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Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
491–500 of 580 posts
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#492Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
Found a few passages in Free as in Freedom (https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/faif-2.0.pdf):
>A December, 2001, Wired magazine article titled “The Geek Syndrome” paints the portrait of several scientifically gifted children diagnosed with high-functioning autism or Asperger Syndrome. In many ways, the parental recollections recorded in the Wired article are eerily similar to the ones offered by Lippman. Stallman also speculates about this. In the interview for a 2000 profile for the TorontoStar, Stallman said he wondered if he were “borderline autistic.”
>In recent years, Lippman says she has taken to reading books about autism and believes that such episodes were more than coincidental. “I do feel that Richard had some of the qualities of an autistic child,” she says. “I regret that so little was known about autism back then. ”Over time, however, Lippman says her son learned to adjust. By age seven, she says, her son had become fond of standing at the front window of subway trains, mapping out and memorizing the labyrinthian system of railroad tracks underneath the city.
>Watch the Stallman gaze for an extended period of time, and you will begin to notice a subtle change. What appears at first to be an attempt to intimidate or hypnotize reveals itself upon second and third viewing as a frustrated attempt to build and main-tain contact. If his personality has a touch or “shadow” of autism or Asperger’s Syndrome, a possibility that Stallman has entertained from time to time, his eyes certainly confirm the diagnosis. Even at their most high-beam level of intensity, they have a tendency to grow cloudy and distant, like the eyes of a wounded animal preparing to give up the ghost. My own first encounter
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#493Earlier quoted context omitted.
He thinks people should be punished for selling proprietary software correct? He also isn't sure than "voluntary pedophilia" is harmful / that people before puberty should be able to pick their sex partners despite not even being a teenager. Limiting this to being just a discussion on what can be "discussed" isn't valid. He appears to support actions that harm others by some of his statements.
> He thinks people should be punished for selling proprietary software correct? No? I'm not really sure what you mean by "punish" here. He advocates for Free Software -- to my knowledge he's never advocated for punishing anybody. > He appears to support actions that harm others by some of his statement. How? Where's the harm? What's harmful about questioning the age of consent being 18 (which, may I remind you, varie…
"I'm all in favour of the principle that it's good to reward people who do things that contribute to society and it's good to punish people, one way or another, if they do things that harm society. This means that people who develop Free Software that's useful deserve a reward, and people who develop proprietary software that's attractive deserve a punishment."
That is from this interview https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/transcripts/rms-fs-2006-03-09....
We aren't talking about the age of consent. RMS explicitly said children before they hit puberty / sexual maturity which is a bit different than a 17 year old to most people.
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#494Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Found a few passages in Free as in Freedom ( https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/faif-2.0.pdf ): >A December, 2001, Wired magazine article titled “The Geek Syndrome” paints the portrait of several scientifically gifted children diagnosed with high-functioning autism or Asperger Syndrome. In many ways, the parental recollections recorded in the Wired article are eerily similar to the ones offered by Lippman. Stallman also sp…
Twice exceptional individuals have especially frustrating lives. Their high intelligence masks their difficulties and then other people claim they are making excuses and not trying hard enough.
No one wants to cut any slack for a smart person with disabilities. They just want to double down on "Smart people are lazy, arrogant, over entitled asshats and you need to behave better!"
There are generally too few resources available for such people. Most resources help with one issue or the other (giftedness or disability), not both at the same time. Such resources are a poor fit for the needs of 2e people.
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#495If 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.
> I see a bunch of people beating up on and attacking an awkward "nerd". It reminds me of high school. That perfectly captures my own impression of this whole debacle. People keep piling on RMS because he's "weird" rather than anything objectively bad that he's done - notice how often his travel binder is being raised even though it's really completely harmless. That's literally witch-hunt behaviour: persecuting some…
Hey now, I was the proverbial awkward nerd in highschool, but you know what I've never done? I've never implied that child pornography is okay.. or bestiality.. so I see this differently.
I've heard nasty things come out of that man and I have no interest in listening to him.
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#496Here[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 not a single word about his dismissal from RMS beforehand? And looking at the older entries on his Wikipedia entry, it seems that the dismissal itself was a controversial topic, with Bushnell claiming disagreement with licensing and RMS claiming communications blackout.
I highly doubt his recount is objective, or even tried to be.
He could've admitted to potentially being biased beforehand, that would've redeemed his account in my eyes, but having me find out that they didn't part on the best of terms leaves a bad taste instead.
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#497Here[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.
Yeah, where are all those articles and opinions about his bad behavior from before the recent debacle? Why are they all being written now?
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#498Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because attempting to redefine "sexual assault" such that it only applies to cases that involve physical violence is an attempt to reduce the perception of the seriousness of the crime
It can be taken that way. But if "sexually" is omitted from "sexually assaulted" a statement can easily be misunderstood. If you add in the context that there was no direct accusation of sexual assault by the victim towards Minsky, I do find reasonable to talk about how these terms are used. I even understand his argument that these terms best not be used in accusations because there are better ones. I find your inte…
Stallman's position is pretty clearly that we should use precise language always. It seems a pretty impeccable position to me. The only people I can think of who benefit from conflating coercive and non-coercive crimes under the same term are the ones who profit from the confusion.
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#499Richard 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.
Curious, what exactly do you think would be different in a world without Stallman?
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#500Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because attempting to redefine "sexual assault" such that it only applies to cases that involve physical violence is an attempt to reduce the perception of the seriousness of the crime
It can be taken that way. But if "sexually" is omitted from "sexually assaulted" a statement can easily be misunderstood. If you add in the context that there was no direct accusation of sexual assault by the victim towards Minsky, I do find reasonable to talk about how these terms are used. I even understand his argument that these terms best not be used in accusations because there are better ones. I find your inte…
The definition of "sexual assault" covers what allegedly took place. Yes, if you change the words used, you end up with an inaccurate statement. Why is that something that needs to be pointed out?
Stallman's entire point is that he feels the use of the word "assault" causes people to believe the crime is more serious than he believes it is. Pointing that out isn't uncharitable.