451–460 of 537 posts
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He certainly doesn't sound like he intends to change or work to change.
That is an odd take on a message that stresses how he has changed in the past and how he hopes to change from this as well.
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This is really the crux of it. His "apology" boils down to "I'm on the spectrum, I'm not good with people stuff". Which would be fine, except what he did was a recurring theme throughout his career and belied sexist and misogynist attitudes. Maybe some people egged him on, but he chose to ignore the people who told him no and those who told him it made them uncomfortable or that it was abusive. This isn't about not u…
>The reason he didn't understand that it was wrong wasn't that he's bad at social cues, it's that he didn't think of women as human beings. This is still downstream of his autism. One of the common attributes of people on the spectrum is that they struggle immensely in terms of having a theory of mind of other individuals. Basically all human interaction and interpretation of that interaction is grounded in self-refe…
I understand it is harder for him than for other people to be nice to others, but he is intelligent enough to work around his own limitations. If he's not, then, again, he will hurt a lot of people and should reconsider his role with the FSF.
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There are three direct quotes from women who attended MIT in the linked article.
It's not clear that the first two even had direct contact with RMS and they don't even make any serious allegations. Barely anyone cares that RMS had a mattress in his office, lots of people at MIT have done that, and nobody is even making the allegation that anything inappropriate happened beyond him having it and him sleeping on it alone. The third is socially awkward and bad behaviour but it happened almost 40 yea…
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That is an odd take on a message that stresses how he has changed in the past and how he hopes to change from this as well.
Do we have any concrete evidence he has changed enough to be a viable front figure for the Free Software Movement?
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>The reason he didn't understand that it was wrong wasn't that he's bad at social cues, it's that he didn't think of women as human beings. This is still downstream of his autism. One of the common attributes of people on the spectrum is that they struggle immensely in terms of having a theory of mind of other individuals. Basically all human interaction and interpretation of that interaction is grounded in self-refe…
> This is still downstream of his autism I understand it is harder for him than for other people to be nice to others, but he is intelligent enough to work around his own limitations. If he's not, then, again, he will hurt a lot of people and should reconsider his role with the FSF.
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Being correct is entirely orthogonal to being appropriate.
To forgive someone's social incompetence could be considered appropriate in this context.
I'm grateful for his work on GPL and Free Software but this does not make him a suitable spokeperson.
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Not FSF's site that I know of, but there's mentions of these "consensual pedo" stuff on his blog. As he's a visible spokesperson, that means his blog content is part of his overall role, and not something that can be treated in isolation. I'd also push back on the post further up: It's not a particularly interesting philosophical question, and I don't think pure inquiry is RMS's goal here given his tendency to aggres…
"As he's a visible spokesperson, that means his blog content is part of his overall role, and not something that can be treated in isolation." I agree this is de facto the case. It's kind of sad, though, and I don't think the world needs to be this way. There should be a way for an e.g. CEO or similar to have a life and persona outside of a job.
It's called private life for a reason: it's not in public.
But when acting as a public speaker and spokeperson you should be acting accordingly.
Weird remarks about age of consent on public mailing lists, or hitting on every young woman at a conference or eating skin from a foot in front of a whole audience are all behaviors that put the whole FOSS movement in a bad light.
The Minsky defense was not the primary, most important reason RMS can't serve as an effective, inclusive leader for free software, it was just the one that got the most attention. This does nothing to address the numerous complaints of harassment towards MIT students, the _other_ times he spoke out in implicit support of pedophilia, the public gaffes that are unacceptable as a public representative (e.g. the foot ski…
Sure, but does any of that keep you from empathizing with the content of this letter?
I'll tell you what it does keep me from, accepting him as a leader.
The letter is evidence that the abuse will continue, amplified by the visibility and power of a leadership position.
> "I've learned something from this about how to be kind to people who have been hurt."
Implying that he will continue to hurt people. Of course all of us will ... however his kind of Hurt is the issue. He takes no responsibility for doing the hurting.
He provides no reason to this behavior stopping here and now, in this letter. He admits to having difficulty with social interaction, and yet he provides no remedy, no, "Here is how I will fix this going forward."
E.g. to solve this, he could use words which have first been edited by an assistant: he could only continue to talk publicly / talk with those whom he "leads" (which is a lot of people given his high-level role) through a filter.
This is just an example, however it is unrealistic. It's his job as an adult to lay out a plan to remedy this.
Linus had a turnaround moment, and wrote a convincing letter. Compare the two.
His remedy seems to suggest that he might manage to grow his empathetic skills, while retaining his boss-level. That is irresponsible, IMO.
This whole issue carries an insulting undertone, as the FSF Board deemed RMS worthy of being leader, when the (former!) supporters disagreed with that value-statement, given his insufficient skills.
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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 resp…
We cannot change the behavior of every person in the world.
But we can change the people who represent the FOSS community to the world.
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Not FSF's site that I know of, but there's mentions of these "consensual pedo" stuff on his blog. As he's a visible spokesperson, that means his blog content is part of his overall role, and not something that can be treated in isolation. I'd also push back on the post further up: It's not a particularly interesting philosophical question, and I don't think pure inquiry is RMS's goal here given his tendency to aggres…
His blog clearly states: "This is the personal web site of Richard Stallman. The views expressed here are my personal views, not those of the Free Software Foundation or the GNU Project. For the sake of separation, this site has always been hosted elsewhere and managed separately. "