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Comment by mattl

5 years ago

FSFE is a legally distinct entity from the FSF.

If the FSFE has problems, it's likely the FSF has them too, and vice versa. I don't want to get into this, really, but the cultural issues that allow these things to happen aren't one-offs; they're a known failure case of the specific, somewhat toxic brand of hacker culture that's been in Free Software circles since the early days.

(I think hacker culture in general is great, but, to use an analogy, there's a buggy implementation going 'round.)

  • By this, I mean: it's likely just a handful of people, max, being an immediate problem, but when the whole “looking past your friends' flaws” thing extends to when your friends are hurting other people, you're standing by while other people get hurt. Geek Social Fallacies[0] #2 and #3 don't combine well.

    It's not just an FSFE problem. It's also not intrinsic to hacker culture in any way; it just tags along, causing problems.

    [0]: http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html