Question for those who think Stallman getting forced out is great news: There are people in this forum arguing that Stallman's statements weren't that bad. Should they be fired from their jobs?
Yay for throwaway accounts, I guess.
Richard M. Stallman resigns
161–170 of 1001 posts
Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns
#162RMS 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…
It’s the new wave. Applebaum resigned with ‘a claim from an anonymous victim, which, was quashed by witnesses and alleged other victim’. Linus got his wang cut by ‘women kernel developers thought it was mean ’. And Stallman lost everything for saying his opinion. Good times to stay alive, eh?
Lots of male developers thought Linus was an asshole.
Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns
#163> Washington had slaves, that doesn't mean we should hate him. Counterpoint: yes it does. Judging Washington by the standards of his time and his peers , slavery was abhorrent. Take the case of Quock Walker, who sued for his freedom in 1781, for instance. The chief justice of Massachusetts (and later Washington's own nominee for chief justice of the US) wrote: > As to the doctrine of slavery and the right of Christia…
I'm not saying that Washington thought he was right to have slaves. He was wrong to have slaves and it reflects poorly on him that he did. Rather, I'm saying the amount of good he did for this country far outweighs his wrongs.
You're speaking as if love and hate should cancel out, like weights balancing. But having a love/hate understanding of a person is extremely common. If I were teaching a person who could not understand both (such as a young child) I would start with only the good things about Washington, because that's more accurate if you absolutely had to choose. But, we're all adults here.
Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns
#164"Famed Lisp hacker and author of GCC resigns from Python kindergarten."
About time, man!
Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns
#165it'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 informa…
I'm hesitant to post anything, anywhere, just because I don't want to offend anyone by expressing an earnest opinion.
I think the trend's moving more quickly towards self-censorship than anyone realizes. How can we even quantify that? Those who censor just disappear?
What stands out for me is the obvious monoculture we're developing.
I miss custom PHPBB boards for every little interest and opinion.
Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns
#166For those, like me, who missed the story behind this story... TL;DR: Richard Stallman has resigned from MIT and the FSF over comments he made defending Marvin Minsky "partying" with Epstein, and donations made to MIT. Joi Ito, the Media Lab director resigned over covering up the donations. Nicholas Negroponte "shocked" with his defense of these donations. Lawrence Lessig wrote about trying to rationalize the donations.
Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns
#167I never much liked Richard Stallman. But he's a freethinker, and freethinkers necessarily exist outside the mainstream. So, despite not liking him, I also don't like this turn of events. It does seem arbitrary to me that the same sexual encounter is classified as rape in Arizona and not rape in Virginia. I suppose we have to draw that line somewhere arbitrary. But I wonder if it was a mistake to classify what is call…
The "turn of events" in this case is losing his job because he made the organisations associated with him look bad. And I think it's completely fair for them to kick him to the curb in this case. No one person too important to lose if they turn into a liability. And in this case, I think RMS was well past that point.
Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns
#168Why 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…
Because RMS isn't just another socially awkward engineer. He is a leader and a part of a larger community and is therefore held to a higher standard. The reason for the higher standard is simple, leaders are entrusted with power and need to wield that power better than others. RMS has failed that test today.
> He is a leader and a part of a larger community and is therefore held to a higher standard.
I see plenty of political and tech leaders set extremely low moral standards. Why is RMS being used to set an example? Do you think RMS actually hurt any children?
His comments are tragically inept - but this seems to boil down to being targeted by breaking headlines such as the New York Post: "MIT scientist says Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre was ‘entirely willing’".
Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns
#169I think Stallman did great work with the FSF and GNU.
I also think the FSF will be hugely better off without him around, and it's insane that it took this long.
Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns
#170I'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…
"Asking questions" that deny people's humanity over and over isn't exactly a positive intellectual exercise. We pretty conclusively decided that race based chattel slavery was wrong a while ago. But why? Can we keep expressing ideas and demanding proof of these claims? Can we do it forever? Can we do it while holding positions of power at institutions that are attended by black students?
> We pretty conclusively decided that race based chattel slavery was wrong a while ago.
Unfortunate that you should use this example since slavery was finally abolished precisely because people kept "asking questions" contrary to the prevailing zeitgeist about why slaves did not enjoy the same rights as other humans.
Never has then been a clearer demonstration of why the "stop asking questions" stance advocated by progressives is intellectually bankrupt.