[deleted]
Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF
761–770 of 943 posts
Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF
#762Earlier quoted context omitted.
I too wonder. One thing that I found quite interesting when moving to France was how casual everybody, even high school teachers, was with swearwords.
Not sure where you are from originally, but the US is fairly unique in the world when it comes to these things.
From eastern Europe, everybody swore but not openly in school during class.
Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF
#763I 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 not just neurodivergence, but its that he recognizes where he jabs people and pretty much admits he doesn't care. I once had this conversation about with with ESR and I remember him saying "RMS doesn't care about the 'social overhead' of most person to person interactions" and so he kind of does his own normative preferences, thinking that because he finds them ideal, that others shouldn't be offended....but the…
This checks out. I work with somebody on the spectrum and he's one of the kindest, most thoughtful people I've ever worked with. He doesn't always pick up on cues (though he is pretty good at it at this point), but he asks questions when he's not sure and just generally goes to great lengths to be considerate. Even more so than many people who aren't on the spectrum, in fact.
Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF
#764Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty shitty to do this to an actual maintainer, but on the other hand I wish the Linux Foundation started doing this.
Pretty shitty to do this to anyone. The only scenario where firing someone for (legally) using a certain software should be allowed to happen is where it was communicated clearly in advance that using that software is not allowed in that particular job position.
IMO the strongest plausible interpretation of what the comment you’re replying to said would include the Linux Foundation clearly communicating the new practice beforehand.
Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF
#765Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wh...a. Transitioning fixed your social cue perception?! That is incredibly fascinating. I'm not even sure how to classify that... pragmatic psychological function (oookay that's probably not a thing), neurobiology, or what else. IMO this is a gigantic breadcrumb for Something™. The question is what the axis point was, and what got fixed as a result. Cooool. I am very curious what else shifted that you'd be happy to…
I have no idea why it happened, I'm just so grateful it did. It was like suddenly seeing color for the first time. When I looked at someone, I could read their intentions and actually feel their feelings. I wasn't a sociopath before or anything, but I couldn't feel empathy. This definitely does not happen to every aspie trans woman, but I've heard of it happening to one or two others. I was worried about losing my in…
The only thing ASD gives me is a measure of clarity - because all of the hidden rules of society are not hidden to me, they're things I need to learn with intent, it gives me a measure of clarity into which rules are required, and which ones are not, when they can be broken and when they can't be.
I'm not gonna say I'd like to be normal, because I have no real construct of what normal would be like - but ASD also gives me one more insight, normality is an illusion foisted on people by society - all humans are some measure of weird, its just a question of how much, and in what way.
Ehlers-Danlos may have shown up anyhow, so that doesnt strike me as a downside even, if that makes sense, if anything you got a benefit by finding it sooner.
Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF
#766Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's nothing new about wokeness. It's just what American Protestantism looks like; Americans have always been this way. Even used to be called the same thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Awakes
Interesting, but woke beliefs are based on European deconstructionism and the goals and methods look more like post-marxist/maoist
Nothing "post" about it. Wokeism's forced public self-abasement via Twitter is the classic Communist struggle session put online.
Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF
#767Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not the OP, but GNU/FSF has stagnated in the past 20 years. There's no cohesive vision; GNU is more of a ecletic collection of software packages than a complete OS. The FSF has no huge influence; most of its impact is based on its historical role.
I guess more of what I'm asking is how rms contributed to GNU's lack of traction rather than whether it is declining/not gaining traction or not.
I know that this opinion is controversial - but I think GPLv3 really hurt GNU a lot. And that license was 100% RMS's doing, as well as the decision to force it onto most/all GNU projects.
GPLv3 basically forced the embedded Linux community to dump the GNU userspace in favor of Busybox. That's a lot of active developers who stopped using and contributing to Bash, Coreutils, and a whole host of other projects.
RMS propelled free software forward in the early days, and should be remembered as a visionary. It's been downhill for GNU since 2008 though, and that's a trend I'd love to see changed.
Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF
#768Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But he is not good at being a leader Don't 35 years leading the FSF say otherwise? Judging from the reactions in the FSF community to his coming back, people were missing him.
Yes, accomplishments in his 35 years include: - A major fracture in the movement (arguably two, if you count GPL2/3). - Actively turning people off (Keith Packard, for example, described why they didn't license X under the GPL: "we had met Richard, and found him a challenging individual"; he later admitted that Stallman was right and that he should have listened). - Sidetracking of pointless issues ("GNU/Linux", "you…
> - Actively turning people off (Keith Packard, for example, ... later admitted that Stallman was right
Packard did, but you're still blaming Stallman for Packard being wrong?!?
> - Sidetracking of pointless issues ("GNU/Linux", "you should not be using hacker", etc.)
And here you are, posting on Hacker News. Are you sure you could do that, without becoming a pariah among your peers if it came out, without Stallman's "sidetracking"?
Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF
#769I am on a quest for facts, hard in this debate. So this was the original post that lead to RMS resign. https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21... Here is a defending one. https://whoisylvia.medium.com/richard-stallman-has-been-vili... But there I have a question. Regarding the "Knight for justice (and hot ladies)" sign. "not the sign about welcoming “hot ladies” on his MIT Media lab office door,…
In your quest for truth, do you question yourself: what's the harm of the sign? Is it sexual assault? Harassing? A bad joke?
And what should we do about it? Ask him to take it out? Refuse to have him at conferences and universities? Kick him from MIT and the FSF?
We're too quick with our judgment and punishment nowadays. This level of offense used to be normal from the Christian prudes and the scared moms, not the progressive liberals.
Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF
#770I 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…
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…
Specifically in the case of employment I'm all for erring on the side of asking employers to be as accommodating as possible. But there are cases where someone's disabilities/attributes reasonably restrict what roles they can perform.
For example, airlines don't employ pilots with extremely poor vision or flight attendants who are too large to fit through the cabin. Someone who relies on a wheelchair may have difficulty becoming a firefighter or a first responder and someone with Tourette's syndrome might have difficulty getting a job as a spokesperson or announcer.
My understanding is that the above constraints are not illegal discrimination (in the US) because the disability/attribute impacts that person's ability to successfully perform key job functions. Maybe extreme PC-warriors take issue with that, but I think most people would agree that these are reasonable constraints.
With respect to neurodivergence it seems dependent on whether it impacts someone's ability to perform their core job functions. As per above we should ask employers should be as accommodating as possible, so I believe an errant joke or comment shouldn't result in anyone being "canceled". But if someone is chronically incapable of processing social cues and/or has trouble interacting with coworkers or customers without triggering HR complaints then they may need to find a different role that doesn't require as much interpersonal interaction. That's unfortunate for the person in question but it doesn't seem any more discriminatory than an airline reassigning a pilot whose vision is failing.