Michael Downey 🇺🇳 @downey@floss.social

For the past 15 years, the world's top #FLOSS leaders gather for a weekend mind-share at the #GSoC Mentor Summit. This year, 370 #FreeSoftware maintainers from 43-ish countries attending. The best event each year in the #OpenSource world. Let's do this! #t

@Shamar As I & many have pointed out, people have been denouncing his behavior for years, and trying to get him removed from his positions of trust and leadership. RMS deliberately designed FSF/GNU as a dictatorship to preserve his power.

Again, you don't seem to grasp the differences between criminal law and betrayal of public trust.

I"m done attempting to interact with you until you get your head out of the sand and learn some basics about how leadership works.

@davidpgil It's not about free speech. It's about damaging the trust in what you've been designated to lead. Being a serial violator of an organization's code of conduct is more than a "personality flaw", it's a disqualification to claim leadership of that organization. Bradley Kuhn put it best: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html

@davidpgil Written by a radical conspiracy theorist with a decades old axes to grind. This is not the reality of the situation. Being abusive toward underrepresented groups in FLOSS is not "doing what's right"

@Shamar If you think removal of RMS was about the MIT email, you don't understand his history/"legacy" of abuse. People including the FSF board have been trying to get him to step down for a long long time.

Once again on the road for the day job. Looking ahead, watch for toots on:

- Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit
- Mozilla Festival
- Linux Foundation Open Source Summit Europe

New term for #Stallman style #FreeSoftware governance: DDFL?

(Despotic Dictator For Life?)

#RMS #OpenSource #FLOSS #FOSS

@Shamar @dthompson @cwebber

This isn't a criminal procceding. It's a crisis of organizational leadership.

Learn the difference.

#RMS is no leader; he's a despotic dictator and cult leader. He has done far more harm to his movement than good.

@wyatwerp @alcinnz They have an (excellent) executive director in John Sullivan. I personally see no need for a president role. But I've resigned as an associate member.

@alcinnz same

The voting members are *not* the individual associate members one becomes by signing up on the web site. It was initially set to be the same group as the board of directors, but they voting members could add others to their group. The current list doesn't seem to be public.

Important read: Bradley Kuhn no longer #FSF director: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html

His thoughtful post reminds me, FSF has a separate class of voting members. Did #RMS resign as a voting member or just as dir/president? It's unclear.

Per the bylaws, the voting members are effectively "in charge" of the organization because they are the ones who name the board of directors. https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/fsf-amended-bylaws-current.pdf

#FreeSoftware #OpenSource #FLOSS #FOSS #stallman

@sir wouldn't want him thinking people can actually make money from real open source

@sir don't tell the "open source" gaslighter

Can someone help me understand?

If #OpenSource is "free labor for corporations", how exactly is it not *also* "free labor for individuals" or small groups of citizens?

#FreeSoftware #FLOSS #FOSS #t