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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

#261

Post by mirimir »

strenholme wrote: post #243
ralfd wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here [0] is someone else who (by his own accord) worked with both RMS and Bushnell and is saying Bushnell is bullshitting and grinding an axe: [0] https://mobile.twitter.com/thomas_lord/status/11744336549420... > Bushnell and I overlapped in our employment at FSF. ... The general culture of inclusiveness and tolerance that RMS fostered meant that, at least when I was there alongside Bushnell, that social circle i…

Thank you for the link. My impression is that RMS mainly had some opinions which were leftover from the “free love” movement of the 1960s and 1970s which were not particularly shocking or out of line back then, but are considered job-losing toxic opinions here in 2019. For the record, as someone who saw that whole movement first hand, I disagree with the whole “free love” movement and think sex should only be done in…

Yeah, from someone who was there, that's almost it. I'd add hacker punk as another key influence. But seriously, you don't say that stuff in public these days.

Edit: Even if you're joking, or just doing it to light people up. Which was, you know, quite the thing. Back in the day.

And damn, had to work at it, but I found a couple BOFH episodes that actually mention women.[0,1]

0) https://bofh.subversivedata.com/story/2009/4

1) http://bofharchive.com/1998/bastard98-21.html

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

#262

Post by tmsh »

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 authored GNU Hurd:

"RMS: I am not very optimistic about the GNU HURD. It makes some progress, but to be really superior it would require solving a lot of deep problems. However, mainly what I think about the HURD is that finishing it is not crucial."

https://redditblog.com/2010/07/29/rms-ama/

I think Bushnell makes some good points but:

(1) he’s biased.

(2) a Googler calling out Stallman is just rich (given the debt Google, its employees, and all modern tech companies owe free software and the relatively little they repay).

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

#263

Post by SmirkingRevenge »

newnewpdro wrote: post #184
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 -…

Autism has become the junk drawer of disorders everyone seems to think they're somehow qualified to diagnose. Could you provide some actual evidence of RMS being formally diagnosed as autistic? Because otherwise you're basically spreading a rumor that RMS has a mental disorder, which is not right.

The other term people are using is "neuro-atypical". That might be a good phrase here. Whether its autism or not, its pretty clear there's a great deal of neuro-atypical happenings in that brain, and many of those clearly impinge upon his social abilities in a really extreme way. There is years of public evidence to support that (including the current crap-storm).

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

#264

Post by goo432124 »

ralfd wrote: post #191
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…

And here [0] is someone else who (by his own accord) worked with both RMS and Bushnell and is saying Bushnell is bullshitting and grinding an axe: [0] https://mobile.twitter.com/thomas_lord/status/11744336549420... > Bushnell and I overlapped in our employment at FSF. ... The general culture of inclusiveness and tolerance that RMS fostered meant that, at least when I was there alongside Bushnell, that social circle i…

Bushnell calls himself a "social justice warrior". These exact words. And in my experience, he's lived up to the common meaning of that phrase. Does this behavior affect how you should regard Bushnell's recent article? Make up your own mind.

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

#265

Post by vkou »

BeetleB wrote: post #128
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 -…

>He’s autistic. I keep hearing this - has he ever been diagnosed? Why do people keep saying this?

To drum up sympathy for his behavior, by blaming it on a medical issue.

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

#266

Post by steveeq1 »

ineedasername wrote: post #242
steveeq1 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sure, you can find am exception if you look hard enough. But my point being is that the outrage crowd simply doesn't apply the same level of outrage to thugs as they do everyone else in any by-and-large way.

Maybe I've lost the line of thinking here. I thought we were talking about black face, and why people are offended by it. It's an offensive racial stereotype. I really don't see anything comparable about thugs. I'm not even clear on what you mean by thug outrage: is it that thugs exist? Is it media portrayal of thugs? Is it that thugs do or say bad things? I am honestly confused by this comparison.

My point is that "gangsta" rap music is every bit as offensive as blackface, perhaps even more. But outrage culture selectively applies the "harmful" argument to the latter, not the former. Nor do they make as a big deal of it.

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

#267

Post by [deleted] »

simplehuman wrote: post #193
kelnos wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming that's correct, and that the "hot ladies" thing happened as she describes, how do you excuse away all the other inappropriate and harassing behavior he's displayed over the years?

Why isn't the harassing behavior being brought up through the right channels? Is internet rage the right way to do this?

[deleted]

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

#268

Post by mirimir »

jameslk wrote: post #251
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…

[flagged]

Yeah, but his support involves less constrained mechanisms.

And you know, to the extent that the mainstream world notices Stallman's ouster, it will increase support for Trump.

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

#269

Post by fzeroracer »

simplehuman wrote: post #219
fzeroracer wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly what channels? The police? A lot of what RMS has done isn't illegal and generally there's a very high legal bar for harassment. So people eventually share their stories through social media and even that doesn't work sometimes (see: Riot). His behavior doesn't have to cross into illegality to be reprehensible.

For a start just leaving a paper trail of formal complaints at MIT would help ascertain this has been happenning for a long time. I just find it shocking that there is no formal complaint. Instead, what we have is just random people claiming that other people got harassed. None of this is verifiable and honestly if internet has thought us anything it is that everybody lies in social media just to get a few likes.

You realize that that very well could be the case and reason why Stallman stepped down, correct?

MIT could likely get into deep trouble if they chose to publish all of the formal complaints against Stallman for obvious privacy reasons and this incident could've just been the proverbial final straw.

And regardless: Apply Occam's Razor here. What is more likely: A group of random people consisting of professors and students bringing grievances against Stallman, or some sort of conspiracy where all of those people are lying, embellishing etc for some form of revenge? If multiple disconnected people are calling someone an asshole, maybe there's an issue here. It's amazing to what lengths people will attempt to create a narrative defending RMS.

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

#270

Post by DoreenMichele »

BeetleB wrote: post #128
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 -…

>He’s autistic. I keep hearing this - has he ever been diagnosed? Why do people keep saying this?

IIRC, in a biography about him, his mother suggested that autism would certainly make sense given some of his childhood behavior. As far as I know, he doesn't have a formal diagnosis, but I'm hardly some expert on RMS.
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