Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by hota_mazi » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:59 AM UTC

> Look at his real history — not the sign about welcoming “hot ladies” on his MIT Media lab office door, which someone else wrote as a joke and which he removed but not before someone took a photo of it — but his record in helping to give everyone in the world access to free software. He has truly made our world a better, more free place.

Just because someone did good things doesn't automatically make the bad things he said or did go away. This is a very dangerous position to hold.

Stallman has an established record going back more than ten years of saying despicable things about women and children and the only reason why this reckoning didn't happen to him until today is because people like the author of this article gave him a pass for philosophical reasons.

She is part of the problem and one of the reasons why women are having such a hard time in the industry today.

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

#282

Post by jamesrcole » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 6:00 AM UTC

glangdale wrote: post #274

jamesrcole wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social progress involves making-acceptable things that were previously offensive and outrageous to the majority. Things that were considered harmful to society. Things like equal rights for women, minorities, different sexualities. For progress to be possible, people must be able to say offensive things that others find unpleasant. You might say, but it’s not those kinds of “harmful” views we want to stop, only the g…

I've finding it hard to understand what sort of progress is reached by, say, enabling weird dudes to constantly and inappropriately hit on women. Suppose there is some future society that has decided that weird stinky dudes that make inappropriate remarks, stare at women's tits and compulsively hit on attractive women who are just trying to exist in a professional setting are actually A-OK. Why is that society's alle…

> I've finding it hard to understand what sort of progress is reached by, say, enabling weird dudes to constantly and inappropriately hit on women.

I was reponding to these statements "there is a benefit to radical thinking and nonconformity, but "do it without hurting others" is a reasonable line to draw. ... I still believe ... that it's possible to maintain not-normal opinions without causing pain to the people around you.". This is clearly talking about all cases where there's potential for causing hurt and pain, not the one specific case you're talking about.

You didn't address one of the main points in my comment: who gets to decide which views are harmful?

And when I talked about social progress, I didn't just mean that which has already occurred. There are things which are today considered offensive and harmful, that in the future will be considered just and good. This has always been the case, for any moment in time. If we decide it's important to shut down all offensive speech, it makes it much harder for society to evolve and improve.

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

#283

Post by tbyehl » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 6:02 AM UTC

chroma wrote: post #133

journalctl wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if she had a decades-long pattern of abusive and tasteless behavior towards people with less power than her, such that people went out of their way to avoid interacting with her at all, then yeah, I’d say hit the bricks. You’re tilting at strawmen to get around the fact that Stallman can’t seem to control his inappropriate behavior. This isn’t a hypothetical, perfectly spherical, frictionless situation, this is…

The "hot ladies" photo was by someone who vandalized his sign and took a picture. He didn't do that. I looked around quite a bit, but I could not find a single instance of abusive behavior. No unwanted touching, no abuse of power, no coercion. I did find quite a few outright lies, such as John Gruber claiming that Stallman had an "open marriage" and "made overt sexual advances to women" while on the board of VA Linux…

Sounds like someone has attributed their experiences with ESR to RMS.

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

#284

Post by PHGamer » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 6:04 AM UTC

even if he is an asshole, he has the right to say what he wants. I sorta get FSF ditching him because linux is going corporate (which I am very much against). but MIT (and western schools in general) are no longer places where free speech is allowed and that is the greater atrocity.

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

#285

Post by yibg » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 6:06 AM UTC

maximente wrote: post #234

aonsager wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes there is a benefit to radical thinking and nonconformity, but "do it without hurting others" is a reasonable line to draw. Stallman was viewed as a toxic individual who caused harm, and this is what our society is trying to weed out. I still believe, perhaps naively, that it's possible to maintain not-normal opinions without causing pain to the people around you. And this is something that everyone needs to do, w…

no, that's not how he "was" viewed by those on the outside, at least; that's incredibly unfair and ignores the mountains of progress he fought and sacrificed for for many decades. i cannot think of a more principled and consistent individual in the realm of technology than RMS, nor someone who's actually completely trustworthy in this day and age. in the tech sphere his logic was talmudic as far as i can tell: not on…

I’m not informed enough to make a judgement either way with regards to Stallman, but someone can be principled and trustworthy in one realm and inappropriate and harmful in another.

Just because I volunteer at a shelter and help people there doesn’t mean I get pass for bad behavior else where.

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

#286

Post by zby » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 6:06 AM UTC

We want our public figures to be predictable. When we lived in small bands we knew the peoples our whole life and we could build a really good model of their thinking. Later when we had bigger polities, we did not have that much information about the leaders. Now we know all of what they say and do and any time - but what is reported are only the deviations from the expectations - in our perception they are not balanced by the whole daily predictable lifes. To be public figure now means to be a good actor, understand what the public thinks about you and constantly adjust your behaviour to fit in and never be caught on any deviation from the public figure image. Stallman is not good at adjusting behaviour. He is still pretty predictable in the geek culture - but for the wider public he is really weird.

See also this blogchain: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/series/predictable-identities/

And in particular this quote from another article: "The perception of creepiness is a response to the ambiguity of threat. […] While they may not be overtly threatening, individuals who display unusual patterns of nonverbal behavior, odd emotional responses or highly distinctive physical characteristics are outside the norm, and by definition unpredictable." from https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.20...

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

#287

Post by strenholme » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 6:06 AM UTC

jl6 wrote: post #279

strenholme wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What’s considered toxic about the free love movement?

It normalized the objectification of women [1] and allowed sexual predators [2] to flourish.

[1] Objectification: instead of treating a woman like a person, they were reduced to being a body to satisfy a man’s base urges.

[2] Sexual predator: Men who do not care about women as human beings but merely see them as potential sexual conquests, and who do dishonest and manipulative stuff to get a woman to have sex with them. Dishonest stuff includes getting a woman drunk so they will consent to sex; lying about one’s wealth or achievements (the canonical example is someone who never joined the military claiming they are a Navy SEAL); etc.

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

#288

Post by egdod » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 6:06 AM UTC

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…

He worked with rms longer than any other programmer and said nothing for decades? Then after this fall from grace, he piles on and acts superior?

Gross.

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

#289

Post by Arnt » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 6:07 AM UTC

jplayer01 wrote: post #247

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…

Frankly, Bushnell and the response to him clearly show none of this should be decided in the court of public opinion. Even if either of these people are correct, none of what we've read or heard so far is in any way sufficient to condemn Stallmann and ruin his career and none of us is in an appropriate position to make that determination. He underwent utter character assassination in the media who went to great lengt…

The first I heard was about how he was a guest in Denmark almost 30 years ago and fouled up his room. Nothing bad happened to him, he was lucky.

Stallman had luck with public opinion many, many times. This time his luck changed.

It's unfair to deplore the bad luck and forget about all the times he had benefited from good luck.

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

#290

Post by Udik » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 6:08 AM UTC

aonsager wrote: post #101

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…

Yes there is a benefit to radical thinking and nonconformity, but "do it without hurting others" is a reasonable line to draw. Stallman was viewed as a toxic individual who caused harm, and this is what our society is trying to weed out. I still believe, perhaps naively, that it's possible to maintain not-normal opinions without causing pain to the people around you. And this is something that everyone needs to do, w…

> "do it without hurting others" is a reasonable line to draw

Let's say then, if we want to enforce some kind of hard limit on what other people are allowed to do or not to do (and even on the kind of people they want to be), that there must be objective and shared ways to establish harm. It cannot be sufficient for someone to say "I felt harmed" to exclude someone else from society (because this what being silenced and removed from one's job means). And we need to have the courage to doubt those who claim they've felt harmed, and to draw a line between tolerable and intolerable amounts of harm (as every action can end up harming somebody, even slightly).

Turns out that laws do precisely this, and define harm in objective ways that allow society to agreee on behaviours that should be punished without limiting personal liberty in arbitrary ways.