. Make the complete failure of the competition's technology part of the mythology of the computer industry. We want to place selection pressure on [people who use the competing tech]...

Do people really need a plan to talk this way though? I remember how Linux, Mac and Windows enthusiasts used to talk about each other in the 90s, early 2000s and even today. Even right here on HN. Is it all Microsoft's fault? I don't think so. This is how people behave, especially online.

[0] http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/Comes-3096.pdf

[r3trohack3r]

In fairness, I overstated. They used “mental deficiency” as a weapon. Equating use of a competing product, the commons, as a sign of mental deficiency. Not necessarily illness.

Source document: http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/Comes-3096.pdf

I’ve lost my edit button on the original post so putting the correction here.

[yellowapple]

A different take on your different take: it might not be coincidental that said current wave of villification coincides with large technology corporations (ostensibly) embracing "open source". The causality is unclear - it could be some nefarious attempt by corporate interests to weaponize public sentiment against "obstacles" to said corporate interests, or it could simply be corporate interests becoming more 21w/illing to dip their toes in "open source" as its more fanatical figures get pushed out - but the correlation is plain as day.

What's especially concerning to me is that such an alignment with corporate interests has somehow managed to successfully brand itself as "leftist" here in the US, both among right-wingers and among people who sincerely believe themselves to be advancing leftist causes by aligning with these large corporations against people with fairly strong anticapitalist leanings. Like with the FOSS movement, I strongly suspect that the ownership class is engaging in its own form of EEE against leftism: paying lip-service to it to appear to "embrace" it, while intending to "extend" it with things outright antithetical to workers' rights (like, you know, celebrating when large corporations terminate employees as long as it's for the "right" reasons, or celebrating when workers are prevented from acquiring arms and ammunition) until it's weak and fragmented enough to "extinguish".

We're approaching a new age of wealth consolidation, be that wealth in the form of real estate, money, intellectual property, you name it. A new gilded age, with all the monopolism that entails.

</tinfoil>

[eeZah7Ux]

Not much tinfoil: big corporations successfully coopted the Free Software movement into Open Source and finally into unpaid labor for SaaS corporations.

Then, they start banning GPLv3.

Next, the same "Linux is cancer" microsoft now "loves Linux" and buys GitHub.

The EEE process is going strong.

[bitwize]

Who do you think is behind cancel culture? Social justice is like the Anti-Life Equation for bigcorps and other established institutions who are incensed that somewhere nerds are having fun without their official sanction.

My eyes were opened when I heard a podcast in which a prominent cancelista put forth the idea that federated protocols were a Bad Thing because by requiring implementations to be protocol compatible, federated services caused "vendor lock-in" and stifled innovation. I thought, what in the seven hells is this? It's like something a professional propagandist for single-vendor services (think Slack, Salesforce, etc.) might say. Up there with Steve Ballmer declaring the GPL a cancer.

Then the burblings of other open-source SJ types began to make more sense. Coraline Ada Ehmke declaring that the Open Source Definition made sense when the enemy was corporations, but now that the enemy was the fascist Trump administration it needed to change. The implication being that bigcorps were no longer the enemy, even though a hallmark of fascism is a corrupt collusion between the state and industry. "We have always been at war with Eastasia" tier cognitive dissonance. Anyway, open source was intended to protect users' freedom, not to fight a particular enemy.

There was another one, I forgot who, who said something like in order to be "real open source" in $CURRENT_YEAR you can't just put the code out there, You need to have a code of conduct, and a code of conduct enforcement board. He lamented the fact that open source projects did not implement the standard practices used by corporate HR departments. Which, if you need to have an HR department to be legitimate open source then that limits legitimate open source participants to corporations only. I'm counting nonprofits like the Linux Foundation as "corporations" because they require (large amounts of) money, infrastructure, a legal team, and yes, an HR department in order to function. No Linus Torvalds could come along and start a project used by billions in the environment they want to create. It would have to go through the Proper Channels and be certified as anti-racist and free of toxic masculinity by the Proper Authorities. Like many forms of regulatory compliance, it's a filter to ensure only the big players can play, but unlike regulation there isn't even a nominal accountability to the public. Scientology style "dead agenting" tactics will suffice when governments are too slow to act.

I want to believe that SJ in open source is for the greater good, but it looks far too much like a weapon to be wielded by the powerful against the users and developers open source was supposed to protect.

[mindslight]

Amen! There doesn't even need to be an explicit motive driving the colonization, rather just an influx of people from the bigcorps who can't imagine a world without the bigcorp authoritarianism they've thrived in.

There is an overwhelming number of them due to the profitability of the surveillance industry. They're focused on source availability rather than software freedom, because that matches the business model of their employers. And their coup is couched in the language of progress, so it's easier to just go along with at first.

I don't know how to push back, except for publishing your own projects such that you can't get doxxed, avoiding middlemen like Github, developing technology that isn't interesting to authoritarians, etc. For the greater landscape, Corporate HR seems here to stay.

Personally, RMS bugs me because he seems to miss the forest for the trees on some things. But this doesn't mean I think the organization RMS founded needs a new leader, rather it means I need to do the work of convincing others where he is wrong. And I'd be lucky if I accomplish one tenth of what RMS has.