The title of the blog post is "interim housing," and should be changed from its current clickbait title per the site guidelines, and nowhere in the post does Stallman say he's homeless, or that he's looking for a permanent residence.
He may or may not be, but
I am looking for a room in a shared house or apartment as an
interim place where I could stay for at least two months.
Ideally I would have the option of staying for up to six
months, but I could do without that.
Well this is what happens when people use cancel culture on anyone that they disagree with, especially career twitter archaeologists who dig up old tweets and put them out of context.
The result? A pioneering hacker in computer science, free software and privacy that has been shamed for wrong-thinkery, and has been financially suffocated, censored, and successfully cancelled. This cancel-culture is disgusting and is utterly unacceptable to treat anybody like this, no matter what their views are.
Taking a stance of 'no matter what their views are' seems a bit extreme to me, for example, I would not mind people who condone the killing or expulsion of a given race being 'cancelled'. My concern is primarily with people taking comments that don't reflect a person's current views, willingly disregarding context or simply having views I don't find particularly objectionable.
>My concern is primarily with people taking comments that don't reflect a person's current views, willingly disregarding context or simply having views I don't find particularly objectionable.
To be fair, and as far as I'm aware, RMS never bothered to inform anyone of his "current" views on pedophilia until after the fact of the Medium article going viral[0]. His prior views on the matter were current as far as the public record was concerned until that point, and RMS was willing to let that stand for about 20 years.
This seems like some misguided ire. Stallman has notoriously lived like this for a long time, this isn't a new thing. He is known for being somewhat of a couch surfer. I wouldn't assume everything you read about Stallman in the future is somehow related to people calling him out for odd stances on pedophilia (which people have a right to do).
I remember reading somewhere that his only source of income was giving talks, which he does irregularly. As the @krapp noted (don't know why he was downvoted) he may or may not be in dire straits but he is said to care little about money to the point of getting himself in tricky financial situations. Kinda like the brilliant Computer Science/Math student who helps everyone else with their assignments but gets kicked out of school for failing too many classes--because he didn't bother to turn in assignments.
On one hand, nobody should be encouraging RMS to continue in his bizarre offensive lifestyle. It's well past time he stopped treating women like garbage, and stopped treating men like garbage, and learned how to be a decent human being.
On the other hand, he's such a houseguest from hell that anyone who ignores basic morality and takes him in anyway will be sufficiently punished for their breach and no further social sanction will be necessary.
12 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 31.5 ms ] threadEdit: I'm not quite sure why I'm being downvoted, he mentioned this in Free As In Freedom.
He may or may not be, but
doesn't make it seem like he's in dire straits.The result? A pioneering hacker in computer science, free software and privacy that has been shamed for wrong-thinkery, and has been financially suffocated, censored, and successfully cancelled. This cancel-culture is disgusting and is utterly unacceptable to treat anybody like this, no matter what their views are.
To be fair, and as far as I'm aware, RMS never bothered to inform anyone of his "current" views on pedophilia until after the fact of the Medium article going viral[0]. His prior views on the matter were current as far as the public record was concerned until that point, and RMS was willing to let that stand for about 20 years.
[0]https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...
I wholeheartedly agree. Excommunication (plus more!) for speech is disastrous.
Richard Stallman doesn't tweet. What are you talking about?
On the other hand, he's such a houseguest from hell that anyone who ignores basic morality and takes him in anyway will be sufficiently punished for their breach and no further social sanction will be necessary.