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Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF

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Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF

#61

Post by tw04 »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #8

I think it is strange that, on the one hand, the tech world has been advocating for the rights of neurodivergent people – society should accept that people on the autism spectrum are different and that’s OK. But at the same time RMS has been attacked for some statements very probably stemming from his autism that, while they may seem a bit shocking and at odds with the mainstream, were not illegal or intentionally of…

>were not illegal or intentionally offensive.

I'm not sure how you can claim to know his intent 18 months after the fact. Do you have an interview or personal relationship to back that claim up? A whole lot of people he directly worked with definitely don't agree with your assessment of his intent.

I don't believe in the time since that he has acknowledged the comments or suggested he didn't mean to offend or that he understands why it was probably a pretty horrible thing to say in light of all the things we know about Epstein.

Accepting someone for their differences: sure. But to imply Stallman is incapable of acknowledging wrongdoing because of autism while simultaneously being qualified to represent the FSF feels like a reach to me.

Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF

#62

Post by tptacek »

creamytaco wrote: post #34

Stallman is a bastion of software freedom in a world turning progressively dark. The fact that he never ever compromised his ideals and principles, never sold out and has been repeatedly proven prescient and absolutely on the money on countless issues, makes him someone that we should strive to protect. There are many invididuals in the Free Software world that backstabbed RMS and tried to destroy him with malicious…

For what would this person be apologizing?

I'm not sure I understand your logic. It seems to me that we should be wary of our impulse to be protective of people whose principles we support. We often don't want to hear about the problematic things those people do.

Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF

#64

Post by cambalache »

bigtones wrote: post #22
hYKdTfpa wrote: post #3

The attacks on him were dubious at best.

Are they.... here is a direct quote from him on a pro-pedophilia political party in 2006 that many that people took offence with: “I am sceptical 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://thenextweb.com/dd/2019…

Was he being an actual child-predator, was he sharing child porn?

Suppose some guy (Stallman or not) argues that the age of consent should be lowered to 14. Now you are in your right to oppose to that proposal or even be disgusted by it. What you dont have the right to is to silence and ostracize the guy or even suggest that opinion must have any type of consequence , be it legal or moral.

Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF

#65

Post by dralley »

IMO, Stallman is a good philosophical leader, but a terrible organizational leader. "On the board" is a decent compromise.

But he has been a huge contributor to GNU's decent into irrelevance in recent years. As an organization, they're perpetually stuck in the 1990s.

Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF

#67

Post by stonogo »

SilverRed wrote: post #46
JohnHaugeland wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop. He argued that pedophilia was okay.

Thats a serious misrepresentation of his words. He once had a page on his site saying that he did not think it was harmful if voluntary (eg, consent between people of similar ages but one being over age) He has since removed the post and stated that its more complex than he initially thought.

He did not remove the post, it's here: https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20Jun...

And he didn't change his mind for over a decade, until he got in trouble for defending Marvin Minsky. I'm still not convinced his "updated opinion" would have happened without the scrutiny brought by the Epstein case.

Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF

#68

Post by lawnchair_larry »

capableweb wrote: post #10
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #8

I think it is strange that, on the one hand, the tech world has been advocating for the rights of neurodivergent people – society should accept that people on the autism spectrum are different and that’s OK. But at the same time RMS has been attacked for some statements very probably stemming from his autism that, while they may seem a bit shocking and at odds with the mainstream, were not illegal or intentionally of…

> intentionally offensive I think this is spot on, because people stopped caring about someone's intention before judging them. Maybe people got so good at lying about their intention, that we don't believe them when they say "it wasn't my intention" when someone says something bad. The end result is the same, it doesn't matter what your intention was, you say something bad, you deserve bad back.

Intention matters when the charge consists of someone imparting intent and meaning beyond that which was said.

It’s not the case that all people need to be aware of and sensitive to every possible person’s misinterpretation of their message. The inverse is closer to true, and the only viable option.

How do you expect someone to know what they don’t know?

Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF

#69

Post by jimbob45 »

prepend wrote: post #4

Sometimes I worry that we truly are devolving and things are getting worse. I think “eventually people will wise up and focus on what’s important” but then even crazier stuff keeps happening. This is a positive sign that maybe we can figure out how to eventually get it right and it won’t just be a circular firing squad getting smaller and smaller over time.

It’s just because he’s a big target. You’d never see this kind of outage over the Oberon or Erlang Committee Chair.

That’s how it goes these days. Attack people you don’t like in power by proclaiming your moral system to be objectively true, regardless of its actual veracity.

Sooner or later, we’ll all realize that there is no truly objective morality and that we all must argue on a level playing field.

Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF

#70

Post by colechristensen »

SilverRed wrote: post #35
colechristensen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not. Being unusual does not free you from the burdens of being a decent person, especially while in a public leadership position, especially when your violations are a repeated trend over a very long period. With the right diagnostic criteria just about everybody who is an asshole could be diagnosed with some mental disorder or another and that is more or less the present state of psychology, that kind of reason…

I don't think RMS has ever intentionally been an asshole. The event that got him kicked out was him trying to clarify that someone he worked with may not of known all the details of the situation and that people shouldn't witch hunt this person who was not around to defend themself. Sure it was a very risky and emotionally charged email thread but RMS still very much seems like a decent person.

Intend? Who cares. It wasn't one incident but many over many many years.

It is not his intentions at question, it is his longstanding pattern of certain behaviors and not learning from them.

A standard defense of abusers is that they didn't mean it (intend to) and they're really sorry and ... you get the picture.

People are allowed to make mistakes, failure is a part of life, but there's a point when failure becomes a pattern and you aren't right for a job as a leader.

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