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In Support of Richard Stallman

stallmansupport.org

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Re: In Support of Richard Stallman

#81

Post by d_tr »

einpoklum wrote: post #67
radmuzom wrote: post #12

Personal story - I was the person who used to get angry and outraged whenever these stories of harassment were published, taking a stance which was pro the supposed victim. Independently, I used to be a huge fan of Stallman and read a lot of his writings as well as what others wrote about him. So when the story first broke out in 2019, my first reaction was "This is simply not possible." Of course, upon researching f…

I may not have all of the background information, but reading the open letter against the FSF board: https://rms-open-letter.github.io/ and the incidents they cite: https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix I find that the signatories seem to be conflating expressions of opinion with action, and demand extreme action in the face of a collection of statements-of-opinion which they disagree with. But even this is not…

Debian will make an announcement in a bit less than 2 weeks:

https://www.debian.org/vote/2021/vote_002

The most popular proposal seems to be "Call on the FSF to further its governance processes", but "Denounce the witch-hunt against RMS and the FSF" and the support letter are also among the proposals.

Re: In Support of Richard Stallman

#82

Post by dang »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #80
dang wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no problem with FSF or Stallman being discussed on HN. All that is on topic in principle. What's not on topic is endless repetition of a same-old flamewar. When there's a major ongoing topic, one important test is whether there's SNI (Significant New Information) in a submission—or just a follow-up that's continuing the same discussion. If there's no SNI, chances are high that the discussion will be a repeat,…

Do you apply this rule evenly? Do you think that some topics are more trouble than they are worth? Some example topics being US/China geopolitics or the story about "men clamming up" around women. Fruitful discussion can be made in both of these but it very often is not.

We do our best to apply it evenly.

> Do you think that some topics are more trouble than they are worth?

This is too generic a question to answer meaningfully. Probably, but it's more a question of whether a given submission is intellectually interesting and capable of supporting a substantive discussion.

> Some example topics being US/China geopolitics or the story about "men clamming up" around women.

You're conflating two different categories there. One (US/China geopolitics) is one of the most common flamewar topics that gets posted to HN, with discussions getting asymptotically worse, past the point where it's not clear that the forum can handle it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26652363

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26643703

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26637365

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26630159

The other was a specific article (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26612918) on a specific topic that really hasn't had much attention. I spent the better part of a day moderating the latter. I don't know if that answers your question or not but from my perspective it's the same principles being applied in all cases.

One important thing to realize is that we're trying to optimize HN for just one thing, which is curiosity: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... A lot of moderation calls that might seem weird or inconsistent make a lot of sense once you understand the chain of derivation from that rule.

Re: In Support of Richard Stallman

#83

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

okareaman wrote: post #59
unityByFreedom wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. This "debunking" is simply a defense of Stallman's views on pedophelia. And Stallman's statement is still on his website. Nothing has changed, https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html

I'm being downvoted into oblivion by people who believe children should be able to choose to have sex with adults. I have to guess because the downvoters won't leave comments defending their position of support for sex between children and adults. I am surprised that they exist on Hacker News, not by their cowardice.

The people who downvote you do not believe what you claim they do. That's the true reason you are downvoted.

Also, you are twisting the facts by trying to present a discussion about a certain topic as a call to engage in sexual activity.

Re: In Support of Richard Stallman

#84

Post by ttt0 »

myhf wrote: post #45
d_tr wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, he is apparently transphobic because of an article he wrote on pronouns. At least admit that this is ridiculous. The misogyny and ableism claims are similarly stupid, but who cares?

It's truly astonishing how something as innocuous as writing bigoted articles can get someone labeled as a bigot. emoji face with rolling eyes

bigot (noun) - a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices

How does it apply to the article below?

https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html

To me, if anything, it applies to you.

Re: In Support of Richard Stallman

#85

Post by joshuamorton »

dudeinjapan wrote: post #40
timkpaine wrote: post #8

Just an observation, the male/female ratio on this support letter is dramatically higher than on the letter pushing for resignation https://rms-open-letter.github.io/

This would make intuitive sense as there are two different crowds watching two movies here. The older, more male-skewed crowd is familiar with rms from his pioneering work in Free Software, and is willing to cut him leniency on past indiscretions, cringey jokes, and off-the-cuff political rants. The younger, more gender mixed crowd sees little to no value in the FS movement; GPL is a nuisance to the Silicon Valley co…

This would be a more compelling argument if many of the signatories of the anti-RMS letter weren't also former employees of the FSF.

Re: In Support of Richard Stallman

#86

Post by wetmore »

dudeinjapan wrote: post #40
timkpaine wrote: post #8

Just an observation, the male/female ratio on this support letter is dramatically higher than on the letter pushing for resignation https://rms-open-letter.github.io/

This would make intuitive sense as there are two different crowds watching two movies here. The older, more male-skewed crowd is familiar with rms from his pioneering work in Free Software, and is willing to cut him leniency on past indiscretions, cringey jokes, and off-the-cuff political rants. The younger, more gender mixed crowd sees little to no value in the FS movement; GPL is a nuisance to the Silicon Valley co…

I don't think your description of the second group is very charitable.

Re: In Support of Richard Stallman

#87

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

joshuamorton wrote: post #85
dudeinjapan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would make intuitive sense as there are two different crowds watching two movies here. The older, more male-skewed crowd is familiar with rms from his pioneering work in Free Software, and is willing to cut him leniency on past indiscretions, cringey jokes, and off-the-cuff political rants. The younger, more gender mixed crowd sees little to no value in the FS movement; GPL is a nuisance to the Silicon Valley co…

This would be a more compelling argument if many of the signatories of the anti-RMS letter weren't also former employees of the FSF.

This is not an argument at all.

If you ask any former employee about his old boss, the opinion is more likely to be negative (or else he'd be a current employee). It is rather rare for people to part with the job amicably.

Re: In Support of Richard Stallman

#88

Post by joshuamorton »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #87
joshuamorton wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be a more compelling argument if many of the signatories of the anti-RMS letter weren't also former employees of the FSF.

This is not an argument at all. If you ask any former employee about his old boss, the opinion is more likely to be negative (or else he'd be a current employee). It is rather rare for people to part with the job amicably.

If RMS as a boss consistently makes hundreds of people, who are otherwise interested in working at the FSF, unhappy enough to quit. That is absolutely an indictment of his abilities as a leader.

Also, the fact that these people were ever employees of the FSF invalidates the claim that they're a group that "sees little to no value in the FS movement; GPL is a nuisance to the Silicon Valley companies at which they work", since they're FSF employees who don't work for Silicon Valley companies and presumably like the GPL, as they work at the FSF.

Re: In Support of Richard Stallman

#89

Post by stcredzero »

d_tr wrote: post #30
stcredzero wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyway, my 2 cents - get all the necessary background information first before labelling and assassinating the character of a person. I think this is covered in Jared Diamond's Collapse. During the Salem Witch Trials, there was a point where a good chunk of the accusations were motivated by getting someone out of the way, so they could get their land, or otherwise by land disputes. Also covered there: Much of the Rwa…

There are a lot of dynamics and feedback loops at play here. It is a sad situation and I really do not know what can be done at this point...

Speak out against the pathologies of the mob, or stand by and watch them become the norm. Watch those norms displace the value of evidence, due process, innocent until proven guilty. There's your choice.

Lots of people fantasize about what they would have done, had they lived in dark historical period X. Well, consider this a half strength test.

Re: In Support of Richard Stallman

#90

Post by jwalton »

tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #64
emilyst wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He made people uncomfortable. He was asked to stop. He was reported. He kept doing it. So it's not a "slightly odd sense of humor." It's not humor if no one laughs. If someone tells me something makes them uncomfortable, I stop it.

How many people were made uncomfortable? How many times was he asked to stop? Is it documented anywhere , other than this persons tweet? And why are they being called "pleasure cards"? It makes it sound like these were handed out in order to solicit sex from women. Do none of these details matter? Am I going crazy? Why are so many people so incurious about factual information once there is any mention of the word "un…

I think it’s called a “pleasure card” because it’s supposed to be the opposite of a “business card” (like the idiom “business or pleasure”.)
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