Why are people attacking RMS?

By Sam Varghese
Tuesday, 21 July 2009 07:04

Opinion and Analysis

There are just a couple of points I'd like to make here. One, when the Debian project was surrounded by allegations of sexist remarks - and one female developer came out strongly against them - neither Schlesinger nor Zimmermann, a former Debian developer, was around to take up cudgels and beat the drums against sexism.

Both these courageous fighters for equal rights were missing in action.

Matthew Garrett, a former Debian developer and exceptionally gifted programmer, who has in the past criticised people over what he construed as sexism - to the extent that the person who wrote the alleged sexist post had to take it down - was nowhere to be seen. Garret has thrown his hat in the ring this time, though.

Indeed, only iTWire thought the story worthy of attention. None of the worthies who have come out swinging against Stallman even bothered to write a paragraph in support of women who were actually willing to come out and be quoted - despite the possibility that they could well be cold-shouldered by their own colleagues in the project as a result.

All this self-righteousness seems to be highly selective - that's the only conclusion I can draw.

It's also quite dirty - Schlesinger has gone to the extent of publishing a private email correspondence with Stallman. But then these tactics, from a GNOME official, should be expected, I guess. Having dealt with two media spokesmen from GNOME, one is acutely aware of the lack of professionalism that exists within GNOME.

Selective attacks like the ones on Stallman do lead to speculation. Stallman recently made a statement about it being risky to develop software in C#, and hence Mono. Whether these attacks on him have anything to do with that statement is open to speculation.

But there is one thing that can be said with certainty - many of today's open source people find Stallman inconvenient. They find his adherence to free software, to the principles that drove him to start the movement, and his occasional pointed statements annoying. They find that it gets in the way of making a quick buck.

Of course, Stallman is not right at every turn. He can be annoying at times with his insistence on minor details. But it is an inescapable fact that the massive ecospace which FOSS occupies now is due in no small way to the idealism of one man who walked out of a very highly-paid job one day because he wanted to produce a free (as in speech, not beer) operating system.

Some of those who have attacked Stallman have cited as justification for their purple prose the fact that there is a problem overall in FOSS when it comes to women. This is a mere figleaf.

The fact is the entire IT industry faces this problem. Once again, no anecdotal evidence here, gentle reader - my wife, a developer for the last 23 years, is often confronted by an all-male audience when she makes a presentation. At times, there may be one more woman in the group of 15 or thereabouts. And she has been telling me these tales since we met 22 years ago.

How many people have made it to the vice-presidential ranks in the world's biggest software company? Just two, Ida Cole and Jean Richardson, as far as I know. Trying to guise this attack on Stallman as a bid to do good for women is just so much hogwash.

I am no respecter of persons - if Stallman did do something that I thought was incorrect, he would get a roasting in these columns. But this time, I think it's the paragons of virtue who have attacked him who deserve a kick in the nether regions.