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In Defense of Richard Stallman

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Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#151

Post by virgilp »

Barrin92 wrote: post #10

> They focused on his tone deaf communication style and awkward demeanor. They spoke of behavior from decades ago and pointed out the fact that he had a mattress in his office. It wasn't just awkward demeanor. He actively made women feel unwelcome in the workplace and behaved unprofessionally over and over again. > He held his positions at MIT, GNU, and the FSF for over thirty years, and in that time nobody accused h…

> He actively made women feel unwelcome in the workplace and behaved unprofessionally over and over again.

All this is irrelevant to the quite real and undeniable truth that it's not because he "made women feel unwelcome in the workplace" that he was sacked. This is pure after-the-fact rationalization. He was sacked for having the wrong opinion and not knowing when to shut up.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#152

Post by throw0101a »

klingonopera wrote: post #107
Traster wrote: post #23

There's quite a lot in this. I don't think it's helpful to throw in stuff like "He is now likely homeless" - gossip/rumour I'm sure this author would be decrying if the other side of the argument had brought it up. We don't know anything about RMS's personal life and shouldn't speculate. Now let's address the underlying point: You don't get X good thing without Y bad behaviour. I don't agree with this. It's a weird s…

> You don't get X good thing without Y bad behaviour. Consider the following: Humans have limited capacity, thus time, money and energy spent limiting Y inhibits resources available to creating X.

While life is short, it is long enough that people can learn not to be assholes / jerks IMHO:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_No_Asshole_Rule

* https://hbr.org/2007/03/why-i-wrote-the-no-asshole-rule

* https://www.td.org/insights/dont-tolerate-brilliant-jerks

* https://www.inc.com/jim-schleckser/why-netflix-doesn-t-toler...

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#154

Post by AsyncAwait »

Barrin92 wrote: post #10

> They focused on his tone deaf communication style and awkward demeanor. They spoke of behavior from decades ago and pointed out the fact that he had a mattress in his office. It wasn't just awkward demeanor. He actively made women feel unwelcome in the workplace and behaved unprofessionally over and over again. > He held his positions at MIT, GNU, and the FSF for over thirty years, and in that time nobody accused h…

The original Medium post was resting on equating Stallman saying that one of Epstein's victims may've been presented to Minsky as "entirely willing", as him saying that the girl in fact was "entirely willing".

Such intentional smear campaign makes me seriously question the author of the piece, because if they had an obvious case of wrongdoing, no such intentional misquoting would indeed be necessary.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#155

Post by hdfbdtbcdg »

jimhefferon wrote: post #133
efdee wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claiming they were actually willing and claiming they presented themselves as actually willing are two very different things. These are very dangerous accusations you are throwing around - you might do well to stick to what he actually said and wrote.

It seems to me not credible that a 70 year old Minsky believed that a quite young lady would, on minutes of meeting him, be so attracted that she would be anxious to be intimate.

According to eyewitnesses he turned down the advances...

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#156

Post by Numberwang »

throw0101a wrote: post #114
sergiosgc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It wasn't just awkward demeanor. He actively made women feel unwelcome in the workplace and behaved unprofessionally over and over again. Every episode I read about fell into the category of "socially awkward adult male". If we can't, as a group, tolerate awkwardness, we are very much down the rabbit hole of mandatory social conformity. By all means, point me to a real abuse scenario by Stallman. I like being prove…

> Every episode I read about fell into the category of "socially awkward adult male". If we can't, as a group, tolerate awkwardness, we are very much down the rabbit hole of mandatory social conformity. Perhaps you need to read about more episodes: > I worked 10 years ago at VA Linux which had Richard Stallman on its board of directors. You might have heard that Stallman applied his open source ideas to his publicly…

So just rumors about stuff happening to other people?

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#157

Post by Chris2048 »

Traster wrote: post #23

There's quite a lot in this. I don't think it's helpful to throw in stuff like "He is now likely homeless" - gossip/rumour I'm sure this author would be decrying if the other side of the argument had brought it up. We don't know anything about RMS's personal life and shouldn't speculate. Now let's address the underlying point: You don't get X good thing without Y bad behaviour. I don't agree with this. It's a weird s…

> You don't get X good thing without Y bad behaviour

Happens in the corporate world all the time though, was Microsoft ever really punished (beyond a wrist slap) for it's antitrust? Steve Jobs was notoriously a pedantic asshole, who gets to punish that?

I think the word "toxic" (people/places/cultures) is becoming vague and overused to the point of becoming the new badspeak - Can we just dismiss Stallman as "toxic"? Is the lynch-mob/fact-poor culture attacking Stallman not also "toxic"?

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#158

Post by barry-cotter »

toxik wrote: post #45

Humanity is converging on ideological monoculture. There is one correct way to think, and if you're dumb enough to step outside of those bounds, people _will_ come after you, and destroy whatever you have. One comment here even suggested that RMS is a rapist in so many words, really? I submit that you cannot have innovation without inconvenient characters. You must allow a plurality of ideas and ideals to exist, even…

Even the US isn’t an ideological monoculture. The woke are ~8% of the US population. No one in China cares. The social strata in India and Pakistan that ape the English speaking world is on the retreat politically.

This cultural moment is mostly a US thing, and to a lesser extent an Anglosphere thing, with especially English proficient vassal states like the Dutch or Scandinavians also taking part. If it ever burns out in the US it’ll just disappear everywhere else in short order.

RMS life was not ruined for an argument on a mailing list, but because he has no allies because he’s constitutionally incapable of playing politics.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#159

Post by [deleted] »

kolektiv wrote: post #18

Sigh. No. It's not just about one incidence of some mistakenly pedantic comments, as has been made clear by many, many people. It's a pattern of behaviour over years combined with no interest in listening to other people or accepting that he might be in the wrong. His behaviour towards women in particular has resulted in a lot of people sharing stories of his behaviour which, on their own, should be enough for someon…

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