Bruce Perens: On Non-Judicical Punishment of Individuals • Hacker News Board

Re: Bruce Perens: On Non-Judicical Punishment of Individuals

#121

Post by Gibbon1 » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 6:15 AM UTC

eyelidlessness wrote: post #92

aortega wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly are not an expert on autism. The disease is a huge spectrum of different behaviors, from almost normal, to severe retardation. I've seen RMS in real life, he's borderline can't take care of himself, that's not being abusive.

I didn’t claim to be an expert. He’s not abusive because he can’t take care of himself. He’s abusive because he’s mean spirited and takes advantage of being excused for it because of his celebrity. I was never afforded that. Take your expertise and shove it up someone who isn’t a nobody. Edit: I regret saying anything please carry on praising the guy who treats people like garbage because people enable him. I’ll just…

Seems to me that Stillman has gone through an obsessive amount of effort to avoid having to change his boorish behavior. You and I would get fired for a lot less.

I'm like, it's his hill he can die on it.

Re: Bruce Perens: On Non-Judicical Punishment of Individuals

#122

Post by bryanrasmussen » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 6:15 AM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #38

Can we please stop armchair-diagnosing RMS and excusing his behaviour based on this armchair diagnosis? Or even worse, calling it a disability like Bruce Perens does, in some kind of effort to gain sympathy, or perhaps appeal to ADA? First of all, nobody has ever actually diagnosed RMS and he himself has rejected that folk diagnosis when offered to him. If dude wanted psychiatric help, he could get it. Second of all,…

>If dude wanted psychiatric help, he could get it.

Just to touch on this and not the other issues - many people who are diagnosable as having some problem refuse diagnosis, this does not mean they don't have the problem they could be diagnosed as having.

Re: Bruce Perens: On Non-Judicical Punishment of Individuals

#123

Post by watwut » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 6:16 AM UTC

lamontcg wrote: post #114

dsr_ wrote: post #97

The ADA requires reasonable accomodations, not unlimited accomodations. Reasonable accomodations are wheelchair ramps so they can enter your building, elevators for people who can't climb stairs, and changing your user interface so that people who can't see colors can operate it and people who can't see at all can use screen-readers. Where is the line to unreasonable accomodations? When a person permanently cannot do…

Defining his behavior as something protected by the ADA is getting deep into "affluenza" territory.

I had seen comments on that effect being popular on HN in latest discussions. Always as side point, so I am grad someone finally did it fully so that we can verbalize disagreement.

Re: Bruce Perens: On Non-Judicical Punishment of Individuals

#124

Post by torthrowaway998 » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 6:17 AM UTC

neilk wrote: post #30

I don't think this argument makes sense. In fact if we follow it to its conclusion, it's an additional reason for RMS to be removed from his job. 1. RMS is not being punished by the FSF. He does not have any right to a particular job, even as the founder of an organization. Many people, including FSF board members, believed he was not competent to serve the organization in a leadership role. One could argue about whe…

>He does not have any right to a particular job

No offense but I find this argument to be in bad faith. You would not say that for someone being fired due to being lgbt, would you? (whether it is legal or not is irrelevant here as this is about moral rights)

He was not ostracized because they found him "not competent to serve the organization in a leadership role" but rather because they were outraged at his opinions (combined with a misrepresentation of his statements along with lies and half-truths -- the pleasure cards, the mit office label, etc).

>Many people, including FSF board members, believed he was not competent to serve the organization in a leadership role.

It would be great if these people too didn't try to misrepresent what he said. Such as in http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html

Re: Bruce Perens: On Non-Judicical Punishment of Individuals

#125

Post by aortega » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 6:21 AM UTC

Arainach wrote: post #109

aortega wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is no context in which this is acceptable. Oh for christ's sake. Have you ever tell a joke to talk to a girl?

Plenty of times. I've never threatened to do violence to myself or anyone else depending on their response, however - and neither has anyone I know, nor has any non-abusive person.

Do you take everything literally? Who are you, Drax the destroyer?

Re: Bruce Perens: On Non-Judicical Punishment of Individuals

#126

Post by wahern » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 6:21 AM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #38

Can we please stop armchair-diagnosing RMS and excusing his behaviour based on this armchair diagnosis? Or even worse, calling it a disability like Bruce Perens does, in some kind of effort to gain sympathy, or perhaps appeal to ADA? First of all, nobody has ever actually diagnosed RMS and he himself has rejected that folk diagnosis when offered to him. If dude wanted psychiatric help, he could get it. Second of all,…

> Yelling at people when they use the wrong words, which is his main and constant strategy, does not help the cause of free software.

Arguably the reason you're using the term "free software" is because of RMS' incessant chastising. The only thing as relentless as RMS are the forces that continually eat away at the central thesis of his movement--the necessity for users to have access to the source code of the software they use as requisite for software freedom.

Does the movement need RMS going forward? I don't know. I'm not even sure it can stay as strong as it is, regardless of his participation. I have more certainty, however, that it wouldn't be as successful as it was and currently is without him. His conflation of the utilitarian and political character of software was rather unique. Even today the vast majority of people find the comparison either impractical, trite, or otherwise inapposite. Comparable concepts, like Lessig's "code is law", aren't quite the same and in any event haven't had the staying power.

Re: Bruce Perens: On Non-Judicical Punishment of Individuals

#127

Post by watwut » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 6:21 AM UTC

aortega wrote: post #47

geofft wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've met RMS in real life and talked to him on multiple occasions. He can absolutely take care of himself and it's a little insulting to RMS to say that he can't. (Who took care of him between when he left his job at MIT and when the FSF got enough funding to hire him an assistant, if he wasn't taking care of himself?)

Not everyone is fine all of the time, and autistic personalities can get high and lows. To me, he seem quite normal and a cool guy that likes make totally inappropriate jokes or comments (that makes them even more funny), but I'm a little autistic myself.

> make totally inappropriate jokes or comments (that makes them even more funny)

That is completely different if you are but of those jokes and if you know that those jokes are funny to people, because they express what others think about you.

Re: Bruce Perens: On Non-Judicical Punishment of Individuals

#128

Post by legulere » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 6:24 AM UTC

anonymousiam wrote: post #66

legulere wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please read his email again and think about if what you said is really true. It’s quoted in this article: https://thenextweb.com/dd/2019/09/13/free-software-icon-rich...

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/richard-stallman ... After one person wrote that "Giuffre was 17 at the time; this makes it rape in the Virgin Islands," Stallman responded, "I think it is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17." Minsky (and Minsky's wife) disputed the claims that he had sex with Gi…

You cannot take one sentence by Stallman and ignore all the rest, Stallman has a year long history of trivializing child rape. This is not about one sentence discussing the age of consent (which in my opinion has little place in a discussion about a child rape and trafficking ring, but that’s debatable)

Re: Bruce Perens: On Non-Judicical Punishment of Individuals

#129

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 6:24 AM UTC

anonymousiam wrote: post #37

legulere wrote: post #19

The FSF looks even more like a sect if you do mental gymnastics like that for your former guru. RMS publicly defended child rape. Someone like that should not get to define what freedom means. RMS has all the right not to get attacked about his awkward behavior, but he has to feel the consequences on his ideological thought.

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).

> To be clear, I am not defending what RMS said, but "defending child rape" is oversimplifying and over exaggerating his position.

He explicitly supported a political campaign that aimed to immediately reduce the age of consent to 12 and ultimately eliminate it, on the basis that sex acts that were “consensual pedophilia” was not only not an oxymoron, but also something that wasn’t harmful.

(He also raised questions about rhe factual guilt of someone accused of nonconsensually sexually exploiting an Epstein-trafficked young woman, but that wasn’t where he defended child rape.)

Re: Bruce Perens: On Non-Judicical Punishment of Individuals

#130

Post by neilk » Tue, Apr 06, 2021, 6:26 AM UTC

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #86

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #46

Punishments should have limits, but the point of removing a toxic member of a team is not to punish the individual. If I hang out with a group of friends, and one of those friends repeatedly makes some of the rest of us uncomfortable, I will stop inviting that person to our gatherings. This is not meant as a rehabilitory or a punitive measure. It's simply a group of people who aren't comfortable with someone else's p…

> Stallman was removed because many found his presence unacceptable to their continued participation. If someone decided not to participate in Free Software because they couldn't stand Stallman, then they don't have a strong urge to do so anyway. It is likely that they didn't even participate at all, but were seeking some attention and did virtue signalling. Does anyone really believe Sara Mei would have contributed…

You seem to be new to this argument. Are you aware that we have had a bifurcated Open Source / Free Software movement since the 1990s? And how that came to be?

There were real philosophical disagreements, and I'm not even saying RMS had the wrong side of the argument. But he definitely gave everyone a huge incentive to go off and do something different because at least you wouldn't be working with RMS.

I can think of several people off the top of my head who attempted to work with RMS, were immediately repelled, and then went off to do other things with freely distributed software.