kevr The petition was to 'to remove Richard M. Stallman from all leadership positions'. In your own mind you can dress up your motives however you please but I reserve the right to think you are being dishonest. The petition is all about RMS the man and his personality and not about governance of the FSF.
I can't help it if you refuse to read the petition as it was written. It points out clearly why the decision to bring RMS back is unjustified and asks that the FSF board of directors be help responsible for this failure. I have also said here repeatedly that RMS should not be allowed back because nothing about the circumstances related to him leaving have changed. Allowing him to return signals that the FSF is unwilling to hold him accountable for those actions and I cannot in good conscience allow that to pass.
With his recent reinstatement to the Board of Directors of the Free Software Foundation, we call for the entire Board of the FSF to step down and for RMS to be removed from all leadership positions.
I have been honest about this from the beginning. A vote of no confidence in the FSF and that they not bring RMS back. To the best of my knowledge, that process was in the early stages and he had not been brought back, but I also feel that if they already have, they did so without respect for the the reasons he was asked to leave and that those actions should be invalidated.
kevr I don't believe I mentioned freedom of speech so I don't see where my standards are double.
You very clearly stated that you believe my statements to have been made on behalf of the whole Solus community. This is not at all true, but that belief implies that all statements I make are not my own when referenced anywhere near Solus.
kevr Yet you display double standards when intimating that I(me), an outsider have no say in Solus(which I never claimed to).
You certainly seem to think you have a say in what we say as representatives of the project, otherwise you wouldn't be so upset. But I can't emphasize enough that you don't have a say in that or my own personal decision to sign a petition. Especially one that specifically states:
(For individual signatures, institutional affiliation is provided for identification purposes only and does not constitute endorsement.)
kevr But you demand that the FSF do your bidding. The FSF should have the right to do what it pleases as does the Solus Project so you may want to be more careful before making double standards accusations.
The purpose of the FSF is to serve as an organization which promotes software freedom on alf of our behalf. I absolutely have a right to voice my concern when they make decisions that compromise this. Solus, on the other hand, is a privately run organization for the purposes of developing an operating system. We frequently listen and act on feedback from our users, but we are in way required to, nor are we acting on their behalf in a political or legal manner.
kevr I never wanted nor asserted that I had any entitlement to control how you present yourselves but I can have an opinion and leave it up to you if I can voice that opinion in this forum.
You have asserted multiple times now that we have in some way acted as your representative, which implies that you should have a say as the one being represented. If we were your representative, that would be true. If we aren't, then you have no right to be upset with us in the first place. That's what you don't seem to understand.
kevr Doesn't the Solus Project have a wider shadow than just the organization itself.
I don't appreciate the rhetorical question. The influence of Solus may be felt outside of Solus, but that shadow is still not Solus. Your statement is correct, but it implies things that aren't.
kevr I believe it does and I suppose I exist in the penumbra and all I stated was that it looked as though you were speaking for everyone, code contributors, docs writers etc. which I think is a reasonable claim.
And as someone on the inside of this decision I have refuted this reasonable claim now enough times to view it as wholly unreasonable. Again, if we wanted to speak for Solus the organization, we would have shouted from the rooftops. And even then, no, we still wouldn't be speaking for the penumbra. And no, the penumbra doesn't have contributors in it. Contributors are a part of the project itself, as I also said at least once.
kevr Your reply seems to suggest that I think that I had a say in how you run Solus. Quite the opposite, I know I have no say but felt that I must express my opinion. I can accept your choice of tactic and you should accept my disagreement of it. We probably agree somewhat on RMS as a man but I think that sending in the hate mob to remove Richard M. Stallman from all leadership positions is a bullying tactic all too common in tech.
And I expect the same courtesy when I take the time to plainly and calmly refute your claims. We did not send a hate mob after the man. The FSF did when they thought it was a good idea to bring him back. We simply joined a group of voices asking for the FSF to be reasonable, and in lieu of that, find leadership that can be. You are the one trying to claim I have different motives than these and I can't emphasize enough that you are dead wrong.
kevr I'm not trying to cause trouble, just expressing an opinion which I felt needed to be heard in the hope that you will view your actions from a wider perspective in future.
This implies that I did anything without considering it in a wider perspective. As I've already said, I considered this greatly before signing the petition, even discussing it with Josh first. You just don't seem to think that we should have done it, which isn't the same thing at all.
kevr Hearing and understanding other opinions is how we progress and this kind of militancy just polarizes people, myself included hence signing the counter petition.
I don't need to hear your opinion. I heard all of this the first go around when he was removed. None of this is new. The only thing that has changed is that the FSF is now willing to change their processes around board members which is a good thing for everyone.
kevr It is as simple as that.
It's never that simple. Especially when other people get involved.
kevr I bear you no malice whatsoever which is why I will continue to use Solus and not storm off in a hissy fit.
I don't bear you any malice either. I do wish that you would actually listen to what I'm saying as the honest truth instead of making disrespectful assumptions and insinuations about my motives and actions.
