Hi,

I support FSFE and not FSF - among other things - because of Stallman. No question RMS did much good for the Free Software movement. After all, he founded it and he is one of the reasons why Free Software even exists. But I don't think he should stay any longer the figurehead of the Free Software movement. Seems the longer he has any say, the longer he will poison the well. He hurts his mission with statements about sexual abuse, dehumanizing disabled people and denigrating women.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, except that I know RMS has been criticized for his "Saint Ignucius" stick. I also don't agree on his position of preferred pronouns for transgender people.

One should note, however, that Stallman is a child of the decade he was born in and also seems to be quite rigid in his points of view, to the point where one might suspect a mild degree of autism. If the latter were to be the case, your comment - and the comments of all of those people who seemingly like to denigrate, ridicule and bully Stallman on Reddit - could be construed as ableist.

I have no illusions as to Stallman being any sort of perfect person, yet I want to note that not only did he found the Free Software Movement and contribute s mzignificantly to it through the creation of the GNU project, he continues to spend all his time travelling the world and advocating software freedom - and not only that, he still occasionally comes up with important new contributions.

The most recent example I can think of is this article from The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/03/facebook-abusing-data-law-privacy-big-tech-surveillance

in which he advocates ending the abusive surveillance by the tech giants by introducing a very simple law: No system is allowed to record data that are not necessary for its primary purpose.

Such a law could be implemented in the EU and could be enforced with mandatory, unenforced inspections and draconian, GDPR-style fines. That would be the end of Google's and Facebook's surveillance, since it would simply become illegal.

I currently believe that such regulations are the only possible way of defeating the surveillance regime. Stopping NSA surveillance might be a good thing, but it's rather immaterial, because the governments are likely to gain access to the tech giants' data troves anyway, as they have in China. I'd love to see the FSFE adopt such a proposal and see it through the EU Parliament.

And while Stallman is still capable of coming up with this kind of thing I honestly don't think we should ostracize him from the movement. I've supported the FSF before, and while I currently am supporting the FSFE and continue to do so, I might easily support the FSF again if I e.g. had more money.

Best
Carsten