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In Support of Richard Stallman

stallmansupport.org

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Re: In Support of Richard Stallman

#31

Post by torthrowaway999 »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #18
radmuzom wrote: post #12

Personal story - I was the person who used to get angry and outraged whenever these stories of harassment were published, taking a stance which was pro the supposed victim. Independently, I used to be a huge fan of Stallman and read a lot of his writings as well as what others wrote about him. So when the story first broke out in 2019, my first reaction was "This is simply not possible." Of course, upon researching f…

I just wonder why he hasn't updated or amended his website, https://www.google.com/search?q=pedophile+site%3Astallman.or...

Did you ask him? Surely he knows more about it than some random person on HN. I am glad that he did not remove his previous statements though, it would be akin to rewriting history, although I think that a note saying that he changed his opinions would be nice.

Re: In Support of Richard Stallman

#33

Post by torthrowaway999 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #14

So I went to their "Debunking False Accusations" page, then clicked through and read the email ("Email #2"), then returned to the page. It feels like they set up a bunch of straw-men which they then went on to debunk. They don't actually defend the content of "Email #2" but instead claimed that people said untrue things about it and then said those were "lies." But without citing the untrue claims they're debunking,…

>But without citing the untrue claims they're debunking

I can link you a few, such as the titles of https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-r... and https://www.vice.com/en/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scient...

>after this all blow up

He changed his mind on or before 2016, before this all blew up https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Biograp...

Is it wrong to be skeptical of stuff? We aren't all born with the innate knowledge that "voluntarily pedophilia harms children", it is not something that I personally agree with but surely you also at some point thought of something that the wider society would consider as disgusting, his blog just served as a place to put some random raw unprocessed thoughts that he had on news stories.

Re: In Support of Richard Stallman

#34

Post by search_social »

oscribinn wrote: post #25
timkpaine wrote: post #8

Just an observation, the male/female ratio on this support letter is dramatically higher than on the letter pushing for resignation https://rms-open-letter.github.io/

Not sure where you're getting your numbers from, but I get the feeling they'd be different if you were only counting biological women as female.

>Not sure where you're getting your numbers from, but I get the feeling they'd be different if you were only counting biological women as female.

Leah is an outspoken defender of FSF.

https://libreboot.org/news/rms.html#rms-is-not-transphobic https://twitter.com/n4of7

Re: In Support of Richard Stallman

#35

Post by torthrowaway999 »

mplewis wrote: post #4

"Stallman's comprehensive personal philosophy on social matters can make people uncomfortable." Could you include a bit on the site that discusses RMS' "pleasure cards" and how he continued to hand them to women even after he was asked to stop because it made people uncomfortable? https://twitter.com/wiredferret/status/1173042834179534849

It is a joke on "business or pleasure" and he gave it to both men and women https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26574720

This is the first time that I read that "he was asked to stop".

Re: In Support of Richard Stallman

#36

Post by torthrowaway999 »

timkpaine wrote: post #8

Just an observation, the male/female ratio on this support letter is dramatically higher than on the letter pushing for resignation https://rms-open-letter.github.io/

Could you please publish your results? Exploring this would be interesting. Did you account for non-english and gender neutral names? So far it seems that Americans are over-represented in the open letter.

Re: In Support of Richard Stallman

#37

Post by creata »

Someone1234 wrote: post #14

So I went to their "Debunking False Accusations" page, then clicked through and read the email ("Email #2"), then returned to the page. It feels like they set up a bunch of straw-men which they then went on to debunk. They don't actually defend the content of "Email #2" but instead claimed that people said untrue things about it and then said those were "lies." But without citing the untrue claims they're debunking,…

Yes, it is good form to link to the claims you are debunking, but these claims are not strawmen. If you want an example of people making untrue claims about "Email #2", here's one very popular Medium post doing just that:

> ... and then says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be "entirely willing".

https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21...

The dead comment next to mine has more examples. That said, the line

> 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.

is incredibly disgusting, no matter how you look at it.

Re: In Support of Richard Stallman

#39

Post by torthrowaway999 »

okareaman wrote: post #20

Unbelievable. This site adds insult to injury by defending pedophelia and links it to trans issues. Are they saying that if the latter is ok, the former is also ok? Sounds like it to me. RMS deserves all the rejection he is getting for this sentiment alone, never mind the other charges. > But he did publish a highly controversial comment[2] in 2006 about the intention of pedophiles in The Netherlands to form a politi…

No, it is rather a defense of skepticism rather than of specific opinions. It does not say that both of them are the same.

>RMS deserves all the rejection he is getting for this sentiment alone

How so? He posts his raw thoughts in his blog. Surely we would not want to discourage skepticism and rationalism just because these thoughts are not currently common.

Please remember: the paradox of tolerance concerns these who withdraw from public dialog and instead take actions against these with different opinions and characteristics instead of engage them in a debate.

As for the other charges, they are similarly dubious at best.

Re: In Support of Richard Stallman

#40

Post by dudeinjapan »

timkpaine wrote: post #8

Just an observation, the male/female ratio on this support letter is dramatically higher than on the letter pushing for resignation https://rms-open-letter.github.io/

This would make intuitive sense as there are two different crowds watching two movies here.

The older, more male-skewed crowd is familiar with rms from his pioneering work in Free Software, and is willing to cut him leniency on past indiscretions, cringey jokes, and off-the-cuff political rants.

The younger, more gender mixed crowd sees little to no value in the FS movement; GPL is a nuisance to the Silicon Valley companies at which they work, and they've all been raised on iPhones, etc. rms is yet another toxic male from the old guard; another loathsome dinosaur.

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