In Defense of Richard Stallman

> because they're afraid of being called liars or censors

lies where told. There are plenty people afraid of pointing this out, lest they be called an "apologist" for something. Is that because of "people like you, Barrin92"?

Can you cite some specific evidence for your specific claims?

Diversity -- but no diversity of opinion...

Inclusiveness -- but let's ostracize the non-conforming aspie...

Fairness -- but let's fire people or make them resign from unrelated positions for their personal opinions, because obviously all of a person's life should serve as a big PR, and god forbid they don't play the role 24/7. Someone might call them for it on Twitter, and what could their employee/organization do other than fire them? (in the "Land of the free" nonetheless)

Not to mention the blatant conformity and blandness -- punishing experimentation, personality, eccentricity, being the devil's advocate, controversiality, and, worse of all, being 'unprofessional' (as if the FSF is something akin to 1970s IBM)...

First they came for Patch Adams...

The current environment rewards the worst kind of scum: holier-than-thou hypocritical tell-tales and people who enjoy yielding power over others by drawing lynch-mobs.

I have wrote against Epstein here in several threads, but I could have lunch with a person who has controversial opinions on the matter like Stallman. People like those who finger-pointed and cheered on the personal consequences on Stallman, I'd prefer to live in another universe from.

Are you happy now? Justice for Epstein's victims served? (on someone who never even met Epstein)

Speak up now, or don't bother to cry crocodile tears and set up the "black ribbon" when we eventually lose Stallman, and tell stories of how he inspired you, etc...

> Stallman defended Minsky by saying it wasn't rape and it was assault. To mount this defence Stallman had to ignore common English definitions for both words, and he had to ignore the legal definitions of both words.

I disagree on both accounts. Rape, to derive its moral severity, requires either intent or negligence. I realize there's a meme about "she told me she was 18" but that does fall under the negligence angle - the implication is "he should have known". (And Minksy did know, or at least suspected.) But drop into a situation where there was no way for them to know, and at least to my intuition the moral badness disappears.

I think there's just a level of ... the sexual event alone creates a certain mass of moral badness, and this mass has to go somewhere, so it's usually pinned on the older partner. However, I'm fully willing to pin it on Epstein in this case if it has to go anywhere. And if that isn't possible - well, maybe it can't be put anywhere. I think this is a social/moral difference; I come from a society where even the law acknowledges that sometimes there's morally bad events that have no guilty party at all. If a mentally disabled person rapes someone because they have no concept of consent, whose moral fault is it? Where do we put the blame? To me, it's obvious that we put it with the people and structures that were supposed to have prevented the event but failed to. If the event was provoked, we put it with the people who provoked it. In this case, that person is unambiguously Epstein, who was the source and cause of all the moral badness in play. This is not always possible, but conveniently in this case it is.

To Linus Torvalds? Wasn't he just temporarily absent for one release due to being 'abusive on pull requests'?

Because AFAIK he did not get as much backlash as RMS is getting at the moment, nor did he lose any position somewhere.