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RMS addresses the free software community

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Re: RMS addresses the free software community

#511

Post by rbanffy »

amazingman wrote: post #455
rbanffy wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I guess the pathological victimhood complex underlying cancel culture just doesn't apply to the neurodivergent. sigh

I think everybody agrees that showing awareness an issue exists and a willingness to change would have gone a long way to prevent the current situation.

Re: RMS addresses the free software community

#512

Post by hnbad »

amazingman wrote: post #455
rbanffy wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I guess the pathological victimhood complex underlying cancel culture just doesn't apply to the neurodivergent. sigh

Being neurodivergent doesn't excuse being actively abusive.

I didn't say he had problems with "theory of mind". I said he didn't think of women, in particular, as human beings. He specifically treated women differently from men and he was being abusive towards them especially while also being abrasive in general. You don't have to be allistic to understand consent (and given that many autistics actually are hyperempathetic and just struggle with social cues, I wouldn't be surprised if allistics are more likely to ignore consent than autistics).

Pretending autism makes it impossible for someone in his position to not be abusive or not understand that what he did was morally wrong and that he was harming people is not a defense of neurodivergent people, it's belittling them.

You're not defending neurodivergence, you're just being patronizing towards autistics. If you're autistic and an abuser, you're an abuser in addition to being autistic.

Re: RMS addresses the free software community

#513

Post by hnbad »

rscoots wrote: post #350
hnbad wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I say "worth it", I'm not simply talking about finances. He's a drain on the organization's reputation. People don't join the FSF because of the great working hours and phenomenal pay, they mostly join it for ideological reasons. We're not talking about retiring a beloved mascot because people don't like it anymore, we're talking about removing an individual holding a position of power who's actively keeping peo…

But agnostic to this specific situation, you would acknowledge that there could be a situation in which the people kept away are morally confused to the point in which it's actually better to do without them from a moral (and long-term business) perspective. "Having a CEO in favor of Data Privacy/Product Safety/Responsible Bank Lending will lead to thousands of potential employees avoiding our company!" I'm sure you'…

You're being intentionally reductive by pivoting to "popularity" when we're talking about someone who has a history of sexual misconduct, highly inappropriate behavior and outright abuse.

Women don't avoid RMS because they think he's a bit of a prick. Women avoid RMS because he's making them feel unsafe. And this comes on top of him being a massive prick to people in general.

Also not actively alienating people who work for the FSF is literally part of the job description. He's unqualified to lead a development team let alone the entire organization.

Re: RMS addresses the free software community

#514

Post by prepend »

torthrowaway998 wrote: post #490
prepend wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That quote is nothing to do with apologizing for statutory rape. Also, statutory rape is completely different than child sexual abuse. Pedophilia is child sexual abuse and a much more serious crime than statutory rape. I don’t think the quote above apologizes for either. Since you conflated pedophilia with statutory rape, it would be irrational for me to claim you somehow support pedophilia because you claimed it was…

>Pedophilia is child sexual abuse Pedophilia is the sexual attraction to children to be more specific, it is not child sexual abuse.

Good point, to be more accurate I should say that the crimes carried out because of pedophilia are more more severe than the crime statutory rape.

Re: RMS addresses the free software community

#515

Post by prepend »

ashtonkem wrote: post #494
prepend wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can argue whatever you like. You stated “slowly sliding into irrelevancy over the past 20 years” and you were clearly wrong.

When I pointed out a few items they do to disprove your timeframe, you moved the goalposts and made statements as if the examples I gave were the only things FSF did.

You made an easy statement to disprove, I disproved it.

Feel free to research FSF and learn about what they do. You’ll certainly find examples of their impact “this decade.” I won’t look them up for you as I fear you’d then want examples from this femtosecond.

Re: RMS addresses the free software community

#516

Post by goodpoint »

concordDance wrote: post #503
goodpoint wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If one minor is involved, it automatically becomes rape? YES. This is how it works legally, because one person does not have the emotional and intellectual maturity to provide fully informed consent.

I really think that lumping forcible rape in the same category as a 17 year old successfuly seducing a 21 year old in California (as opposed to, say, Spain) is bad for discourse. Even if we grant the latter is harmful and wrong, the mechanism via which the harm happens is different, as is the amount of harm.

>a 17 year old successfuly seducing a 21 year old

Most countries have laws allowing relationships within an age difference of 3 or 4 or 5 years.

But some people want to blur the lines around consent claiming that a 15yo can consent to sex with some 45yo without the latter being held responsible.

> the mechanism via which the harm happens is different, as is the amount of harm

I never argued otherwise.

Just like for any other illegal behavior, legal systems are designed take into account the circumstance and impact of an event.

But this does not change the initial point about informed consent and rape being rape.

Re: RMS addresses the free software community

#517

Post by goodpoint »

goodpoint wrote: post #457
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

> 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 behavio…

Downvoting without commenting... interesting.

I'd love to see what contributions to FLOSS the downvoters have achieved.

Re: RMS addresses the free software community

#518

Post by beachwood23 »

koheripbal wrote: post #131
b215826 wrote: post #10

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…

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…

> We would be better off if we could remove those dishonest people from our communities here and elsewhere.

How do you distinguish between dishonesty and honesty? Who gets to determine that?

It sounds like you are attempting to block the people who blocked other people. It isn't a good cycle to get into.

Listening to arguments we disagree with is going to be incredibly valuable in the coming years. Not everyone is arguing bad-faith. There are some people who genuinely believe different things. Addressing those differences directly, through open discussion, will be much more productive than a procedure to "identify and eliminate".

Re: RMS addresses the free software community

#519

Post by jancsika »

iajrz wrote: post #271
jancsika wrote: post #98

That's great, but the problem seems to be RMS's disruption of development activities. This doesn't change that. For example: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-01/msg00... Imagine taking the time to publicly explain to an out-of-practice dev why some technical feature is needed, then being accused of a "pressure campaign" that requires the out-of-practice dev to consult privately, "with people I have…

> That kind of disruption is at odds with every value FOSS devs claim to hold-- meritocratic, decentralized, etc. You're mixing things here. :) meritocracy and decentralization are completely orthogonal to free software. They [edit: s/are/could be construed as a/] part of the open-source ethos as explored in CATB & explained by esr, not a sine-qua-non of free software.

The problem in this case is an unspoken governance model where a participant from decades ago showed up, made public accusations about the trustworthiness of the other participants, then declared a time schedule of his own choosing during which he would consult his own private council to judge the veracity of all the public arguments given.

Whatever we want to call that, and whatever the origins of the problem, it is a bad thing.

Edit: clarification

Re: RMS addresses the free software community

#520

Post by seoaeu »

NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #493
seoaeu wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Um, what? I must be misunderstanding you because rape isn't OK just because the perpetrator has plausible deniability about whether it was intentional. Doubly so when there is a strong case he knew or should have known something something was wrong.
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