In Defense of Richard Stallman • Hacker News Board

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#201

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 11:12 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #76

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 o…

I for one agree 100% with you here. And I don't really know what angers me more - the explicit desire to destroy a person's life, expressed by many including the original blogger that started this mess, or the relentless denial of reality, the willingness to repeat bald-faced lies, even though the source material was accessible and widely quoted.

Until this debacle I didn't realize so many people in our industry can voluntarily refrain from most basic reading comprehension. There's no discussion with people who simply refuse to read and comprehend a plain English sentence. There were moments I felt this was approaching Varelse level of Foreignness[0] - a mind so alien that it's hard to communicate, a mind that looks at a written sentence and understands the exact opposite of what it was communicating.

--

[0] - https://enderverse.fandom.com/wiki/Hierarchy_of_Foreignness

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#202

Post by CathedralBorrow » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 11:12 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #76

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 o…

I'll speak up: I'm happy that Stallman resigned from his positions, but the final straw for me was the surfacing of Stallman's pedophilic musings over the years. You left that part out.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#203

Post by interpenetrate » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 11:12 AM UTC

computerex wrote: post #44

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…

He worked in MIT for over 30 years, do share any evidence at all of the pattern you are referring to.

>He worked in MIT for over 30 years

walter lewin was at mit for 43 years before he was exposed and fired for sexual abuse.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#204

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 11:12 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #76

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 o…

[deleted]

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#205

Post by vezycash » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 11:13 AM UTC

dpq wrote: post #117

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring a legal age of consent, refusing to accept the accepted definitions of assault and rape, and claiming they were actually willing are emphatically not just "socially awkward".

> claiming they were actually willing Did you even bother to read the emails or at the very least the article? This misconception is exactly what's being argued there, that Stallman said something clearly different. > Ignoring a legal age of consent By doing what, raping someone underage? Or rather expressing his opinion that it's ridiculous that when in one state the age of consent is 16, in another one it's 18, and…

Once people have decided, or taken a position, facts and evidence are virtually useless.

I read here on HN a few days ago that the dude in question, TURNED THE GIRL DOWN. How people are crucifying two people (Stallman and the dead guy) for underage rape that never happened is just crazy.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#206

Post by lazyjones » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 11:13 AM UTC

fugly_nerd wrote: post #146

forgot_user1234 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"He actively made women feel unwelcome in the workplace and behaved unprofessionally over and over again." You are making me feel unwelcome on this forum and your comment is unprofessional. > Yes, because of people like you, Geoff. When people like Stallm .... It's because of people like you that allegations ruin people's life. When there's nothing to prove, you are talking about what could have

Seriously I feel so attacked right now. Barrin92 is saying it is a crime to be awkward and people are upvoting it to the top. I thought people stopped picking on nerds after high school. Makes me want to kill myself to not deal with the anxiety of trying to make people like me.

It's just a small, noisy, superficial and generally annoying minority with short attention span that goes on such lynch crusades.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#207

Post by DanBC » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 11:13 AM UTC

computerex wrote: post #44

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…

He worked in MIT for over 30 years, do share any evidence at all of the pattern you are referring to.

Re-read this thread, and then have a think about why women don't tell you about harassing arseholes.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#208

Post by shademaan » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 11:13 AM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #128

equalunique wrote: post #56

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. Can you please cite your sources for this claim?

He’s autistic. He probably gives almost everyone he comes into contact with the creeps. Neurotypical people don’t like autistic people, and would prefer to avoid them to the greatest extent possible. I doubt Stallman was any more unpleasant to women than to men, or showed any greater or lesser social graces. He has never, ever held back about any of his opinions or actions. I’m sure you could get him to admit to thin…

>Neurotypical people don’t like autistic people,

Oh this is hilarious. Do you realize how many people -- not just men -- in CS, physics, mathematics are autistic, especially in places like MIT? Places like that are teeming with autistic people who somehow manage not to make their students and colleagues uncomfortable. I'll even be so bold as to claim neurotypicals are actually a minority in some of those subjects.

This is really strange atempt to spin his firing as some sort of evidence that autistic men are being oppressed in CS academia and tech. As anyone who's been in either of those environmets, that's clearly NOT the case.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#209

Post by CathedralBorrow » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 11:13 AM UTC

meerita wrote: post #167

coldtea wrote: post #76

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 o…

I've read the mail from Stallman and I couldn't believe people forced him to resign just because he stated that 1 it is not clear assault 2, he don't disbelieve his colleague had sex. BTW: I have also suffered the tough, complicated, unstable and rare personality of Stallman. Not for that I want to see him dead but like everyone else, when he has been unrespectful with me, I let him know. Everyone who knows Stallman…

Well there were also those posts about having sex with children sometimes being quite fine.

Edit: The downvotes are interesting given that this is how Stallman himself characterized those posts:

"Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it."

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#210

Post by lettergram » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 11:13 AM UTC

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…

> I don’t know the details, but she was given advanced warning anytime Stallman was headed over so that she could leave. He was a creep and women at the company knew to stay away.

If we don’t have a specific account and details are unknown, then I don’t think this is a fair characterization.

Ive had others think Stallman is creepy too. They actively avoided him, but he never did anything to them.

Sexual advances in and of themselves are not illegal - but again we don’t have a true source for this information. Assuming this is all 100% factually accurate and the sentiment is properly related: it sounds Inappropriate, but if he wasn’t fired, it sounds like it wasn’t far enough outside the acceptable conduct to warrant anything.