His tone was “and you can do this too, you can join in.”Īs a newbie librarian, what I was hearing at my university library was that these monopolistic publishers putting human knowledge behind paywalls and proprietary platforms were our friends and that libraries-whose social mission is to share and preserve knowledge-could no longer fully lead our own mission in the digital age, we’d have to give over core parts of our mission to for-profit companies. When RMS spoke, I thought “This is genius.” RMS thinks about and works on stuff I will never fully understand but in his presentation that day, he drew me in with his uncompromising principles, ability to think through systems and their consequences, and the directness and simplicity of his language-no academic jargon or superiority. When I first heard Richard Stallman speak, in San Diego in 2002, he was on a platform with Lawrence Lessig. ![]() My letter addresses two topics, my personal experiences with RMS and my sense of community fairness. Richard, on the other hand, has reflected, admitted his own concern for harm he may have done, and never resorted to any name calling despite the cost he has personally borne as a result of the attacks on him. All of this was re-upped in the same vicious manner in March 2021, when Richard’s return to the FSF was announced. losers” and macho name-calling, pushing for “taking sides” rather than for understanding and reflection. The loudest attacks on RMS followed patterns I’ve experienced myself in some subcultures. What happened to RMS, in the maelstrom following the Epstein scandal, struck me as a disinformation campaign. I’m focused instead on the painful consequences for our liberation movements of leaping to judgment, weaponizing buzzwords and treating accusations as evidence. I’m not addressing the way journalists misrepresented RMS, that seems unquestionably wrong and not debatable. To nourish a welcoming and inclusive community rather than hurl names at one another and ostracize people. My letter is for people who are still struggling, as I am, to find the way forward, to learn from this painful and harmful series of events. Public support in the face of unfair public attack seems necessary to me, and my hope is to put some energy toward better community dialog. This letter of support for RMS is my effort. How do you support someone you’ve known for years who is unfairly attacked and publicly maligned? Subjected to a mass campaign of accusations and name-calling by people who demonstrably don’t know or purposely disregard the facts? How do you contribute to fairness and understanding without just “joining a side, let’s see who wins?” Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 4.0) for this page, albeit Peterson’s article may be licensed differently. Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software at 7:58 pm by Dr. ![]() Letter of Support for Richard Stallman – Doing Better in Community
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