[flagged]
[flagged]
The Stallman Report
61–70 of 208 posts
Re: The Stallman Report
#62Whether you find the people who want RMS to resign obnoxious or not, this is a very well documented and clear-headed collection of what they think (and convinced me) is wrong with the man
It isn't. It intentionally gives quotes retracted or out of context.
Re: The Stallman Report
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If you want to discuss our report on Hacker News, you will have to help us overcome the systemic reactionary bias on HN. The message is clear: HN has a "bias" (according to them) and their readers must take action in order to discuss it. It could be that readers here disagree with them, it could be that readers don't buy their attempt at character assassination, instead they play victims as if there was a grand cons…
[flagged]
How do we know that there are no powerful men behind anonymous accusations?
Re: The Stallman Report
#64Re: The Stallman Report
#65Puberty was considered the adulthood age for mellinia, that is suitable for marriage (and is still considered so in several places).
Why is this a very controversial topic?
Re: The Stallman Report
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Epstein quote is taken out of context and his controversial opinion about age of consent (which isn't even that different from the opinions held by esteemed philosophers like Michel Foucault and Simone de Beauvoir) was retracted publicly by him years ago.
Well if you have read the document he only retracted his opinion on children children and childhood seems to stop for him at 14 and after that you are a teenager and you are fair game. I have a lot of sympathy for teenager leading their own sex lives with each other. I have a lot less sympathy for adults that bring up the fact that teenager are entitled to a sexuality when the implication is that adults shouldn't be…
> you are fair game
I am pretty confident that when Stallman writes about large age gaps, he wasn't condoning predatory behaviour, but wanted to emphasize the fact that some people can be fully capable of making their own decisions even if they are in their teens. (I would go a little further to add that some people in their twenties or later can be equally vulnerable to predatory behaviour as regular sheltered teens, and it's mostly up to the upbringing they recieved) Maybe I'm too charitable in my interpretation, but "teens being fair game" is not what I understood for sure.
Re: The Stallman Report
#67Whether you find the people who want RMS to resign obnoxious or not, this is a very well documented and clear-headed collection of what they think (and convinced me) is wrong with the man
It isn't. It intentionally gives quotes retracted or out of context.
Care to elaborate and put them in the proper context?
...and as far as I understood, that comment was not completely retracted, but amended to change the "age bar" to 14?
Re: The Stallman Report
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If these people succeeded in their apparent goal of making RMS less popular, do they think the world will love them for it? Sometimes one does the right thing not because the world will love you, but because it is the right thing.
Bullying an old man with cancer over off-colored jokes made half a century ago and opinions that he publicly retracted is "the right thing"? That's absurd.
Does the old man still carry authority and a leadership position in a globally influential movement?
Leaders are held accountable.
Re: The Stallman Report
#69On the one hand, the case seems too little. Some weird opinions (but are you in the free country with free speech to express even weird opinions?), then an interaction back in the 80's(!!!), exactly one weird comment on stage, suggestive behaviour... On the other hand, it's not a criminal charge. It's about who and how leads an institution. I've seen post-USSR academic institutions led by old directors for decades, w…
That's pretty insightful comment for someone of post-USSR background as well. The important difference here is that all the institutions in question were founded by Stallman himself. And there are plenty of open-source communities that don't involve Stallman at all, and the barrier to create new ones is low as well - as soon as people are willing to follow you.
And, indeed, I can't speak for everyone but his continued involvement with FSF has put it off the list of organizations I'm interested in working with at all.
Re: The Stallman Report
#70Puberty was considered the adulthood age for mellinia, that is suitable for marriage (and is still considered so in several places). Why is this a very controversial topic?
Taboos are often controversial.
And if he were a sociologist or anthropologist, published in the field with any reputation at all in it, who could speak on that complex dynamic over history and the interplay between environment, tradition, human biology, and social context, he might have a prayer of using reason to move the needle on the taboos in his own culture. But he's not. He's a professor in another field speaking way out on the deep end of a field he doesn't have the credentials to be taken seriously in.
We all have freedom of speech, but academic professors are expected to uphold a level of rigor that most people are not, and his writings on this topic harm his credibility and therefore, indirectly, his ability to advocate for free software.