Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by r3856283 » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 1:27 AM UTC

wmf wrote: post #108

For those who do not know RMS personally: "I worked for RMS longer than any other programmer. ... This was an own-goal for RMS. He has had plenty of opportunities to learn how to stfu when that’s necessary. ... I can confirm the unfortunate reality that RMS’s behavior was a concern [in the 1990s], and that [Marvin Minsky's] protection was itself part of the problem. He was never held to account; he was himself coddle…

He didn't work with or for RMS longer than any other programmer, there are many who have longer. Gerald J. Sussman is a programmer and hired him at MIT and is still on the board of FSF and still working with him, that is over 40 years. And RMS has grown over the years. This is from over 20 years ago.

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

#122

Post by astrange » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 1:28 AM UTC

dralley wrote: post #103

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…

Why should they apologize? Everything they say is true. GNU software absolutely has been stagnating for the past 2 decades under Stallman's leadership. It is a little known fact that in 2005, there was an offer to merge the LLVM project into GCC, and assign the entire copyright to GNU. The patches to do so were even submitted. [0] They were rejected [1], because GNU wasn't interested in producing a modular compiler.…

I knew the maintainer of GNU libtool and I remember him getting randomly fired by Stallman one day because he was a macOS user, and therefore not motivated enough to support free software OS uses.

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

#123

Post by henearkr » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 1:28 AM UTC

JohnHaugeland wrote: post #14

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, maybe it was "hard to interact with him" only if one was unwilling to accept his difference?

Please stop. He argued that pedophilia was okay.

[edit: I got the context wrong, see children comments]

The commented pedophilia was the allegated one of Marvin Minsky with a 17 yo girl, whose coercion (by Epstein) into sexual acts was maybe (probably, in the words of RMS) not made clear to Minsky (nor the age).

I precise, because 17 yo is a quite mature age for sexual activity (and more so for a girl than for a boy, because the sexual maturity of the body happens earlier), and the context of being presented by Epstein may make it not obvious that there was slavery.

So, even if I do not condone, I can see where the position of RMS comes from.

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

#124

Post by etrabroline » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 1:28 AM UTC

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…

Not to my knowledge and he most likely never will. Attacking traditional social values is more important to some people than Free Software. Having people with stronger beliefs about unrelated issues that take precedence over the goals of the organization is a recipe for disaster and ultimately failure. I suspect RMS agreed to concessions such as allowing GNU to go in a direction where these unrelated political issues will increasingly drive decision making and force out major contributors who disagree with them. Time will tell.

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

#125

Post by DaiPlusPlus » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 1:28 AM UTC

wmf wrote: post #115

ethbr0 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly asking, what's the difference between someone being neurodivergent and just thoughtless / mean / an ass?

Whether they can control it?

Then why would someone choose to be an ass - or generally choose to be unlikable?

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

#126

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 1:29 AM UTC

mjg59 wrote: post #54

dempseye wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did he say that?

This is probably a reference to https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.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."

[deleted]

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

#127

Post by sjansen » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 1:30 AM UTC

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…

> Stallman is a bastion of software freedom

In my judgement, he has done marginally more good than harm. Under his leadership the FSF has had only limited impact. Mirroring his own behavior, it has instead often wasted money and good will tilting at windmills instead of of effecting change.

I support the ideals of software freedom, but I do not support the FSF or Richard Stallman. He was key to getting the ball rolling decades ago, but has mostly been a distraction and impediment since then. Other projects, such as Debian and Mozilla, have made far larger contributions over the past couple decades.

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

#128

Post by geofft » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 1:32 AM UTC

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…

Andy Wingo was and still is right, and more people should say it publicly. What he wrote then had been widely believed among many free software developers - including many who had worked closely with the FSF and with GNU - for years, but the public worship of RMS was too strong for any of the people doing the actual work to say anything without getting seen as traitors to the movement by people like you. He and the other GNU maintainers who wrote that statement called out an accurate problem, and the free software movement would have been stronger had RMS and the FSF listened.

Every single thing that RMS refused to compromise on has been a weakness for the cause of software freedom. RMS didn't compromise on his technical vision for GNU's kernel, and the HURD barely works today. RMS didn't compromise on allowing GCC to have an IR, and LLVM, a weak-copyleft compiler, has caught up. RMS didn't compromise on his personal unwillingness to use non-free JS on the web and basically decided to ignore the web entirely as a result, and it was basically an abandonment of setting any strategic direction for the free software movement re the web. We have a whole generation of folks who are ready to insist that "open source" means anything on GitHub, license or no license.

We could have had a victorious free software movement. What we got was a cult of personality.

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

#129

Post by etrabroline » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 1:32 AM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #98

nostrademons wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ribbonfarm called this a couple years ago: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/03/06/a-quick-battle-field-g... Specifically battlefront #8. He calls it consequential because the the neurodivergent/PC conflict highlights an inherent paradox in the PC worldview. Most applications of political correctness focus (at least on the surface) on defending a marginalized group against the verbal attacks of a privileged one. When a…

Honestly asking, what's the difference between someone being neurodivergent and just thoughtless / mean / an ass?

>thoughtless / mean / an ass

This is precisely what people with autism tend to be like because of the difficulty people with autism have empathizing with others and seeing things from other people's points of view.

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

#130

Post by karaterobot » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 1:32 AM UTC

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…

Just wondering what the source is for Stallman being autistic? I see people saying he's autistic, and I even see people saying he has called himself "borderline autistic", but that's not quite the same thing as a diagnosis. I don't see a reliable source making that claim; even Wikipedia says nothing about it (except a backstage talk item about there not being any source on the claim).

I admit, the circumstantial evidence is, uhh, indicative, but I don't see it being a matter of public record. Then again, I only did six and a half minutes of internet research, though, and I could be wrong, thus the question mark.