Kind of meta, but I don’t think Hacker News downvotes are being used as intended in this thread. There are a lot of well constructed arguments exposed in a polite manner that are downvoted.
Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
161–170 of 580 posts
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#162> 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.
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 -…
Is he actually autistic? Or is it a convenient diagnosis people give him to excuse his behavior?
(I can't find any actual reference to him being autistic on the web. Please enlighten me.)
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#163Perhaps this author is unaware of the number of statements Stallman has made regarding pedophilia on his website over the years [1]. If RMS has changed his point of view, he can go back to those parts of his blog and add an update.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=pedophile+site%3Astallman.or...
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
Totally. I get that the OP is from Stallman's publicist. But I think a good publicist shouldn't at worse be selective about the truth, not say outright false things like this. Plenty of people who know Stallman have made it clear that Stallman's behavior is consistent, harmful, and willful. E.g.: https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1172422966904160257
And who, if I may ask, is this person who is so eagerly ventilating his opinions to feed the wolves? To me it sounds more like he's upset because RMS didn't agree with him, which would be his problem in a sane world.
I'm not sure which person you didn't bother to Google, but the one I quoted is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Garrett
Stallman is currently a topic of public interest, so it's unsurprising that people are commenting on his situation, just like you're doing here.
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#165> 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.
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 -…
You make it sound as though autistic people are unable to learn appropriate social behavior. That is not only false, it does an extreme disservice to the entire community of people on the spectrum.
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#166Kind of meta, but I don’t think Hacker News downvotes are being used as intended in this thread. There are a lot of well constructed arguments exposed in a polite manner that are downvoted.
lmao, welcome to hn comment section circa 2012+
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lynching is a pretty bad analogy. He did not die. He was not physically harmed. A guy around retirement age decided to resign from a couple of jobs. Stallman got away with a lot for decades because he had much more privilege than the people he harmed. He might still be getting away with it had MIT not gotten caught making themselves absolutely eager to run with a serial predator. But just because somebody gets away w…
That's fair, I don't know of a less extreme word. I don't mean it in the way that it means in the southern US, but in the more broad sense of "trial-less mob justice action".
That didn't happen either. He made public comments and received public criticism. If MIT and the FSF board thought there wasn't a problem, they could have kept him on. He chose to resign.
If there's any lack of due process, it's at those institutions. But given how both organizations protected him for decades, it seems to me that the real lack of due process was in failing for many years to handle complaints about his behavior.
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#168The thing is though, the outrage mob usually doesn't care about facts. Their outrage is always based on the heat of the moment. It even seems this mode has been spilling over into our justice system lately, which is a very unfortunate and a sad state of affairs.
Your comment sounds familiar. I read it very often on the internet these days under various topics.
If a phenomenon occurs more frequently, then one would expect it to be noted more frequently. Or did you mean to imply something else?
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
If his logic didnt matter, shouldnt he be condemned for only being inappropriate or hostile? Yet it seems that his current reputation among the public at large is that of an actual paedophilia/rape apologist. Whether he actually was or not, this lack of concern for subtleties is the very reason why "societal censure" should only be the authority on matters relating to politeness and not criminality.
I disagree. Societal censure is appropriate on the topics you declare exempt. It is appropriate to fear censure and exile from your society when caught to simply be considering such activities, even if no criminal action is occurs. They are societally unacceptable. If his historical actions and present words lead others to be concerned that he’s an apologist, it is appropriate to react societally.
I'm not aware that practicing radical self-censorship for the sake of conformity is the current standard of social justice, and, as far as I can tell, numerous forms of injustice were at one point or another deemed socially acceptable.
Even justifiable concerns are just exactly that, justifiable concerns. If anything, it is the society that cannot behave however it wants but has an obligation to uphold justice. It needs to have a fair legal system as opposed to mob justice and to punish only genuine criminals as opposed to merely people with criminal reputation.
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Keep in mind that Stallman maintained that Bushnell stopped answering emails for two years, and that was the reason for firing him. Seems like he still holds a grudge.
Interesting. Not to entirely doubt what you're saying, but the source for that statement on Wikipedia doesn't have a primary source. Do you happen to have more reading? I would love to have the complete story between them.
(Aside: Now that I look into it, Mr. Bushnell's Wikipedia page has basically been rewritten on September 22nd [1] after his article) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Bushnell&a...