Anyone unaffiliated with a large commercial organization is being systematically rooted out and destroyed in the free software community. I'm honestly ashamed to be a part of this community right now. ESR has done SO MUCH for us, but doesn't align with a position some wishy washy corporate PR departments have OK'd, so he's OUT. There is no "be nice" rule in life, and doubly so for corporate America. This is disgraceful bigotry in action.
He has gone insane after 9/11. He thinks homosexuals are pedophile. I have the cathedral and the Bazaar at home, and I live that book, but he isn't part of the healthy open source community anymore.
Do you have a primary source for that? This sounds like a cancel-culture rumor intended to attach negative ideas to a person in order to discredit them.
After reading that entire post, I believe the above quote that:
"He thinks homosexuals are pedophile[s]"
is false. The rant asserts that homosexuals may be more predisposed to pedophelia and/or ephebophelia than those who are straight. Though as an astute commenter on the post pointed out that basically no evidence for the central thesis was provided by ESR.
He's a real winner. I won't go as far as to claim he thinks all homosexuals are pedophiles because I personally can't remember the link for when I read him say that, but here's a quote that edges that line:
And that brings us to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. In particular, the widespread tagging of Epstein as a pedophile.
No, Jeffrey Epstein is not a pedophile. This is important. If conservatives keep misidentifying him as one, I fear some unfortunate consequences.
Pedophiles desire pre-pubertal children. This is not Epstein’s kink; he quite obviously likes his girls to be as young as possible but fully nubile. The correct term for this is “ephebophile”, and being clear about the distinction matters. I’ll explain why.
The Left has a long history of triggering conservatives into self-discrediting moral panics (“Rock and roll is the devil’s music”). It also has a strong internal contingent that would like to normalize pedophilia. I mean the real thing, not Epstein’s creepy ephebophilia.
Homosexual pedophiles have been biding their time in order to get adult-on-adult homosexuality fully normalized as battlespace prep, but you see a few trial balloons go up occasionally in places like Salon. The last round of this was interrupted by the need to take down Milo Yiannopolous, but the internal logic of left-wing sexual liberationism always demands new ways to freak out the normals, and the pedophiles are more than willing to be next up in satisfying that perpetual demand.
The OSI was consistent with the banning, though. He broke the rules, he got banned.
Even if it drives him further into his current beliefs, it keeps him from throwing personal attacks on public mailing lists, which is what the OSI wants.
Reading the quote from Kick https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22539826 doesn't say that. It seems a bit off base to me, but so what? People aren't all good or all bad. They aren't an authority on everything they have an opinion on. That is what makes appeal to authority so dangerous. I don't think it's possible for any strong opinion to please everyone. To me the question really does boil down to whether freedom of speech is truly supported within the open source community. True freedom of speech allows all opinions, even the disgusting ones so that hair splitting censorship can't drown out dissent.
I'm not aware of any organization that promotes "true freedom of speech" to that extreme. I don't want the government shutting ESR down, but I would never hire someone who has said what he says about race, gender, or sexuality.
The OSI has their own rights as well, and part of their own freedom of speech is that they get to chose who does or doesn't use their platform for speech.
> I'm not aware of any organization that promotes "true freedom of speech" to that extreme. I don't want the government shutting ESR down, but I would never hire someone who has said what he says about race, gender, or sexuality.
Promoting something isn't the same thing as supporting or allowing it. Many mailing lists have allowed a self governing style of free speech. If you don't want to hear from someone, you add then to your banlist. The extreme and consistently offensive get marginalized by each person, rather than by a singular authority.
Your comment about never hiring someone who was said what ESR says about race, gender, or sexuality is a broad and unspecific brush. I've read the links provided, what specifically did he say, and when that would make him un-hireable forever?
'Don't be alone with other people' is not exactly radical advice. I've had plenty of managers who said things very similar to that, or acted in ways that seemed informed by advice like that (for instance, making a point of holding one-on-one meetings in rooms with glass doors or walls.) The proliferation of glass-walls in workplaces is probably more than just a in-vogue aesthetic. I think a lot of people see value in having third party witnesses when in potentially confrontational scenarios.
only nutters were attracted to this work in the 80s and 90s. My point stands. We're kicking out the people that thought differently enough to make the world we now live in. Honestly I refuse to blame someone for believing propaganda when it was so strongly pressed upon them. Remember, gay content only recently became acceptable to advertisers and corporate america. Anyone with the old anti-gay viewpoints will be purged by them and their cronies to make more money. This is wrong. Only actual misdeeds should be punished. It's ok to have wrong ideas. We all have them.
I'm queer, but have a LOT of empathy for the previous generation and the crap they had to put up with. Can you just imagine trying to say you were a LGTBQ ally in the 1970s when these people were in their formative years??? It was a different time. They are a product of that time. Be thankful.
What relevance does his personal opinion on homosexuality, expressed on his personal blog, have to his participation in an OSI mailing list about open source licensing?
It spills over. He is fighting against codes of conducts and diversity because he thinks its about normalizing homosexuality and he thinks that normalizing homosexuality is the first step towards normalizing pedophilia.
This is quite wrong[0]. ESR has credited "normalizing homosexuality" (which as a social movement only began in the late 19th century) with pushing MSM away from predatory sexuality/pederasty (the Graeco-Roman/Mediterranean model, albeit not exclusive to that milieu), and towards egalitarian, affectionate relationships. He pleads with well-meaning, egalitarian gays to remain vigilant against attempts within the LGBT movement to normalize predatory sex (including pederasty) in the future. This is probably feasible, because we managed to do it starting from the late 19th c. in the developed West.
> He is fighting against codes of conducts and diversity because he thinks its about normalizing homosexuality
No, he's not. He's fighting against codes of conduct because he sees them as a Leftist attempt to gain control of open source software as an institution and subvert it, in other words, a Leftist power grab. This is not by any means the first such Leftist takeover in history. You can agree or disagree about his reading of what's going on, but either way it has nothing to do with normalizing homosexuality.
He clearly does not think all homosexuals are pedophiles.
Since we all know that some homosexuals are pedophiles, what is the point of saying "he thinks homosexuals are pedophiles" without a proportion modifier?
There can be a "be nice" rule in both life and corporate America. Lots of organisations have a "no assholes" rule and this goes double for organisations with a substantial volunteer/not-for-profit ethos as a few unpleasant people who create a lot of drama can drive away a lot of quiet contributors by making their lives unpleasant.
ESR has always been someone who has created drama. Look up the CML2 controversy on the linux kernel mailing list where ESR created so much drama that in the end the kernel devs just gave up on trying to work with him.
It's quite possible that the OSI just decided the juice wasn't worth the squeeze.
Because OSS is successful, unless you're in college, the majority of people contributing are those who are being paid to or are independent consultants, as that's possible now.
It's no longer a hobbyist interest, solely the domain of prolific idealists.
ESR has been a victim of his own success. Back when OSS was the upstart ideal, an iconoclast could herd the (small) number of cats and motivate people. The fight against Goliath made it easier to overlook/distract from one's foibles.
This is no longer the case. His fore-bearers are thankful for what he's done, but he's no longer critical. He's not a guy holding a torch in the dark anymore, for which you are grateful to stand near, whatever your personal feelings towards them.
I also suspect that because his influence has diminished as the movement has become normalized, this loss of power might be perceived "de-platforming" by more imagined forces (in his own words, feminism, SJWs, socialists, etc.), when it reality it is just him coming to terms with his no longer being a giant on whose shoulders it is necessary to stand.
That can kinda make a guy feel small, especially for someone who seems to lack humility (based on his own writings)
