Great post!
<https://lunduke.com/posts/2020-03-9-b>
Open Source Initiative bans co-founder, Eric S Raymond Mar 9, 2020
Last week, Eric S Raymond (often known as ESR <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond>, author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar>, and co-founder of the Open Source Intiative <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Initiative>) was banned from the Open Source Intiative (the “OSI”).
Specifically, Raymond was banned from the mailing lists used to organize and communicate with the OSI.
For an organization to ban their founder from communicating with the group (such as via a mailing list) is a noteworthy move.
At a time when we have seen other founders (of multiple Free and Open Source related initiatives) pushed out of the organizations they founded (such as with Richard Stallman being compelled to resign from the Free Software Foundation, or the attempts to remove Linus Torvalds from the Linux Kernel – both of which happened within the last year) it seems worth taking a deeper look at what, specifically, is happening with the Open Source Initiative.
I don't wish to tell any of you what you should think about this significant move. As such I will simply provide as much of the relevant information as I can, show the timeline of events, and reach out to all involved parties for their points of view and comments.
Raymond made the following statement, on February 27, 2020, on his personal blog <http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8609>:
“I – OSI’s co-founder and its president for its first six years – was kicked off their lists for being too rhetorically forceful in opposing certain recent attempts to subvert OSD clauses 5 and 6. This despite the fact that I had vocal support from multiple list members who thanked me for being willing to speak out.
It shouldn’t be news to anyone that there is an effort afoot to change – I would say corrupt – the fundamental premises of the open-source culture. Instead of meritocracy and “show me the code”, we are now urged to behave so that no-one will ever feel uncomfortable.
The effect – the intended effect – is to diminish the prestige and autonomy of people who do the work – write the code – in favor of self-appointed tone-policers. In the process, the freedom to speak necessary truths even when the manner in which they are expressed is unpleasant is being gradually strangled.
And that is bad for us. Very bad. Both directly – it damages our self-correction process – and in its second-order effects. The habit of institutional tone policing, even when well-intentioned, too easily slides into the active censorship of disfavored views.” ... o
The more such censorious self righteousness (as has been exercised against Torvalds, Stallman, now ESR, and many others) is given air time and publicity, the better - the true intentions of "petty nazis" or "snowflakes" or "liberal censors" or "exclude to include" hypocrites, is a good thing to expose and the sooner real people, not the moronic NPCs causing these problems, will learn to get a handle on communication, power, and the holding of authority. Lessons being learned ...