A chart showing the signature count as a graph comparing the #rms open support letter vs the anti-stallman letter... yay the letter in support of stallman is not just winning, but it seems to be growing in support where the other letter has lost steam and stopped growing.

The link below includes the script used to generate the chart

https://linuxreviews.org/Open-RMS-Letter_Chart_Generator

@freemo That makes sense. The folks signing the letter against Stallman care about the open source community and it's commitment to inclusiveness and diversity. The folks signing the letter in support of Stallman are more concerned with "men's rights" or fighting "cancel culture." It would take them longer to hear about it, since they're not a part of the community, but surprise, surprise, there are more insecure men on the internet than free software advocates. 🙄

@pants

mens rights _are_ a thing as long as eg. men who chose to invest more time in their children than into their jobs are considered weak, as it means that it should be the womans job.

cancel culture is a problem, the anger of many gets unloaded on a single person, warranted or not. it's just lynch mobs with cyber. "down the memory hole with him!"

it doesn't even fix any problems, but silences symptoms of a fucked up society. the problems still exist, they only aren't visible anymore.

@freemo

Wow, nothing could be further from the truth (replying to @pants ). Inclusiveness and diversity are one of my top priorities, yet I support him.. What you really mean is that I dont have the same priorities as you when it comes to inclusiveness.

I have spoken to a **lot** of people about RMS and your statement seems ignorantly disconnected with their sentiment. Not one of them mentioned anything about men's rights, and while cancel culture is sometimes mentioned it doesnt seem to be the primary motivating factor. In fact every single person I spoke to on other side seemed to care about the future of FSF more than anything else.

One anecdote on our server is an openly bisexual man on our server supported RMS and received very disgusting intolerant hate male of the strongest language possible for his stance, apparently this is a thing as many people supporting RMS has received the same, yet I have heard of no one against RMS being harassed in a similar manner. This right here exemplifies, I think, why people are supporting RMS, because the people who tend to be doing the hate and destroying the diversity are the very people who tried to cancel RMS in the first place.

More over, there simply isnt a good argument against him. Some of his comments that people dont like he has either changed his mind on later, or has been largely irrelevant tot he topic and certainly not hateful or prejudice even when it might be wrong or uninformed (which isnt that often).

In short, we have some very hateful disrespectful people trying to force other people to their will even when they are a minority voice and RMS is largely supported, their tactics have been unacceptable and empowering people who behave like petulant toddlers in discussing this very issue (re: the hate speech towards RMS supporters) is the very reason many of us oppose it, particularly when RMS has been the greatest driving force of FSF to begin with and the vast majority of signatures against him are from places like microsoft that have been toxic to FSF from the get go.

@bonifartius

@freemo if you're talking about @lupyuen , maybe he can confirm, but I'm pretty sure he signed the letter to remove RMS and got attacked by Stallman's supporters...
And there are lots of good arguments against RMS if you give even a little credibility to the women he's behaved poorly towards.
This isn't about Microsoft, or proprietary software. It's about a man who abused his position of authority after being asked not to, then people trying to take that authority away.
@bonifartius

@pants

I was not refering to him, I dont know his sexual orientation, though he was on the back of my mind when I mentioned it and I did think he posted his letter in support of RMS not against.

As for the evidence against stallman, I give weight to evidence not hearsay, particularly people in positions of power. If your asking me that I should judge against him on gossip alone from individuals whom I have no personal connection to and no way to judge their credibility, then no I obviously wont do that.

Can you give an example of any evidence-backed instances where he abused authority, I am happy to listen and maybe change my mind.

@lupyuen @bonifartius

@pants

In fact the more I think about it any evidence-backed claims of something he did or said that is questionable in nearly all cases were not hateful and more of a reflection of being on the autistic spectrum. In which case the move to use those things against him to get him kicked off the board seems like intolerance and prejudice towards aspies, which is a far greater crime than anything stallman has come close to doing.

@lupyuen @bonifartius