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Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him

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Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him

#141

Post by JabavuAdams »

overgard wrote: post #113
mlevental wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's a large contingent of people on hn (in tech, in the world) that fetishize "logic" and believe it always trumps "feelings". i put both in quotes because to this contingent both of those concepts have absolutely zero relation to their actual form. i too used to be quite fond of making completely dispassionate arguments about controversial things (race, gender, class, etc.) because i believed that the entire con…

The whole point of rational dispassionate discussion is exactly because everyone has their own subjective feelings and experiences and biases. You have to put them aside to have a useful discussion. Prioritizing personal experience and saying “you cant know what its like if youre not X” is a bad bad social meme. I mean lets pretend its true. So what? It doesn’t advance the discussion at all, its only purpose is to en…

People are excellent rationalizers -- smart people especially. Basically smart people can use reason as a cudgel to win any debate -- not because they've actually constructed a good proof or considered all relevant evidence.

Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him

#142

Post by mr_woozy »

osdiab wrote: post #76
mr_woozy wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only progress you seem to have made is allow your feelings of abhorrent-ness to disregard all logical arguments that come your way which you decide are abusing their logical authority. Pretty self-reinforcing thought pattern you've built there.

Why so black and white? OP’s saying that there are other things besides “logic” (which is often itself just masked “feelings” from someone unaware of their own biases) that are relevant to the problems of the world; not saying that logic altogether is abhorrent and shutting “all logical arguments that come their way” down. You ought to inspect why you yourself are getting defensive over that statement.

I'm not getting defensive I'm pointing out an argument that stems from feelings and is only supported by feelings has no basis in discussion, since they are not axioms for discussion but subjective.

The OP starts out dismissing logical arguments and then pats himself on the back for seeing through the grand conspiracy of analytical thought.

Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him

#143

Post by lilyball »

> As an active feminist and one who has witnessed much bad behavior among tech CEOs over the past 30 years, I think that accusing Richard Stallman of not supporting women, gays, or any other minority group is false. Look at his real history — […] — but his record in helping to give everyone in the world access to free software.

What kind of bullshit is this? Stallman's advocacy for open source in no way whatsoever makes him a champion for women, gay people, or any other marginalized group, and does not even remotely excuse his behavior.

Sylvia, calling yourself a feminist doesn't actually make you one.

Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him

#144

Post by jeffchien »

favorited wrote: post #5

Here[0] is a post by someone else who (by his own account) "worked for RMS longer than any other programmer." While he obviously has had a long relationship with Stallman, one of his key takeaways was: "RMS’s loss of MIT privileges and leadership of the FSF are the appropriate responses to a pattern of decades of poor behavior. It does not matter if they are appropriate responses to a single email thread, because the…

I must admit I didn't know who Mr. Bushnell was, so I looked him up. Finding out about his dismissal from GNU Hurd back in 2003 was quite ironic to me:

> RMS has now "dismissed" me as Hurd maintainer because I have publicly spoken against the GFDL, saying that a GNU maintainer must support and speak in favor of GNU policies. If this is really RMS's reason, then it means that he demands the right to control the speech of every GNU volunteer when it comes to GNU project policies. He wants not merely to set the direction, but also to require that each and every one of us publicly support a GNU policy when asked to.

[1] https://lists.softwarelibero.it/pipermail/discussioni/2003-N... [2] https://lwn.net/Articles/59147/

Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him

#145

Post by panzagl »

mlevental wrote: post #53
chasing wrote: post #39

> He takes everything literally and doesn’t necessarily take feelings and the reactions of others into account when making statements that are outside the bounds of his expertise in free software. Whelp, then no one should be that surprised when people stop taking his feelings into account and decide they no longer want to be associated with him. Not being an asshole is a two-way street.

there's a large contingent of people on hn (in tech, in the world) that fetishize "logic" and believe it always trumps "feelings". i put both in quotes because to this contingent both of those concepts have absolutely zero relation to their actual form. i too used to be quite fond of making completely dispassionate arguments about controversial things (race, gender, class, etc.) because i believed that the entire con…

Hell is sitting in a meeting where a consensus decision is reached that is demonstrably wrong, and everybody treats you like the asshole because your very real and verifiable reasons are making everyone else feel bad or stupid.

Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him

#146

Post by asveikau »

sp332 wrote: post #78
qzx_pierri wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s autistic. Suddenly the people who were annoyingly vocal about being “inclusive” are forgetting Stallman’s disability. He says “creepy” things because he doesn’t understand social cues or casual communication at a certain level. Everyone in this thread demonizing RMS should be ashamed of themselves. This is the same reason why he can’t hold a relationship, or why he sleeps in his office. He’s just far out there -…

This is bull. He had decades to learn not to make women uncomfortable by doing one single thing - calling his business card his "pleasure" card when he handed it to a woman - and he still does that. That's not autism. Autism might hypothetically lead to doing that until someone pulled him aside and told him it was creepy and made others uncomfortable. After that it's just being an asshole.

> Autism might hypothetically lead to doing that until someone pulled him aside and told him it was creepy and made others uncomfortable.

It's not with autism, but I have first hand experience telling a mentally ill person (diagnosis was schizoaffective) that certain behavior is creepy and made women uncomfortable. They didn't listen. They argued it with me very intensely instead. In some cases part of the illness is not realizing there's a problem. It's not always going to work to politely flag a behavior as off putting and they get it right away.

Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him

#147

Post by [deleted] »

flippinburgers wrote: post #67

If you read the article she notes that the infamous "hot ladies" photo was the result of someone else writing and then snapping that shot of his office door. People only see what they want to see. I see a bunch of people beating up on and attacking an awkward "nerd". It reminds me of high school.

[deleted]

Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him

#148

Post by matz1 »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #72

We are, sadly, entering a new age of conformity. Aligning yourself with what main stream society thinks is correct is now more important than anything else. The response of course is that "bad behavior should never be excused, regardless of ability!" which leads to a losing argument in which we try to say what kind of good excuses what kind of bad. But this presupposes the conformist stance: that fitting in with the…

I think this a fundamental issue with humanity, not everyone think alike. What one human think is right is another human wrong. Its all relative.

At least I'm hoping in the future virtual reality can somewhat solve this where everyone can live in their own perferabable society.

Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him

#149

Post by astrodust »

remarkEon wrote: post #98
floatingatoll wrote: post #8

Richard Stallman has been vilified by those who experienced him. His actions are reported to repeatedly exceed what is permissible without societal censure, regardless of the logic and/or reasoning behind them. Knowing him is not necessary to react to him, and to tell stories of his actions to others.

Imagine the world if Stallman had been excommunicated from tech after the first awkward/offensive interaction he had with someone. I sure wouldn’t. Tangentially: I better not see anyone here lionize Steve Jobs ever again, because he inflicted actual physical trauma on people. He didn’t just piss them off with his failure to recognize social cues.

"Imagine the world where people were held accountable and called out for being dicks.."

Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him

#150

Post by roenxi »

favorited wrote: post #5

Here[0] is a post by someone else who (by his own account) "worked for RMS longer than any other programmer." While he obviously has had a long relationship with Stallman, one of his key takeaways was: "RMS’s loss of MIT privileges and leadership of the FSF are the appropriate responses to a pattern of decades of poor behavior. It does not matter if they are appropriate responses to a single email thread, because the…

Bushnell* writes a very reasonable piece. It deals with a number of issues with Stallman as a leader of the FSF and MIT and suggests Stallman is unlikely to come back to either of those institutions.

But he doesn't deal with what the big problem here is - the way this was done is concerning. Stallman wasn't forced to resign by people like him - who are quite happy to say "Look, Stallman, you've dedicated your life to this, you've done good work, but we want to take the movement into a more mainstream place".

Stallman resigned in the middle of a press firestorm, based on lies, with people publicly accusing him of supporting someone he called a 'serial rapist'. He is now facing large numbers of people retroactively justifying his treatment by spreading various rumours that may or may not be true but certainly can't be enumerated and assessed for accuracy. They are unfalsifiable and undebunkable because so far there is very little substance and a lot of hearsay. I've seen the odd comments justifying all sorts of weird assumptions, in one case literally because 'he was an eccentric bloke'. This is gross pigeonholing and stereotyping.

This is not a reasonable process and the outcomes are horrible. Stallman has literally dedicated his life to trying to make the world better for other people. He was bought down by leaks by someone who now says "Did I even really know who Richard Stallman was before those emails? To be honest, not really" [0]. This is not how these things should be done and it bodes very poorly for the future of the FSF. Not only is there no particular reward for leading the FSF, there is also the risk of being publicly shamed and driven out.

There is a difference between leadership change by mob rule, and leadership change by voting and process. This isn't a sustainable way of doing things. It is really bad.

[0] https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec2...

* EDIT - Thanks yakshaving_jgt for pointing out I said Paul. Moment of confusion, although fortunately not one that obscured the point.

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