[GTALUG] Surveillance Capitalism [was another thread]

[Russell Reiter]

On Fri, Apr 2, 2021 at 8:10 PM Dhaval Giani <dhaval.giani at gmail.com> wrote:

> Russell,
>
> My assumption here is you are here in good faith as opposed to one of
> those "white men are being persecuted" crowd. If you are the latter,
> please let me know, I will send all future emails from you to
>

Your assumption is correct. I suppose any difference of opinion you and I
may have
come from the fact that in my other interests which involve Community
Action Participation,
we use a social contract we all decide upon and review with each talk. That
is not the case
here.



> /dev/null.
>
> On Fri, Apr 2, 2021 at 2:27 PM Russell Reiter <rreiter91 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, Apr 2, 2021, 4:38 PM Dhaval Giani, <dhaval.giani at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> >
> >> >> are all aware of. Many women were uncomfortable around RMS and
> avoided
> >> >> him. Many refused to participate in our community because of
> >> >> interactions with him. Do you think RMS is more important than a
> >> >> community of developers he is pushing away?
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > See all the stuff you say we are all aware in this message is just
> rumors and innuendo to me.
> >> >
> >>
> >> Wait, so all these women saying those words are rumours and innuendo?
> >
> >
> > You know what, thats exactly what innuendo is, saying "all these women"
> without even a link to a personal quote from them, not a one.
> >
> >> You choose to disbelieve them? After a pattern of behaviour that
> >> multiple people have confirmed and talked about?
> >
> >
> > I can't disbelieve that which I can find no record of. What multiple
> people are you talking about?
> >
> > What I can do is check some facts, to the best of my abilities. This
> link I came across in my opinion has a more balanced view than yours.
>
> "In your opinion". In the opinion of many others, an apologist. If it
> was a balanced article, why is there no link to the other petition?
>

I said I think it is more balanced than your statements. It is a collection
of facts. Quite a few of them which I will review, but all the inflammatory
rhetoric doesn't make it any easier. I'd hate to think that is what open
source is all about.

>
> >
> > https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/
> >
>
> https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-appendix-a-a7e41e784f88
> - She has listed multiple (anonymous for obvious reasons) women who
> are willing to talk about the toxic environment. It doesn't even begin
> to count the numbers who are not, and would just wish it could go
> away.
>

> >>
> >> > What are not rumors and innuendo are the historical facts on IBM,
> their influence, their power and powerful friends and most importantly
> their big ball of money which they spend on influenceing the influencers.
> >> >
> >> >>
> >> >> I want to explicitly state this. RMS is a major reason free software
> >> >> is where it is. RMS's contributions to free software are gigantic.
> >> >> However, RMS cannot be a leader of our community if he continues to
> >> >> isolate a significant population of prospective developers. RMS the
> >> >> contributor - YES. RMS the leader - NO.
> >> >>
> >> >> RMS cannot be the poster child of our community if it is going to be
> >> >> relevant in the future.
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > This is where being the willing poster child of a charitable
> institution, used to raise funds, diverges from the science of truth and
> innovation.
> >> >
> >> > In the legal science of truth, a person is innocent until proven
> guilty in a court of law. However, media and the media barons in conteol,
> crucify persons and their personas daily, just to make a buck.
> >> >
> >>
> >> And no one has charged RMS with a crime. All we are saying is, he is
> >> not representative of a majority of us, and we don't want him to
> >> represent us. Some of us are minorities who have heard racist
> >> statements being made by prominent folks in the community and have
> >> made us feel our contributions are not valued. It is not hard to
> >> believe after that experience that other prominent folks can be
> >> sexist. RMS has not stepped up and owned up to his actions and
> >> apologized. I have no problem with people growing. We all make
> >> mistakes. But doubling down like this, well I don't want to be a part
> >> of that community. And the reality is, there are tons of "other"
> >> people who will not join in and we will never know. So yes, if the
> >> choice is between thousands of those people, having a diverse
> >> community, growing and being relevant to the world, I would rather RMS
> >> step down than us lose this community. And I would rather you leave
> >> the community if you think being more welcoming to other voices is not
> >> important. We don't need your contributions at the risk of alienating
> >> many more people.
> >
> >
> > Wow that last paragraph was a completely off the wall projection of
> negative personal attributes towards RMS without a shred of evidence. I
> wasnt aware that Stallman was a deemed racist by association.
> >
>
> Stop for a moment. I said, knowing enough prominent folks who have
> made racist statements, it is not hard for me to believe RMS could
> have made sexist statements.
>

Again I have a real difficulty with guilt by association. Much less relying
on the prominence of people, That's the kind of thing that makes one person
label another as like a terrorist when no such thing is true.

>
> > Its bad enough that someone on this list deemed him to be an incel. Just
> type incel into google and you can see the links to terrorisim.
> >
>
> And I believe a number of us called him out on that.
>

I see but the damage is done right there, on this list in any case.  You
may think that is trivial, I do not.


> Russell, I made a good faith attempt to search for your contributions
> to foss projects.  I have been unable to find anything. If you look at
> https://rms-support-letter.github.io/ , that seems to fit the profile
> of most signatories in there. https://rms-open-letter.github.io/ on
> the other hand has prominent FOSS organizations, as well as a number
> of prominent developers, many of whom I recognize.
>
> I fail to understand why you believe that RMS is more important than
> countless women we are losing.
>

What I believe is when the mob grabs the torches and the pitchforks anyone
can look like frankenstein.

Sorry I can't think of a pithy comic book reference, but I wasn't much on
reading those.



>
> I have been contributing to the Linux kernel for over 14 years now. I
> have been through the times (and this was supposed to be better than
> the time before I started) when it was absolutely expected to have a
> thick skin, and flame wars were quite common. That was a terrible
> environment. Many people burned out and left. A big part of my role
> today is to mentor new developers (to Linux kernel) into the open
> source project. One of the common questions I have to answer is why do
> we need to work in this toxic environment (and this is better than the
> time I started working in). These are all men. It is impossible to
> hire women because they (rightly) don't want to deal with the
> toxicity. It is not a made up toxicity. I have been to top
> conferences, talking with women friends of mine, who are then being
> hit on, right in front of me. AT A PROFESSIONAL EVENT!
>

You mean while the presenter was talking, or afterwards at the social mixer.
Mixing business with pleasure, as most open source conferences do, has
its drawbacks.


> I cannot speak for women, I am not one. I can however speak to
> racialized events. There was one on this very mailing list not too
> long ago. There have been enough times I have been spoken over by
> other folks not because I was wrong, but because they believed I had
> no clue of what I was talking about. Despite having written that code.
> Despite having designed that code. I go to conferences, which are
> supposed to be the most important ones, and I do not see very many
> people who look like me or talk like me. I have been to conferences
> where people have thought it is funny to joke about my accent.
>

These are all the things we talk about when I move in spaces and we
organize to establish a social contract where every opinion is valid, even
the wrong ones. It is what democracy is all about.


> One of my fears is, Linux and FOSS will soon become irrelevant. Simply
> because we are too busy being assholes, and not interested in getting
> more (diverse group of ) people in. People who probably have a bigger
> concern about privacy and tracking (than your big corp tracking your
> every move). We lose these people when we let RMS be our face.
>

I often use Subjective Units of Disclosure when I operate in marginalized
spaces.

I was the first webmaster of the Canadian Harm Reduction Network. I was
recruited
for that position after my own personal site illustrated my commitment to
social justice,
of the day. I knew from historical reading, that our network would come
under scrutiny.
So I tested the system, simply. I went to the library to log into my harm
reduction account, no
problem. I went to an Employment Resource Centre, the site was blocked as
activist. So every time I was blocked at an ERC, I sent an email to the
government.
This went on for a couple of years.

Now Harm Reduction is a national/global strategy. Needless to say I can use
the
words harm reduction without being overtly negatively labelled, in public
or private any
longer. At least I hope so, but you never know.

So yeah, I don't contribute to FOSS, the kernel or anything like that. I'm
just a bona
fide, dyed in the wool, dumpster diving linux hacker and I do have a social
conscience
even if it is not apparent to you at this time.

>
> Again, I say this again. RMS as a contributor, yes. RMS as a leader, no.
>
> I am not going to step into your Godwin's law discussion
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law ). It is irrelevant to
> the issue at hand.
>

That wasn't my discussion. I'm talking about Surveillance capitalism, which
grows
more important to me day by day. I just think there is a lot of shooting
the messenger
with RMS.


>
> Dhaval
>


-- 
Russell
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