Bruce Perens: On Non-Judicical Punishment of Individuals

I don't doubt that RMS can contribute to the free software foundation without putting him in a position where his handicaps will injure others. In a professional setting I helped manage an individual with similar challenges and focus. Our solution was to buffer them with a couple of "handler" individuals who would not trigger the individual's quirks, and who could pass their contributions on to the organization in a reliable way.

My feelings on RMS is that he should not be on the board, and he should directly participate on any "official" communications channel, be it email or code reviewing. Rather, a channel should be provided for him to respond, and within that channel should be a process to capture the essence of the response that is important without the offensive bits.

> should not get to define what freedom means.

This little bit right here sounds fascist.

I'm not going to defend RMS' words or actions (I don't even know what the entire case against him is, and the more extreme this gets the less I want to pry into his personal life). I do think people are losing their minds to assassinate the guy.

RMS has given us our entire industry and careers. Without free software, you wouldn't have a job. I wouldn't either. Take a moment and let the gravity of that sink in.

(take a moment)

He apologized and spent several years away from the organization he founded. Why does it have to be the rest of his natural life? We're murdering him and taking his baby.

Why do people nowadays believe in permanent assassination of character? Unending punishment?

People have redemption arcs.

The stupid movies, books, and tv shows that everyone in this thread watches have forgiveness and grace in them. Why do we deny them to our fellow humans?

I'm an atheist, but Jesus preached against this kind of thing, and I think we could learn from some of his teachings. Throwing stones and forgiveness.

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I got cut off by the Hacker News negative karma filter for the downvotes I got, but I typed out a comment I was pretty happy with. (It was to this comment [2]) I'll include it here instead:

> There ought to be a place for RMS in our discourse. Just not this one.

I'm trying to think of the limit of humanity here, when we're all living in the metaverse and aren't tied to physical bodies anymore. Complete freedom, and the ability to disassociate ourselves from our corporeal bodies. Assume new identities at will.

In the future, you'd ban the "RMS account" for misbehavior, but he'd be free to join again under a new one, free from the judgments and baggage of the old account. He'd just lack all of the accolades and gear he'd built up.

What you're doing now is calling for RMS permadeath in meatspace. He can't restart. It's game over.

Since there is no ability to restart IRL lives, why don't we have forgiveness as a feature?

The US penal system has a notion of when punishments have been meted out. He's stepped down for several years. Was it not long enough of a punishment?

Are we saying that some people may never forgive RMS? And that we're restricting his access indefinitely to satisfy the people who hold grudges eternally?

What sort of bug in humanity is that?

Maybe certain people think we should stop letting people out of jail.

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26708215

This has little to do with RMS but instead the appalling attitude of those who are in favor of cancel culture.

Historians have failed you: this behavior and mentality will lead to a dark dead end. We must be tolerant and even accepting of those with whom we disagree with. Opinions are fleeting, but we are all human and that won’t change in our lifetime.

To be clear, I am not defending what RMS said, but "defending child rape" is oversimplifying and over exaggerating his position. His remark related to the age of consent being different in different places (states/countries).

> I'm no fan of Stallman, but I do find it worrying that some companies can unilaterally decide to sink the FSF if they don't like what it's doing.

Why? That's like, the entire basis of every organization, that supporters don't have to support it. If a company selling a product behaves in a way you don't want to support you stop buying, if a charity stops supporting a cause you stop supporting it, etc.