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Richard Stallman’s Exit Heralds a New Era in Tech

wired.com

41–50 of 69 posts

Re: Richard Stallman’s Exit Heralds a New Era in Tech

#41
> This is a lesson we are fast learning about freedom as it promoted by the tech world. It is not about ensuring that everyone can express their views and feelings. Freedom, in this telling, is about exclusion. The freedom to drive others away. And, until recently, freedom from consequences.

Disagree with the author here. Freedom in the tech world and indeed in the 1st Amendment is absolutely about the right to express objectionable views. The problem was that historical cultural norms permitted misogynistic bigots to maintain positions of power - it was a lack of political coordination to root out these leaders. Now there is a political wave driving sexual equality. But just like we learned with racism after Obama’s election, these things don’t move in one direction, they are wars, Trump is still in the Whitehouse and his poll numbers aren’t too bad. So if you care about the long term improvement of sexual equality, best to follow a laser sharp political strategy and discern that a principle like freedom of speech brings allies to the cause, it helps far more than it harms.

Free speech means permitting people to say hurtful things. We should protect everyone’s opportunity to reveal who they are. The main focus should be on what we do with that information.

Re: Richard Stallman’s Exit Heralds a New Era in Tech

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of gross for a guy in his 40s to be asking out a 19-year-old freshman at the university he's a professor at, isn't it? And in the first minute of their first conversation, and with no interest in her other than that. Also I'd say she wasn't complaining, or trying to condemn him. The facts kind of speak for themselves though--this is not a guy who makes women feel welcome.

Maybe he was hoping to date an intelligent woman, who would not judge him for his looks and got rejected, for whatever reason we do not know. However, thanks to your comment, we now know, why you would reject another person and it has everything to do with outward appearance. Thanks for informing us. It seems, that she acted in an acceptable and correct way. Nothing wrong with rejecting someone. The only bad thing is…

Who said anything about appearance?

Re: Richard Stallman’s Exit Heralds a New Era in Tech

#43
First, my comment has nothing to say about Stallman’s problematic behavior or expulsion of FSF or MIT.

However the article is characterizing free software as a centralized system whose purpose is to give powerful men the “freedom” to exclude. It also says the free software movement shares this perverse notion of freedom with the tech giants like Facebook. Can free software maintainers become exclusionary tyrants? Of course, but built into free software is the remedy. You have access to the source control and you are not obligated to tolerate a tyrant. You have near complete freedom over the source code to make any changes or to fork the project, completely sidestepping the maintainer. If someone truly wanted to be a petty tyrant with the “freedom” to exclude they would write their software as closed source, start a company and maintain complete control over all versions of the software and hire or fire all of the programmers who can edit it.

Re: Richard Stallman’s Exit Heralds a New Era in Tech

#44
I believe this trend of prefering moral purity over professional qualities will reach its tipping point when cancer doctors will get fired for making inappropriate comments to female coworkers. At this point we'll start to get serious about what constitutes fireable behaviors and what just makes you a prick.

I sincerely hope we'll reach that point very soon.

Re: Richard Stallman’s Exit Heralds a New Era in Tech

#45
>This is a lesson we are fast learning about freedom as it promoted by the tech world. It is not about ensuring that everyone can express their views and feelings. Freedom, in this telling, is about exclusion. The freedom to drive others away.

This seems to be presenting opinion as fact.

From a software perspective though, I would argue that yes, I should absolutely have the freedom to reject a change in my code from someone else. The rejected party has the freedom to fork my code.

Re: Richard Stallman’s Exit Heralds a New Era in Tech

#47
post #23
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty obvious that US propaganda and censorship machine pushed into tech at full force in the last couple of years, with all the manufacturing consent at all levels. When they forced codes of conduct, inquisition was already kind of expected.

Is Monty Python lost on this generation?

The european or the african?

Re: Richard Stallman’s Exit Heralds a New Era in Tech

#48
I would argue that a so-called "new era" has already begun, regardless of whether Stallman is physically the chair of any organization. So much time has passed since the formation of the FSF, and (though HN likes to pretend otherwise), tech doesn't exist in a bubble.

Different issues are driving decisions today than were a few decades ago; that's just the flow of time. I don't think it's a bad thing at all that standards and goals have changed.

I think this "new era" began with the rise of FAANG companies, so really, these trends have been in motion for a while. I'm excited what new developments in AR/VR, AI, compiler theory, etc. will come in the approaching years.

Re: Richard Stallman’s Exit Heralds a New Era in Tech

#49
Someone took the time to actually sift through all the accusations and put them in context.

https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/index.html

This is only about the publications on medium, Vice, and The Daily Beast, not this new one in Wired, who apparently also discovered there's good money in selling pyres.

Re: Richard Stallman’s Exit Heralds a New Era in Tech

#50
post #37

Read the emails. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-091320191420... Then come back and read what I have to say. There was nothing offensive or controversial in there. Not a one. The man only pushed to avoid letting the narrative people wanted to believe run away with the reputation of a friend (Minsky) before all the facts were in. He's endorsing to let the justice system do it's work instead of letting…

The responses to Stallman on csail-related show that his comments were controversial and did offend some people even before the media distorted them.

I agree with some of what Stallman said, but he didn't simply encourage everyone to reserve judgment. He imagined a plausible scenario, argued for a particular moral interpretation, and emphatically rejected legal definitions. He called opposing views "absolutely wrong" and "morally absurd". He dug in when someone suggested that the conversation was unproductive and could reflect badly on CSAIL.

Why do you believe the FSF and MIT didn't investigate? Many people have called this the straw that broke the camel's back.

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