You missed the earlier comment where I’ve said I talked to them before posting this note to my blog.

That’s nice. Christian apparently had to talk to only one before he found cause to give his position some further consideration.

What *is* it with people who claim that giving a *critique* of someones statement is somehow the same as abridging their freedom of speech ?

There’s no correlation between these two whatsoever. Indeed, uttering critiques is an example of a way of using freedom of speech.

If I say that you just wrote something stupid (you did!) — then that doesn’t in any way restrict your freedom of speech.

You’re free to say what you want (within certain limits) — but you do not have any right, nor any reasonable expectation, to be able to say what you want and NOT be critiqued for it.

There exists no “freedom from critique”, and indeed, the only way we could make that, would be to severly limit freedom of speech. (critique is speech to, you know)

[/rant]

I see your feminist point of view and I respect it although I’m not sure how women born in ’70s and ’80s could be come bored with software engineering during the ’90s when they were 20 at most.

See the comment above, I’ve talked to 9 of my female friends and they did agree with what I’ve written above. While I am male and I guess I’ll never really know I assume females are not like Borg and they don’t have a combined mind so there’s not one official point of view, right?

[1]http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=385

I haven’t seen hate. I’ve seen criticism and suggestions that the community should distance itself from people who exhibit this behaviour. I think making that stand makes the community more welcoming to a larger number of people.

I don’t see it as a symptom. The truth is back in the days there were far more guys interested in IT than girls. Over the years the trends are changing and you see more and more women choosing software engineering. I don’t think it’s sexism that stops them. In fact I hope that given some more time and space, ladies will be represented equally across all FLOSS universe. See what happened to soccer leagues and other sports traditionally seen as “male”.

Please don’t try to turn me into an opportunist. Nowhere did I claim that I support what RMS said. What I said is issues like this one should be handled either in private correspondence when asking him to apologize or through the GCDS board if private email fails. Turning into a public hate list does not help at all.

I’ve talked to several women before posting my note so putting me in the same line with Stallman does not do justice. Most of them were mildly annoyed over what he said, none of them disagreed what I’ve posted above while about half of them raised the exact same issue about some men needing to show off with their over-protectiveness so they can feel useful. This control group includes my wonderful girlfriend.

And again, I am not supporting bad behavior, I am opposing turning this kind of issues into public stoning. We are not cavemen and while I do not believe such a level of protection is healthy, it would be ten times better if you posted this to one of the GNOME mailing lists instead, perhaps at least adding the offender as CC.