The creator of FOSS BIOS Libreboot, Leah Rowe, wrote a book. It’s called “a mostly bloodless coup” and it’s a sort of memoir and it’s on her website. The contents are really frightening. In it she:
- Breaks a man’s nose at a gay bar because he won’t have sex with her
- Verbally abuses her girlfriend daily
- Later moves the now-ex-girlfriend back in with her because she “wanted a driver” and “wanted a maid”. Keeps her there for 4 years, verbally abusing her the entire time
- Cynically joins the “Stallman Support” campaign, despite not supporting him actually (and knowingly collaborating with white supremacists on the campaign), to distract from the coup she was doing at Libreboot. (For the record I hate Stallman too, this is just to highlight the scale of consciously manipulative stuff she’s happy to do to entire communities when it serves her interests)
- Stalks, while calling the police to snitch on, a family because they offered her heroin
- Gets kicked out of more trans support groups/IRC channels/Discord servers than I can count
- Identifies as a compulsive liar. Describes many of the lies in detail
- Wrecks seemingly every hotel room she stays in, with vomit and physical destruction from drunkenness
- Describes terrorizing everyone around her and feeling no remorse
- Describes that she is not capable of feeling remorse
- Identifies as a sociopath/ASPD, but insists that cognitive behavioral therapy and talk therapy are equivalent to conversion therapy for sociopaths, that fearing sociopaths is discriminatory, and that society should be restructured to accommodate sociopaths
- So many more things
Look I hate the FSF and Stallman, and I have a Librebooted computer that I rely on every day. I knew there was a bunch of drama around Leah but I had no idea that it was like this. In all the things above, I’m not “reinterpreting” the events, it’s her words. For example with the guy whose nose she broke, here’s what she said:
“There was one person who tried to seduce me all night, before deciding not to come home with me, which annoyed me as I was indeed quite horny. My taxi arrived. I asked the driver to wait, went back inside, hugged him, smiled, and broke his nose. I saw a blur that was his face falling backward as I calmly and quickly walked out of the bar, my whim now satisfied. His friend called me a dirty [T-slur] as I quickly entered the cab, unscathed. I did it on a whim, feeling no hatred or malice in me whatsoever. I felt great satisfaction as the driver took me home, and I worked on Libreboot all night.”
I just haven’t seen this being discussed anywhere and I don’t know how a community manages a person who has done these things.
She also created the “canoeboot” project to troll GNU Boot. She was butthurt that GNU forked libreboot after she started accepting binary blobs in the project.
I’m a little ways into the book, and it’s really good. She might be a horrible person but the memoir is a really good window into a way of thinking.
i just feel like its more “what if the worst aspects of 16 year old me tried to write the autobiographical parts of mein kampf”
Can someone breakdown why the OP mentions they dislike FSF and Stallman so much?
Because FSF and Stallman have huge beef with Leah and Libreboot, and I want to make it clear that I’m not some FSF or Stallman fangirl who’s just trying to continue the beef.
That doesn’t answer my question. I didn’t even know about any of that! I want to know why so many people hate them both
While Stallman and the FSF have done great things for FOSS software, Richard Stallman is a man who has needed to Shut The Fuck Up for well over two decades. Every time he decides to share some dipshit opinion he manages to set not just FOSS Software but all of nerdom back
He once had to have someone explain to him why he needed to immediately run back a post that was basically “but what if someone underage consents?” (To his credit, he did run it back)
He eats his own foot peelings in the middle of conference talks
He is…a parody of gross unsocialized nerds except it’s unironic
He once had to have someone explain to him why he needed to immediately run back a post that was basically “but what if someone underage consents?” (To his credit, he did run it back)
not so fun fact: aaron schwartz had some similar, really weird views about this that he posted publicly, but that all got memory holed.
Earnestly anyone else I would assume hiding ill intent, but with Stallman i earnestly think he’s just too autistic to realize when he has an exceptionally stupid opinion that might sound fine in a frictionless vacuum with spherical cows
the free software community does lolcows now, i should kill myself
What have you made, demon? I cast you out
stallman, rowe, de raadt, all hard workers. y’all want to cancel them but you can’t cancel free labour. you can get people to stop using their excellent software and make them look bad at every possible angle, but they will continue to make things better for 80 billion people, your grandchild’s grandchild will learn about them in school, if there still is school.
I’m in the openbsd mailing list, she’s a hard worker.
Well the Libreboot docs read like schitzo ramblings, so this totally tracks
I hate the. FSF and Stallman
Eeehhh, did I miss something? Stallman is pretty much why we have open source software today. The guy goes a bit far personally with only free software, bit that is his choice.
So what did I miss this time that warrants new hate for Stallman?
Hating RMS is just like the second stage of google-lovers from calling free software ad open source and now just hating on him and adoring Linus Torvals…
Same people that don’t know shit about free software movement or history and just joined the community because it lookes cool. Same people that always forget the GNU part in basically everything and think that people stating it are overreacting. Same pople that like FOSS but only understand it as open source…
To be honest is not their fault, companies wanted to adopt free software philosophy but just because if the openess part, (convenience) not the freedom of the users. The GNU community is not very easy to manage by a company too many freedom ideals. Developing convenience is just better to market after all, basically Linus approach. Fast forward and now wr have the Android locking in. Oh wow so unexpected…
It reads clearly as unapologetic elitism that eventually lands on a point of betrayal as if that was the entire comments original point of contention. Instead of being derisive, I suggest that you consider that you might feel betrayal and anger because you perpetuate it all day long. Step out of the dissing game and you will notice that somehow, as if by magic, it will stop bothering you.
it’s not new; are you saying that you didn’t read this and look at the sources or are you saying that you just don’t care he did (and does) these things?
(i strongly suspect it’s the second, and i doubt you have any interest in having a good faith conversation, so i am unlikely to reply to whatever deflection you responded with - but to anyone else reading this comment, please just take a couple minutes and read through the report if your only awareness of stallmen is gnu)
I was wondering the same too, so far I’ve found a series of blog posts from an MIT student that led to his removal in 2019. This is the main post and this is a later appendix that added further accusations.
RMS said RMS stuff, there were many gritted teeth, and general butt hurtness, he got cancelled and fired for about 30 seconds his come back annoyed many
Maybe you can search for some emails where he does indeed argue in defense of pedophilia… Draw your own conclusions. It’s not new btw. We don’t talk as much about it because we separate “art from the artist” or whatever.
I’m not going to relitigate this since it’s been argued to death but no one on the internet is responsible for RMS’ weird emails. You are not responsible for him, and posters don’t need to preface all of their posts by professing their hatred for him. You can think he’s creepy and weird and not make it your personality.
Hating RMS is the open source e equivalent of shitting in Noam Chomsky: It allows people to signal their position while relinquishing the responsibility to think critically. Classic Reddit behavior. Typically these are high school or college age kids who don’t really know anything about him just that he’s weird and that he said some weird stuff online.
In real life your posts don’t matter. It means nothing. Your positions are not praxis. They have zero effect on the material world.
Saying you hate RMS is like saying you hate Scooby Doo – its completely meaningless. You might as well say you’re a fucking pirate. It’s a completely non sensical statement.
Your positions are not praxis. They have zero effect on the material world.
Until they do. If your take causes problems the moment you act on it, it is inherently a problem itself.
So wait, it’s considered “edgy” to not like people that argue FOR PEDOPHILIA? That’s wild.
Someone check this user’s hard drive immediately
Look man, I know your brain is probably pickled from the internet, but I’ll engage on good faith against my better judgement.
I’m not defending RMS, I’m saying that it’s weird to preface anything that has to do with him with “first off, I hate RMS and the FSF”. It’s textbook virtue signaling and its cringe. RMS is not a pedophile. He said some problematic shit on the internet. Saying problematic shit on the internet is not real life.
Even of he was a pedophile, RMS is not your responsibility. You don’t need to preface any post that references FSF with some qualifier to signal to people you’re on their side. No one fucking cares what you think of him.
Furthermore, RMS has actually made something important in material reality by making the GPL and coreutils among other things. This has had a measurable impact on the world. What you are doing does not. Your opinion of him is about as relevant as your opinion on Scooby Doo.
I’m not defending RMS
Even of he was a pedophile, RMS is not your responsibility
You’re brain is likely pickled more than the person you’re responding to with that word salad.
I know your brain is probably pickled from the internet
You call someone out on picking on Stallman unprompted as virtue signalling, but you don’t recognize when you preface with your own virtue signalling, do you?
Making something important in the past doesn’t make them a saint for their entire life and taking back things you say on the internet is a lot more easier than nonchalantly saying bullshit in real life, from the moment you write it, edit it to the time you press post.
So yes, imo, you’re trying to defend RMS statements. Defending and trying to do damage control for someone else’s problematic statements like this on the internet is fucking cringe.
But i hope he sees this, man. 👌
New???
People have tried to find ways to hate him since way before even Linux arrived on the scene and he got pissy because people called the OS Linux and not just the kernel.
TBF he’s correct on that one, Linux actually is just the kernel and the OS normally built around it is the project he started ~7 years before Linux was ever a thing. Given his OS project had a political/ethical message that Linux completely disregards, it’s completely understandable he might be a tad irked that his work is lumped in under the kernel guy’s.
Even if it sounds silly to us “normal users” if you put yourself in his head it makes sense.
That’s fair, I edited my comment because I read read it and decided that this is in fact nothing new. Still extremely annoying and shows a complete lack of critical analysis.
RMS is a freak but we are all indebted to him for giving us the GPL.
There’s two kinds of projects in FOSS: those made because someone hates something and wants to replace it, and those made by people who love something.
The first is often made by assholes and sociopaths. I try to fill my life with the second kind.
I think you should avoid things created out of hate.
Weird, I just install software on my computers and it doesn’t affect my life beyond that. What hardware do people use that bad mojo from the bits executed by CPU affects their emotional state? Risk V?
I think you should avoid things created out of hate.
Hey, it’s not my fault my parents decided having a baby would be a great way to spite each other!
You are not a thing.
If you go that deep you better just end it because there is little to live for in this world if you cut out anything for which you dont like the creator.
I generally don’t care who created what as long as we’re not talking Hitler levels of asshole. If need be, fork the project witga new group of people or something
Other firmwares exist, even libreboot is a fork of coreboot. The availability of the code is not an automatic invite to start judging it’s authors. The four freedoms are there so exercise them.
I didn’t say anything about the creator but more the reason the thing exists. Reactionary projects tend to just suck and be full of drama. I’m never surprised when it’s discovered its creators are jerks.
Honestly, you’d be surprised how easy it is to avoid distasteful things and people.
why was this account created 6 hours ago and has only made this post?
Because I’m literally afraid of Leah. In the book she describes ruining people’s lives for slighting her.
If Leah reads this, please ruin my life. You cannot. You suck. :-)
i fucking hate you. go away forever
Why?
i was hungry
Hungry fella.
I guess thats true. I was worried it was gonna be another unfounded smear job of a trans woman but im reading the thing and… yeah…
Bad people can be trans. Trans people can do bad things. OP respected their pronouns and didn’t make the post about them being trans.
Its mostly my experiences from the tumblr/discord/twitter/bluesky circle of hell where anyone whos trans get pedo accusations for breathing and a 50 page google doc that ends up boiling down to “they were mean sometimes to people that wanted to hunt them down” or “they drew a ship I don’t like”
I’m not willing to claim that she hasn’t done any of these things and generally if a stranger tells you that they’re terrible, you can trust it insofar that you likely aren’t missing out if they’re lying, but has anyone corroborated her claims so that we know she’s not just self-destructing her public image?
- Identifies as a compulsive liar. Describes many of the lies in detail
But all the rest of this is totally true, I promise.
That picture looks like Stan from Skins
Why she have meth face though
Good question! It’s the meth.
Has meth behaviour as well
I didn’t like her before. Now I like her less.
