Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

audio-video.gnu.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 841 posts

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#411

Post by sophacles »

Pannoniae wrote: post #373
jraph wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like Gnome so much, but enshittification is quite a strong word to qualify it. I'd prefer we reserved this word for when stuff gets worse because of money / investors, with incentives at odds with the user needs. I don't believe Gnome suffers from decisions that are bad because of financial incentives.

Well, I am open to changing my mind. What do you think, what's the reason then? From an outsider perspective, 10 years ago I've seen all those beautiful, perfectly usable UIs, and they have almost all disappeared by today. What happened? Why do you think GNOME does that?

It's possible that your subjective opinion of what makes a good UI differs from the subjective opinion of the people doing the work on Gnome.

I'd need some strong evidence that they are selling you to some other party in order to enrich their investors. Who are these investors? How do they even get profits from Gnome? What choices have been made that let 3rd party companies get better access to you/your data from Gnome itself?

Differences of opinion aren't evidence of intentionally screwing over users in order to get more money for investors.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#412

Post by yura »

testermelon wrote: post #67

We are in dire need of succession. Can memories of his reasoning alone withstand the erosion of time in the mindshare of public discussion? I know FSF will codify stuffs and preserve things that are ideologically important. But without someone as strong-headed as him we will have a hard time defending freedom of software.

> But without someone as strong-headed as him we will have a hard time defending freedom of software.

Anyone who is not as strong-headed as he is will have no hope of defending software freedom. The only thing I wish is that he would learn how to be more persuasive, i.e. improve his rhetoric skills. His reasoning and logical skills are exceptional, but winning over the public is not always about being right.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#413

Post by znpy »

Biganon wrote: post #208
jll29 wrote: post #187

I wish RMS all the best for his health, a long and happy life. I also know that if he reads this, it will be from an Emacs mail client on his dusty ThinkPad in text mode (no X11 or Wayland) by sending a URL to a service he wrote that will email him the Web page back - a clean process without any using any tainted proprietary software. He only ever exchanged one sentence with me when we had dinner together with other…

The only thing he told me is "this t-shirt implies a political affiliation that isn't mine; I won't sign it." I had asked him to sign my t-shirt, that depicted him with a beret with a Gnu on it, in the style of Che Guevara

He was right.

Stallman had to fight people comparing free software to communism, and left wing people didn’t help at all in that sense.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#414

Post by op00to »

yura wrote: post #402
op00to wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

He's eccentric, and most people would say that his social skills are subpar. But if you spend more than a few minutes reading his emails or watching him talk you'll realize that he is most definitely /not/ an asshole.

[flagged]

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#415

Post by jraph »

oblio wrote: post #387
op00to wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

I think there are two different things:

- the MIT mailing list discussion of a few years ago where he got a lot of flakes for what I indeed believe was a lot of misunderstanding. He seemed reasonable to me, but you really need subtle and careful reading to notice this. It was easy to misread and understand the contrary of was he thinks. I think he should have refrained from participating in this discussion though. While I don't know if it was intentionally driven by opponents, I do think he was defamed a lot, regardless one's opinion on this story.

- his inappropriate behavior with women, who mostly had to (find tricks to) avoid him, from was I read there and there. I don't think he is misogynistic (many examples on stallman.org supports the opposite) but I believe there's no excuse for this inappropriate behavior if true. He should have shown more respect and learned to avoid making people and women in particular uncomfortable. He is incredibly clever, I can't imagine he would be unable to learn what patterns to avoid, he should have bothered more. I know it's difficult in particular for some autistic people (which he might be) to take hints, but I also know some who became incredibly good at it after learning (better than non-autistic people even, precisely because it was a conscious process - not saying it's easy; it is exhausting for some people). And it does not require being able to take subtle hints to avoid obvious sexist behavior. I was thinking of this and the many times he was mean to someone when I mentioned "unacceptable" in my first comment.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#417

Post by throwaway5Am1k »

Pannoniae wrote: post #404
throwaway5Am1k wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>enshittification This is the 2nd time this word has been used to describe the Linux desktop in this thread, and it's disingenuous. FOSS doesn't do any of the things described with enshitification article: it doesn't sit between buyers and sellers and screw each of them in turn. That's not what's been happening. Maybe the software goes shit, but it is not "enshitification". At every turn there's been alternatives (GN…

I am not misusing the word. I don't know what their incentives are, but they are just progressively making things worse and more locked down in the name of "progress". Bland, corporate, utterly inoffensive and lifeless "design"? Check. Trying to remove theming from users? Check. etc.... The only reason why they haven't succeeded like other OSes is because it's FOSS. But they really want to take away the user's choice…

>I am not misusing the word

Yes you are, see:

>they are just progressively making things worse

That's things going "shit". That's been around for as long as software has been around (e.g. Borland). Enshitification is a very specific thing: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

To quote it:

I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.

>shift the Overton window

You're all over the place. This has nothing to do with enshitification.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#418

Post by op00to »

shafyy wrote: post #359
op00to wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years and years ago he talked at my university lug. I picked him up in my car from the train. The BO smell remained in my car for WEEKS. Dude had a serious aroma.

Classic Seinfeld

stallman and jon voight both well known assholes!

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#420

Post by kypro »

Ensorceled wrote: post #377
calderknight wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there countless examples of people who have been cancelled in this way to various degrees? People accused of sexual crimes, racist beliefs, fringe moral views, heretical religious/theological beliefs, etc. have been cancelled countless times both recently and all throughout recorded history. Examples: * Norman Finkelstein (blacklisted from Academia for his work relating to the Israel/Palestine conflict) * Rich…

> Norman Finkelstein (blacklisted from Academia for his work relating to the Israel/Palestine conflict) He wasn't "cancelled" for being "woke", that's straight up political fallout for going up against Israeli interests. > Richard Stallman (made to resign from his positions at MIT and FSF due to comments relating to Marvin Minsky and Jeffrey Epstein) He's back at FSF. Clearly not "cancelled" as evidenced by this enti…

Cancelled is probably the wrong word. I think what the other commenter meant was that the moral reputation of individuals tends to decline with time since what is considered moral is relative to a given society and a given period of time.

It's very hard to name a historical figure who lived prior to the 1900s who didn't express something racist, sexist or homophobic for example. Similarly, even people who were in the public spotlight 4-5 decades ago have often said things considered morally objectionable today. Even people who are obviously anti-racist like Justin Trudeau used to believe black face was acceptable until very recently, for example.

I don't know if Stallman has been "cancelled". I'm not even sure what that means. But his reputation has been harmed like almost anyone who's been in the public spotlight for long enough.

Post reply on HN