Re: Remove RMS from the GCC Steering Committee

["Óscar Fuentes" <ofv@wanadoo.es>]

We on the West are on the brink of entering into a new cycle of social
madness, fueled by Postmodern nonsense.

Thank you for being brave enough to confront the self-righteous mob, and
thank you for doing it with such equanimity and eloquence.

Alexandre Oliva via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> writes:

> Nathan,
>
> I think you identify an important problem of gender imbalance in our
> community.  It is quite likely that finding ways to make our community
> more welcoming to demographic groups that are currently less present
> than in the distribution in the global population could reduce this
> imbalance.
>
> However, your diagnosis as to the supposed cause of the problem makes no
> sense to me.  You said yourself that Stallman has not participated in
> our community for decades.  Much as I know, his very hands-off influence
> in the SC has been mostly limited to licensing and strategic issues,
> e.g. the GPLv3 and Runtime Exception relicensing, to ensure copyleft
> defenses were in place to avoid abuse of such features as plugins.
>
>
> It may be very convenient to paint a boogey-man and expel it because
> that became fashionable.  But sacrificing a goat or a lamb does not
> expiate our own sins, and expelling someone who hasn't even been present
> in the community can't be expected to make any real difference to that
> matter; it would rather make us seem *less* welcoming and more
> intolerant, and suggest other motivations for the move.
>
>
> Let's be real and honest, when was the last time anyone in the GCC
> community was called out for sexist behavior?  When was there even
> conversation about it, and about how sexist behavior is not acceptable
> and not to be accepted among participants in the GCC community?  What
> was our latest collective action to promote e.g. gender equity within
> the community?
>
> If we were to shift our collective blame over this very real and
> undesirable problem to someone who has any direct authority over the
> project, why not suggesting expelling e.g. the entire Steering Committee
> for its evident failure to address the problem?  (I don't think it's a
> good idea, but that would be the first thing to try if we were to blame
> "management"/"leadership" rather than ourselves for it)
>
> What could support any rational belief that having RMS one extra level
> removed from our technical community would bring about anything
> resembling a solution to the very undesirable and unjust gender
> imbalance you've correctly identified?
>
>
> The action you propose, besides the absence of effect in making our
> community actually more welcoming, because he's already absent, would
> send the opposite of a welcoming signal to people with controversial or
> impopular opinions, to people at a certain spot in the neurodiversity
> spectrum, and to many others who oppose this sort of mob rule.
>
>
> How about we set out to take individual and collective actions that
> actually address the problem *in* our community?  We don't need anyone's
> approval to call out sexist acts, nor to invite and train people with an
> interest in compiler technology, nor to maintain a welcoming atmosphere.
>
> A regime of terror to maintain a false appearance of a welcoming
> atmosphere won't get us there.
>
> If we undertake such actions, individually or collecetively, you might
> be surprised (but I won't be) that he, even absent from the community,
> would support these actions, which is the very opposite of the picture
> you paint.
>
> Our taking effective action on our own would help show what the real
> issues and intents are, and it would tell apart those who are really
> interested in solving the gender imbalance and the social injustices
> causing it, like you and me, from those who are abusing that flag as a
> trojan horse to serve nefarious purposes, as suggested and illustrated
> in https://ultralux97.medium.com/stallman-must-be-removed-a3061b09fb22