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Richard M. Stallman resigns

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Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns

#111

Post by javagram »

rrss wrote: post #95
javagram wrote: post #10

A good comparison by another poster today here between RMS’ statements on the mailing list and the lies the news media published about them https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990426 I wonder what this means for the influence of the FSF in general. And will RMS stop working on emacs and other software?

> and will RMS stop working on emacs and other software? Has he still been contributing code? My impression was always that he wrote the first versions of emacs,gcc,... many years ago, and many other people have taken over in the intervening decades. I'm quite confident he isn't working on gcc anymore.

I knew he no longer works on GCC and many other projects but I thought he still contributed to emacs. Looking at the recent commits on GitHub, it appears I was wrong about that.

Did he have mainly a supervisory role at the FSF or was he just giving talks lately and no longer actively contributing?

Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns

#112

Post by wyoming »

joe_the_user wrote: post #49
aazaa wrote: post #14

I've seen some online cheering Stallman's resignation from MIT. I suspect they'll also be cheering about this resignation as well. But this is nothing to cheer about. Regardless of what low regard the man might be held as a person, he's being persecuted for having expressing ideas, demanding proof of claims, advocating for objective standards, and asking questions. These are all hallmarks of scientific inquiry. It se…

I too, am a fan of Stallman's accomplishments and I am sad that debate on this topic essentially can't happen. That said, I think Stallman's position really is fundamentally wrong and problematic. Legally, sex with underaged people is rape regardless of consent. Morally, that stance really is justified in the most common circumstance - when the non-underaged person has more power and experience than the underaged per…

To defend Minsky and Prince Andrew, there’s no evidence they knew she was underage. She also appeared in a photo with Andrew and Ghisline Maxwell. Perhaps he knew she was underage but for a member of royalty to fly to a private island and have underage sex with 8+ girls at once is a serious allegation which is what she claimed. Maybe it’s true but at least one of the accused by her (the famous lawyer involved) has claimed to have evidence that she is lying — or more precisely, exaggerating her story.

My ex-girlfriend dated Prince Andrew (she was in her late 20s). I’ve been around some of these people in South Florida and LA. A lot of allegedly good people will ignore red flags but people openly targeting underage girls seems to be isolated to only one or two principals.

Of course, all of this is wrong —- even this concept of pleasure parties where young (over 18) girls are brought to billionaire parties often by younger guys. Turning regular girls into “sugar babies” or prostitutes is a major problem.

Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns

#113

Post by [deleted] »

iamnothere wrote: post #43

RMS was defending Minsky, awkwardly. As someone who has a history of social awkwardness, he should be forgiven for this. He's been a good steward of the FSF, which has doing important work in the service of free (read: non-backdoored) hardware lately. I know there are good people still at the FSF, but I can only hope they are as incorruptible and dogged as RMS. The way this attack came suddenly out of the depths make…

[deleted]

Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns

#114

Post by naringas »

it's rather interesting how all the information technology (social media, etc...) is slowly moving our culture towards increasing self-censorship. One has to have the right opinion or stay quiet.

Having the wrong opinion about certain topics is getting more expensive. Stay away from taboos or else... never mind the fact that what we regard as wrong changes across different societies over time.

Weirdly all the information technology is steering towards being more similar in our opinions and in what we can say without facing consequences.

Recently I started to thing about how in spite of having the ability to share, and change, and store information better and with more ease than ever, we seem to be going in the opposite direction. Instead of having more transparent institutions, everything is getting more "opaque" (so to speak) towards the public (even it this is happening due to overload).

does anyone remember "information wants to be free"? I don't think anybody says that anymore, but I remember reading that a bunch on slashdot in the early 00s

Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns

#115

Post by [deleted] »

bbanyc wrote: post #77
iamnothere wrote: post #43

RMS was defending Minsky, awkwardly. As someone who has a history of social awkwardness, he should be forgiven for this. He's been a good steward of the FSF, which has doing important work in the service of free (read: non-backdoored) hardware lately. I know there are good people still at the FSF, but I can only hope they are as incorruptible and dogged as RMS. The way this attack came suddenly out of the depths make…

Minsky was a child molester. There's no way to defend that.

[deleted]

Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns

#116

Post by wnoise »

jimrandomh wrote: post #8

Before jumping to criticize Stallman, be aware: there is a big difference between what today's round of headlines claim Stallman wrote, and what he actually wrote. Given the relatively clear-cut nature of the lies the press has told about him, I think he ought to be suing for libel.

He'd have a very hard time winning. In many jurisdictions there is a "substantial truth" doctrine: if a statement gives an impression that's substantially close to the truth, it's considered OK, even if technically false. Once you add in how many people typically react to this sort of thing...

http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/substantial-truth

Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns

#117

Post by aazaa »

brian-armstrong wrote: post #90
aazaa wrote: post #14

I've seen some online cheering Stallman's resignation from MIT. I suspect they'll also be cheering about this resignation as well. But this is nothing to cheer about. Regardless of what low regard the man might be held as a person, he's being persecuted for having expressing ideas, demanding proof of claims, advocating for objective standards, and asking questions. These are all hallmarks of scientific inquiry. It se…

Er, sorry, no. A public mailing list is not the correct venue for this discussion. Supposing as you do that society currently holds the wrong opinion on "does sex with minors constitute sexual assault?", the right answer is unlikely to be hashed out on a MIT list for CS activities. You also lend Stallman more weight than he deserves. His resignation will go unnoticed by all outside of our specific tech sphere and cer…

> ... Supposing as you do that society currently holds the wrong opinion on "does sex with minors constitute sexual assault?", the right answer is unlikely to be hashed out on a MIT list for CS activities.

I expressed no opinion either way on that topic. I don't even consider the topic relevant to my position, which is that once we agree that merely asking some questions will result in harsh punishments, we're hosed as a society.

Today, it's the question you hate that gets punished. Tomorrow it will be the question you hold most dear.

Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns

#118

Post by ceejayoz »

ddtaylor wrote: post #87

I don't agree with many things RMS says, but I am not a fan of this cancel culture where character assassinations are orchestrated routinely.

When you've made statements about "voluntary pedophilia" in the past, and you decide to voluntarily wade into the Epstein scandal, that's probably better termed character suicide.

Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns

#119

Post by agumonkey »

hristov wrote: post #47

I think it is unfair to hound him over his latest statement about sexual assault. He is absolutely right that the term sexual assault includes actions that are so different that it can be used to unfairly destroy people's reputation. And if you are going to call someone a monster, it is better to more precisely define what type of sexual assault he did. I myself was sexually assaulted some time ago. I was in an ordin…

This was the kind of gray area people dealt with on their own and cannot IMO be regulated by law (because it's just barely possible to define). There are limits though but today it's becoming too binary and myopic. Weird era.

Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns

#120

Post by robocat »

Why does this feel like such a witch hunt?

It is clear RMS was stunningly clueless to write anything about this, but surely we all know of similar engineers that would make a similar error? If everyone were held up to the same moral standard, we wouldn't have many people left in power! Just to be clear: I'm definitely not supporting hurting children (directly or indirectly) - I hope I'm not falling into the same tar pit.

I certainly respect RMS for what he created and his idealism (although last time I saw him talk he spent about half the time negatively pontificating about Linus and Linux, which seriously damaged his credibility IMHO).

It must be devastating to be on the receiving end of such ire.

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