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

#531

Post by unityByFreedom » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 6:08 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #308

unityByFreedom wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you referring to this brief statement [1]? That does not pass as sincere in my book. Good luck to him in the future, I hope he gets everything sorted.

[1] https://www.stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_Septe...

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

#532

Post by Arnt » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 6:11 AM UTC

Arnt wrote: post #485

sgt wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That archive is a gem on its own! I can't find the article about RMS though, and I've scanned through about 16-17 issues so far. Do you happen to know which issue it is? Aside from that, this is a great magazine and it's so much fun reading through old articles from the 80s and 90s about Unix. I didn't know Denmark had such a large Unix scene back then.

I've clicked a fair few myself, looking for it... I read the story in 1994 or slightly later, but it was old already. I'm running the whole archive through pdfsandwich now to be able to grep.

Grep found it: Issue 121, dated long after 1994.

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

#533

Post by emiliobumachar » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 7:36 AM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #432

ng12 wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was also one that I can't be bothered to find Then please don't post it. Lazy citation of original material is how we got here.

There are lots of them, and they're easy to find. They're all on his website. Here are a few. RMS has made a few comments saying that images of child sexual abuse should not be illegal. https://stallman.org/archives/2012-jul-oct.html#15_September... > Rick Falkvinge joins me in demanding an end to the censorship of "child pornography", and points out that if in the US you observe the rape of a child, making a video o…

> His argument about criminalising children who share images of themselves with other children has a simple fix: stop prosecuting children for doing stupid shit.

That would be less rule of law, and more blind faith in the benevolence of public officials.

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

#534

Post by dang » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 7:44 AM UTC

faissaloo wrote: post #412

noobermin wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Or perhaps it's simply that in the abscence of religious structures the mob decides morality. I'm pretty sure this isn't what Nietzsche had in mind.

Nietzsche made observations, rightly or wrongly. I don't know that he had anything in mind other than neurosyphilis

Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

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

#535

Post by dang » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 7:48 AM UTC

lostjohnny wrote: post #449

_skel wrote: post #122

His job, as the head of the FSF and GNU, was to represent those organizations to the public, which includes many people who don't know him. Being judged and vilified by people who don't know you is what happens to public figures. If your behavior brings disrepute on the organizations you represent, you should let those organizations find different representatives. RMS was right to step down. He is still free to say w…

> Being judged and vilified by people who don't know you is what happens to public figures Nope. I don't judge and vilify people that I don't know, I judge their opinions. In this case Stallman's opinion were completely rational, he's been judged for who he is and his past, by people that didn't know him super charged by people who knew him and held a grudge against him. It's called character assassination. Or mob. >…

We've banned this account for using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. That is against the site guidelines and destroys the curiosity that this site exists for, regardless of what you're fighting for or against.

Please don't create accounts to break HN's guidelines with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#536

Post by kelnos » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 8:12 AM UTC

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #252

kelnos wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't personally know Charles Manson, but I think he is definitely deserving of vilification. Now, that doesn't mean that RMS (or anyone else) absolutely certainly deserves being vilified by people who don't know them, but the entire premise is false: knowing someone (personally, I assume is the implication?) is not a necessary condition for condemning their behavior.

It’s funny because this is exactly the type of argument that RMS would probably make.

I hadn't thought of that when writing it, but yeah, he probably might.

No one is claiming all his arguments are bad, or that all his arguments are framed poorly, or that all his arguments ignore how they could offend or hurt people. But some of them, arguably, do.

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

#537

Post by kelnos » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 8:14 AM UTC

seba_dos1 wrote: post #348

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?

Such as? Most of "examples" that were in circulation for past days were usually misunderstood jokes that others made at his expense. Seriously - how can one treat somebody mentioning "if he ever hits on you, just tell him you use vim" as an example of what's wrong with rms seriously? Stories about plants being kept by female professors just to scare him away? Please. You need to be completely missing the context to i…

Either you've been not paying attention (in which case, why are you so self-righteously claiming there's nothing else that happened), or you have been paying attention, and you're deliberately ignoring or are mischaracterizing all the actual, real accounts of bad behavior that have been reported over the past week or two.

Either way, I'm not really in a mood to educate you.

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

#538

Post by kelnos » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 8:16 AM UTC

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?

Who says it hasn't been? In general, universities and non-profits and companies don't disclose private reports of abuse or harassment. Who says MIT, the FSF, and GNU Project haven't all been getting private reports in addition to the people tweeting and blogging about their misadventures with RMS?

And regardless, this behavior has apparently been going on for decades without anyone taking action. Can you blame people for thinking that "the right channels" aren't working?

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

#539

Post by kelnos » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 8:21 AM UTC

ng12 wrote: post #199

kelnos wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a condition where you have trouble interacting socially with people, while also running an influential organization and acting as its figurehead, you need to be able to mitigate these issues. If this means you have an assistant who you run emails by before sending them, so be it. If your assistant also takes a look at your office (given to you as a favor by a respected educational institution) and tells y…

At what point is your work no longer your own? FSF wouldn't exist without Stallman's vision and subsequent decades of tireless effort. Who gets to decide that Stallman no longer deserves stewardship over his own life's work because of a poster and some tired anecdote about plants?

At the end of the day, the FSF board had to decide what they wanted to do, either a) let RMS continue to do his usual thing without repercussions and become a less-relevant organization that people don't take seriously, or b) clean house and maintain some level of trust. Presumably they also considered a c) let RMS continue to do his thing and hope that there's no fallout. But I guess they considered (c) wasn't realistic, didn't want (a), and decided on (b).

No one is saying that RMS's work with GNU or the FSF is somehow invalidated. He's done some absolutely fantastic and amazing work, and I honestly do believe that, without him, we are actually losing something valuable. But we're also losing some bad stuff too. My feeling is that the bad stuff outweighs further good that he could do, but of course that's open for debate.

> ... because of a poster and some tired anecdote about plants?

Deliberately minimizing and dismissing the allegations against RMS is a bad-faith way to push forward your argument. Please don't do that here.

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

#540

Post by kelnos » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 8:24 AM UTC

dependenttypes wrote: post #300

kelnos wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a condition where you have trouble interacting socially with people, while also running an influential organization and acting as its figurehead, you need to be able to mitigate these issues. If this means you have an assistant who you run emails by before sending them, so be it. If your assistant also takes a look at your office (given to you as a favor by a respected educational institution) and tells y…

> the problem isn't that he's unable to understand, the problem is that he's unwilling to This is a common line used to attack non-neurotypical people (and not only!). They have not considered the possibilities that their explanations or arguments are weak however.

Or, the simpler explanation, given that MJG has known RMS for many, many years, and had interacted with him often, is that his assessment is actually correct.

But still, regardless: assuming all the allegations dredged up about him over the past couple weeks is true, do you actually believe it's ok for him to behave that way? If so, then we should just stop discussing this, because it's not going to be productive. If not, then what would you suggest instead? I presume you'd suggest something less harsh than pressuring him to step down from his leadership roles. But what exactly is there that we can do to improve his behavior, after decades of his lack of desire to change? Would you be fine telling women who have to interact with him that they just have to deal with his harassing behavior? I certainly wouldn't be.