Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Critique of the Open Letter Calling for the Removal of RMS

meribold.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 274 posts

Re: A Critique of the Open Letter Calling for the Removal of RMS

#191

Post by josteink »

ljm wrote: post #168
krapp wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It surprises me that so many people are outraged by a Chrome extension that highlights names - and does nothing more as far as I know - denouncing it with all of the righteous anger that Hacker News can muster (including wanting to blacklist anyone who contributed to the extension, and wanting to see everyone with progressive politics purged from free software entirely) yet no one seems too bothered when RMS supporte…

Looking at both examples, the entire situation is bothersome and, frankly, exhausting. I don't know where people find the energy to fuel all this outrage when there is surely somewhere to meet in the middle. It's difficult to take seriously, and understand the genuine underlying issues, when emotions all around are amplified to the extreme. Campaigning to have someone arrested on one end and employing totalitarian ta…

> I don't know where people find the energy to fuel all this outrage when there is surely somewhere to meet in the middle.

Extremists and activists like this don't want to meet in the middle. They want to move the middle towards their point of view and then they want that middle-ground to be the only acceptable ground to hold.

It's an unreasonable position to hold in a free society, and we as a people should not encourage these individuals by giving them attention or giving in to their demands.

Re: A Critique of the Open Letter Calling for the Removal of RMS

#192

Post by pseudalopex »

gher-shyu3i wrote: post #176
maweki wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a sphere where we usually choose our names and expect other people to use them, instead of what's written in some official document, I don't see how chosen pronouns are any different. Honestly, it's not hard to call people what they want to be called. You might feel the line between innocent mistake and maliciousness has not been crossed. Other people do disagree.

> Honestly, it's not hard to call people what they want to be called. So should I cater to someone who wants to be referred to as an Apache helicopter gunship? Where do you draw the line?

Try the standard English pronouns and see how it goes.

Re: A Critique of the Open Letter Calling for the Removal of RMS

#193

Post by josteink »

mikaeluman wrote: post #86

> RMS has (for some reason) tens of thousands of political notes on his website ready to be cherry-picked It used to be quite okay to share your opinions, political or not, on your website. It they concern anything that is of importance, some people will find it disagreeable and even offensive. The fact that we are at a point where expressing this is somehow strange and it’s accepted that you can be subjected to cher…

> That’s a horrible place for our society to be in.

This is encouraged from early on in school these days with ideas like "safe spaces" where people can be "safe" from so called "micro aggressions" (basically having their own convictions challenged, even for valid reasons).

It seems like just having common disagreements is considered inappropriate now, and the more opinions you express publicly, the more "micro-agressions" you must accept that you are imposing on others. And thus obviously you are terrible person and must be cancelled.

And so comes the (now traditional) SJW witch-hunt.

Whoever supports these ideas really needs to be considered the enemies of a healthy democracy, and their ideas needs to be constantly and publicly challenged.

Re: A Critique of the Open Letter Calling for the Removal of RMS

#194

Post by dpatterbee »

insert_coin wrote: post #121
dpatterbee wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that gender is a complicated social issue and not every transgender person wants to be thrown into an "other" category with their pronouns. Given how simple it is to use someone's preferred pronouns once they've been made clear to you, I don't see how it's a problem to do so.

This problem was created by trying to force people to say specific words. You try to force RMS to say some words? guess what, he will now try to force his words onto you. You don't agree? neither does he, great, just great. There is no difference here. It is no more valid for you to force language on others than it is for him to try and do it.

Do you call people by their names? Seems like you're already forced to call people what they want you to. I believe there's a difference between asking people to refer to you by some identifier and whatever nonsense you're equating it to.

Re: A Critique of the Open Letter Calling for the Removal of RMS

#195

Post by dpatterbee »

gnomewascool wrote: post #164
dpatterbee wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that gender is a complicated social issue and not every transgender person wants to be thrown into an "other" category with their pronouns. Given how simple it is to use someone's preferred pronouns once they've been made clear to you, I don't see how it's a problem to do so.

RMS's stance is that "they" is not a grammatically valid singular pronoun, so he'll not use it. If somebody told you that their preferred pronoun was "we", I doubt you'd use it. > not every transgender person wants to be thrown into an "other" category with their pronouns RMS's pronoun "perse" is gender-neutral (not non-gender). The stance is IMO crazy, but he does have a point that using "they" as both singular and…

It does introduce ambiguity in certain sentences, but pronouns already do that and we don't have much issue using them. The solution is to just not use the pronoun if it's ambiguous, pronouns are just a convenience.

Re: A Critique of the Open Letter Calling for the Removal of RMS

#196

Post by gher-shyu3i »

pseudalopex wrote: post #192
gher-shyu3i wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly, it's not hard to call people what they want to be called. So should I cater to someone who wants to be referred to as an Apache helicopter gunship? Where do you draw the line?

Try the standard English pronouns and see how it goes.

English is not the only language people speak you know.

Re: A Critique of the Open Letter Calling for the Removal of RMS

#197

Post by insert_coin »

dpatterbee wrote: post #194
insert_coin wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This problem was created by trying to force people to say specific words. You try to force RMS to say some words? guess what, he will now try to force his words onto you. You don't agree? neither does he, great, just great. There is no difference here. It is no more valid for you to force language on others than it is for him to try and do it.

Do you call people by their names? Seems like you're already forced to call people what they want you to. I believe there's a difference between asking people to refer to you by some identifier and whatever nonsense you're equating it to.

You are not forced to call anyone anything. You have no right to compel anyone to say anything. You can ask, that's about it. They can say no.

Re: A Critique of the Open Letter Calling for the Removal of RMS

#198

Post by torthrowaway998 »

krapp wrote: post #161
DarkCrusader2 wrote: post #98

> A competing letter in support of RMS exists and has accumulated considerably more signatures than the letter condemning RMS. > In response someone created a Chrome extension that marks repositories owned by a signatory of this support letter with red text on GitHub. This is incredible worrying. This is basically maintaining a repository of people with "incorrect" opinions. How long before such repositories are inte…

It surprises me that so many people are outraged by a Chrome extension that highlights names - and does nothing more as far as I know - denouncing it with all of the righteous anger that Hacker News can muster (including wanting to blacklist anyone who contributed to the extension, and wanting to see everyone with progressive politics purged from free software entirely) yet no one seems too bothered when RMS supporte…

>including wanting to blacklist anyone who contributed to the extension

I think you refer to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26722528, if so it is more about giving them the same treatment that they give others. If anything it is hypocritical to say that the extension is fine but giving them the same treatment is not.

>and wanting to see everyone with progressive politics purged from free software entirely

This is... not true. RMS himself has progressive politics. A progressive can still reject insanity caused by other progressives.

>RMS supporters want to have Molly de Blanc arrested for simply writing a petition[0] to begin with.

Just a few corrections:

- It is not RMS supporters, it is a specific timecube-like conspiracy theorist that has been known to debian for a few years now.

- This article is more about the plainly false libel in appendix that molly knew about but has refused to correct.

Re: A Critique of the Open Letter Calling for the Removal of RMS

#199

Post by KingOfCoders »

torthrowaway999 wrote: post #186
KingOfCoders wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I steal an apple from you and grow more apples from it and give them away, there is no difference to the act of stealing your apple and eating it. As a side note: RMS seams to be totally against "stealing" digital GPLed code.

>If I steal an apple from you and grow more apples from it and give them away, there is no difference to the act of stealing your apple and eating it. Certainly, but we talk about digital good here, stealing the first apple harms me (unless if I was not going to use it regardless), copying it however does not. >RMS seams to be totally against "stealing" digital GPLed code. Please explain what you mean by stealing her…

"He is against taking GPLed code, modifying it, compiling it, and then distributing the binary without distributing your modifications."

Yes.

Re: A Critique of the Open Letter Calling for the Removal of RMS

#200

Post by dragonwriter »

insert_coin wrote: post #121
dpatterbee wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that gender is a complicated social issue and not every transgender person wants to be thrown into an "other" category with their pronouns. Given how simple it is to use someone's preferred pronouns once they've been made clear to you, I don't see how it's a problem to do so.

This problem was created by trying to force people to say specific words. You try to force RMS to say some words? guess what, he will now try to force his words onto you. You don't agree? neither does he, great, just great. There is no difference here. It is no more valid for you to force language on others than it is for him to try and do it.

> You try to force RMS to say some words?

You mean like “GNU/Linux”? It's really not a big leap from RMS’s thinking he gets to name other people’s things without their consent (and insist that other people folloq his preference) to his thinking he gets to name other people without their consent, and its truly backwards to think that either of those stems from people trying to “force” anything on Stallman.

Post reply on HN