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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

#831

Post by cryptica »

JohnBooty wrote: post #608
cryptica wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes to show that it's not regular people who create 'cancel culture'. It's the financial elite. They do it as means to push forward a financial agenda. If those who orchestrate the cancellations were who they portray themselves to be, the hypocrisy would be brain-splitting. The only reason their brain lobes are still attached together is because they know that they're being deceptive and it's part of an agenda. I…

It's not possible for a rational, cohesive mind to believe that a person who dedicated his whole life to free software is a bad person just because he once said something without thinking through it. Multiple strawman arguments in the same sentence. 1. Few if any are claiming RMS is "a bad person" in totality. While I realize the internet is no place for nuance, please understand the question is about whether somebod…

>> Few if any are claiming RMS is "a bad person" in totality

I used the word 'believe' for a reason, it's people's beliefs who drove him out in the first place. Besides, the term 'stawman argument' makes no sense when discussing ethics or human behavior. This is not math or engineering. These kinds of statements are necessarily axiomatic; either you understand it or you don't. Either it neatly fits into your logical understanding of the world or it doesn't.

I wouldn't write off someone who has done such great things for so many decades when I know for a fact that most people in positions of power today are hypocritical monsters (only difference is that they have good PR teams to manage their public images); you need to put it in perspective.

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

#832

Post by krapp »

visitor1 wrote: post #776
krapp wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. He made multiple statements on his website supporting sexual relationships between adults and minors. There was not simply the one statement he made, then retracted. Here is a comment I made two years ago pointing them all out as well as the context by which any reasonable person would consider them to be in support of pedophilia. And while it is true that he made a single comment after the controversy retracting…

No, you are using exaggerations to try to justify an invalid point. Stallman is a scientist, has an inquisitive mind, will question the world, the laws, the establishment, has traveled the world. Petty minds have never understood the language of great minds.

Yeah..no. Stallman's language is as plain and direct as his intent. We're not talking about Richard Feynman lecturing on quantum electrodynamics at a physics symposium. Even a cursory reading of Stallman's blog posts on the subject make it clear that he wasn't simply questioning the status quo as some intellectual exercise or testing any hypothesis as a scientist, he was emotionally invested.

He would see stories in the media about pedophiles being arrested and would comment on those stories, expressing outrage that society considered sexual relationships between grown men and children to be a taboo or a crime. He believed it was possible for children to give consent for sexual relationships (a view that, to be fair, he retracted, and to be completely fair, he retracted in the least convincing way possible,) and that children should be trained for sexual relationships by adults.

And you've lost the plot - you made Stallman out to be a brilliant scholar, intellectual and world travelling bon-vivant, which just makes him look pathetic in hindsight given what happened to him. But the narrative is that he's a fragile, socially awkward autistic who barely understands basic human behavior and can't operate in the cold, cruel world, and who shouldn't be held accountable for his words or behavior. Isn't that right? Isn't that supposed to be where the cult of Stallman is circling the wagons?

Please try better with your next troll account.

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

#833

Post by seba_dos1 »

jolux wrote: post #830
seba_dos1 wrote: post #819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Avoiding this, like Stallman did, is a way of playing with semantics to reduce the seriousness of an accusation. Well, yes, since the point was to speak against what he called "accusation inflation" - which, I believe, wasn't even directed as much to Minksy's case as into general usage of that term in English: The announcement of the Friday event does an injustice to Marvin Minsky: “deceased AI ‘pioneer’ Marvin Min…

>It clearly is enough for Stallman though, as evidenced by many other language crusades he's been on for his whole life. The context is significant here though, because he has a history of belittling women and being insensitive to concerns about consent. These specific characteristics are red flags. It doesn't really matter whether the person bringing them up thinks they have wholly rational reasons to, or that they'…

> as if that would make the act ok, or make it not constitute "sexual assault."

It doesn't appear to me as "making the act ok", I'm not sure where that comes from at all. He didn't even hint that it wasn't a case of "sexual assault". All he said is that it wasn't "assault" (which was the exact term being used in the announcement), and that he dislikes the way the other term - "sexual assault" - leads to people misusing the term "assault" in the first place; and explained why.

Was that a proper way, time and place to do that? Nope! Was it in poor taste and prone to misinterpretation? Absolutely! Does speaking in poor taste (or even questioning the institution of age of consent) make you child abuse apologist? Heck no.

Regarding the context of belittling women and consent insensitivity - I don't have enough information about Stallman to accurately assess that. I've seen some stories that appear credible, but I've also seen some that are so blatantly misinterpreted that reading them makes me feel sick. Therefore I remain cautious, both ways.

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

#834

Post by jdub »

blagie wrote: post #757
jdub wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you're still harping on about culture, as if Richard hasn't misbehaved and offended people everywhere he's been. And don't conflate his personal behaviour with "tactics for achieving change".

Because you still don't understand, on an underlying level, what culture is, how people differ from each other, or how to accommodate that diversity. I'm trying to help you by at least pointing you in the right direction, but I'm close to giving up. It's Dunning-Kruger (which is not an insult and not uncommon in this domain) -- you're unaware of what you don't know. My experience is the international business communi…

For pity's sake, none of this applies to Richard's behaviour you supercilious twat.

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

#835

Post by detaro »

ddingus wrote: post #828
detaro wrote: post #825

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RMS came to speak at my university. He probably did more damage to general student perception of anything associated with the FSF than industry-ass-kissing professors did in the 3 years prior in that one day. Thus if you want the ideas to succeed, you want to make them matter independently of the "brands" of RMS and FSF, especially now the FSF has decided it wants to continue to tie its "brand" to RMS going forward.…

RMS literally created the thing. Others can and should be doing active, mass outreach. Leader does not have to mean public figure. Someone has to really mean it. RMS has no peers in this regard. Maybe the right thing to do here is firm up a 5 year plan, go on a donation drive and fund organizers, who can work the crowds.

I'd not bet anything on the FSF being capable or even just willing to commit to anything like that and seeing it through without sabotaging it or cancelling it because it stepped on someones toes internally. They do not appear to have a culture that would permit doing so, but rather one of focusing to much on backing RMS and driving people who might succeed at new ways of doing outreach away. Even if they didn't have RMS around anymore for whatever reason, it'd be far from given they'd migrate away from that culture successfully, there's more to this than him.

> Leader does not have to mean public figure.

> Someone has to really mean it. RMS has no peers in this regard.

This IMHO conflicts, you can't have a leader that you view as "has no peers in this regard" but has no public presence. Having the "weird extremists" (=really mean it) in some corner has some value, but negative perception of other traits hurts their usefulness in that role too.

Which is overall why I think supporting the ideas behind Free Software is best done outside that. Times have changed. If I'm wrong, I'll be positively surprised.

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

#836

Post by JohnHaugeland »

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.

> Thats a serious misrepresentation of his words

No it isn't, and a bunch of people have now given you evidence.

You're really going to be an apologist for this ?

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

#837

Post by lawnchair_larry »

mjg59 wrote: post #363
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that it’s literally not a suggestion that there are circumstances under which it is ok. You’re not stupid. You know what he meant. And you know what he meant wasn’t what he is being smeared as.

Under what circumstances is something that does no harm not ok?

Feel free to quote or link the passage where he says it does no harm. If you cannot find one, you’ll issue an apology to RMS for falsely defaming him, right? That’s what it’s called when you claim someone says pedophilia does no harm when they didn’t say that.

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

#838

Post by lawnchair_larry »

jolux wrote: post #287
seba_dos1 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you don't understand those power imbalances, you are bound to do harm. That's not a bad point. But then it turns out that it's not really connected to the statements about Minsky, is it? > Somebody who doesn't understand that is not fit to be a leader. This is stretching it way too far, since this assumes that understanding of power in hypothetical scenario that doesn't connect to yourself somehow translates to…

> That's not a bad point. But then it turns out that it's not really connected to the statements about Minsky, is it? The statements about Minsky are harmful. What reason is there to be coming to somebody’s defense when they are credibly accused of something like that? Frankly I don’t want friends who would react like Stallman did if I were to be accused as seriously as Minsky has been. People who are going to do har…

Based on what he was accused of? You want all of your friends to ditch you based on an accusation? Regardless of the Epstein thing, this is not a take that you have given much thought.

I could accuse you right now of touching 5 year olds in the park, and by your own claim, you would want all of your friends to abandon you.

Your whole rationale about power imbalances doesn’t even make sense in this context. He is writing unix tools, not running a daycare.

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

#839

Post by arp242 »

africanboy wrote: post #804
arp242 wrote: post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That last "Our Core Work" paragraph is hilarious and straight from 1996. The special mention that Savannah gets makes it double hilarious, since it's the worst code repository software ever created and was already stale in 2001. If you want FSF to be some sort of "by hackers, for hackers" thing: sure, go for it. If you want anything more: lolno. The FSF is Free Software's worst enemy.

> The FSF is Free Software's worst enemy. That's a bold claim, but since I don't have a horse in this race my opinion is that FOSS space is huge and one size fits all is not possible anymore. They can't make everybody happy and it would be silly to even try. If you don't like FSF, you can support other entities. I believe it's perfectly fine to disagree, but I also believe FSF has never forced anybody to do anything…

I don't think RMS is "the devil", but we do allow him to frame the debate and priorities, and I don't think this is a good thing as I feel his priorities are all wrong. The more mindshare RMS takes up, the less there is for things that do matter.

Why aren't we using some Free Software platform to develop our software on? No really, if we can't get our own tooling together then what does that say about the movement as a whole? People use GitHub simply because it's the best platform out there; I did a review of many alternatives a while ago, and GitHub was the best by far. It's as simple as that really. The problem with the "RMS mindset" is that "it's Free Software" is enough of a "feature" that will make people use it, and turns out it's not except for quite a small group of people.

Imagine an alternative universe where the FSF had invested significant time an resources in developing a Savannah that actually, you know, worked well. Not only would people use it, and it would have been a great platform to spread the word about Free Software and why it matters. Instead, Stallman writes polemics about how SaaS is evil and you shouldn't be using these "Service as a Software Substitute". Okay, nice... But also missing the point and that's just not how software works today, or will ever work again. The 80s have come and gone.

I don't work for a big corporation btw; I've actually been work full-time on Free Software for the last 2 years, making about €700/month or so. At least I put my money where my mouth is :-)

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

#840

Post by [deleted] »

sterlind wrote: post #337
Aloha wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like this, I've spent a lifetime learning a rulebook by trial and error that everyone else just seems to know . It's absolutely maddening when the rules suddenly change for no discernible reason, often with little warning and grave consequences with no second chances for screwing it up. I see people clamoring for a safe spaces and I wonder where I can find such a thing? (To an extent I can find one at sci-fi, an…

I relate because I've been there, I think. Before I transitioned I had pretty strong ASD and couldn't figure out how to answer simple questions like "what's up?" or if I should wave to someone I've met twice if they're 15 feet away walking towards me. Transitioning did something to my brain chemistry and let me read social cues nearly overnight, but I got friends by delving into the LGBT community. Maybe furry cons i…

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