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Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

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Re: Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

#71

Post by newacct583 »

guenthert wrote: post #57
tsimionescu wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His job is entirely ideological, so his ideology receives due scrutiny, even if this were an entirely unrelated field. But, given that Minsky is a significant name in the compiter science communities, and that Stallman continues to deny that Minsky's behavior (having sex with a 17 year-old unwilling sex worker while he was 70? 80?, even though he may have thought she was an 18-year old willinh sex worker) is not emto…

When did you stop beating your wife? Minsky did not have sex with an underage sex worker. Allegedly Epstein directed that woman to offer sex to Minsky, but that didn't occur. It is mind boggling how readily some people throw mud here.

We don't know that it didn't happen either. My understanding is that the relevant section of the deposition in question (which was part of a civil suit, not a criminal matter) is redacted. The unredacted contents were reported via a leak to a journalist. And it's not clear if Giuffre was even asked if sex occurred, as it wasn't relevant to this particular suit and the attorneys present weren't law enforcement or prosecutors with a mandate to chase the kind of evidence.

A reasonable guess is that Minsky probably did have sex, he just wasn't ever actually accused by anyone (being dead by the time this blew up).

Could that be wrong? Sure. But jumping in to argue that the absence of evidence proves innocence while failing to recognize the gravity of the crime involved is EXACTLY the rake that RMS stepped on.

Re: Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

#72

Post by jtsiskin »

semitones wrote: post #14
Splendor wrote: post #5

> He has sincere regrets, especially at how anger toward him personally has negatively impacted the reputation and mission of FSF. This line really misses the mark for me. When you defend a man who raped a 17 year-old girl, your biggest regret shouldn't be about how it harmed your reputation.

This is the point that RMS is trying to make. His argument (iirc) is that "rape" might be an incorrect word used to describe what happened (was it proved to be rape? The only part proved iirc were the ages), and that immediately because the person was 17 instead of 18, that word is used to describe the situation without second thought. I don't think he was saying that there should be zero repercussions, or that we sh…

He was 73 and she was 17. Are we supposed to believe he thought she thought he was cute? It’s unreasonable to imagine he thought sex was something she wanted

Re: Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

#73

Post by tzs »

semitones wrote: post #14
Splendor wrote: post #5

> He has sincere regrets, especially at how anger toward him personally has negatively impacted the reputation and mission of FSF. This line really misses the mark for me. When you defend a man who raped a 17 year-old girl, your biggest regret shouldn't be about how it harmed your reputation.

This is the point that RMS is trying to make. His argument (iirc) is that "rape" might be an incorrect word used to describe what happened (was it proved to be rape? The only part proved iirc were the ages), and that immediately because the person was 17 instead of 18, that word is used to describe the situation without second thought. I don't think he was saying that there should be zero repercussions, or that we sh…

> The only part proved iirc were the ages), and that immediately because the person was 17 instead of 18, that word is used to describe the situation without second thought.

The age of consent there at the time was 16. It was later raised to 18 by the Child Protection Act of 2002.

This will probably come as a surprise to many people, but 16 is also the current age of consent in a majority of US states. It is 16 in 33 states and in DC.

It is 17 in six states, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri, New York, and Texas.

It is 18 in only 11 states, Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, North Dakota, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Re: Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

#74

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

kmeisthax wrote: post #23

This past month has completely destroyed my confidence in FSF leadership. I hope they can earn it back. Say what you want about the open letter - and it is an inaccurate open letter - the fact is that most people who had legitimate criticisms of RMS's leadership decided to sign onto it anyway. You might argue that this is malice. I'd argue that the open letter's ultimate conclusion - wipe the FSF management slate cle…

> They ignored the fact that people within the community had significant problems with his conduct, completely unrelated to the Epstein thing.

Then you should have hounded him for those things, and not twisted the words he actually wrote (which was even more blatant since both what rms said and what Vice said is there in the public) and then tried to pin it onto him. Do you really think everyone is going to have a short memory about how this all was handled? Regardless of whether you like rms or not, would you like to have this kind of due diligence to be applied to you one day?

> If they had handled this the way Linus Torvalds did - i.e. making a show out of toning down his toxic behavior, and then actually toning it down, this could have worked.

So, what you're saying is... people expect a show. It doesn't have to be sincere, it just has to be the right kind of a show, maybe jerking a tear or two. And they know full well it's just a show. But they still are going to make a decision based on the quality of that show. Right?

"Extremely superficial" and "infantile" are words that immediately come to mind to describe this kind of behavior, and frankly speaking, this is not the kind of people that should be let within a mile of any kind of decision making.

Re: Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

#75

Post by horsawlarway »

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #67
danpalmer wrote: post #4

> He has sincere regrets, especially at how anger toward him personally has negatively impacted the reputation and mission of FSF In my opinion, "I'm sorry you were offended enough to stop supporting me" is not a sincere apology. In fact this whole announcement is one big "I'm sorry you were offended" statement. It doesn't apologise for the problem, it "apologises" for not managing to sneak the announcements past peo…

Am I the only one who simply doesn't care? The purpose of the FSF isn't protecting children. It's the promotion of free software. Some tone-deaf words by RMS are only even relevant because of the prevalence of cancel culture and the cult of wokeism. Software will still need to be free after the fad cult of wokeism has been left behind. What the media claimed was Stallman defended Epstein. That isn't true. The whole t…

Nope - I'm right there with you.

This creeping worldview where everything is black and white is starting to get very annoying.

Personally - I'm not an infant and I can recognize that nearly every person (actually - every person) I interact with on a daily basis holds viewpoints that I would agree with, and viewpoints that I would disagree with.

There is no paragon of virtue, and there is no paragon of evil. Everyone will do good and bad (and god help you if you try to get us all to agree which is which).

I still somehow manage to interact productively with most folks.

People who fixate on this type of social judgement are mentally unwell.

Re: Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

#77

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

cryptoz wrote: post #68
danpalmer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that it's binary. Brendan Eich seems to be doing pretty well running Brave after being "cancelled" for donating for anti-gay-marriage causes. I think people remember that but have mostly let him get on with his life because he a) apologised, and b) no longer runs something as visible as Mozilla.

I have been anti Eich since I heard about all this. I dis-recommend Brave to everyone I know and will never support another Brendan Eich product again. I'm frequently surprised that the HN crowd largely seems to give him a pass on his hateful opinions towards LGBT people. He's also an anti-masker and thinks a lot of what Dr Fauci says is actually lies. He is not somebody I look up to or see as a leader, especially in…

It may be a dumb question, but if the product is good, why should I care about personal views of whoever created it?

When people go to the market, are they supposed to ask "okay, I see your eggs are free range, but do you guys support gay marriage?"

Re: Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

#78

Post by chipsa »

Splendor wrote: post #35
azinman2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His point was that we don’t know that Minsky raped anyone from Minsky’s perspective. Go read his actual words again.

> from Minsky’s perspective Oh no, honey.

Rephrase: no one has actually accused Minsky of rape. Someone accused Maxwell of making her try to sleep with Minsky, but there's no testimony that it actually occurred, and Minsky's widow says there was no time she wasn't with him for it to have occurred.

Re: Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

#79

Post by horsawlarway »

newacct583 wrote: post #71
guenthert wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did you stop beating your wife? Minsky did not have sex with an underage sex worker. Allegedly Epstein directed that woman to offer sex to Minsky, but that didn't occur. It is mind boggling how readily some people throw mud here.

We don't know that it didn't happen either. My understanding is that the relevant section of the deposition in question (which was part of a civil suit, not a criminal matter) is redacted. The unredacted contents were reported via a leak to a journalist. And it's not clear if Giuffre was even asked if sex occurred, as it wasn't relevant to this particular suit and the attorneys present weren't law enforcement or pros…

How fucking far we've fallen from "innocent until proven guilty".

Re: Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman

#80

Post by horsawlarway »

ghaff wrote: post #26
DasIch wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if, RMS is hit by a bus tomorrow? The FSF is not a new organization. That it cannot function without RMS means it's failing to stand on its own. That may be acceptable for a new organization but in case of the FSF that's just a massive failure to build a sustainable organization. If you care about the work the FSF is doing (I don't), this announcement should be extremely worrying.

Exactly. So this >30 year old organization spends a paragraph to basically say they're crippled as an organization without RMS. Imagine a company welcoming back a founder who was forced out for some sort of highly questionable behavior and public statements--and the company to come out with a statement a year later that they just couldn't go on without their founder's wisdom. We would rightly say the board and senior…

So Apple, right? We are talking about Steve Jobs here, no?
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