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

Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF

techrights.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 943 posts

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

#171

Post by dkersten »

hourislate wrote: post #59
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…

It's sad that the media outlets and "Woke Twitter", etc, were misquoting him saying he was defending Jeffrey Epstein and doing everything they could to get him fired from the FSF, etc. What's even worse was none of these "WOKE" were even concerned with "the victims of sexual assault" or any other noble cause. This was organized for ideological reasons and their goal was and is to replace everyone in a relevant positi…

The worst part is that the blog post that started a lot of that literally quoted RMS one sentence and the rephrased it as something completely different in the very next sentence. And nobody called them out for it.

He basically just said "Minsky may not have known because Epstein most likely forced the girl into acting as if her was willing" (paraphrased from memory) and it got turned into "RMS said the girl was willing".

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

#172

Post by Avshalom »

etrabroline wrote: post #129
ethbr0 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know a lot of autistic people and they're all scrupulously kind and emotionally intelligent.

The idea that autistic people are assholes is an artifact of every other gamer on the internet self diagnosing themselves with aspergers in the 00s and then using that as an excuse to be un-introspectively cruel to each other.

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

#174

Post by geofft »

snvzz wrote: post #119
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…

The whole deal[0] was a character assassination campaign. [0] https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/

This is an abridged view looking at a couple of statements and news articles from a few days in September 2019. The free software community's frustration with Richard Stallman had been going on for many, many years before then. The most you can say is that it provided a public impetus for the organization to act, and perhaps that public impetus was driven by journalists who misread his words.

http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html

> I have been silent the last month because, until two days ago, I was an at-large member of FSF's Board of Directors, and a Voting Member of the FSF. As a member of FSF's two leadership bodies, I was abiding by a reasonable request from the FSF management and my duty to the organization. [...]

> For the last two years, I had been a loud internal voice in the FSF leadership regarding RMS' Free-Software-unrelated public statements; I felt strongly that it was in the best interest of the FSF to actively seek to limit such statements, and that it was my duty to FSF to speak out about this within the organization. Those who only learned of this story in the last month (understandably) believed Selam G.'s Medium post raised an entirely new issue. In fact, RMS' views and statements posted on stallman.org about sexual morality escalated for the worse over the last few years. When the escalation started, I still considered RMS both a friend and colleague, and I attempted to argue with him at length to convince him that some of his positions were harmful to sexual assault survivors and those who are sex-trafficked, and to the people who devote their lives in service to such individuals. More importantly to the FSF, I attempted to persuade RMS that launching a controversial campaign on sexual behavior and morality was counter to his and FSF's mission to advance software freedom, and told RMS that my duty as an FSF Director was to assure the best outcome for the FSF, which IMO didn't include having a leader who made such statements.

(Copious internal links evidencing those claims omitted, check the original.)

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

#175

Post by klyrs »

strictnein wrote: post #118
Traster wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to chime in to say, either defend Stallman or don’t. Don’t do this silly moral panic “I worry about society” thing. Address the issues, don’t make gross generalisations.

"Only discuss the topic I wish you to discuss" is definitely an interesting take.

Avoiding generic tangents isn't just an interesting take, it's actualy a site guideline.

> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

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

#176

Post by Arainach »

ttt0 wrote: post #141
astrange wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pretty shitty to do this to an actual maintainer, but on the other hand I wish the Linux Foundation started doing this.

Why? Writing a tool - even an operating system kernel - doesn't mean that that tool is appropriate for everything (for instance, for everyday use). Linux does many things great - a fair number of them industry-leading - but desktop user experience is not one of them and has never been close to being so.

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

#177

Post by adolph »

zeruch wrote: post #95
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…

Apologize for what? What in his statement should be apologize for? It's an op-ed that the author himself qualifies with a fairly clear sense of wat exists "on the ground" and his opinion about it, both positive and negative. Frankly, Stallman has been a boat-anchor to his own cause more than much else for a while, and he is IMHO a vile little imp; his poor hygiene, both physical and emotional, and his chronic id-salv…

>his poor hygiene

The social hygiene movement represented a rationalized, professionalized version of the earlier social purity movement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_hygiene_movement

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

#178

Post by rayiner »

wsc981 wrote: post #132
bigtones wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think this view of Stallman was quite widespread in the 70s, or at the very least much more widespread than it is today. I read in The Netherlands in the 70s child porn was quite readily available. See also “Chick arrest”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_pornography_laws_in_th... In this period there were even politicians openly advocating for allowing sex with children on television: https://youtu.be/nSMpAhQ…

> It seems to me often the people advocating for allowing sex with children would be left-oriented.

And teenagers. My kid's progressive K-12 private school had a scandal recently when more than a dozen victims came forth with allegations that they had been sexually abused by male teachers in the 1970s. Much of the testimony recounts that sexual relationships between male teachers and high school students were an "open secret" around the school, teachers would invite students to parties at their houses, etc.

It was a very liberal school back then too--the fact that it did not generate a scandal at the time despite being an "open secret" tells you about how the boundaries were being pushed in various directions back then. Luckily that turned out to be an ideological dead end.

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

#179

Post by mjg59 »

henearkr wrote: post #142
mjg59 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

The context is the one of the accusation of Marvin Minsky, in a case involving Epstein. The victim was a 17 yo girl, and "if" the condition of sexual slavery of the victim was not made clear, it could have been misunderstood as a voluntary act, and I would indeed understand that a voluntary sexual act with a 17 yo girl does not systematically lead to harm. What was criticized by RMS was the overly broad generalizatio…

> The context is the one of the accusation of Marvin Minsky, in a case involving Epstein

No, the context is the totality of RMS's behaviour over the years, as was made clear by a parent comment:

"A few final statements did bring him down, but he had been chipping at the foundation for years."

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

#180

Post by jjoonathan »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #125
wmf wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether they can control it?

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

Stallman was defending a friend and, by my reading, logically correct in the narrow point he was making. Anyone can sympathize with those priorities. However, he chose to place them above social realpolitik like "don't touch sufficiently radioactive subjects" and "almost nobody has time to dissect your argument so you'll win or lose the optics game on fuzzy associations alone." To be principled in this matter was to be antisocial. Most of us, myself included, would drop the principles in order to get along with everyone else, but that's not how Stallman rolled.
Post reply on HN