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Bruce Perens: On Non-Judicical Punishment of Individuals

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141–150 of 227 posts

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

#141

There is a conflict here: on one hand we want diversity, accept people with their differences, their handicap or education. On the other hand we want them to behave the same way we do, otherwise we reject them. So your company should have people with handicap, but that have no effect on others. And diverse genders, but you should consider them all the same, even if we know we have diverse bodies, needs and behaviors.…

Do we really need diversity though? I would be perfectly fine if a development of a project would be done by strangers behind incognito aliases. I don't care if the contributed code comes from Black woman or Caucasian man or some cat who had learned to code. I believe that it is absolutely irrelevant topic that is forced on the industry by whatever reasons. If is not like the barrier to entry is too high: anyone who…

Two things:

1. The meaning of $500 varies wildly across earth. It's not much work to figure that out. 2. It depends on the kind of project. If you want a community project, a project that lives and breathes, you don't just need to put out code, but also inspire use and new contributors. For that, a pleasant atmosphere helps, and have existing contributors seem approachable. For that, you need to project not being a tiny club of likeminded, or worse, outright similar, people. This tends to discouraged interest and participation. It also tends towards a particular internal culture having way too much overlap with a particular culture is my experience. Teams consisting of 30 year old male computer scientists will have a particular kind of banter/small talk utterly incompatible with many other backgrounds. Not having too much of one kind of team member protects you from this, making on boarding easier.

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

#142
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,…

>Lots of people on the spectrum know how to behave.

It is called a spectrum because it contains a lot of different conditions that vary significantly.

>but he doesn't have to be in the decision board of the FSF to do this

Please re-evaluate this statement. One could as well use "you don't have to be in the decision board of the FSF to be gay". He certainly does not need to be in the decision board of the FSF to do this but you do not need to be in the decision board of the FSF to do pretty much anything.

I would argue that being in the decision board (instead of being the president) of the FSF is a good position for him. He can continue steering the FSF on things regarding software freedom, can continue giving his talks, and the face of the FSF will be someone who is more desirable by donors and deals with people better I guess?

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

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Maybe he's even shared that fact with the FSF board, and maybe they've taken that into account in their decision to reinstate him" If they had, it would be a good idea to have written into the press release. "Of course, we also have to consider the fact that he is 68. Increasing cognitive rigidity is a natural consequence of ageing, and people can find it harder to change ingrained habits at 68 than if they were 20…

> If they had, it would be a good idea to have written into the press release. If someone discloses to their employer that they are seeing a therapist, it would be inappropriate for their employer to put that disclosure in a press release. (Board members aren’t technically employees but I think the principle is the same.) > So you think someone with cognitive rigidity who can't change his habits is a good fit for a l…

> If the FSF board wants to give him the opportunity to demonstrate an ability to change, why shouldn’t they?

Because of the forseeable adverse impact on other people to whom thet are responsible?

> Also, they are much better judges of whether he is trying to change, and whether or not he’s had success in that, than external observers such as you or I can be.

The at least one FSF board member who departed, and the FSF’s management who likewise resigned over the issue, OTOH, are in at least an equally good position to the Board members who supported the move.

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

#144
post #55
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…

> 2. RMS is not obviously asking for any understanding nor promising to be better. You can't apologize once there is a mixture of 10% truth and 90% defamation. The libelous press will then print that the target has apologized for 100%, and therefore has validated the libel.

I agree that the vast majority of complaints against him are unreasonable. But without some sort of apology or promise to do better, what are we supposed to tell those 10% with valid issues?

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

#145
This is one of the strangest things I have ever read. In summary:

Cancel culture is a great economic incentive to do better, but don’t use the name cancel culture and don’t apply it to Stallman because he has empathy problems, which are a handicap.

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

#146
post #89
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are his views not important when the entire mission of the FSF is to spread a very particular point of view? When RMS is advocating for zoophilia and necrophilia (he's finally relented on pedophilia, though, after many years of also defending "consensual" pedophilia), it hurts the advocacy for his other causes. You can't effectively simultaneously champion two such disparate causes without one cause seeping into…

Please refrain from libelous statements. I’ve never read anything from Stallman that defends any behavior a reasonable person would identify as Paedophilia, rather objections on the extremal formal definitions the US judiciary has for the status of “child”

> I’ve never read anything from Stallman that defends any behavior a reasonable person would identify as Paedophilia

Stallman defended legalization of pedophilia by name (and in the context of an overt political effort to eliminate age of consent entirely) and only recanted that support after the controversy over Minsky erupted in 2019 (which, given the somewhat related subject matter, also brought heightened, though not the first, attention to that advocacy.)

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

#147

What's interesting is that in this particular case, we did kind of get a sort of "jury" vote in the two open letters to the FSF: One asking that he be removed (3000 signatures), and one asking that he be kept on (5000 signatures). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Return_to_FSF

The counterletter accepted signatures for longer than the original letter, and it was heavily promoted in the Eastern bloc, which is very sympathetic towards causes that exclude women and other minorities. The original letter is signed by many of us who actually write the free software and who are part of GNU. I recognise people in the original letter I've collaborated on GNU software with, people I've met at confere…

It was not "promoted in the Eastern bloc". People from those regions could sign it under their real names without repercussions.

The anti-Stallman letter is signed by the usual SJW developers who jump at any chance to cancel someone. Some of these went straight to positions of power in projects without having contributed anything of value.

These developers represent less than 5% of projects, the other 95% either does not care or is scared to sign the pro-Stallman letter.

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

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> He explicitly supported a political campaign that aimed to immediately reduce the age of consent to 12

No he absolutely didn't, certainly not explicitly. He linked to the news item and added a sentence of commentary, he did it for 3 news items that day and thousands over the decades.

It's right here, 2006-06-05: https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html

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

#149
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…

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

#150

There is a conflict here: on one hand we want diversity, accept people with their differences, their handicap or education. On the other hand we want them to behave the same way we do, otherwise we reject them. So your company should have people with handicap, but that have no effect on others. And diverse genders, but you should consider them all the same, even if we know we have diverse bodies, needs and behaviors.…

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