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In Defense of Richard Stallman

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Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#351

Post by seba_dos1 »

wozniacki wrote: post #261
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 agree with everything you said. I just hope that we applied the same rationale in an even-keeled and level-headed manner in other cases where similar concerns are raised. I hope we don't make exceptions for our favorite pet causes no matter how close to the heart and rule against those who were found to have either voiced opinions or acted in an antagonistic manner to such causes, even when those decisions are thor…

I find those completely different cases. Stallman didn't say what accusations attributed to him at all, and at least some stuff that is thrown around is clearly a misinterpretation for anyone who knows his autistic nature and context of being a person many people joke about. This situation is hardly related to the Eich one.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#352

Post by roenxi »

sannee wrote: post #305
roenxi wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core of the drama is a MIT visiting professor has a poor grasp of social context and an inability to synchronise with other people. It seems totally possible that some graduate mechanical engineer totally misread a text. Mechanical engineers aren't known for being social butterflys.

Being capable to extract precise logical meaning from text is something everyone with STEM education learns in their introductory mathematics courses. It has nothing to do with social ability. > visiting professor has a poor grasp of social context and an inability to synchronise with other people. I am not that interested about the broader political context. I would like to know who (and why) shot Franz Ferdinand so…

It is unlikely that anyone was acting in bad faith here. Unless there is compelling evidence it is safest to assume that people were hasty and didn't stop to think and try to exercise a little tolerance and reflection.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#353

Post by argaba »

praptak wrote: post #284
meerita wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What posts are you talking about? He didn't state anything related to child sex, plus, Eptein wasn't only offering that so it is unclear that Minsk had sex with minors. It's obvious that Stallman condemn that, but to his eyes, nothing is crystal clear and he is not the kind of person who will fall so easily in any logic fallacy. I think people is mob lawing him without any reason more than "he just stated some facts"…

It's a public post from 2003. Funny how nobody has dug it up for 16 years.

I don't really have a side here, I am not surprised in the slightest that people say things that others can find offensive (what a shocker).

However since we're in the era of unerasable past, its kind of expected for people to do dig up the past. I do wonder if "society" will start applying a consistency stick to what people say. I.e. if they have had a consistent view on say pedophilia in this instance.

On that note was Stallman consistent over time to this day?

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#354

Post by smhost »

lettergram wrote: post #334
smhost wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

currently, https://stallman.org/ says:

> I continue to be the Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project. I do not intend to stop any time soon.

apparently the site was previously defaced by an FSF employee.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#355

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…

[deleted]

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#356

Post by eej2ya1K »

sascha_sl wrote: post #212
eej2ya1K wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You, too - stop lying. People have been asking for documentation in every thread about this and it never shows up. Stop fucking lying.

https://twitter.com/corbett/status/994012399656042496 https://twitter.com/starsandrobots/status/994267277460619265 https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/994010501460865025 https://twitter.com/wiredferret/status/1173042834179534849 https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-appendi...

Are you... are you serious? Do you expect this to convince sane people? The disingenuousness on display in these threads is amazing.

"Maybe this is RMS's last-ditch effort to return to his glory days, when he could put abortion references in the documentation, and talk about virginity in his conference talks, and nobody would push back."

"I’m a CIS male and I’ve avoided GPL and every event he’s associated with in boston for over ten years because I didn’t like his macho-aggressive attitudes towards everything."

"If a women reports a FOSS hero, does anyone hear it?"

Oh, and for some reason pretty much everyone in these threads is either mistaken or deliberately lying about his recent comments about Minsky.

These people are trying to ruin someone's life and they're treating the entire thing like a joke.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#357

Post by TeMPOraL »

oska wrote: post #323
lettergram wrote: post #279

@dang Can we please stop removing Stallman discussions from the front page? I understand we want to keep things civil on HN, but the reality is that this dramatically impacts this community and all developers - probably more than we realize on the surface. I Discussing it and essentially letting everyone voice their thoughts is a way to both (a) come to consensus and (b) potentially see view points. As it stands the…

I would imagine that it's been automatically removed due to a large number of people flagging it, rather than manually removed by the admins. My understanding is that automatic removals (from flagging) get reviewed and unremoved if the admins don't see a good case for the submission being flag-worthy.

There's also anti-flamewar system in HN that penalizes stories that accrue too many comments too quickly; I'm betting this is what makes this and similar stories drop from the front page very fast.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#358

Post by haasted »

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…

Same author as the original medium post, so I would assume identical agenda and a risk of cherry-picking and distortion of the incidents described.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#359

Post by lettergram »

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’d like a first hand account and link:

> 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 her.

Just an FYI the person who said that already had beef with RMS. I’d recommend reading fully into the situation - perhaps you still believe it, but at least you’ll know.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#360

Post by DanBC »

roenxi wrote: post #312
DanBC wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is one correct way to think, Yes, when it comes to "is raping children okay?" there is only one way to think - "No, raping children is not okay".

But, and this is important, there is no natural law algorithm for working out what the words "raping" and "children" mean. People have to occasionally talk about difficult issues to find out. There isn't a common moral or legal standard about what either of those words mean on the margins, in globally or in the US. If people can't voice opinions that are wrong, they have no easy way of finding out why those opinions…

There are plenty of places where you can talk about what "rape" and "children" mean. There are lots of legal discussion groups that would welcome this conversation. Except he's going to have to meet a somewhat higher bar than "I haven't got a fucking clue what I'm talking about, but here's what I reckon anyway".

When someone linked to your organisation is accused of raping a child that's probably a bad time to start a discussion saying "was she really a child?", and "was it really assault?" and "was it really rape?".

The fact that RMS is incapable of seeing that it was the wrong time to launch this discussion, that there are better places to have that discussion, is precisely why he needed to go.

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