61–70 of 537 posts
RMS really stays behind what he says. I'm very glad he is around!
I really hope they get him out of FSF leadership ASAP. The damage he does to the free software movement is incalculable.
> Some have described me as being "tone-deaf," and that is fair. With my difficulty in understanding social cues, that tends to happen. For instance, I defended Professor Minsky on an M.I.T. mailing list after someone leaped to the conclusion that he was just guilty as Jeffrey Epstein. To my surprise, some thought my message defended Epstein. As I had stated previously, Epstein is a serial rapist, and rapists should…
I really hope this will be sufficient to let this whole situation rest. The right thing to do is to accept his apology while holding him accountable for his commitment to be better in the future.
Which apology? He’s only apologizing once quickly for losing his temper (Sometimes I lost my temper because I didn't have the social skills to avoid it. Some people could cope with this; others were hurt. I apologize to each of them.) and spends a whole lot of time explaining why he is different and we should all put up with his social ineptitude because he didn’t know better. That does not constitute an apology. We…
I can't help but observe that this type of organizational "put up" is reserved only for some. Some people commit the most minor of crimes, perhaps as minor as enjoying the "wrong" type of music and just like that, never get a chance to participate or contribute. While other people commit terrible nasty crimes with actual real victims and keep getting additional chances. I'm not saying rms is this case.
Seems reasonable to me, though I am among the crowd who didn't read his initial statement as anything resembling a defense of Epstein.
It irks me to a great extent how you cannot debate certain topics without immediately being labelled as an apologist or a supporter. Nuance no longer exists.
Fortunately, most of us aren't in that category.
> Some have described me as being "tone-deaf," and that is fair. With my difficulty in understanding social cues, that tends to happen. For instance, I defended Professor Minsky on an M.I.T. mailing list after someone leaped to the conclusion that he was just guilty as Jeffrey Epstein. To my surprise, some thought my message defended Epstein. As I had stated previously, Epstein is a serial rapist, and rapists should…
> Minsky (71) had sex with a 17 year old who had been trafficked and coerced, in 2001. You're doing the exact thing that journalists did when they condemned RMS. Virginia Giuffre testified that Epstein directed her to have sex with Minsky; however she has not said that they actually had sex. His ex-wife also claims that she was with him the entire time they were on the island.
Seems reasonable to me, though I am among the crowd who didn't read his initial statement as anything resembling a defense of Epstein.
It irks me to a great extent how you cannot debate certain topics without immediately being labelled as an apologist or a supporter. Nuance no longer exists.
I think message is genuine, and sympathize with his stand. His work on free software has been invaluable and shaped the software world in a good way. To paint the whole person as a "bad guy" ("terrible person") in the context of the latest developments always seemed off to me. However, usually apologies in this context backfire. Everything that you say about this can and will be used against you. This has happened to…
rms has a long history of what today qualifies as sexual harassment, independent of his current controversy surrounding the Minsky/Epstein mailing list posts. He's also a bad leader (a drama llama that causes misunderstandings and controversies at every turn) regardless of his extremely controversial views on things like pedophilia, the definition of "sexual assault", Epstein's victims, et c.
Now, would the journalists who wrote articles with titles that are a variation of "RMS defended Epstein" [1,2] apologize or at least correct their articles? Also, now that RMS has explicitly clarified his position on these issues, can the people who leveraged his "silence" and "bad behavior" to oust him from the FSF at least admit that their motive was less about making the free-software movement welcoming and was mo…
Apologize for what? This post doesn't make him less accountable for what he wrote in that email.
.. really sad for RedHat though ..
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/26/redhat_fsf_funding_ri...