I'm quite impressed with this statement. It isn't at all what I expected.
I hope he can put this mess behind him.
RMS addresses the free software community
421–430 of 537 posts
Re: RMS addresses the free software community
#422Earlier quoted context omitted.
Accounts that act poorly, usually do so in multiple ways. Banning accounts for bad behavior will likely curb other undetectable bad behavior. HN is a bit unique. I suspect it is less influenced by bad behavior because it is small enough to fly under the radar.
HN has a system where submissions get flagged and possibly downranked if the number of comments exceeds its score as it is indicative of a flame war. It is the opposite of what social media that optimize for "engagement" do. The HN community also has a habit of downranking controversial topics. For example, subjects like women in tech and racism tend to get buried quickly. It is not that these are not worth talking a…
I prefer forums with clear rules, and if something is flagged then it should be only if is against a specific rule. I am not sure if is more preferable to debate the merit of yet another incomplete Tic-Tac-Toe in Rust then having a pasionate debate on app stores, free software or X.
Blame wars should be fixed differently IMO, you could temporary ban accounts that do not respect the rules, users can report comments and indicate the rule that is broken, this require better moderation and clear rules.
Though, I am not sure if HN could implement this, is too big and probably mi preferences work better on smaller niche forums with a few good moderators and a community that cares about the quality and pushes the participants to communicate in the allowed rules.
Re: RMS addresses the free software community
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
"How dare people have opinions on politics or society on their personal web blogs". How is this any different than telling celebrities to pipe down, as if people aren't human anymore once they become famous?
When you have the megaphone of fame in your hand, you can't pretend it doesn't exist. That kind of influence is an enormous privilege, one that nearly everyone that has it has had to chase aggressively their entire careers if not lives. You cannot pretend a celebrity pontificating into a camera that is broadcasting to 100's of millions of people is the same thing as someone's personal weblog that no one ever reads. Y…
People also make the choice to cling onto famous peoples' words. They could just as well not do that.
> That kind of influence is an enormous privilege, one that nearly everyone that has it has had to chase aggressively their entire careers if not lives.
I don't think RMS did that, and I don't think "nearly everyone that has it has had to chase [it]". Some people do, and others just... become (in)famous in their respective fields. Imagine just wanting to be good at basketball, getting some of level of fame, and then just hearing "shut up and dribble", etc.
> there are many famous people who've figured out how to self actualize their lives without attracting attention
And how does one go about this without e.g. not saying anything at all? Discussing politics or societal ills is -always- going to irk some people. It's really not fair to say that, because someone now has some level of reach, that they have to basically say nothing at all. Why is there no personal responsibility or accountability? I'm going to assume the controversial stance here that people just don't raise children right, to not dwell on peoples' words just because they're "famous". And that is a larger societal issue than celebrities simply having opinions as a human being.
Re: RMS addresses the free software community
#424Earlier quoted context omitted.
"How dare people have opinions on politics or society on their personal web blogs". How is this any different than telling celebrities to pipe down, as if people aren't human anymore once they become famous?
When you have the megaphone of fame in your hand, you can't pretend it doesn't exist. That kind of influence is an enormous privilege, one that nearly everyone that has it has had to chase aggressively their entire careers if not lives. You cannot pretend a celebrity pontificating into a camera that is broadcasting to 100's of millions of people is the same thing as someone's personal weblog that no one ever reads. Y…
> You cannot pretend a celebrity pontificating into a camera that is broadcasting to 100's of millions of people is the same thing as someone's personal weblog that no one ever reads.
I'd say it's getting harder and harder to tell the difference.
Re: RMS addresses the free software community
#425Now, 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…
They've declared their verdict and moved on :) . It's the 24/7 newscycle they don't have time for corrections unless it is recent and they can put it on the "backpage"
Re: RMS addresses the free software community
#426Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I was confused, we can't downvote. IMO flag should only be used for offtopic or content that is against side rules. I nenver flagged any submission, even if I think is offtopic or low quality, I can ignore it, maybe the people that engaged it have other opinion so why I should decide for others what should they see on the home page. My proposal might not be better , so I admit I can be wrong and I let the HN st…
All submissions compete for attention. Voting and commenting influence what submissions other people see too.
I know but from my observations all the up-votes and comments can't undo a few flags. Maybe there should be a way so if same number of people contest the flags then it undoes it?
At least I think is not fair to use flag on an item I think it should get less attention, then I should flag all posts about the frameworks or languages that I think are getting too much attention (I do not flag and very rare downvote )
Re: RMS addresses the free software community
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is this about Thomas Bushnell? Because I feel this is about Thomas Bushnell It doesn't have to be. I've known over a dozen people working at the FSF over the years, and they _all_ had the same stories about trying to avoid RMS as much as physically possible because of his behavior and how he treated people. At some point we have to stop looking for excuses and start listening to the people who are actually there. >…
> start listening to the people who are actually there. I'd love to, if only these people who are so aggrieved would properly write down their experiences instead of "I didn't like him anyway" after-the-fact tweets. > Correction: _Last_ it was the Epstein connection, a straw on a pile of many straws. Yes, quite enough to build a strawperson as an effigy, and now you're doing it, because there was no Epstein connectio…
> and now you're doing it, because there was no Epstein connection.
If you prefer the phrases "defense of Minsky in his 70s having sex with a minor on a private island where Minksy then later hosted another conference _after_ Epstein's public conviction for sex trafficking and being designated a level three sex offender" or perhaps "refusal to recognize sex with minors as rape" we can use one of those instead. I don't mind. Because Stallman _did_ say he believed that Minsky had sex with a 17 year old on a billionaire's small private island and saw nothing wrong with it, and Minsky _did_ host a conference on Epstein's island after Epstein's crimes became public.
> I'd love to, if only these people who are so aggrieved would...
I think it's weird for you to expect everyone to blog about their daily negative experiences instead of venting to their friends and then trying to forget.
The two sides here are people who work at or with the FSF (or who have close friends who work at or with the FSF) and people whose only exposure is shit blogs that come up on google. And the people who work at or with the FSF are like "RMS is a nightmare for me or for a close friend of mine", and the people who google shit blogs are like "I don't find these shit blogs to be compelling enough to notice the fact that the people saying that RMS has been a nightmare are all the people who have to work with him". Everyone gets to pick their side though.
Re: RMS addresses the free software community
#428Now, 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…
RMS does not call for that and it isn't necessary. He acknowledges his own tone-deafness. Plus, people understand editorials like those are interpretations of words. If you want the facts you look at the original source material and decide for yourself.
Fox news viewers don't realize that 3/4 of fox news channel is opinion shows which don't have to be correct or even tell the truth because it's opinion.
Re: RMS addresses the free software community
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is there a place I can quickly catch up on these events? Summary: https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/
To the OP: that article is extremely biased in favor of RMS and focuses extremely narrowly on the Epstein/Minsky e-mails. Unfortunately I do not know of a good collection of his other failings (outside of the Minsky e-mails) to provide as a counter.
> that article […] focuses extremely narrowly on the Epstein/Minsky e-mails
No, only about the top third of the article is that. The rest covers the various subsequent attacks and goes through their claims at length.
Re: RMS addresses the free software community
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, no that’s not how journalism works. They report the FACTS as they see them. /s There’s no such thing as a retraction anymore, it’s just clarifications. I would have more faith in the media if they admitted when they were wrong, or at least presented, thoughtfully considered, opposing viewpoints. My faith in the media perhaps really took its first hit with Nick Sandman. I just felt weird that all these people were…
> There’s no such thing as a retraction anymore, it’s just clarifications. I think journalism always mostly did "corrections." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correction_(newspaper)
You won't see "corrections" along the top bar of "news" on the webpages either. It will always be hidden away somewhere obscure unless their misreporting causes public outrage, and then sometimes they'll actually do a proper retraction.