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

RMS addresses the free software community

fsf.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 537 posts

Re: RMS addresses the free software community

#491

Post by dragonwriter »

Osmose wrote: post #49

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…

> the _other_ times he spoke out in implicit support of pedophilia,

His support for pedophilia was explicit (though in context it was actually support for “consensual” sex between adults and children, not support for mere pedophilia, which is an orientation, not an action.)

Re: RMS addresses the free software community

#492

Post by lax4ever »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #428
unityByFreedom wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fox News? Finding consistent application of a journalistic standard in any of the major news channels (MSNBC, ABC, Fox, NBC, CBS, CNN) is practically impossible. It's become more and more a game of "Gotcha" between them than what I think is anything resembling journalism.

Re: RMS addresses the free software community

#493

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

seoaeu wrote: post #435
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your thoughtful reply. I think the problem in it with respect to mine lies here: "because the relevant society has decided that it is obvious why sex with minors is harmful" But it's not obvious who is a minor or when a minor having sex is wrong. I commented elsewhere, but what about two 15 year olds? A 15 and a 20? In some country X where age of consent is 14, vs. in some country Y where age of consent…

That was the question RMS asked, but it is oblivious of a way more relevant point: the girl was a victim of human trafficking . Regardless of age a sex slave cannot consent. Not to mention how clueless you have to be to discuss age of consent laws on a many-thousand person workplace mailing list with teenagers on it.

...right, but you can't look at someone and based on looks end up thinking, "That person is a victim of human trafficking!" in the same way you might look at someone and think, "That person might be younger than 18 [or whatever the local law says]!". It might be possible to blame Minsky for the second thing, but the first seems completely crazy to me.

Re: RMS addresses the free software community

#494

Post by ashtonkem »

prepend wrote: post #325
ashtonkem wrote: post #24

I really have no idea why anyone wants to keep RMS in charge of the FSF based on his work product alone. What has the FSF been doing other than slowly sliding into irrelevancy over the past 20 years?

GPLv3 came out in 2007 so that’s less than 20 years. They also sue people [0] who break the license, so that’s good. I’m not sure how relevant FSF is supposed to be. They seem more relevant than ever, but aren’t a huge deal. They just run GPL and promote open source. And they’re one of many groups. So it’s ok, I think, to just do your thing and not blow up and be huge. They are small ($1M annual budget [1] and 14 sta…

> GPLv3 came out in 2007 so that’s less than 20 years.

One would hope that he'd have an achievement at least once a decade.

> They also sue people [0] who break the license, so that’s good.

That's nice. No need to keep engineers around if they're just going to maintain a license then. Fire everyone and hire lawyers.

> I’m not sure how relevant FSF is supposed to be.

Very, I imagine. Very few organizations want to be small. Given that copyleft licenses are losing badly to more permissive licenses, I imagine that they'd prefer to be bigger and more effective.

> They are small ($1M annual budget [1] and 14 staff) and think that’s ok when compared to stuff like Mozilla where their CEO makes more than the entire FSF budget. The ROI from FSF compared to Mozilla seems really good and impactful.

I'd argue the opposite. Mozilla, for all of its faults, is actually trying to get open source and privacy respecting software into the hands of end users who aren't inherently ideological about this stuff. We can debate endlessly about their tactics and results, but in this decade at least they're massively more effective and important than the FSF.

I'd argue that the FSF is small in terms of staff and budget because the leadership has failed.

Re: RMS addresses the free software community

#495

Post by wrycoder »

simion314 wrote: post #156
koheripbal wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of those things will happen. We would be better off if we could remove those dishonest people from our communities here and elsewhere. Dishonest reporting, and amplifying of dishonest posts on social media is not something you will ever get an apology for, because those efforts were never meant to survive scrutiny. They were meant to create "pressure" to cause reputational damage. You cannot convince or engag…

>This is one of the reasons I believe social media sites should enact age-based voting. I am not sure this works, on HN for example is easy enough for a small mob to disappear articles by flagging them, on top of that we get no reason why things were flagged or any way to undo it. Account age or karma is not enough, we need much more, make it harder to share/downvote or flag , like by making someone type at least 60…

Vouching appears to undo flagging. More people should vouch, if they see abuse.

Re: RMS addresses the free software community

#496

Post by wrycoder »

pseudalopex wrote: post #244
simion314 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would think so because is hard to notice, I would not have believed it until I seen it with my own eyes, it was an article about RMS and there was a good discussion in the comments , in 5-10 minutes the entry was gone from the first pages, it was flagged, I think there were around 2-- comments in the end but most readers missed the article and instead they could see more then one day old stuff. My proposal is to…

People started flagging anything about Stallman because there were over 100 submissions in 2 weeks.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26713636

1. If you just downvote, the article will fall off the front page quickly enough.

2. If you disagree with a flag, then hit the “vouch” button and resurrect it.

Re: RMS addresses the free software community

#497

Post by JoeyBananas »

stusmall wrote: post #39

"Later in life, I discovered that some people had negative reactions to my behavior, which I did not even know about. Tending to be direct and honest with my thoughts, I sometimes made others uncomfortable or even offended them -- especially women. This was not a choice: I didn't understand the problem enough to know which choices there were. Sometimes I lost my temper because I didn't have the social skills to avoid…

This comment section has devolved into another episode of "Hackernews attempts to justify the pointless character assassination of RMS by scraping the bottom of the barrel for half-assed reasons to be outraged"

Re: RMS addresses the free software community

#498

Post by wrycoder »

dpbriggs wrote: post #198
chc wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't he write that Epstein's child sex trafficking victim being pimped to septuagenarian professor Marvin Minsky should be considered consensual sex and not rape, despite her attestations otherwise?

He didn't write that; it was reported as that. It wasn't appropriate but RMS being RMS wrote about a situation in which the girls were being coerced into presenting willingly, which Minksy then could have believed. RMS is technically correct - this scenario could have happened - but I don't believe it as Minsky couldn't have been that naive.

The best evidence we have indicates that Minsky was not naive - he turned her down, and then remarked to an associate about it.

And his wife denies it, she was with him.

Re: RMS addresses the free software community

#499

Post by ebcode »

sneak wrote: post #61
jan46 wrote: post #22

RMS really stays behind what he says. I'm very glad he is around!

I'm glad he's around, too, and I hope he keeps writing his intelligent and completely tone-deaf rants on his own website. I really hope they get him out of FSF leadership ASAP. The damage he does to the free software movement is incalculable.

> The damage he does to the free software movement is incalculable.

That's like saying the damage George Lucas has done to Star Wars is incalculable. Without George Lucas, there is no Star Wars. Did he fuck it up? Absolutely. Is the world a better place with Star Wars in it? I think so.

We're not going to change these old-timers. That's what makes them old-timers. We're only going to become old-timers ourselves someday (if we're lucky). Probably best to exercise as much compassion for them as we can, and hope the future returns the favor when our time comes.

Re: RMS addresses the free software community

#500

Post by joana035 »

Avamander wrote: post #402
unsungNovelty wrote: post #267

I'm gonna drop this again where ACLU's former president Nadine Strossen shares her view which is more sophisticated and thought through than mine is anyways - https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web

Leah Rowe's article might also be of interest: https://libreboot.org/news/rms.html

I found this page that summarise the whole thing https://jorgemorais.gitlab.io/justice-for-rms/
Post reply on HN