[geofft]

Perhaps a better way of putting this is that while autism doesn't need a "cure," being an asshole is absolutely a thing that - if it is indeed caused by a medical condition - a medical professional can help with. (And if it is not caused by a medical condition, then it is simply a character flaw, and should be judged like a willful character flaw and not like a medical condition.)

There are plenty of autistic people who are not assholes and are lovely people. Many of them say they go out of their way to have their rational brain compensate for the level of emotional processing that other people expect out of them, that they specifically worry about being perceived as rude.

The least a leader of an activism organization can do (assuming he does in fact care about the activism) is to figure out when he's alienating people and figure out how to stop, or to step down and let someone else take the leadership role.

[yellowapple]

> The least a leader of an activism organization can do (assuming he does in fact care about the activism) is to figure out when he's alienating people and figure out how to stop, or to step down and let someone else take the leadership role.

Which he did, and pretty quickly at that. And then the FSF evidently wanted him to return, hence his reappointment to the Board of Directors.

[MauranKilom]

> figure out when he's alienating people and figure out how to stop

I read through the appendix in the open letter and find no discussion of this. If he did stop, would you agree that this entire letter was baseless?

[geofft]

I personally find the open letter a bit short on these sorts of details. I think better sources are these:

http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html (October 2019, by a former FSF board member and 2021 recipient of the FSF's Award for the Advancement of Free Software):

> For the last two years, I had been a loud internal voice in the FSF leadership regarding RMS' Free-Software-unrelated public statements; I felt strongly that it was in the best interest of the FSF to actively seek to limit such statements, and that it was my duty to FSF to speak out about this within the organization. [...] When the escalation started, I still considered RMS both a friend and colleague, and I attempted to argue with him at length to convince him that some of his positions were harmful to sexual assault survivors and those who are sex-trafficked, and to the people who devote their lives in service to such individuals. More importantly to the FSF, I attempted to persuade RMS that launching a controversial campaign on sexual behavior and morality was counter to his and FSF's mission to advance software freedom, and told RMS that my duty as an FSF Director was to assure the best outcome for the FSF, which IMO didn't include having a leader who made such statements.

https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html (September 2019, by a former FSF board member and 2014 recipient of the FSF's Award for the Advancement of Free Software):

> I've spent a lot of time working with him to help him understand why various positions he holds are harmful. I've reached the conclusion that it's not that he's unable to understand, he's just unwilling to change his mind.

They aren't going to change the letter or its appendix at this point, given that people have signed, but if I had the magic power to change it, I would suggest those two as citations that he was repeatedly asked to consider the impact of his actions and repeatedly refused.

If he did stop - if he did express the interest in figuring out why he's alienating people and why his statements were not only hurting the cause of free software directly but wasting the time of FSF board members who could be contributing to free software instead - then yes, the letter would have been unnecessary, because the problem would have been resolved.

[salawat]

>For the last two years, I had been a loud internal voice in the FSF leadership regarding RMS' Free-Software-unrelated public statements; I felt strongly that it was in the best interest of the FSF to actively seek to limit such statements, and that it was my duty to FSF to speak out about this within the organization. [...]

Read: I felt it was in the Foundation's best interest's to deprive Richard Stallman of his inalienable right to free speech. I also felt it was my duty to try to get the organization to agree with me on the virtue of censoring Richard Stallman.

>I've spent a lot of time working with him to help him understand why various positions he holds are harmful. I've reached the conclusion that it's not that he's unable to understand, he's just unwilling to change his mind.

Read: I've argued my case, but the case I made was not sufficient for Richard Stallman to decide to change his viewpoint on the matter.

Note all of these are written in such a way to put the most uncharitable spin on Richard, and the most charitable spin on the writer.

Russell's conjugation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation

Critical thinking is important.

[MauranKilom]

Both of these are relevant to his removal back then, but how are they relevant now?

> assure the best outcome for the FSF, which IMO didn't include having a leader who made such statements.

Ok, he's no longer leading the FSF and the recent development does not aim to change that. Why is this (reasonable-at-the-time, imo) opinion relevant now?

> I've reached the conclusion that it's not that he's unable to understand, he's just unwilling to change his mind.

Did he change his mind now? Has he repented? Atoned? The 2019 pieces are not going to take this into account.

[geofft]

He hasn't said anything, and moreover the FSF was awfully secretive about the fact that he was rejoining:

https://twitter.com/fsf/status/1374399897558917128

It is certainly possible that between 2019 and now that he is no longer "unwilling to change his mind." (I think that's more important than whether he "repented"/"atoned"; I'm not looking for a YouTube apology video, I'm looking for an effective leader.) But a) given that complaints about his leadership approach had been around for decades, it's a priori unlikely that anything changed in the last year and a half without further information, b) his announcement didn't say anything about reflecting on why he stepped down, he just said he's back and isn't planning on stepping down again, and c) he's continued leading the GNU Project, which the FSF provides organizational stewardship for, everything points to nothing having changed.

We don't know why the FSF put him back on the board - we don't know if the board asked or he asked. We don't know whether they took any of the above into account. We don't know what his role on the board is. The only statement the FSF made is that one tweet.

(And, in any case, being a member of the FSF board is a leadership role.)

There's a lot of concern apart from the text of the open letter about the FSF's secrecy. For instance, see this statement from the EFF https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/statement-re-election-... and this one from KDE https://ev.kde.org/2021/03/24/on-the-reappointment-of-rms-fs... .

I agree that the open letter doesn't go into full detail about why the authors of the letter believe that no meaningful change has happened, but I think they are justified in believing it.