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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

#591

Post by franga2000 »

tw04 wrote: post #545
franga2000 wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it tho? There's definitely a difference between having sex with a 17yo when you think it's consentual without knowing someone else is forcing her in the background vs. forcing her yourself. Although I personally don't believe it, it is theoretically possible that Minsky didn't know - pointing that out, especially when very little information was available, seems at worst insensitive, but sounds mainly like a ver…

Minsky was an obese, balding old man. To imply that he should have expected or not had even a tiny bit of concern that an attractive young woman on a private island was throwing herself at him is ridiculous. https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/lomkCENpPXufPOLUkw6mzlgBljQ=... If I were in my 60s and a 17 year old child was throwing themselves at me for sex, I would question what was going on. The fact it was on a private…

Yeah, obviously I don't believe that he though she did it because she liked him.

But there's a big spectrum of possibilities from "she freely accepted payment for it" to "she was kidnapped, tied up and shipped in a crate, then forced under threat of violence". Before we knew Epstein was a monster, her being a very highly-paid prostitute would've seemed like the more likely explanation.

We need a term for people in between "creep" and "monster" - judging by this specific example, Minsky was in that middle. Maybe he did know exactly what was happening in the background and that would make him a monster, but I don't think that information was available at the time.

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

#592

Post by adwn »

tw04 wrote: post #581
adwn wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess if some billionaire flew me to a private island in the Carribean where young attractive girls started throwing themselves at me, and I was the age and... attractiveness of Minsky, giant alarm bells would have been blaring in my head [...] As you may or may not know, some women will voluntarily have sex with men in exchange for money, no coercion or assault required. If a billionaire flew you to a private is…

>As you may or may not know, some women will voluntarily have sex with men in exchange for money, no coercion or assault required. Which is also illegal. And if you're having sex with a teenager for money, she probably has some pretty major life issues going on. Which as a 60-year-old - you should know better. Period. >If a billionaire flew you to a private island with attractive woman offering to have sex with you,…

> Which is also illegal.

Where? Even within the US, prostitution laws vary wildly.

> And if you're having sex with a teenager for money, she probably has some pretty major life issues going on.

Did Minsky know that they weren't adults? Do you have a source for that?

> So... sex trafficking. By definition.

Wrong. Not even by definition. If you disagree, show me a valid definition of sex trafficking that includes "flying to an island to have sex with voluntary prostitutes".

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

#593

Post by CJefferson »

ddingus wrote: post #499
CJefferson wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question, is there anything useful he has said in the last 10 years he has said you can point to? He seems helplessly lost in the past, before the web, the explosion in javascript, etc. etc.

Avoiding closed devices, say ones that a person cannot write and run a program on without some sort of permission? Old != wrong and or irrelevant The FSF matters, the ideas matter. RMS is an important part of all that. Web? Javascript? There is a big world of software out there.

The problem is (in my mind), the FSF doesn't matter, and RMS is a major part of that. He pushed away the vast majority of the leading voices in open source over the years (I don't se meant major open source coders / project leaders defending or supporting him. Most dislike him).

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

#594

Post by elric »

gwd wrote: post #534
elric wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Age of consent is seriously tricky business. And I think that's in part because it's really two things which are muddled together: young people having sex with each other; and older people having sex with younger people. It is absolutely fine for young people to consent to having sex with other young people. A minimum age makes little sense there. Very young kids do stupid things all the time, including touching each…

> Age of consent is seriously tricky business. Right, and I carefully worded what I said about it to try to avoid expressing any opinion on the subject. :-)

Oh I wasn't trying to refute your statement or anything, I was merely trying to expand on the whole Age Of Consent business. Sorry if this came across in that way.

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

#595

Post by refenestrator »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #533
u801e wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> willingly resigned from his position at the FSF because of it. I don't think willingly is the best way to put it. It was more along the lines that he was told there would be consequences and he could avoid them if he resigned.

It's possible this is true, although I personally suspect if he was willing to put out a statement that said something like (paraphrasing) "I did a dumb thing, I'm sorry, I now understand why rape is bad, and I'll work on being better about understanding why these types of things are bad" he would have kept the position. However, even if I'm wrong, and he really was forced to resign, I don't think it detracts that mu…

Nah, that is an optimally bad strategy. Don't concede things you didn't actually say or mean in the hope that it will mollify people, it never works and will only be held against you.

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

#596

Post by PaulRobinson »

young_unixer wrote: post #145
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…

I don't even think we should be "advocating for the rights of neurodivergent people". We should just stop using our prejudice to misinterpret statements, and we should stop putting words in other people's mouths. Autistic people (who usually talk in a very literal way) would be benefited by this change as a byproduct, but this principle should apply to everyone, not only to neurodivergent people. Is what the person s…

In this specific case, no, what he said was not logically ("technically"), correct.

The age of consent is so named because it is widely accepted that no minor is able to present themselves to an adult as "willing" to engage in sex. After much debate over hundreds of years and with inputs from researchers in child psychology, people below the age of consent are judged by society to not have the emotional maturity to make those decisions, irresepective of their physical maturity.

Now, a contrarian might argue that the age is wrong - and indeed, it does vary country by country, and often when the couple are very close in age it is accepted there was not a typical case of sexual exploitation by the elder party - but in the case RMS was referring to, Minsky was likely aware of the age of consent and the reason for its existence AND that his own behaviour was extremely likely to be exploitative and abusive no matter what the child said, so RMS's argument is logically absurd.

Minsky's behaviour can not be explained as "acceptable", because the law is not widely considered unjust in this situation other than by pedophiles. RMS' argument can logically be judged as being advocative of a pedophile's behaviour.

Therefore RMS' arguments are technically - i.e. logically - incorrect, as well as being deeply offensive to a large number of people.

He has since accepted this himself. He does not dispute it.

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

#597

Post by nyolfen »

dralley wrote: post #562
nyolfen wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one of those criticisms as a i recall was 'he had a mattress in his office' as if this suggested something untoward rather than him sleeping in his office

No. If you go back and look at that accusation, it was that he was propositioning people for sex in the halls of MIT, AND he had a mattress in his office.

> propositioning people for sex in the halls of MIT

you are going to need to cite that. the only accusations of 'sexual harassment' i have seen are asking women at conferences on dates.

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

#598

Post by jrochkind1 »

varispeed wrote: post #432
jrochkind1 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The philosophy of freedom of open source that RMS and others have been developing pre-dates any significant big corporation sponsorship. (Many of the particular big corporations using open source now didn't even exist then). I guess you can argue they would have changed it by now but for the subsequent sponsorship. There's no real way to resolve that claim one way or the other. But it is a coherent philosophy on it's…

> But it is a coherent philosophy on it's own, it's not some incoherent thing that makes sense only as self-interest of big corporations. I don't dispute the fact that it is coherent, but it is serving the interest of big corporations. Could you explain why do you think it doesn't? > Open source from the start as envisioned by rms and others was about creating software that users could use as they choose, including a…

I don't know how useful it is to continue this I don't think we're going to get anywhere else, but I wanted to defend myself against your accusation and say that I do not work for a "big corporation", I work for a small non-profit, intentionally (and making less money than I probably could if I were trying to maximize my income, but enough money, and I get to write open source on the clock).

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

#599

Post by [deleted] »

thefz wrote: post #567
lanevorockz wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't rewrite history, main reason Richard was pushed out was a MeToo/racism witch hunt against him. He was not the only one attacked on it, most heads of open source projects were also a target at the same time.

Honestly I think they went after Stallman because he is a prominent figure and at the same time white, male and not exactly in his twenties.

[deleted]

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

#600

Post by kgwxd »

preommr wrote: post #185
throwawaycdn12 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada only raised their age of consent from 14 to 16 in 2008. I don't think Canada should be cancelled as a result of this.

+1 We shouldn't be cancelling Canada because of random laws, we should be cancelling them because hockey sucks.

And ham is not bacon.
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