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One of these days it's going to be for real and I wonder how many of his fans will be enraged when someone says something like "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone".
I'd die just to watch it.
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Bold comment. Privately, I was disappointed that he was fine after reading the news; I suspect that you're not alone in your views based on that and I had a similar moral debate internally. I'm proud of you for lending your username on HN to remind everybody how truly awful of a person he can be, but I fear that even your clout cannot save this comment from people that love him.
Actually, my comment on the situation was "My thoughts are with RMS, an important voice and pioneer:” https://twitter.com/#!/raganwald/status/200664134960939008 I got an earful about him from other people both publicly and privately, and I also recall a thread right here on HN a while back where there were allegations of (and spirited discussion about) his interest in getting young men into his hotel room at conferen…
But oh, right, other people said those things, not you. You're just reporting, in a comment thread about the man's uncertain physical health, asking if it's "acceptable" to wish him well.
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Wow, if only he were in the United States where you don't have to rely on the Government for medical care...
Yes, but in US you have to have a lot of money for receiving a very basic and fundamental human right: medical care...
Social/Moral question: Is it acceptable to wish Mr. Stallman well in light of allegations that he has advocated for truly awful practices? e.g. Dutch pedophiles have formed a political party to campaign for legalization. I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. http://stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html
There, you're doing it. It is all right for someone to be skeptical about any commonly held view, except when it's about sex with minors. In any discussion about any kind of sex with anyone under 18 whatsoever, if you're not 100% fully completely convincedly against it, then you're a bad person!!1 Why can't we just discuss this? Like we can discuss anything else? Especially in the US, where the norm appears to be tha…
He's not discussing it. He's just expressing an opinion. It's an opinion which appears to be based in ignorance. Without any reference to evidence it's just an opinion, and it's unfortunately close to the opinions given by paedophiles.
People have spent many years trying to get the harm done by paedophiles taken seriously. It's frustrating when someone with a large audience blurts out the same ignorant nonsense that victims have been fighting for years.
So, feel free to say that sexual abuse with children is not harmful - just make sure to read some of the extensive evidence before you do.
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Wow, I had no idea. That's repugnant. Why do people still invite him to conferences? Surely there's less-objectionable representatives of his views on software.
Free speech also includes speech you disagree with and the exercise of democracy implies the need to discuss things that are repugnant to you. I do not agree with them, but I defend their (both Dutch pedophiles and RMS) right to state their opinions. Even if I strongly disagree with both.
That said, conference speakers are there at the discretion of the organizers. Not being able to speak is a rights violation; not being able to speak at a conference is not.
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I came here expecting a troll :) in Europe you don't have to rely on Government for health care: you have an array of options in the private sector, which are usually much better (in my experience) than the US private hospitals since they have to compete with a free and good-enough option. Most of the population prefer to use the free, government subsidized health system though.
By free, you mean that we prefer to use the system we're already paying anyway ;-) (when we can afford the wait).
This presents an interesting situation. Is Stallman okay with being hooked up to medical computers even though they may not be running free software? What about the privacy issues involved in being checked into a hospital?
You can ask him yourself, if you want: rms@fsf.org
He replies to almost all emails within a couple of days.
EDIT: He actually answered a very similar question in his reddit AMA [1]:
22. two_front_teeth: Suppose your doctor told you that you needed a medical procedure to survive but that the procedure would require inserting a device inside of your body which ran proprietary software. Would you be willing to have the procedure done to save your life?
RMS: The only way I could justify this is if I began developing a free replacement for that very program. It is ok to use a nonfree program for the purpose of developing its free replacement.
Shit. I hope he's okay, it's difficult to tell what happened through the lens of Google Translate. Anyone have more information?
http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/276638/fsf-pres...
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Yes, but in US you have to have a lot of money for receiving a very basic and fundamental human right: medical care...
It's coming. The law is a mess, and phasing in slowly. But it passed, and it's real. It will no doubt have to be fixed over the coming decades, but universal health care in the USA is a reality. But the "lot of money" thing is just reality: health care costs a lot of money, period. And it must be paid. Coming up with a regime to do so without leaving people out or inappropriately burdening them is a hard problem, and…