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In Defense of Richard Stallman

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Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#331

Post by TeMPOraL »

viraptor wrote: post #110
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…

> If we can't, as a group, tolerate awkwardness, we are very much down the rabbit hole of mandatory social conformity. There's a difference between tolerating it to a degree and letting leaders continue uncomfortable awkwardness. If it's enough to distance people, maybe they're not a great candidate for a leader. That doesn't remove anything from their achievements and abilities to contribute or to spread new ideas.…

> There's a difference between tolerating it to a degree and letting leaders continue uncomfortable awkwardness. If it's enough to distance people, maybe they're not a great candidate for a leader.

Honestly, they got him because they could. There's plenty of politicians, including state heads, regularly making offensive and sexist comments. I haven't seen anyone attempting or even proposing a coup because of that. It usually gets a day or two on the news, and then is remembered only in jokes.

> That doesn't remove anything from their achievements and abilities to contribute or to spread new ideas.

Of course it does, because being a leader is the ability "to contribute or to spread new ideas". Moreover, in this particular case, we're hearing plenty of voices trying to retroactively deny RMS's achievements.

> entirely omitting the space occupied by almost all of us: between homelessness and being a leader of a global movement/organisation.

In this particular case, it was a jump over that space occupied by almost all of us. In a blink of an eye, this incident made an old person not employable and apparently (according to the TFA) homeless. Maybe a different, more emotionally and intellectually balanced person could handle this and resume a fulfilling but low-profile life. But such people don't generally end up with achievements or roles as RMS did. It takes a pretty unbalanced person to persist in pushing views that go against the commercial zeitgeist so long, so successfully, and without compromise.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#332

Post by computerex »

DanBC wrote: post #207
computerex wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you might be a bit emotional. Can you provide some solid proof of Richard Stallman harassing or abusing people as a pattern or any evidence at all?

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#333

Post by DanBC »

fold_right wrote: post #197
DanBC wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop using autism to defend someone who's said that raping children doesn't harm them.

Children? ... Honestly curious, when did he say that?

https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20...

> I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.

https://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html

> The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia" also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally--but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.

> Some rules might be called for when these acts directly affect other people's interests. For incest, contraception could be mandatory to avoid risk of inbreeding. For prostitution, a license should be required to ensure prostitutes get regular medical check-ups, and they should have training and support in insisting on use of condoms. This will be an advance in public health, compared with the situation today.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#334

Post by lettergram »

smhost wrote: post #309
lettergram wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He pretty much was / is. He lived at MIT, his life’s work was GNU and the FSF. All three were taken away, and more than that - people were excited and driven to do this. He’s had to move, he’s lost all his potions, etc. There was very little discourse and punishment was swift. That’s not really the way justice should be served. This man (RMS), essentially spent his life fighting for others. He was thrown to the wolve…

stallman is still the head of the GNU project.

That may not be the case...

We don’t know if it’s true but:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21103133

In either case, to your comment, he was stripped of his life. To say otherwise is disingenuous.

It’d be like saying: I took your house and job, but left you the car.

That’d still be striping you of land and title (to your comment)

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#335

Post by jdefr89 »

If I know anything about human behavior than these incidents were a final excuse to get rid of Stallman. I personally don’t care for him, but he has done so much for FOSS. Also I am surprised more people trying to condemn him are not seeing that Stallman is basically autistic. People are essentially being mad over someone with autism acting in some ways autistic.. C’mon people need to start cutting some people a damn break this worlds lost all sanity..

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#336

Post by ianleeclark »

pvaldes wrote: post #275
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…

> He actively made women feel unwelcome in the workplace This sword cuts both ways. MIT is not a kindergarten, they are adult people moving in an adult work context. It has been said here, that some women are so terrified of Stallman that will carry plants around with they. If true this would speak volumes but not about RMS; about those women! I assume that there are a lot of very smart but socially awkward people (m…

> A fully growth women, so terrified of any contact with men to barricade herself behind a geranium all day, should raise a red flag.

Cool victim blaming.

> Any adult women should be able to stop and deal elegantly with an undesired proposition.

They're in a professional environment, they shouldn't have to deal with this.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#337

Post by cambalache »

claudeganon wrote: post #190
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’m not sure if this is just more grandstanding of the “SJWs run amok” variety, but in case you’re unaware, his recent comments were just the tip of the iceberg: https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-appendi... Someone else downthread also linked about how a woman he worked with on a Linux project had to be warned of his arrival ahead of time so she could leave because of his aggressive advances toward…

I am sorry but that is a pretty awful article.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#338

Post by roenxi »

prepend wrote: post #48
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…

> It's a pattern of behaviour over years combined This is a tough rhetorical device. I’ve read quite a bit about this recently. I am not a huge RMS reader and while I’ve known of him for 25 years or so, I haven’t nearly read everything he said and everything written by people who met him. So maybe he does have a pattern of behavior that’s negative enough to be fired. But maybe he doesn’t have a pattern but some peopl…

> This is a tough rhetorical device.

There is no particular charge to defend so it is indefensible. It is more insinuation than accusation. It also sounds vaguely convincing without needing to provide any actual evidence or cite any specific instance, and turns singular instances of not-really-a-problem into a 'pattern' (eg, like what happened to his door sign).

> But maybe he doesn’t have a pattern but some people incorrectly perceive a pattern.

I went to a Stallman talk on Free Software once when he was in Australia. The questions he fielded after the talk where honestly jawdropping and one of the first encounters I had with how little some people understand subtle arguments.

"Software must be free, but people can be paid to work on it!" then "So what you are saying is that people should work without getting paid?" style exchanges.

Stallman is defiantly no stranger to having his words misunderstood. It wasn't even malicious, people just didn't understand him.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#339

Post by CathedralBorrow »

hizanberg wrote: post #330
CathedralBorrow wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I am sceptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren’t voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.” “There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.“ I can give you the links but it's quite…

It's well-known he's since recanted his thoughts in those posts: https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September... Are people allowed to change their mind after having conversations that convince them that their position is wrong?

Of course people are allowed to change their minds. But forgive me if I take a skeptical view of someone in their sixties suddenly saying "Contrary to my writings on the subject, I've recently learned that having sex with children is wrong"

Especially if that recanting happens to take place right as the shitstorm about his writings and behavior has started.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#340

Post by TeMPOraL »

eternalban wrote: post #320
TeMPOraL wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> the relentless denial of reality This is a tried and true tactic and it works. Issue certainly is not "reading comprehension". How many fingers? http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/18.html

There are four lights.
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