Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 580 posts

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

#301

Post by traderjane »

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]

Sending the country through impeachment for a recording about President Trump grabbing women's vaginas is different from organizations evicting Richard Stallman. It is a difference of magnitude.

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

#302

Post by tonyedgecombe »

strenholme wrote: post #287
jl6 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I’m pretty sure both those things existed before the sixties.

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

#303

Post by virgilp »

hota_mazi wrote: post #281

> 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…

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

Yes. She should be fired for this opinion... though perhaps that would be too lenient, given how much suffering her opinion caused?

> saying despicable things

I miss the good old times when saying despicable things about our lord and savior would get you a well-deserved bonfire.

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

#304

Post by kragen »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #157
mjevans wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the nuance of the language as selected. "I am skeptical" clearly prefaces a desire to be made aware of actual scientific evidence, to have the citations (references to the evidence) provided. Further, you, and others who keep beating this dead horse, do not realize that it is part of a larger, ongoing, discussion in which (IIRC from prior HN threads), RMS had that skepticism resolved with knowledge by…

> RMS had that skepticism resolved with knowledge by those who actually discussed the point Then he should directly comment on all of the statements on the subject he has made over the years [1], particularly since they still exist on his personal website in unedited form, and are easily linked. Honestly, he could easily go back and write an "Updated: I no longer think this because X. I held this idea for a long time…

He did do that, in fact. He just didn't do it in the specific place you're looking.

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

#305

Post by dependenttypes »

toofy wrote: post #109
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 -…

I don’t mean to sound snarky, but this really discounts so many factors in how autism is dealt with and even worse it makes it sound as if autistic people are unable to learn how their actions impact people around them, which is of course completely untrue. Autistic people may have difficulty interpreting things such as social cues, but they are absolutely not incapable. We have indications from many of those closest…

I offer http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html

> he was willfully dismissive of others feelings

I can't see why this is considered this bad honestly.

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

#306

Post by input_sh »

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…

> [P]rostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia ... should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.

June 28th 2003: http://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html

> I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.

https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20...

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

#307

Post by faissaloo »

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…

>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.

This is why you should develop a second personality, at first it's exhausting but eventually you get the hang of it.

>But maybe it's this fear that leads us rushing back to deep moral systems likes religious fantastics when their faith is questioned.

Or perhaps it's simply that in the abscence of religious structures the mob decides morality.

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

#308

Post by kragen »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #241
NiekvdMaas wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agreed. This is one of the worst examples: https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20Jun... I'm all for freedom of speech, but I don't see how people can defend these kind of opinions he's advocating.

Yeah. It's not clear to me whether or not RMS still believes these things. He may need time to collect himself. In the mean time, I don't understand blog posts like this one that completely gloss over his past statements which remain the same without further comment.

He has said that he changed his mind.

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

#309

Post by NiekvdMaas »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #241
NiekvdMaas wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agreed. This is one of the worst examples: https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20Jun... I'm all for freedom of speech, but I don't see how people can defend these kind of opinions he's advocating.

Yeah. It's not clear to me whether or not RMS still believes these things. He may need time to collect himself. In the mean time, I don't understand blog posts like this one that completely gloss over his past statements which remain the same without further comment.

Well... He updated the link 12 years later (last year) because the original one was broken. So it's pretty much clear he still holds these beliefs.

If he made a statement that he changed his mind, I'd be happy to see it.

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

#310

Post by erik_seaberg »

ng12 wrote: post #222
api wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He minimized it. What he intended to do doesn't matter. That's not my point. What matters is that his words could be interpreted that way and that he was affiliated with MIT.

If there's one place in our society that should welcome discussion of ugly issues it should be our universities, particularly the few as storied as MIT.

It might be only CSAIL, not all of MIT, that made this call.
Post reply on HN