Remove RMS from the GCC Steering Committee

[Christopher Dimech]

What is this?  The usual rant of freaked out madness!!!

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Christopher Dimech
General Administrator - Naiad Informatics - GNU Project (Geocomputation)
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> Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2021 at 8:02 AM
> From: "Nathan Sidwell" <nathan@acm.org>
> To: "GCC Development" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> Subject: Remove RMS from the GCC Steering Committee
>
> [double sigh, attaching a pdf causes it to be blocked, and I guess the number of 
> URLs is also triggering a spam trap for the follow up.  I have removed many of 
> the URLS from this, you'll have to use your google-fu for sources.  I emailed 
> several members of the SC, and don't want to bomb them with yet a third copy. ]
> 
> Dear members of the GCC Steering Committee (SC),  I ask you to remove Richard 
> Stallman (RMS) from the SC, or, should you chose not to do so, make a clear 
> statement as to why he remains.
> 
> I am writing this publicly, as it is important we address the issue. In 2019, 
> when RMS resigned from the FSF, I asked the SC about his status on the SC (the 
> web site continued to list his affiliation as FSF).  I never saw as response. I 
> failed to follow up. (FWIW, I never received a response to a technical licensing 
> issue I asked in 2020. Something seems amiss.)
> 
> As this is public, even though I know you, the SC, know who I am, and I am lucky 
> enough to count several of you as friends, I present some bona fides:
>      • I am a long-time developer of GCC, having become involved during the EGCS 
> days of the late 1990’s.
>      • While there has been a time when I wasn’t as active as before or since, I 
> have made many thousands of commits to GCC. Particularly in the C++ Front End.
>      • You, the SC, have recognized my skills and named me as a co-maintainer of 
> the C++ Front End.
>      • In addition to the front end, I have implemented middle-end and backend 
> changes and improvements.  For instance the core of the OpenAcc execution model, 
> building on the excellent OpenMP support developed by Redhat.
>      • Outside of upstream, I have ported GCC to several architectures.  Sadly 
> several never saw the light of day, but they did pay the bills.
>      • Historically, I reimplemented the gcov coverage system, and was a 
> co-maintainer of that subsystem for some time.
>      • I implemented several pieces of the Itanium C++ ABI – the nearest thing 
> we have to a cross-platform ABI standard.
>      • I was named a maintainer of the morpho (since removed) backend, and the 
> nvidia backend originally authored by Bernd Schmidt (Tom de Vries has taken over 
> that maintainance).
>      • I’m nowhere near as prolific as other contributors, but I have been 
> fortunate enough to work on a program that is exciting and useful to so many people.
> 
> I would rather not have to write this email.  Like many developers, I just want 
> to write code. Right now we’re working towards the GCC 11 release.  I thought 
> about deferring this email. But there’s never a good time, and bad behaviour 
> needs to be addressed in the moment.  I have left this for too long already.
> 
> I used to think of GCC development as egalitarian, and therefore fair, and, by 
> assumption, welcoming. That is not true. I’m a white dude with a British accent. 
> /Of course/ I have white male privilege.  I used to joke that I fell into every 
> job I’ve had (including my doctorate) – that, right there, is white male 
> privilege.  I have so much, that I can move to a xenophobic racist country and 
> get a complete pass from the ‘immigrants are bad’ mentality. Many of you on the 
> SC have such privilege – if you don’t think such privilege affects you, /then 
> you have it/.
> 
> Just letting the code speak for itself, /is not enough/. Egalitarianism would be 
> fine in an equal world.  We do not live in that world.
> 
> Perhaps you discount the benefits of white male privilege.  You’re wrong.  Of 
> course I cannot speak from experience, but being female in a misogynistic 
> environment is /exhausting/. Being non-white in a racist society is 
> /exhausting/.  You may think the current pre-release crunch is tiring – but it 
> has an end and will stop. The adverse affects of white male privilege never stop.
> 
> Perhaps you do not see the need to attract a diverse population of developers. 
> Why do you not want to evangelize to everyone the fun it is in writing 
> compilers?  /You’re writing a program that writes programs!/ /You’re writing a 
> program that can rewrite itself to run on a different CPU!/ /How meta do you 
> want to go!?/
> 
> You cannot have missed the sparsity of women and people of color in compiler 
> engineering (kaporcenter black tech workforce).  Maybe you fallaciously put that 
> down to imbalances in education (leakytechpipeline)  How can we, the GCC 
> community, be expected to address that?  Representation matters, we’re the problem.
> 
> In the before-time, I had heard that RMS was ‘difficult’, or ‘socially awkward’. 
>   I had ignored the true toxicity he engenders. I’m sure you have too. It didn’t 
> directly affect me. I didn’t need to interact with him.  I’m not a woman. It 
> diminishes all of us to ignore it.
> Let me list a few of the cases I have found.  Warning, this are extremely 
> offensive repugnant opinions. Mostly referenced via  geekfeminism.wikia.org. It 
> didn’t take me long to find them – I should have done so sooner and for that I 
> am sorry.
>      1. 'skeptical that voluntarily pedophilia harms children.’  stallman's own 
>   archives 2006-mar-jun  I note that children are *incapable* of consenting. 
> That’s what the age of consent means.
>      2. 'end censorship of “child pornography”’. Stallman's archives 
> 2012-jul-oct.html Notice use of “quotes” to down play what is actually being 
> requested.
>      3. 'gentle expressions of attraction’ Stallman's archives 2012-jul-oct.html 
> Condoning a variant of the wolf-whistle.  Unless one’s talking to one’s lover, 
> ‘gentle invitations for sex’ by a stranger is *grooming* (be it child or of-age).
>      4. Defends someone charged with ‘"sexual assault" on a "child" after a 
> session with a sex worker of age 16.’ stallman's archives 2018-jul-oct  Notice 
> the quoting here, implying the *child* is not a child. ‘The article refers to 
> the sex worker as a "child", but that is not so. Elsewhere it has been published 
> that she is 16 years old. That is late adolescence, not childhood.’ No, they are 
> a child, that’s what the ages of majority and consent mean.
>      5. The ‘St Ignatius’ ‘EMACS virgins’ non-joke. ‘The commenter writes about 
> seeing the routine when she was only 15, and how RMS singled her out several 
> times during that performance:
>         He actually pointed to me in the back and proclaimed, into the mic, "A 
> GIRL!" causing the audience to turn and look. Mortifying. Then he proceeded to 
> gesture toward me every time he referred to "EMACS Virgins." (I cannot believe 
> that he is still doing the same talk 10+ years later.)’
>         No wonder women want nothing to do with him.
>      6. A business card that is completely repelling image on oreilly
>      7. He knows those cards are inappropriate.  He broke the code of conduct he 
> helped author. wiredferret's twitter feed.
>      8. I understand he’s tried to circumvent such codes of conduct by asking 
> women to meet him outside of the conference venue. _sagesharp_'s twitter feed.
>      9. He doesn’t acknowledge the few women he has worked with ‘I don’t have 
> any experience working with women in programming projects; I don’t think that 
> any volunteered to work on Emacs or GCC.’  Completely ignoring Sandra Loosemore, 
> who is a coauthor, with him, of the Glibc manual. Sandra was involved with LISP 
> standardization, so I would be surprised if he was unaware of her involvement 
> there. As you well know, she has worked significantly on GCC,  GCC has several 
> other women contributors, but too few for complacency.
>      10. ‘My first interaction with RMS was at a hacker con at 19. He asked my 
> name, I gave it, whether I went to MIT (I had an MIT shirt on), and after 
> confirmation I did, asked me on a date. I said no. That was our entire 
> conversation.’ corbett's twitter feed. This is but one of many reports of 
> utterly inappropriate social interactions.
> That list is no where near exhaustive, nor is it prioritized. As a personal 
> anecdote, an acquaintance of mine who was at MIT, related that she was warned 
> about RMS’s behaviour, and to never be alone with him.  It wasn’t an isolated 
> warning.
> 
> Perhaps you’ll discount these as hearsay, or construct a rationale that the 
> reporter was misinterpreting intent or something.  This is not a court of law. 
> So many are pointing in the same direction that you cannot ignore the 
> implication.  Perhaps you’ll claim my request is ‘cancel culture’.  That is the 
> cry of the hypocrite – this is ‘actions have consequences’.  While I know 
> neither you nor RMS will make a fallacious ‘but my rights’ accusation, others 
> may.  The USA is not the world and the SC is not the US government.  For those 
> in the USA, the (inapplicable) first amendment provides 5 rights, including 
> showing an unwelcome guest the door.
> 
> The GCC web site mentions that SC membership is a /personal membership/:
> 
> ‘Membership in the steering committee is a personal membership. Affiliations are 
> listed for identification purposes only; steering committee members do not 
> represent their employers or academic institutions. Generally speaking, 
> committee members were chosen to represent the interests of communities (e.g. 
> Fortran users, embedded systems developers, kernel hackers), not companies.’		 
> gcc website steering committee
> Thus, /you/, the SC members are each personally endorsing RMS via his SC 
> membership. At best, /you/ are saying that his behaviour is not a hindrance to 
> GCC’s mission.  At worse, /you/ are saying his behaviour is acceptable.  By 
> accepting RMS on the SC, /we/, the GCC developer community, are saying the same. 
> We should think about that.
> 
> RMS is no longer a developer of GCC, the most recent commit I can find regards 
> SCO in 2003.  Prior to that there were commits in 1997, but significantly less 
> than 1994 and earlier.  GCC’s implementation language is now C++, which I 
> believe RMS neither uses nor likes.  When was RMS’ most recent positive input to 
> the GCC project? Even if it was recent and significant, that doesn’t mean his 
> toxic behavior should be accepted.
> 
> Our intent is to be welcoming, but RMS’s toxicity is repellent. We might not 
> desire that toxicity reflect upon us, but it does. Our intent may be good, but 
> intent is not important – impact is, and /harm is being done/. Fix it.
> 
> I am asking you to make a positive move towards more inclusivity and diversity. 
> Perhaps you don’t think that is important – we’re about the code.  That’s a 
> privileged view point. The other popular open source compiler has a much more 
> inclusive community, and its conferences are a joy because of that.  And they 
> put paid to the fallacious argument that women ‘just don’t like compilers’ – 
> what rot!
> 
> My current workplace is a joy because of the huge step towards gender equality 
> amongst the engineers.  You might not realize how enlightening that is without 
> experiencing it. (And yes, it could be better.)
> 
> In the alternative, I want you to make a definitive statement about why you 
> choose not to make such a change.  Do not hide behind silence.  Silence is 
> agreeing with the status quo.  Further, if you choose not to make a change, do 
> not hide behind a technicality. (My understanding is that RMS has veto power.) 
> The rules of the SC are not immutable laws of the universe, nor does humanity 
> have immutable laws cast in stone.  The EGCS project showed that we can make 
> changes with GCC’s social organization.  If we fail to do so, it will continue 
> to be harder and harder to attract new talent to GCC development.
> 
> Address this as a priority. Address it now.
> -- 
> Nathan Sidwell
>