He might’ve been an influential figure, but he’s still a creep. Just because someone made something once doesn’t mean we should turn a blind eye towards them.
> What’s most disturbing about this is how many of my friends and peers support Stallman’s removal. At first it was because they took the false accusations at face value. When I pointed out that these accusations were lies, they supported Stallman’s removal for other reasons. They focused on his tone deaf communication style and awkward demeanor. They spoke of behavior from decades ago and pointed out the fact that he had a mattress in his office. (Apparently that’s where he often slept.) As far as I can tell, the worst allegations against Stallman involve him being a socially clueless aspie. He held his positions at MIT, GNU, and the FSF for over thirty years, and in that time nobody accused him of coercion, unwanted touching, or verbal harassment. If an occasional social gaffe or failed attempt at humor is all it takes to get thrown out on the street, nobody is safe.
the problem is a combination of being socially clueless but also being entirely unable to change because asking rms to change will escalate into an endless discussion about principles where he was always justified, no matter the topic, so people stopped trying at some point and went for plant defense[1] instead.
I believe the point of the article is that the personality that is resistant to change may be useful when this person believes in an idea (free software, privacy, etc). When they are confronted about the idea they will also not be willing to change. Then the ideas can develop themselves to become reality. Of course when this rigidity comes to social behavior this may be an issue.
To go a bit philosophical: I wonder if we can truly be rigid in some aspects and flexible in others. I guess this can be taught.
How is he a creep and what did he do to justify how he was treated? Did you read his comment about his defense of Marvin Lee Minsky? Precisely what was creepy or wrong about it?
1. What's your evidence? Where are these "documented" cases?
2. What incident are you referring to? His comments that led to his removal were about language and preciseness. Did you read his comment? Are you sure you know what the background/context is here?
Can you please read the thread yourself and point out to specific instances you are referring to? Because there is a lot of false information in this thread, like so:
> Last week, on a private MIT mailing list, Richard Stallman argued that a sex trafficking survivor may have "willingly" presented herself, and thus Minksey hadn't really committed sexual assault. That being coerced by Epstein made it not rape.
Which is flat out wrong, and something that the article here explicitly demonstrates why it's false. Did you read the "Defense of Richard Stallman" article presented here in this thread?
I read that thread before. The only "creep" I got out of it was that he was an awkward wannabe-dater.
And that thread contains misleading or outright false information, so I am honestly not sure what of it is truth-worthy. Do you have secondary sources, or is this internet rumor all?
before someone goes into a defensive rage... rms being a creep and particularly women at MIT going to great lengths to avoid him is well documented
these remarks, while slightly distorted by the media, are still part of a pattern of dismissing sexual assault (including the way RMS insists on not using the word assault despite it being well understood that assault does not have to be physical violence)
rms is the sort of person who overshoots principled to a point everyone is tired of talking to them and where in-person criticism dies before it is even expressed because why bother with someone who will never seek to be better anyway and that afforded him a lot of leeway, even if i think the means of removing him now have been not entirely clean, it still was overdue
women at MIT going to great lengths to avoid him is well documented
Genuine question: where is this documented? I have been using GNU stuff for 25 years and until now have never heard about this. Do you have links to reputable sources?
So are weird polyamorous people who are into "cuddle puddles" committing sexual assault or something similar by advertising that fact?
It seems to me that Stallman advertising that he likes cuddles is automatically considered creepy, beyond the pale, whereas if a properly woke community of appropriately diverse individuals did the same, it would be just considered part of that culture and accepted.
What's more, Stallman used to be part of what that community used to be. He is a hippie. I bet people not up to speed on him reading about this incident assume he's an alt-righter who voted for Trump, but he supports Bernie Sanders, says that Australians should vote for the Greens, and advocates for weird gender-neutral pronouns.
And he likes cuddles and dared to advertise that fact!
I acknowledge that putting that on a business card is out of line in today's culture, but god I wish it wasn't. If you are creeped out by an old man wanting cuddles, but you wouldn't if it were someone else, then you are a bigot. And if you're creeped out any people at all advertising that they like cuddles, then that is stifling and the future is going to be bland and full of lonely people.
So, basically, exactly what the article says, a big nothing. The plants thing is stupid, rms doesn't hate plants. Sarah Mei appears to have no special reason to hate rms, shes a well known person who is extremely negative about anyone in software who's said anything offensive, including Linus, etc.
Well...
An anonymous source, from the internet, which itself had heard of this only through another party.
Dismissing unreliable sources like that is a safe default, no?
Are you... are you serious? Do you expect this to convince sane people? The disingenuousness on display in these threads is amazing.
"Maybe this is RMS's last-ditch effort to return to his glory days, when he could put abortion references in the documentation, and talk about virginity in his conference talks, and nobody would push back."
"I’m a CIS male and I’ve avoided GPL and every event he’s associated with in boston for over ten years because I didn’t like his macho-aggressive attitudes towards everything."
"If a women reports a FOSS hero, does anyone hear it?"
Oh, and for some reason pretty much everyone in these threads is either mistaken or deliberately lying about his recent comments about Minsky.
These people are trying to ruin someone's life and they're treating the entire thing like a joke.
I don't expect this to convince insane people. By which i mean you're insane. You take people using inclusive language as automatically dismissible. Clear sign I'm wasting my time.
>Oh, and for some reason pretty much everyone in these threads is either mistaken or deliberately lying about his recent comments about Minsky.
These threads are mostly dated 2018. The one tweet that isn't is referencing a talk from August. I don't know what you're talking about.
If we are going to destroy the lives of men for being creepy and having socially awkward game, do we also get a pass for undesired female behavior, such as cuntiness and sleeping around?
RMS could have the most pleasing and charming pick-up artistry, and most women would still avoid him like the plague. I think people like RMS should just stop trying to connect to the opposite sex altogether, because clearly, making women reject your advances is a dangerous game for some.
The genius dude just did not want to change his mind. What a terrible and unprofessional thing to do. He should have listened and could be banging a cancel culture beast right now.
Edit: The proof you give: "My first interaction with RMS was at a hacker con at 19. He asked my name, I gave it, whether I went to MIT (I had an MIT shirt on), and after confirmation I did, asked me on a date. I said no. That was our entire conversation."
What a crime! What a crime! I bet that pushed her out of the industry altogether, into an industry where men are all married.
> before someone goes into a defensive rage... rms being a creep and particularly women at MIT going to great lengths to avoid him is well documented
I can't believe this hasn't been asked yet - if the allegations are founded, why didn't MIT do anything as his employer? They have a statutory obligation to provide a safe workplace.
I hate to be the one to draw the feminism card on HN because I know I'll attract a swarm of people that'll 'disagree' with me by shouting things at me, but that is called rape culture, and despite the confusing name, it is not solely about rape.
If that sounds hard to believe I can empathise, it took a personal anecdote for me to get and notice the spread of it too.
If you're wondering how one would be disincentivized, have a lot at how people react:
I don't know, there doesn't seem to be any documented instances of that I can find. Doesn't mean there wasn't any, but as I said, disincentives to reporting are high.
The article also clearly states "As far as I can tell, the worst allegations against Stallman involve him being a socially clueless aspie", which I believe matches your "he's still a creep". I tend to agree, he's not a socially well adjusted person. But did that really interfere with his work for the FSF? From what I can gather, he did a pretty good job at it :-/
Many brilliant people developed earlier unusual if not antisocial behaviour as a result of being estranged and often derided by others because of them being smarter. Or should we really dismiss all technical work by Leonardo Da Vinci because it was later revealed that he was a pedophile?
Stallman did nothing like that, he just made some comments everyone should avoid in today's new middle ages, yet he is treated like a criminal. He failed to realize there are snipers out there, possibly paid ones, waiting for the six lines that could make an argument for hanging him, and he gave them those six lines: that's his only fault.
The FOSS community will have to watch very closely who is going to benefit from his departure.
I've seen this said a few times, and it needs to be cleared up.
Stallman defended Minsky by saying it wasn't rape and it was assault. To mount this defence Stallman had to ignore common English definitions for both words, and he had to ignore the legal definitions of both words.
People are angry at Stallman for what he actually said, not what you think they think he said.
If you want to say that you want necrophiles to fuck your corpse when you die; that you think the harms of incestual abuse can be avoided with condom use; that you think child abuse isn't that harmful; that you think sexual assault isn't assault unless force or violence is used; that having sex with a trafficked coerced child isn't rape; then you shouldn't be surprised when projects want to distance themselves from your views.
> You don’t get the free software movement without a person like Richard Stallman
We don't get the free software movement we have without Stallman, but what's that actually saying? How popular would gnu be if it had someone who was better at communication involved?
> We don't get the free software movement we have without Stallman, but what's that actually saying? How popular would gnu be if it had someone who was better at communication involved?
Not many people thinking about it in this way, kudos.
> How popular would gnu be if it had someone who was better at communication involved?
Also, how popular would gnu be if the US had a copyright reform, or if we lived in a fairy world with unicorns? There is no point to such questions: if there ever was a person who could be a worthy replacement of rms at the helm of FSF, they preferred to remain invisible. So the most plausible scenario is not "someone like rms but better", it's "nobody remotely as good at all".
> Stallman defended Minsky by saying it wasn't rape and it was assault. To mount this defence Stallman had to ignore common English definitions for both words, and he had to ignore the legal definitions of both words.
I disagree on both accounts. Rape, to derive its moral severity, requires either intent or negligence. I realize there's a meme about "she told me she was 18" but that does fall under the negligence angle - the implication is "he should have known". (And Minksy did know, or at least suspected.) But drop into a situation where there was no way for them to know, and at least to my intuition the moral badness disappears.
I think there's just a level of ... the sexual event alone creates a certain mass of moral badness, and this mass has to go somewhere, so it's usually pinned on the older partner. However, I'm fully willing to pin it on Epstein in this case if it has to go anywhere. And if that isn't possible - well, maybe it can't be put anywhere. I think this is a social/moral difference; I come from a society where even the law acknowledges that sometimes there's morally bad events that have no guilty party at all. If a mentally disabled person rapes someone because they have no concept of consent, whose moral fault is it? Where do we put the blame? To me, it's obvious that we put it with the people and structures that were supposed to have prevented the event but failed to. If the event was provoked, we put it with the people who provoked it. In this case, that person is unambiguously Epstein, who was the source and cause of all the moral badness in play. This is not always possible, but conveniently in this case it is.
You're not clearing things up; you are contributing to the misinformation. Your unsubstantiated claim that "Stallman defended Minsky" really doesn't help, unless, perhaps, it helps train people to ignore what they read on the Internet about such matters.
Here's what a proper newspaper wrote on the subject:
> "In short: Stallman made some technically-correct-but-utterly-tactless comments on a private mailing list, mostly in defense of his late friend and colleague Marvin Minsky."
The first fucking line of your "proper newspaper" article
> after leaked emails appeared to show him downplaying another academic’s alleged participation in the purported sex trafficking of minors by Jeffrey Epstein.
His creepy, shirtless "get on my mattress" calls to female undergrads at MIT register as more than being awkward or autistic. That alone should be unacceptable behavior for faculty.
I've worked in an office where the lender complained with the neighbouring artists about their mattresses. Because "you're not allowed to sleep in the office." (He didn't complain with us because we put them away after use.) The response he got? "Oh we use those for sex only." Topic dropped :-)
People are angry at Stallman for what he actually said, not what you think they think he said.
I think it's more to the point that people who, for whatever reasons, have a grudge against Professor Stallman (and there are undoubtedly a lot of those) are very happily jumping on the band waggon.
This headline implies Stallman was defending Epstein, not Minsky, and suggest he said the victim was "willing".
> and he had to ignore the legal definitions of both words
He didn't ignore them, he criticised their usage and how they are perceived by the public; Are you going to comment on the full context and motivation behind Stallmans' comment?
> They focused on his tone deaf communication style and awkward demeanor. They spoke of behavior from decades ago and pointed out the fact that he had a mattress in his office.
It wasn't just awkward demeanor. He actively made women feel unwelcome in the workplace and behaved unprofessionally over and over again.
> He held his positions at MIT, GNU, and the FSF for over thirty years, and in that time nobody accused him of coercion, unwanted touching, or verbal harassment
Yes, because of people like you, Geoff. When people like Stallman behave like they do and say the things they say they don't have to face the consequences because people don't want to speak up, because they're afraid of being called liars or censors. That's how authority figures and popular individuals keep getting away with it.
The second paragraph of the post is irrelevant and further proves the point. Stallman's contributions to free software don't excuse his conduct.
> It wasn't just awkward demeanor. He actively made women feel unwelcome in the workplace and behaved unprofessionally over and over again.
Every episode I read about fell into the category of "socially awkward adult male". If we can't, as a group, tolerate awkwardness, we are very much down the rabbit hole of mandatory social conformity.
By all means, point me to a real abuse scenario by Stallman. I like being proven wrong.
Ignoring a legal age of consent, refusing to accept the accepted definitions of assault and rape, and claiming they were actually willing are emphatically not just "socially awkward".
On his website, for example, Stallman says that he "reject[s] the term sexual assault" completely.[1]
~edit: I have included the full quote below as I did not intend to twist/misrepresent in any way.
Stallman writes:
" The term is applied to a broad range of actions, ranging from stealing a kiss to rape, as well as other things in between. It acts as propaganda for treating them the same.
There seems to be an exception for TSA agents, however.
The term is further stretched to include sexual harassment, which is not a specific act, but rather a pattern of acts that amounts to a form of gender bias. Gender bias is rightly prohibited in certain situations for the sake of equal opportunity.
I don't think that rape should be treated like stealing a kiss, so I reject the term "sexual assault" completely."
...and does a great job explaining his pov. It's not like he's saying that sexual assaults do not exist, and people should be able to rape / immodestly touch whoever they please with impunity.
> Sexual assault: The term is applied to a broad range of actions, ranging from stealing a kiss to rape, as well as other things in between. It acts as propaganda for treating them the same.
"Violent crime" also applies to a broad range of actions. It's not a propaganda term for treating all kinds of violent crime as the same. Why would that be the case for sexual assault?
On one side, you indeed quote Stallman itself and the source of the quote. On the other side the complete quote reads:
The term is applied to a broad range of actions, ranging from stealing a kiss to rape, as well as other things in between. It acts as propaganda for treating them the same.
There seems to be an exception for TSA agents, however.
The term is further stretched to include sexual harassment, which is not a specific act, but rather a pattern of acts that amounts to a form of gender bias. Gender bias is rightly prohibited in certain situations for the sake of equal opportunity.
I don't think that rape should be treated like stealing a kiss, so I reject the term "sexual assault" completely.
Reading the full context and your except was totally different for me. The full context, implies he doesn't accept the term, because it's an umbrella term that does more harm, than good. That's arguable, but doesn't seem a radical opinion.
In fact, IMO, I agree that using "sexual assault" for something other than rape / attempt of, is depreciating the full meaning of the term and victims are normally the first ones to be affected by it.
I do agree that other crimes, born from gender inequality, are very serious as well - that doesn't mean, we should bundle them up. How would society react, if slaps started to be prosecuted as attempted murders?
Hmm. I wasn't trying to twist his words at all, so thanks for quoting in full.
If I see a problem with his characterization of the term "sexual assault" / his reasoning in rejecting it, it's that the "broad range of actions" he says are labeled with the term "sexual assault" share one common trait: they happened without the consent of one party. He kind of ignores this in favour of describing the term as "propaganda for treating [acts of non-rape] as the same". And I find the argument that "one unwanted act that I and presumably others find mostly harmless was described as sexual assault, thus this term has lost its meaning in general" somewhat hard to swallow.
Wikipedia: "Sexual assault is an act in which a person intentionally sexually touches another person without that person's consent, or coerces or physically forces a person to engage in a sexual act against their will."[1]
If we did away with the term "sexual assault", I'm not sure what terms we would be left with when describing such things, except to describe the exact acts themselves.
In fact, I'm not sure if I buy the idea that "the term sexual assault is losing/has lost its meaning because it used to mean rape" at all, because there has always been a word for that: rape. As far as I know, this term has always existed to describe a broad-range of sexual acts performed without consent.
He also explains why, and he raises a good point. Sexual assault covers a lot of different things, but to many if not most people it implies the worst.
I think the whole point of the Stallman discussion as of lately is that people only decide to read what they want to read, ignoring context.
> I don't think that rape should be treated like stealing a kiss, so I reject the term "sexual assault" completely.
From my understanding, he disagrees with the term because it is imprecise, and the greater of two evils might be mixed up with the lesser - with the result that the greater evil might be perceived as less evil as it actually is.
(Edit: A sibling comment gets the above thought better, describing it as an "umbrella term".)
The way you quote him, you try (seem to) to imply that he thinks there is no such thing denoting "sexual assault". Or using the same logical reasoning: Are you, spats1990, implying that rape should be treated like "stealing a kiss"? I doubt you are, but I strongly doubt he does either.
I've replied upthread and edited my post to include the full quote. I wasn't trying to twist his words.
As I wrote in my reply to the post you're referring to, I seem to think that the term sexual assault is necessarily imprecise--but in another sense, it isn't imprecise at all, as all the acts described by it share a single commonality, which is lack of consent.
Claiming they were actually willing and claiming they presented themselves as actually willing are two very different things. These are very dangerous accusations you are throwing around - you might do well to stick to what he actually said and wrote.
It seems to me not credible that a 70 year old Minsky believed that a quite young lady would, on minutes of meeting him, be so attracted that she would be anxious to be intimate.
Possibly, but that is not the point. The point is that RMS never said the victims were willing, which is the quote (or one of the quotes) he's being burnt for.
He might have thought she was attracted to him. Anna Nicole Smith claimed to have been attracted to her 90-something husband. There have been enough historical examples where power or intellect apparently attracts. Or maybe he thought she was attracted to Epstein's money and wanted to be on his good side by "entertaining" his friends. Or maybe he was fully aware of the situation.
We cannot know what he thought, and we cannot even ask since he is dead, and we did not even know what actually happened after she "offered" herself (unwillingly and coerced by Epstein, of course).
He did not "ignore" age of consent, and what you describe as "refusing to accept the accepted definitions" is not refusal to accept the law, as you ambiguously characterise it, but the crime of arguing how unhelpful those definitions are in the context he describes.
And what could be more normal than an 17 year old girl on a billionaire's private island willingly offering free sex to a man in his 70s? How could Minsky possibly have suspected that anything was amiss?
I have read over your comment a few times and still have no idea what you mean. But yeah, I'm confident in my judgment of what is and isn't normal in this instance.
I guess it's possible Minsky confused her for a 18 year old prostitute. Whether that counts as "willing" depends on your views on prostitution, of course.
Did you even bother to read the emails or at the very least the article? This misconception is exactly what's being argued there, that Stallman said something clearly different.
> Ignoring a legal age of consent
By doing what, raping someone underage? Or rather expressing his opinion that it's ridiculous that when in one state the age of consent is 16, in another one it's 18, and yet people are judged morally and criminally for failing to distinguish between these two? So basically what you're saying is that possessing a non-standard opinion and criticizing existing laws should make you a non-person. I believe you'd feel very much at home in the USSR, the communist party had the same ideas.
Once people have decided, or taken a position, facts and evidence are virtually useless.
I read here on HN a few days ago that the dude in question, TURNED THE GIRL DOWN. How people are crucifying two people (Stallman and the dead guy) for underage rape that never happened is just crazy.
it's SJW and cancel culture, with people who pile on as a virtue signalling that is causing this.
See how badly critics blasted dave chappel for his new show, despite the audience loving the jokes (even if they were edgy, they were done in good taste, and pin-pointed a problem that society at large refuses to comment or talk about).
Agreed. If Stallman was a charming, charismatic, handsome guy with a square jaw and good hair the whole conversation would probably have a different lens placed on it.
Yesn't IMO. When discussing RMS as a person I agree but in the context of the presidency of the FSF (which is more or less the "face of free software") we should certainly take into account what kind of energy he radiates.
Hot, charming people get away with things that ugly awkward people don't. However, the lesson to be drawn from this isn't that it's ok to do those things. Rather, it's that life is unfair.
except that Stallman was let off for years ... I think people often just let him off because he wasn't "Hot, charming" and they maybe felt a certain amount of pity for him ...
There is study after study after study concluding that pretty people on average have it easier in life, are treated better, have it easier to achieve successful careers, have it easier to find sexual partners, get away with more things, etc...
Have you never heard of the 'halo effect'? I find it really sad and closes minded that you would call something 'incel' simply because you're incapable of fathoming the idea that things are actually harder for some people.
> If we can't, as a group, tolerate awkwardness, we are very much down the rabbit hole of mandatory social conformity.
Which seem to go against all goals of diversity and inclusiveness. If we strive for more diverse community we have accept quirks of some people. Only in purely homogeneous group everybody can be comfortable and not offended.
> I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.
> The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia" also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally--but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.
> Some rules might be called for when these acts directly affect other people's interests. For incest, contraception could be mandatory to avoid risk of inbreeding. For prostitution, a license should be required to ensure prostitutes get regular medical check-ups, and they should have training and support in insisting on use of condoms. This will be an advance in public health, compared with the situation today.
I don't understand how what you've answered changes the fact that Stallman openly implied with his opinion that absence of consent (rape) makes a sexual relation unethical and bad.
Stallman is against rape, and arguing that criticizing the ambiguous use of a term in a certain context (sexual assault) makes he somehow pro-rape seems unreasonable (but I'm open to explanations I didn't consider, if you wish to try).
In general, if you have any sources for your claims feel free to share them (I can't find any sources quoting stallman saying anything that vaguely resembles a pro-rape argument, and I've gone through most comments in the section).
More specifically, Stallman didn't ever say that raping children doesn't harm them, if your definition of rape is sex without consent (that's the legal definition in my country). He said that if you have consensual sex with a minor then that may not be harmful for him/her (the fact that this is not "raping children" follows from the very definition of rape).
I'm trying to leave my feelings aside but you really seem to be misquoting Stallman to try to make a point. I really hope I'm wrong about this so I'm genuinely curious about what did you mean when you said he stated that "raping children doesn't harm them".
Autism isn't a catch-all excuse for his behaviour and using it as one spits in the face of people with autism who face the same challenges and work hard to improve.
My comment is as much a general observation as it is a specific one, because unfortunately I have seen this before.
People, even many of the ones advocating for inclusivity, are extremely unforgiving of autistic traits and will dogpile on any social faux-pass accidentally made.
Half of the academic computer science community is autistic and not attractive, and the vast majority of them somehow manages to refrain from making female colleagues and students constantly uncomfortabe, provoking outrage by doubting the well-supported testimony of a child sex abuse victim, and so forth.
> If we can't, as a group, tolerate awkwardness, we are very much down the rabbit hole of mandatory social conformity.
There's a difference between tolerating it to a degree and letting leaders continue uncomfortable awkwardness. If it's enough to distance people, maybe they're not a great candidate for a leader. That doesn't remove anything from their achievements and abilities to contribute or to spread new ideas. The post says "If an occasional social gaffe or failed attempt at humor is all it takes to get thrown out on the street" - entirely omitting the space occupied by almost all of us: between homelessness and being a leader of a global movement/organisation.
We can at the same time tolerate awkwardness and hold our local and global leaders to high standards.
The point of a leader is that they do/present something that gathers followers. If the followers say "no, that's not ok", they're by definition not a good leader anymore (or not for that group of people - RMS can definitely create an FSF clone with people who accept him).
There's lots of leaders who love the status quo and organise people around it. No challenging needed. (for example priests being leaders for a small local community)
There's also lots of leaders (many important ones on history) who say controversial things. You are saying they shouldn't be given a platform by society, which I can't disagree with more.
This isn't the followers saying "no, that's not ok", this is large institutions saying "no" on behalf of a vocal few.
Mu. You asked if leader is defined by challenging things. I gave an alternative definition with an example of leaders not challenging things. (and sure, there are also those who do challenge) No-platforming is a completely different topic, and I have expressed no opinions about it.
You haven't responded to my point here, this is just playing semantics and making me guess your definitions.
Despite how you are dancing around responses, from where I see it: You are clearly denying him a platform by saying he shouldnt be a 'leader' (ie. keep his posts). You are making that decision by institutions instead of individuals. You are holding all the worlds 'leaders' to your own moral views which is logically inconsistent.
You didn't just give an example of a leader who doesn't challenge things. You literally stated that if a follower disagrees with the leader, then "by definition" he/she is not a good leader.
You are implying that the definition of "leader" includes that you can't challenge things people may not find ok (disagree with).
a minority of followers didn't like what RMS did (from what i hear). Do we now aim to please every body, even if it means removing the awkward visionaries that would've otherwise have contributed more, and replace them with crowd-pleasing socialites that navigate people gracefully?
Why do you think the second case happened? He resigned from a prestigious position on his own terms. If I expected anyone to tell straight "I've been forced to resign" or "I've been fired due to politics", it would be RMS. He didn't, and nobody seems to be preventing him to take part in public life - as evidenced by the number of posts, there's a number of people who still want to work with him.
He was witch-hunted on the internet by a serial witch-hunter, some "journalists" who lack basic reading comprehension and the lynch mob that ensured. It's naive to believe he resigned voluntarily. He was pressured into it, probably believed the witch-hunters, lynchmobgoers and finger pointers to a certain degree that he indeed is evil, resigned to protect what he created and therefore was nice enough to not shit all over the institutions he created on his way out.
His reputation was set on fire and burned to the ground, he was expelled from his life's work, might even have become homeless as a direct result, and most of the people he considered friends or friendly vanished over night (tho, some remain as you pointed out, but decidedly few) destroying most of his social (support) network.
He built a global movement challenging people publically and he's happy to semi-publically state his opinions about sexual assault at the worst possible time, but he will stay silent about pressure to step down to be nice? I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that.
Reading your link, I don't find anything troubling. He says the term is too ambiguous and it makes it easy to (potentially maliciously) misrepresent someone's acts.
If you find anything else he's said troubling please provide me some references as I'm trying to read anything that may help me to understand this episode. (I've already read about his former and present opinions on paedophilia)
> There's a difference between tolerating it to a degree and letting leaders continue uncomfortable awkwardness.
You are saying that socially awkward people shouldn't be leaders. RMS can't change, he isn't socially awkward by choice. That's his personality.
I disagree. Leaders have flaws, and social awkwardness isn't anywhere near the top of the worst flaws. In fact, in RMS' case, I think it was part of the reason for his success in promoting free software.
> There's a difference between tolerating it to a degree and letting leaders continue uncomfortable awkwardness. If it's enough to distance people, maybe they're not a great candidate for a leader.
Honestly, they got him because they could. There's plenty of politicians, including state heads, regularly making offensive and sexist comments. I haven't seen anyone attempting or even proposing a coup because of that. It usually gets a day or two on the news, and then is remembered only in jokes.
> That doesn't remove anything from their achievements and abilities to contribute or to spread new ideas.
Of course it does, because being a leader is the ability "to contribute or to spread new ideas". Moreover, in this particular case, we're hearing plenty of voices trying to retroactively deny RMS's achievements.
> entirely omitting the space occupied by almost all of us: between homelessness and being a leader of a global movement/organisation.
In this particular case, it was a jump over that space occupied by almost all of us. In a blink of an eye, this incident made an old person not employable and apparently (according to the TFA) homeless. Maybe a different, more emotionally and intellectually balanced person could handle this and resume a fulfilling but low-profile life. But such people don't generally end up with achievements or roles as RMS did. It takes a pretty unbalanced person to persist in pushing views that go against the commercial zeitgeist so long, so successfully, and without compromise.
> In a blink of an eye, this incident made an old person not employable and apparently (according to the TFA) homeless.
He already entered his retirement age. (Unless I miscalculated) He's a clever man - if he's got no retirement fund, or stable accommodation by now, that's a different issue and only brought forwards faster, not created now.
I mean, if the accommodation was provided entirely unofficially by MIT this whole time and was yanked away without warning, I really sympathise. But I find that idea unlikely without some good confirmation.
> Every episode I read about fell into the category of "socially awkward adult male". If we can't, as a group, tolerate awkwardness, we are very much down the rabbit hole of mandatory social conformity.
Perhaps you need to read about more episodes:
> I worked 10 years ago at VA Linux which had Richard Stallman on its board of directors. You might have heard that Stallman applied his open source ideas to his publicly open marriage as well. The problem was that he was more than open. He made overt sexual advances to women at work. One young woman who worked next to me was so upset from his multiple advances that she took it to senior management. She was able to deal with the problem without taking the issue outside the company. I don’t know the details, but she was given advanced warning anytime Stallman was headed over so that she could leave. He was a creep and women at the company knew to stay away.
I'm sorry for the specific request, but it must be a first hand account of an event. This second hand account can easily be the result of RMS being a difficult person to be around, for any number of reasons, constructed via word of mouth into a sexual issue.
I haven't read the description of anything that resembles sexual abuse by RMS.
(edited to remove an unintended reference to sexual assault)
Why are you shifting the goalposts to sexual assault? No-one here is saying that RMS has sexually assaulted anyone, and he wasn't fired due to allegations of that nature.
> I'm sorry for the specific request, but it must be a first hand account of an event.
The excerpt is from an e-mail that John Gruber received in 2011. It is the written testimony of someone who witnessed the events in question first hand.
It's a blog post written around an excerpt from an email of someone who did not witness the abuse event, but knew and interacted with the abused at the time. In my book, that's a second hand account of the event.
Also, Gruber dislikes Stallman for quite a while, and has repeteadly picked on him for various reasons like "lack of hygiene" or weird behaviour. Never, once, until now, for the sexual advances theme.... He just discovered that this was in fact the primary reason why he should've disliked Stallman, not the others.
Given this, I'd expect (A) this is close to the worst concrete evidence that one can find on Stallman's misbehaviours, everywhere; and (B ) it's not exactly unbiased. Sure it sounds bad, but I would like details. Because at the same time, there's also this tale that sounds a lot more objective, verifiable & facts-based https://archive.is/7qepC. E.g :
> One remarkable thing about the FSF at that time, when we worked out of dinky spare offices on the campus of MIT, was the degree of participation by women. In the tiny society that was then the FSF, women were more prominent than I had seen in Silicon Valley, or acadamia prior. The general culture of inclusiveness and tolerance that RMS fostered meant that, at least when I was there alongside Bushnell, that social circle in and around the organization was feminized and all the stronger for it.
> Also, Gruber dislikes Stallman for quite a while, and has repeteadly picked on him for various reasons like "lack of hygiene"
It somewhat makes me think that, coming from the greatest Apple fanboy ever, Gruber forgot that on many accounts Steve Jobs too had a personal hygiene problem.
> I don’t know the details, but she was given advanced warning anytime Stallman was headed over so that she could leave. He was a creep and women at the company knew to stay away.
If we don’t have a specific account and details are unknown, then I don’t think this is a fair characterization.
Ive had others think Stallman is creepy too. They actively avoided him, but he never did anything to them.
Sexual advances in and of themselves are not illegal - but again we don’t have a true source for this information. Assuming this is all 100% factually accurate and the sentiment is properly related: it sounds Inappropriate, but if he wasn’t fired, it sounds like it wasn’t far enough outside the acceptable conduct to warrant anything.
> it sounds like it wasn’t far enough outside the acceptable conduct to warrant anything.
That's not how things work. Workplace "justice" is quite dependent on things like internal politics and personal affiliations. You can't rely tell how bad something was by the disciplinary response.
Stallman is such an annoyance that if there were a credible harassment allegation against him, the MIT administration would have almost certainly made use of it before this.
Why is John Gruber reprinting anonymous emails that are clearly lying? Richard Stallman was never married so he never had an "open marriage" either. Given that the person writing the email didn't even bother to verify this easily verified detail I suspect the rest is also a work of fiction.
3. It is a widely known that if anyone ever associates RMS with "open source", he will interject to say that he vehemently disagrees with open source and had nothing to do with its creation. The fireball guy who posted this story, clearly knows very little of RMS to post this without mentioning the fact that this part absolutely is false.
4. He dislikes the word "open" in general, and would never ever use it to describe anything he was involved in. Again, key fact that is clearly false.
5. RMS does not usually have bad hygiene.
6. One of the people who coined "open source" was involved with VA Linux, his name was Eric S Raymond. Perhaps this this is about him.
> followed up with a post relaying numerous first-hand reports from women subjected to Stallman’s harassment. One example:
The example it then lists (about Stallman at a buffet lunch) is the only "first-hand" report of harassment contained in the follow-up post. This is actually pivotal to the whole daringfireball post as he is purporting to have an ironclad case of harassment but there's only a single first-person account and an email he received about something happening to somebody else at VA Linux (I can't find any reference for Stallman ever being on the board of directors at VA Linux, although they changed their name a number of times which doesn't make things any easier).
I find no current links indicating Stallman was ever on the VA Linux, or any other corporate board. Neither his personal bio nor Wikipedia bio mention any.
> He actively made women feel unwelcome in the workplace
This sword cuts both ways.
MIT is not a kindergarten, they are adult people moving in an adult work context.
It has been said here, that some women are so terrified of Stallman that will carry plants around with they. If true this would speak volumes but not about RMS; about those women!
I assume that there are a lot of very smart but socially awkward people (men and women) in MIT. Excentricity and twisted humour is not a trait exclusive of men. Sex jokes are not exclusive of men. A fully growth women, so terrified of any contact with men to barricade herself behind a geranium all day, should raise a red flag. Maybe somebody in the administration could stop chasing the "big bad men" and kindly try to help this women to improve her social skills instead.
Dealing with sex and relationships is part of being an adult. Any adult women should be able to stop and deal elegantly with an undesired proposition. Men act nervous, clumsy and awkward all the time when try to develop a romantic relationship. This does not convert them in monsters. Is just the human nature.
Just a smile and a "thanks, but not thanks" should be enough, and this is a skill that can be learned also.
Some work environments are more amenable than others to developing relationships. Do realize that many people in this thread probably only exist because their parents met in a work setting. Your own grandparents may have.
For many people, the workplace is where they spend the largest chunk of their life and thus the primary method of socializing and developing relationships.
There are workplaces where this is inappropriate. There are situations, such as imbalances of power, making this inappropriate. But it is far less appropriate, edging on trolling, for you to categorize every single work relationship as "women being harassed in the workplace".
Do know it is possible to develop a romantic relationship without harassing the other person. If you're not acquainted with the method, for the sake of your potential partners, please familiarize yourself.
> But it is far less appropriate, edging on trolling, for you to categorize every single work relationship as "women being harassed in the workplace".
Try reading my post again, my dude. Maybe go a little slower. Read it backwards to forwards, forwards to backwards, and then try setting aside ideological goggles for a second.
We're talking about a workplace where women are doing something completely and totally bizarre: they're carrying around plants so they don't have to engage with someone. There's no situation in which that isn't totally bizarre--people don't just walk around with potted plants for the fun of it.
So, I say, "Hey, maybe they shouldn't have to deal with this," yet I'm the one who needs to "familiarize yourself." What a deranged cadre of people the lot of you are--you're so desperate to explain away this abuse that you can't even keep the context of a thread only 3 or 4 posts deep.
I've read your post. Your post is a reply to someone who is talking about "all the millions of people who are happily married to people they met in professional environments".
When you replied to that post, you stopped talking about MIT and Stallman, and you addressed a general situation: "Is it okay to have romantic relationships in the workplace". Maybe you should quit jumping on the opportunity to call people deranged/desperate/whatever and revise your own posts, because it's possible you're in the wrong.
Not. We need to use the correct terms. Victim blaming would be suggesting that the woman triggered the situation somehow. I'm not saying this at all.
I'm talking about the reaction. IF that history was real [and not just a silly rumour] then we must notice that there is more than a people acting weird here. To freak out and carry an antiviolator house plant because you received a twisted visit card with dirty humour, once, well... this is not normal either, IMHO.
> They're in a professional environment, they shouldn't have to deal with this.
Fair point. 100% agree with that, but if you put several adult people in a room, they will inevitably try to develop relationships.
The behavior I saw, with creepy-sounding jokes about how being molested by guards is desireable if the guards are cute and similar comments, was definitely beyond "socially awkward adult male".
There is also no reason that "male" should be a relevant qualifier.
As I referred afterwards on the thread (and should have done on the original comment), please refer to actual first-hand accounts. These kinds of stories tend to grow on each retelling.
> OP: "CBP waved me through with hardly a word last week (TSA did grumble at me, for not moving fast enough through their fondling queue)."
>
> RMS: I generally ask, "Could I please be checked by a woman? It's not fair that only gays get to enjoy this."
I don't have a link, but I have not seen this one grow or change at all, everyone referring to it refers to the same thing.
"actively made women feel unwelcome" therefore he should be internet lynch mobbed with the same fervor that's reserved for high profile criminals? Do I get my own internet lynch mob next time someone makes me feel unwelcome or acts unprofessionally?
He’s autistic. He probably gives almost everyone he comes into contact with the creeps. Neurotypical people don’t like autistic people, and would prefer to avoid them to the greatest extent possible.
I doubt Stallman was any more unpleasant to women than to men, or showed any greater or lesser social graces. He has never, ever held back about any of his opinions or actions. I’m sure you could get him to admit to things that would get almost anyone fired by most jobs in under ten minutes and he wouldn’t deny any of it afterwards.
People like Stallman don’t do professional because he’s not a faker. He’s not trying to make money or buy prestige. He just wants free software.
Oh this is hilarious. Do you realize how many people -- not just men -- in CS, physics, mathematics are autistic, especially in places like MIT? Places like that are teeming with autistic people who somehow manage not to make their students and colleagues uncomfortable. I'll even be so bold as to claim neurotypicals are actually a minority in some of those subjects.
This is really strange atempt to spin his firing as some sort of evidence that autistic men are being oppressed in CS academia and tech. As anyone who's been in either of those environmets, that's clearly NOT the case.
I’m not saying he’s oppressed. He’s a super giant nerd and people don’t like nerds. Other nerds don’t like nerds. No one owes anyone else shit. Normal people don’t like fat or ugly people either, and avoid them too.
The idea that autistic people do not make allistic people uncomfortable is completely at odds with my experience. The more obviously autistic someone is the less allistic people want to be near them. People who are crushing monomaniacal bores with poor social skills are tolerated if they have some valuable skills, keep to themselves, or parrot the party line.
Autistic people can make allistic people uncomfortable by sitting quietly in the corner of a room. They look funny, they stim, they do that flappy thing with their hands, or rock.
Stallman wasn’t oppressed. He was booted for being a huge outspoken driven asshole with no political nous, but he’s been a huge outspoken equal opportunity asshole for decades.
They look funny, they stim, they do that flappy thing with their hands, or rock.
The problem is you are attributing the low end of high functioning with all of them. Either you have also met autistic people much closer to normal than that, or you simply haven't noticed them because you can't tell the difference.
>I’m not saying he’s oppressed. He’s a super giant nerd and people don’t like nerds
At some point most people mature enough to realize that everyone's a nerd about something and stop caring. Most people with a college education and an actual career end up meeting all sorts of people and realizing that cliques are stupid. There are still some high schoolesque antics at every company, but generally that has been my experience.
> Do you realize how many people -- not just men -- in CS, physics, mathematics are autistic, especially in places like MIT?
Do you have any citations for that (for the fact that there's a significant proportion of autistic people who study/work at the MIT)? It's come up a few times in the comment section of this article, and I can't find sources for that claim.
Honestly the first time I read it I dismissed it as an exaggeration, but you (and others) seem convinced enough to use it to back some of your opinions on this topic. Before this, I would've thought that thoughts like that were merely stereotypes result of ignorance.
Stereotypes are mostly accurate[1]. If you don’t think it’s accurate you could just visually compare MIT and Harvard students. The difference in average nerdiness is neither small nor subtle. I hope you will accept the relationship between nerdiness and autism as a given.
> Stereotype (In)Accuracy in Perceptions of Groups and Individuals
> Are stereotypes accurate or inaccurate? We summarize evidence that stereotype accuracy is one of the largest and most replicable findings in social psychology. We address controversies in this literature, including the long-standing and continuing but unjustified emphasis on stereotype inaccuracy, how to define and assess stereotype accuracy, and whether stereotypic (vs. individuating) information can be used rationally in person perception. We conclude with suggestions for building theory and for future directions of stereotype (in)accuracy research.
>He’s autistic. He probably gives almost everyone he comes into contact with the creeps. Neurotypical people don’t like autistic people, and would prefer to avoid them to the greatest extent possible.
This is an incredibly ignorant opinion. Lots of high functioning autistic people develop reasonable social skills. People still probably notice if they hang around with us long enough, but non-shitty people (aka apparently almost everyone but you) don't default to thinking they are creepy perverts that they must escape from.
Some autistic people are so socially stunted that they have trouble interacting with people at all, but there are a lot of us that have successful careers, friends, wives, etc. We're a little weird but most of us aren't freaks. Try having some compassion.
If by some chance you have formed this opinion due to a personal struggle with autism. Theres ways to learn decent social skills.
My social skills are just fine thanks. I’m still not under the illusion allistic people like autistic people, or accept them except under the condition that they hide who and what they are.
I don’t think autistic people are creepy perverts. I think that normal people pretty much automatically think they’re creepy because there’s something off about the way they interact socially. The degree of offness varies but if you never had it you were never autistic.
If you’re under the impression people are accepting go to an autism or asperger’s support group. You will be quickly disabused of your high opinion of humanity.
> Being able to pass as nonautistic is an important skill. We live in a world full of people who hate autistic people. Other people find the natural way our bodies move to be upsetting or repulsive to look at. It is not realistic to expect nonautistic people to change, so those of us who can acquire the skill of passing will often be better able to achieve our goals if we can pass.
You keep going to extremes. I'm not saying everyone treats autistic people perfectly, I'm just not agreeing that most people are so repulsed that they feel physically unsafe around us and treat us like creeps. The act of socializing itself is exhausting to me, but I don't necessarily feel like I have to hide everything about myself, its more like I have to pay attention to how I respond to people because I might say something that's legitimately rude because my instincts about what might hurt a person's feelings are out of touch with most people.
I don't know that there's a better way for society to accept us than for us to do our best to learn normal social behavior and for them to be understanding when they see that we're trying, even if we fail. Surely you don't expect normal people to just get constantly insulted forever to spare the feelings of a tiny percentage of the population.
And obviously due to variance, bad luck, ignorant local populations/culture, etc, some autistic people will inevitably have a worse experience with people than mine.
I said Stallman was an equal opportunity autistic asshole rather than a sexual predator. You impugned my social skills.
I never said people felt threatened by autistic people. They’re disgusted. Just like fat or ugly people. People aren’t creeped out by scary, violent men, they’re afraid of them. Being creeped out is about disgust, not fear.
I have no comment about society because that’s every individual’s own problem, just like being fat or ugly. No one except maybe your family and friends care, so deal with it or suffer or deal with it and suffer. But don’t sugar coat it and pretend things are ok and people are nice. This is a fallen world and if you find your way into a pleasant part it’s through continuous, vigourous effort.
Neurotypical people don’t like autistic people, and would prefer to avoid them to the greatest extent possible.
The other extreme is the way you interpret my statements to mean that I have some delusionally idealistic view of humanity. Reality lies between your overly bleak assessment of average people and the perfectly accepting world you mistakenly attributed to me.
I acknowledge that some people are jerks. However, most people try to get along with people when they interact with them. The people who don't, or who are unusually bad at it are often the neurotypical people.
The word creepy can mean fear or disgust. Frequently in the context of women thinking a guy is a creep, they mean some amount of both. If that's not what you meant, fair enough.
Are you disgusted by fat people, the mentally disabled, or people that aren't beautiful? I don't think that's as normal as you seem to think it is.
There are verifiable prejudices towards overweight people but you make it sound like people can't stand to see them.
Also, don't you think all sorts of self-help groups are self selecting for people with negative experiences?
Seriously I feel so attacked right now. Barrin92 is saying it is a crime to be awkward and people are upvoting it to the top. I thought people stopped picking on nerds after high school. Makes me want to kill myself to not deal with the anxiety of trying to make people like me.
> because they're afraid of being called liars or censors
lies where told. There are plenty people afraid of pointing this out, lest they be called an "apologist" for something. Is that because of "people like you, Barrin92"?
> He actively made women feel unwelcome in the workplace and behaved unprofessionally over and over again.
How do you know this? How do you know that he deliberately tries to make women uncomfortable? I don't think any women is comfortable near a fat, bearded virgin that eats things off his foot, but to accuse him of deliberately making women uncomfortable implies that he knows some of his actions are off limits and he's deliberately crossing the line. You're just attributing malice when there's a simple answer - he's socially awkward, he doesn't know what the limits are.
> How do you know that he deliberately tries to make women uncomfortable?
He doesn’t do it deliberately (probably). The accusations are only that he does it.
> I don't think any women is comfortable near a fat, bearded virgin that eats things off his foot
None of the things you just listed were part of the reasons they gave.
> but to accuse him of deliberately making women uncomfortable
Again – deliberate not necessary for this to be a bad thing.
In case you haven’t seen it and/or for your browsing convenience, here’s a link to the main set of actual issues in question: https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-appendi... (the fact that I’m linking this doesn’t mean I agree with every word of it or take its truth as a given, by the way – just pointing out that you’re arguing against a non-position)
Ignorance is a bad excuse for undesired behavior. That's why when it comes to legal terms, you can't claim you didn't knew something was illegal and get away with it.
There are good reasons to defend (some of) Stallman's behavior, saying he don't know better is not one of them. If anything, it only makes me feel better about his current situation: Oh, the whole problem is that he didn't knew what he was doing? Well, he's learning a hell of a lesson now.
I don't see why you have to attack the author here, but let me ask you this -- if I "feel" unwelcomed by your conduct, for whatever reason, on a "private" mailing list, then should you be forced to resign?
Then maybe we should have removed him for one of the previous instances of awkwardness, because the message I see here in no way justifies any of the things that subsequently happened.
I would not call it anything less than a disgrace for anyone involved.
> Yes, because of people like you, Geoff. When people like Stallman behave like they do and say the things they say they don't have to face the consequences because people don't want to speak up, because they're afraid of being called liars or censors. That's how authority figures and popular individuals keep getting away with it.
On the other hand, so far, no one has come forward to denounce anything (harassment or similar) about Stallman.
It seems to me that Stallman's lack of social adherence is the reason why he's being attacked. Not actual facts.
> He actively made women feel unwelcome in the workplace and behaved unprofessionally over and over again.
All this is irrelevant to the quite real and undeniable truth that it's not because he "made women feel unwelcome in the workplace" that he was sacked. This is pure after-the-fact rationalization. He was sacked for having the wrong opinion and not knowing when to shut up.
The original Medium post was resting on equating Stallman saying that one of Epstein's victims may've been presented to Minsky as "entirely willing", as him saying that the girl in fact was "entirely willing".
Such intentional smear campaign makes me seriously question the author of the piece, because if they had an obvious case of wrongdoing, no such intentional misquoting would indeed be necessary.
Honestly I'm starting to feel that at this point we should just have businesses that are like sororities and fraternities because people can't seem to handle themselves or handle how others fail to handle themselves.
> He actively made women feel unwelcome in the workplace and behaved unprofessionally over and over again.
I'm 6 foot+ and 200 pounds+. I make certain women uncomfortable simply by existing. They will view every action I take through a lens of being frightened and intimidated.
Do I deserve to get fired? Obviously not.
I have also had different women ask me to join a meeting because the audience wasn't listening to them because they were so physically small. They needed someone with authority to say "shut up and listen". Those women have no issues with me whatsoever and enlist my assistance
Clearly the problem isn't with me, should the women frightened of me get fired instead? Obviously not.
However, the fact that he is homeless has nothing to do with the discussion. It just adds some "feeling" to the problem which should not be there. A MacArthur fellow (1990) is supposed to be able to manage his life (or get someone to do so).
You're brushing aside the whole social pressure thing.
That's something that can make normal people kill themseleves at the worst, or throw them into a pretty bad emotional turmoil with some very real effects on their life.
It does rather smack of the old police tactic: When someone's known to have done something Bad, but the police cannot prove it, they send them to prison for a minor crime such as tax evasion.
I'm not saying that RMS has committed any crimes of course, but there are other reasons that people do not see him as a political figure that they can rally behind in the modern day. A lot of this is entirely about image. People feel uncomfortable having an aging, socially irrepressible person in charge of an organisation which they support. A (seemingly false) allegation is all that it took to bring those qualms to the fore.
Also I note that the author tacitly avoids the other comments which RMS has historically made, in particular with regards to abuse of minors, instead focusing on the one which was incorrectly taken out of context.
This is a weird way to think of it. All of these organizations have been putting up with Stallman's problematic behavior for a long time. This incident reopened a dark chapter in MIT history, too soon and Stallman has a history of, at best, minimizing the impact of pedophilia.
I agree with you, that's roughly what I was saying. The events of the last few weeks were the catalyst that allowed people to start externalising those things, small or big, which they had previously been withholding in the name of "getting on".
The 4 steps of cancel culture, or socially sanctioned sadism:
1. He said/did thing x. He must lose his livelihood and be annihilated.
2. He did not say thing x, but he said y which is basically thing x.
3. He said neither x or y, but he essentially deserves this anyway because of other things he may have done or said. They may have not offended anyone at the time to cause this level of outrage, but clearly combined with what he may have said recently, his time was up anyway.
4. He may not have deserved what happened to him, but maybe he should have just kept his mouth shut about issue x. If me and my friends accused him, then he probably wasn't innocent.
(5.) Write medium/Quillette/twitter post: I was part of the mob until it came for me.
Am i reading it correctly that the author implies that the end justifies the means (in this case stallmans behaviour) because without it we would not have what we have today. Unless you have a time machine that is just speculation.
No. The author says that there are no "means" to speak of, there is perhaps a communication issue Stallman has. The author argues that such issues should be tolerated to a reasonable degree, otherwise the society as a whole may end up poorer. I make no claim about the truthfulness of that, but that's what the author says.
I don’t think it’s subscribing to or endorsing cancel culture to ask for that. RMS being a rude, insensitive jerk is not because he’s an aspie (claiming such is rude to aspies who manage to not be assholes), but because he is a selfish and self-absorbed person.
"We deserve"? Stallman led because he is possibly literally the only person who stood up and tried to lead. It is difficult to imagine he won any sort of leadership contest with anyone (on anything apart from technical merit. Stallman just isn't a political animal). The work he has done is thankless and probably fairly miserable by an objective standard.
I don't know RMS personally, but from what I've seen and read about him, he's a bit eccentric. There's nothing wrong with that, but people tend to dislike or distrust those whom are different from what society considers 'normal'. I suspect part of the 'witch hunt' was in part fueled by this eccentricity.
> I suspect part of the 'witch hunt' was in part fueled by this eccentricity.
It seems to me that the exact opposite is happening here. He is "hunted" because of his uncompromising stance on freedom for software users. The eccentricity is just an excuse, useful to gather a horde of angry people, but inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.
Doesn't this imply that proprietary software vendors were pushing for his resignation? I mean, yeah, sure, but in all honesty, I never considered the FSF to be that influential.
If anything, I'd almost agree on the fact that RMS made (as ironic as this sounds) selling free software more difficult than if it was any standard corporate drone in his place. He's a great idealist, but he's not really good at selling things...
Yeah, his appeal to ideals might work for some (it does appeal to me). But surely that's not the best way of selling things to the majority of the population, let alone companies.
I'm tempted to agree with you that he might have made it more difficult. It's not just the message you use to sell something, it's also the way in which. If people associate FSF too much with RMS it could be harmful for FSF, because they'll assume it just appeals to the 'eccentric bunch'.
Yeah, from the looks of things, the FSF might become more of a threat to proprietary software vendors now, if they have new charismatic leader (at the risk of selling-out on their ideals, though).
It's not just about one incidence of some mistakenly pedantic comments, as has been made clear by many, many people. It's a pattern of behaviour over years combined with no interest in listening to other people or accepting that he might be in the wrong. His behaviour towards women in particular has resulted in a lot of people sharing stories of his behaviour which, on their own, should be enough for someone to be considered a problem. This latest incident is just what it took to finally tip things over the edge.
This article then goes on to talk about people like Stallman being needed, or essential for something like free software. It doesn't matter, even if it was true, which there is no way of proving, it's pure assertion. Phrases like "required someone who couldn’t take a hint" might sound all perseverance and dedication to this writer, but perhaps going and asking women what comes to mind when they hear about people like this might be an eye opener.
Without him students wouldn't have as many free tools? Maybe, but maybe they would have other tools, better tools, built by the people his behaviour, and the behaviour of people like him, have driven from the industry before they got a chance to have the impact that people like him seem to assume is a right.
Would you be willing to provide a few links to those stories over the years? I never knew enough about his personal behavior to judge that and have no idea how to search for it.
Thanks for the link. It's interesting start. But it doesn't show me a predator as I expect at the end of sexual assault accusations. It shows more of a sad lonely guy, that's probably sometimes annoying and is not welcome by people. This date-suicide thing is still abusive, but on very personal and not even ethical level. Not sure if it should involve some organization in any way.
It's a bit hard now to figure out what's happening, as I've thought of RMS as a moral person and somewhat aligned my morals to him. It's now dificult to dissect them to figure out what's wrong. And also, it rings a bit like the story of Socrates and what Seneca said about it.
He sent inappropriate messages in an online course, there are no accusations against him, proven or unproven regarding his career at MIT. And what point are you trying to make with your statement? Lewin supposedly asked a student to do sexual role playing with him and asked for inappropriate videos. Richard Stallman hasn't done anything of the sort and if you disagree provide proof.
I think you might be a bit emotional. Can you provide some solid proof of Richard Stallman harassing or abusing people as a pattern or any evidence at all?
Please refrain from personal attacks as they are against hacker news terms of use. Secondly, you need to provide specific examples. There's plenty of content in this thread arguing contrary to your position, maybe you should read those, too. I think it's a cop out to simply refer to a thread. Are you sure you know what you are talking about?
This is a tough rhetorical device. I’ve read quite a bit about this recently. I am not a huge RMS reader and while I’ve known of him for 25 years or so, I haven’t nearly read everything he said and everything written by people who met him.
So maybe he does have a pattern of behavior that’s negative enough to be fired. But maybe he doesn’t have a pattern but some people incorrectly perceive a pattern. It’s tough without proper data to differentiate.
What I have read is a half dozen accounts of not really clearly defined “charges” like “he asked me out once” and “someone told me that women at MIT keep plants to wars him off” and “he made jokes about virgins.”
Granted, I don’t know the method for cancellation but even if everything I read on HN is true. If every story ends up being completely accurate in the most negative way possible, thats like 20 things over 40 years. And not a pattern unless implicitly add in much more.
I think that these anecdotes are useful if I’ve already decided RMS is a misogynist and I want to back in some evidence. But I feel like if this were given to a jury of his peers he would be acquitted
It also seems weird to me how these few stories are presented as evidence as if they count for a lot. That’s scary as I’m not sure how anyone can defend themselves against faulty evidence. Or even to determine if it’s faulty.
So we run the risk of going into a weird mob event where only negative evidence can be presented. There is no defender. There is no real judge.
This is not a healthy way to treat people. And I don’t think it’s a good way to produce good software.
Jury of peers is for criminal prosecution, not job performance assessment, which is closer to civil cases, in which preponderance of the evidence is the standard.
There’s a judge and sometimes jury in civil cases. There’s still evidence rules. My comment stands with preponderance of evidence standard.
I feel like if all this was handed to a judge or jury it wouldn’t meet the standard for civil verdicts either.
It’s only when I see this stuff presented in the tumbler verse world of most uptweets is true or whatever that it seems to stick.
It’s certainly currently effective, but I don’t know how sustainable it is because it seems like a poor way to produce quality things.
Perhaps there will be a critical mass of people who just adhere to a rational ideal and break the boycotts to the extent where we can have a parallel world that ignores such style of medium-post fueled discussion.
There is no particular charge to defend so it is indefensible. It is more insinuation than accusation. It also sounds vaguely convincing without needing to provide any actual evidence or cite any specific instance, and turns singular instances of not-really-a-problem into a 'pattern' (eg, like what happened to his door sign).
> But maybe he doesn’t have a pattern but some people incorrectly perceive a pattern.
I went to a Stallman talk on Free Software once when he was in Australia. The questions he fielded after the talk where honestly jawdropping and one of the first encounters I had with how little some people understand subtle arguments.
"Software must be free, but people can be paid to work on it!" then "So what you are saying is that people should work without getting paid?" style exchanges.
Stallman is defiantly no stranger to having his words misunderstood. It wasn't even malicious, people just didn't understand him.
Maybe, but maybe they would have other tools, better tools, built by the people his behaviour, and the behaviour of people like him, have driven from the industry before they got a chance to have the impact that people like him seem to assume is a right.
They ware free to develop whatever they want.
If they do not wish to be a part of the GNU project that is fine, make your own project and develop whatever you want.
If people out there were willing to put in the years to create better software than what the GNU project provides than they would have done so.
And a lot of great free software has been created outside of GNU.
It is like saying that unless you get commit rights to the Linux kernel, or if you didn't partake in Linux development you could not write software. Maybe Linus called you an idiot.
Your argument is that if Linux hadnt written the kernel we would have had a better operating system today.
Being a part of a project is not a right, it is a privilege.
Writing free software is something anyone can do, and they can do it a lot better because of GNU/Linux. Just do it.
> Maybe, but maybe they would have other tools, better tools, built by the people his behaviour, and the behaviour of people like him, have driven from the industry
We do have some evidence as to how likely that is given that projects such as Mastodon, NodeJS, GIMP and others have been forked by groups claiming to be dissatisfied with the 'toxic' behavior around said projects. They have indeed produced elaborate code of conducts, but no computer code to speak of.
In September 2019, it was reported that Stallman had made statements on an internal CSAIL listserv in defense of deceased MIT professor Marvin Minsky, in relation to Virginia Giuffre's deposition that she was directed to have sex with Minsky by Jeffrey Epstein.[117][118] As a response, Stallman resigned from both MIT and the Free Software Foundation.[119][120][121]
"What this is really all about" is wildly subjective for such a circumstance (not a legal criminal context with judge/crime). This might be what it's "really about" to some, like the activists campaigning for this.
For the institutions making the decisions (MIT, FSF) I'm pretty sure this is "all about" scandal. One highly visible scandalous statement. A pattern of scandalous statements. Rumour os scandalous behavior. Most importantly, the promise of further scandal unless you disassociate from him.
I think RMS is one of those judgments that people would make differently in public and in private.
Let's say I found 10 times over two decades where you did something inappropriate (I think the average person would be a saint if this was the number of times they erred in two decades) and put them all into a single article. Would that mean you have a "pattern of behavior"? It would certainly present as one. Or merely that you are human and occasionally say or do dumb, inappropriate things? It seems at this case that all of the "pattern of behavior" was speech in this case, and not particularly egregious in any instance.
> no interest in listening to other people or accepting that he might be in the wrong
About what exactly? Are the "other people" also as humble in their opinions?
> This latest incident
There is no "incident", his comments are entirely fair if quoted properly.
> it's pure assertion
much like the the "stories of his behaviour"
> going and asking women what comes to mind when they hear about people like this
What a standard to aspire to - forget "presumption of innocence", the new standard is "what come to mind" for whatever bias floats from the unconscious at the time.
There's quite a lot in this. I don't think it's helpful to throw in stuff like "He is now likely homeless" - gossip/rumour I'm sure this author would be decrying if the other side of the argument had brought it up. We don't know anything about RMS's personal life and shouldn't speculate.
Now let's address the underlying point: You don't get X good thing without Y bad behaviour. I don't agree with this. It's a weird sort of blackmail "Put up with my bad behaviour because you need me". Firstly, For all we know, if we had been less tolerant of bad treatment of people in the free software movement, it'd be a much more powerful movement today than if we had allowed a small number of toxic individuals to take leadership roles and drive out many potential contributors. I see that as no less likely than the scenario put out in this defense.
Secondly, this attitude shifts the responsibility away from the individual for their actions. If someone has a lot to contribute but it never happens because their attitude sucks, that's on them. It's not on us to enable them.
1) There's a reason drill sergeants aren't exactly known to be friendly...
2) Not all people have an easy time learning not to be an asshole (and some literally can't). Thus, the resource-cost varies.
3) If one is just blunt, people can often misinterpret that as being an asshole. But factually, the blunt person is just blunt, and the "victim" is just disgruntled, which, at least in my opinion, makes the "victim" the actual asshole if he decides to judge the blunt person because of that.
There are certainly many assholes who deserve to be criticized, but we should allow the benefit of doubt to all parties first.
It’s a fine line between blunt and asshole. To pull off being blunt you need some additional empathy and social grace. The other person has to feel that your blunt but they respect it. Otherwise you’ll be seen as an asshole. Assholery really is in the eyes and ears of the beholder.
Taking a closer look at "The No Asshole Rule", I'd say it's an opinion piece, and it runs the risk of enforcing something like Newspeak and a conformist atmosphere.
They argue with a single example of how getting rid of a salesman at a company, who was an asshole, but had great results, that the following year, the company's revenue went up (correlation does not imply causation). Then, OTOH, they argue that every company needs a "token asshole" citing Steve Jobs as an example (in direct contradiction to the previous cited example).
On the whole, there doesn't seem to be enough scientific evidence to support the anti-asshole sentiment, just a bunch of opinions, hamstrung with authoritative arguments.
I'd refer again to the drill sergeant as a hyperbole as to why some people are assholes, and how it serves the greater good in defiance to the brunt of people having to accept such assholery.
In many scenarios the most important skill you can have is the ability to ignore common sense. The drawback of that ability is that people without common sense are very often seen as assholes since most of our social fabric is based on mutual common sense.
Or in other words, a person who is brilliant thanks to his lack of common sense would not have been brilliant if he had common sense. And convincing a person without common sense that learning common sense would be good for him is very hard, most likely he will just ignore it like he did all other common sense things he have been told to do in his life. Therefore it is inevitable that asshole leaders who lack common sense will continue to appear and thrive, because those with common sense can't do the job.
Consider the following: the existence and promotion of Y bad behaviour reduces the ability and willingness of humans to contribute to creating X, and the return of investment of time, money and energy spent in limiting Y results in more overall time, money and energy available to create X.
Better yet, consider the following: things are more complicated that ridiculous oversimplification.
> You don't get X good thing without Y bad behaviour
Happens in the corporate world all the time though, was Microsoft ever really punished (beyond a wrist slap) for it's antitrust? Steve Jobs was notoriously a pedantic asshole, who gets to punish that?
I think the word "toxic" (people/places/cultures) is becoming vague and overused to the point of becoming the new badspeak - Can we just dismiss Stallman as "toxic"? Is the lynch-mob/fact-poor culture attacking Stallman not also "toxic"?
His "social interactions compiler" or the SIC thrown warnings for years but he and everybody around him choose to silence these warnings instead of fixing them.
Now he had an error. The error that doesn't make sense to him but obviously the SIC is not happy but instead of trying to dig into his algorithms they try to argue with the compiler.
> If someone has a lot to contribute but it never happens because their attitude sucks, that's on them. It's not on us to enable them.
It's not on you, maybe, but I'd be willing to put up with somebody's shit if they get the job done. And especially then if no one else has gotten it done so far.
Einstein bonked his cousin. And postulated the Theories of Relativity. Yeah, you'd think he could've thought of a better name.
I care about results, if someone's nice, that's a bonus. But don't deny the fact either, that some people will be nice because they need to hide an incompetence. I know, and they know, if you have the results, that that is the most important thing, being nice is optional. Not being nice also does not imply being rude, just neutral, by the way.
EDIT: And as a German, I'm intrinsically aware of the stereotype that we're often labelled as "rude", when we're actually being direct. So, who's at fault here? No one is, but we'd all go a long way to take a step back and realize, what's actually going on.
EDIT2: And I also often have to put up with the reverse of this, people who are so goddamned nice, I can't be mad at them for any longer than a few seconds, but basically can't get shit done. As an employee who often had to clean-up after others, I often got pissed at this, but fortunately, that's no longer my case.
And someone who’s great but an ass/racist/sexist could push out, deter, and marginalize geniuses. We do not have a deficit of people able to do wonderful things. We do not have to tolerate terrible people to get results.
You know what, I agree with you on that (at least concerning racism/sexism). But when it comes to "ass(holes)" and other "terrible people", as we can see from the whole RMS debacle, most people are unreliable and incapable of correctly identifying those terrible people.
I should've been more precise in this: Seemingly terrible people deserve an accurate evaluation that does not rely on "feelings" or the lynch-mob.
Definitions of an "ass(hole)" are pretty subjective, and the tolerances here vary far greater than those that are racist or sexist. You shouldn't mix them up.
That's fair and it is subjective - but I think it's pretty simple to come up with an "Employee Bill of Rights" that can enumerate "inalienable" rights for your employees, e.g. the right respectful communication (aka not being shouted at) etc. The internet is full of them.
This is, of course, different from being blunt, quiet, or other sorts of personality quirks people can associate negatively with. But I would say the line between proper and improper workplace behavior is more defined than people think.
I think the fear you are bringing up is the slippery slope into people being fearful of every interaction, but that will always need to be managed just like privacy and security and there will never be a one size fits all. But there certainly can be some pretty simple baselines established. Unions do it all the time - to varying degrees of success.
And, somewhat ironically, he is being criticized in non specific terms which allow moral vagueness (which is the only reason this specific witch hunt is still going on).
The BSD are certainly Free Software today, for they clearly respect the four freedoms. They did not exist, though, at the beginning of the GNU project.
If my understanding is correct, BSD only started becoming free software in 1989 with the release of Net/1, and even then large chunks of the codebase were not free software.
GNU, on the other hand, kicked off some years before, in 1983.
BSD is open source, but not "free" in the GNU sense. A GNU license keeps the software free. BSD license keeps the distributor & developer "free," but not the software itself.
Why do we even need to invoke Stallman's achievements as an excuse here? What did the man say - he expressed his opinion that accusations of sexual assault are probably inflated and inaccurate. For fuck's sake!
While I am also saddened by the dishonest nature of the reporting on the Minsky accident and the cowardly lack of push back against it, one should not go to the other extreme and simply dismiss all the complaints about Stallman's behavior as him merely being "a clueless aspie". A good example is his emacs virgin joke, which he as as I read specifically made about individual female members of the audience. Due to our hysterical politicized environment we are not able to deal with incidents like this : acknowledge that behavior like this is unprofessional but does not make Stallman a horrible monster, especially since he indeed stopped making that joke after some criticism.
> He held his positions at MIT, GNU, and the FSF for over thirty years, and in that time nobody accused him of coercion, unwanted touching, or verbal harassment.
The author missed the point of the Me Too movement. Lot of other powerful people were not publicly accused for decades because they were powerful and could easily silence their accusers.
> because they were powerful and could easily silence their accusers.
this is certainly not the case for Stallman, as proven by the continuous stream of angry criticism that he has been receiving from many people through the years. It does not seem that RMS held any real power over anybody (except maybe for the handful of FSF employees). The fact that this criticism, which has already existed openly, has had a real effect on the FSF and MIT is obviously due to pressures from higher-ups, not from twitter pawns.
It's not about what we think, but what people in the receiving end of his advances thought at the time that was happening. Stallman IS a powerful figure in the Free Software movement. The mere fact the people are making blog posts or coming to HN in his defense after what he said, both in the MIT e-mail and in his blog over the years, is evidence enough of that. While it is hard to think that Stallman would go after those who accused him of anything, the guy has a huge enough following that people would be intimidated to make accusations due to the possibility of push back from the community.
> There are two possibilities here. Either the author of the Medium post was not capable of correctly parsing the sentence, or she didn’t care about truth and was leveling as many accusations as possible in the hope that one would stick.
Either I am vastly overestimating the quality of american top university education, or the first option is highly unlikely. So, who benefits from Stallman getting removed from the picture? Or, given that the original author was also from MIT, maybe it was just some sort of personal grievance?
The core of the drama is a MIT visiting professor has a poor grasp of social context and an inability to synchronise with other people.
It seems totally possible that some graduate mechanical engineer totally misread a text. Mechanical engineers aren't known for being social butterflys.
Being capable to extract precise logical meaning from text is something everyone with STEM education learns in their introductory mathematics courses. It has nothing to do with social ability.
> visiting professor has a poor grasp of social context and an inability to synchronise with other people.
I am not that interested about the broader political context. I would like to know who (and why) shot Franz Ferdinand so to speak.
It is unlikely that anyone was acting in bad faith here. Unless there is compelling evidence it is safest to assume that people were hasty and didn't stop to think and try to exercise a little tolerance and reflection.
I think it is safe to assume that the author is super good at reading comprehension. The SAT [1] scores of MIT students seem to be in the top 5% of population [2].
Funny enough on how the industry has taken free-software and its 'open-source' derived ideas for granted and they have all originated from the FSF and its founder RMS.
But when social media archaeologists revive past 'thought crimes' from 20+ years ago to use against anyone, it is ridiculous to completely silence and exclude them from society, especially someone like Stallman who is very principled in his cause.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 366 ms ] thread[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Richard_Stallman/Archive_...
To go a bit philosophical: I wonder if we can truly be rigid in some aspects and flexible in others. I guess this can be taught.
> Last week, on a private MIT mailing list, Richard Stallman argued that a sex trafficking survivor may have "willingly" presented herself, and thus Minksey hadn't really committed sexual assault. That being coerced by Epstein made it not rape.
Which is flat out wrong, and something that the article here explicitly demonstrates why it's false. Did you read the "Defense of Richard Stallman" article presented here in this thread?
And that thread contains misleading or outright false information, so I am honestly not sure what of it is truth-worthy. Do you have secondary sources, or is this internet rumor all?
these remarks, while slightly distorted by the media, are still part of a pattern of dismissing sexual assault (including the way RMS insists on not using the word assault despite it being well understood that assault does not have to be physical violence)
rms is the sort of person who overshoots principled to a point everyone is tired of talking to them and where in-person criticism dies before it is even expressed because why bother with someone who will never seek to be better anyway and that afforded him a lot of leeway, even if i think the means of removing him now have been not entirely clean, it still was overdue
Genuine question: where is this documented? I have been using GNU stuff for 25 years and until now have never heard about this. Do you have links to reputable sources?
It seems to me that Stallman advertising that he likes cuddles is automatically considered creepy, beyond the pale, whereas if a properly woke community of appropriately diverse individuals did the same, it would be just considered part of that culture and accepted.
What's more, Stallman used to be part of what that community used to be. He is a hippie. I bet people not up to speed on him reading about this incident assume he's an alt-righter who voted for Trump, but he supports Bernie Sanders, says that Australians should vote for the Greens, and advocates for weird gender-neutral pronouns.
And he likes cuddles and dared to advertise that fact!
I acknowledge that putting that on a business card is out of line in today's culture, but god I wish it wasn't. If you are creeped out by an old man wanting cuddles, but you wouldn't if it were someone else, then you are a bigot. And if you're creeped out any people at all advertising that they like cuddles, then that is stifling and the future is going to be bland and full of lonely people.
Nobody is accusing RMS of committing sexual assault.
Edit: also, there are plenty of people accusing Stallman of sexual assault. But I'm happy to argue under the pretence that that isn't true.
>Are the hypothetical weird poly people ineligible to work for MIT because they openly advertise their enthusiasm for cuddle puddles?
If they do it in a professional context, I would say yes.
https://twitter.com/starsandrobots/status/994267277460619265
https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/994010501460865025
https://twitter.com/wiredferret/status/1173042834179534849
https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-appendi...
Source? I have no reason to disbelieve the claim, this discussion on Wikipedia seems to correlate it too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Richard_Stallman/Archive_...
Besides dismissing one person at face value... is that all you have to say about these?
But more to the matter at hand, Stallman himself has a story about him smelling on plants, albeit dead: https://stallman.org/articles/texas.html
So, the far more reliable source seems to suggest that, indeed, he doesn't fear plants.
"Maybe this is RMS's last-ditch effort to return to his glory days, when he could put abortion references in the documentation, and talk about virginity in his conference talks, and nobody would push back."
"I’m a CIS male and I’ve avoided GPL and every event he’s associated with in boston for over ten years because I didn’t like his macho-aggressive attitudes towards everything."
"If a women reports a FOSS hero, does anyone hear it?"
Oh, and for some reason pretty much everyone in these threads is either mistaken or deliberately lying about his recent comments about Minsky.
These people are trying to ruin someone's life and they're treating the entire thing like a joke.
I don't expect this to convince insane people. By which i mean you're insane. You take people using inclusive language as automatically dismissible. Clear sign I'm wasting my time.
>Oh, and for some reason pretty much everyone in these threads is either mistaken or deliberately lying about his recent comments about Minsky.
These threads are mostly dated 2018. The one tweet that isn't is referencing a talk from August. I don't know what you're talking about.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
RMS could have the most pleasing and charming pick-up artistry, and most women would still avoid him like the plague. I think people like RMS should just stop trying to connect to the opposite sex altogether, because clearly, making women reject your advances is a dangerous game for some.
The genius dude just did not want to change his mind. What a terrible and unprofessional thing to do. He should have listened and could be banging a cancel culture beast right now.
Edit: The proof you give: "My first interaction with RMS was at a hacker con at 19. He asked my name, I gave it, whether I went to MIT (I had an MIT shirt on), and after confirmation I did, asked me on a date. I said no. That was our entire conversation."
What a crime! What a crime! I bet that pushed her out of the industry altogether, into an industry where men are all married.
I can't believe this hasn't been asked yet - if the allegations are founded, why didn't MIT do anything as his employer? They have a statutory obligation to provide a safe workplace.
If that sounds hard to believe I can empathise, it took a personal anecdote for me to get and notice the spread of it too.
If you're wondering how one would be disincentivized, have a lot at how people react:
https://medium.com/p/a7e41e784f88/responses/show
Oh wait, you're saying that no allegations were made to them? Did I read that right?
Stallman did nothing like that, he just made some comments everyone should avoid in today's new middle ages, yet he is treated like a criminal. He failed to realize there are snipers out there, possibly paid ones, waiting for the six lines that could make an argument for hanging him, and he gave them those six lines: that's his only fault.
The FOSS community will have to watch very closely who is going to benefit from his departure.
I've seen this said a few times, and it needs to be cleared up.
Stallman defended Minsky by saying it wasn't rape and it was assault. To mount this defence Stallman had to ignore common English definitions for both words, and he had to ignore the legal definitions of both words.
People are angry at Stallman for what he actually said, not what you think they think he said.
If you want to say that you want necrophiles to fuck your corpse when you die; that you think the harms of incestual abuse can be avoided with condom use; that you think child abuse isn't that harmful; that you think sexual assault isn't assault unless force or violence is used; that having sex with a trafficked coerced child isn't rape; then you shouldn't be surprised when projects want to distance themselves from your views.
> You don’t get the free software movement without a person like Richard Stallman
We don't get the free software movement we have without Stallman, but what's that actually saying? How popular would gnu be if it had someone who was better at communication involved?
Not many people thinking about it in this way, kudos.
Also, how popular would gnu be if the US had a copyright reform, or if we lived in a fairy world with unicorns? There is no point to such questions: if there ever was a person who could be a worthy replacement of rms at the helm of FSF, they preferred to remain invisible. So the most plausible scenario is not "someone like rms but better", it's "nobody remotely as good at all".
I disagree on both accounts. Rape, to derive its moral severity, requires either intent or negligence. I realize there's a meme about "she told me she was 18" but that does fall under the negligence angle - the implication is "he should have known". (And Minksy did know, or at least suspected.) But drop into a situation where there was no way for them to know, and at least to my intuition the moral badness disappears.
I think there's just a level of ... the sexual event alone creates a certain mass of moral badness, and this mass has to go somewhere, so it's usually pinned on the older partner. However, I'm fully willing to pin it on Epstein in this case if it has to go anywhere. And if that isn't possible - well, maybe it can't be put anywhere. I think this is a social/moral difference; I come from a society where even the law acknowledges that sometimes there's morally bad events that have no guilty party at all. If a mentally disabled person rapes someone because they have no concept of consent, whose moral fault is it? Where do we put the blame? To me, it's obvious that we put it with the people and structures that were supposed to have prevented the event but failed to. If the event was provoked, we put it with the people who provoked it. In this case, that person is unambiguously Epstein, who was the source and cause of all the moral badness in play. This is not always possible, but conveniently in this case it is.
Here's what a proper newspaper wrote on the subject:
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/sep/17/mit-scient...
> "In short: Stallman made some technically-correct-but-utterly-tactless comments on a private mailing list, mostly in defense of his late friend and colleague Marvin Minsky."
> after leaked emails appeared to show him downplaying another academic’s alleged participation in the purported sex trafficking of minors by Jeffrey Epstein.
I think it's more to the point that people who, for whatever reasons, have a grudge against Professor Stallman (and there are undoubtedly a lot of those) are very happily jumping on the band waggon.
edit: some clarification
> People are angry at Stallman for what he actually said, not what you think they think he said.
This isn't the lie we're talking about, whatever else people are angry about, many are angry about:
"MIT Scientist Defends Marvin Minsky: Epstein Victim Likely ‘Presented Herself’ as ‘Entirely Willing’"
This headline implies Stallman was defending Epstein, not Minsky, and suggest he said the victim was "willing".
> and he had to ignore the legal definitions of both words
He didn't ignore them, he criticised their usage and how they are perceived by the public; Are you going to comment on the full context and motivation behind Stallmans' comment?
It wasn't just awkward demeanor. He actively made women feel unwelcome in the workplace and behaved unprofessionally over and over again.
> He held his positions at MIT, GNU, and the FSF for over thirty years, and in that time nobody accused him of coercion, unwanted touching, or verbal harassment
Yes, because of people like you, Geoff. When people like Stallman behave like they do and say the things they say they don't have to face the consequences because people don't want to speak up, because they're afraid of being called liars or censors. That's how authority figures and popular individuals keep getting away with it.
The second paragraph of the post is irrelevant and further proves the point. Stallman's contributions to free software don't excuse his conduct.
That was sarcasm, because apparently in 2019 that's an acceptable thing to say with a straight face.
So, like those people you seem to applaud did to Stallman?
>apparently in 2019 that's an acceptable thing to say with a straight face
Oh, the irony...
Invoking <current year> isn't usually said with a straight face anymore.
Every episode I read about fell into the category of "socially awkward adult male". If we can't, as a group, tolerate awkwardness, we are very much down the rabbit hole of mandatory social conformity.
By all means, point me to a real abuse scenario by Stallman. I like being proven wrong.
~edit: I have included the full quote below as I did not intend to twist/misrepresent in any way.
Stallman writes: " The term is applied to a broad range of actions, ranging from stealing a kiss to rape, as well as other things in between. It acts as propaganda for treating them the same.
There seems to be an exception for TSA agents, however.
The term is further stretched to include sexual harassment, which is not a specific act, but rather a pattern of acts that amounts to a form of gender bias. Gender bias is rightly prohibited in certain situations for the sake of equal opportunity.
I don't think that rape should be treated like stealing a kiss, so I reject the term "sexual assault" completely."
[1]https://stallman.org/antiglossary.html#assult
> Sexual assault: The term is applied to a broad range of actions, ranging from stealing a kiss to rape, as well as other things in between. It acts as propaganda for treating them the same.
On one side, you indeed quote Stallman itself and the source of the quote. On the other side the complete quote reads:
Reading the full context and your except was totally different for me. The full context, implies he doesn't accept the term, because it's an umbrella term that does more harm, than good. That's arguable, but doesn't seem a radical opinion.In fact, IMO, I agree that using "sexual assault" for something other than rape / attempt of, is depreciating the full meaning of the term and victims are normally the first ones to be affected by it. I do agree that other crimes, born from gender inequality, are very serious as well - that doesn't mean, we should bundle them up. How would society react, if slaps started to be prosecuted as attempted murders?
If I see a problem with his characterization of the term "sexual assault" / his reasoning in rejecting it, it's that the "broad range of actions" he says are labeled with the term "sexual assault" share one common trait: they happened without the consent of one party. He kind of ignores this in favour of describing the term as "propaganda for treating [acts of non-rape] as the same". And I find the argument that "one unwanted act that I and presumably others find mostly harmless was described as sexual assault, thus this term has lost its meaning in general" somewhat hard to swallow.
Wikipedia: "Sexual assault is an act in which a person intentionally sexually touches another person without that person's consent, or coerces or physically forces a person to engage in a sexual act against their will."[1]
If we did away with the term "sexual assault", I'm not sure what terms we would be left with when describing such things, except to describe the exact acts themselves.
In fact, I'm not sure if I buy the idea that "the term sexual assault is losing/has lost its meaning because it used to mean rape" at all, because there has always been a word for that: rape. As far as I know, this term has always existed to describe a broad-range of sexual acts performed without consent.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_assault
> I don't think that rape should be treated like stealing a kiss, so I reject the term "sexual assault" completely.
From my understanding, he disagrees with the term because it is imprecise, and the greater of two evils might be mixed up with the lesser - with the result that the greater evil might be perceived as less evil as it actually is.
(Edit: A sibling comment gets the above thought better, describing it as an "umbrella term".)
The way you quote him, you try (seem to) to imply that he thinks there is no such thing denoting "sexual assault". Or using the same logical reasoning: Are you, spats1990, implying that rape should be treated like "stealing a kiss"? I doubt you are, but I strongly doubt he does either.
As I wrote in my reply to the post you're referring to, I seem to think that the term sexual assault is necessarily imprecise--but in another sense, it isn't imprecise at all, as all the acts described by it share a single commonality, which is lack of consent.
We cannot know what he thought, and we cannot even ask since he is dead, and we did not even know what actually happened after she "offered" herself (unwillingly and coerced by Epstein, of course).
If it were, who needs legislature?
RMS claimed it was plausible that she presented herself to Minsky as willing, due to coercion by Epstein.
There's a big difference.
Reportedly, Minsky did suspect that something was amiss and refused the offer.
Did you even bother to read the emails or at the very least the article? This misconception is exactly what's being argued there, that Stallman said something clearly different.
> Ignoring a legal age of consent
By doing what, raping someone underage? Or rather expressing his opinion that it's ridiculous that when in one state the age of consent is 16, in another one it's 18, and yet people are judged morally and criminally for failing to distinguish between these two? So basically what you're saying is that possessing a non-standard opinion and criticizing existing laws should make you a non-person. I believe you'd feel very much at home in the USSR, the communist party had the same ideas.
I read here on HN a few days ago that the dude in question, TURNED THE GIRL DOWN. How people are crucifying two people (Stallman and the dead guy) for underage rape that never happened is just crazy.
See how badly critics blasted dave chappel for his new show, despite the audience loving the jokes (even if they were edgy, they were done in good taste, and pin-pointed a problem that society at large refuses to comment or talk about).
if it's OK for the charming, suave guy to do it, then the issue exists at the "victim", not the "perpetrator".
Rule of law is meant to make life more fair, and this isn't a lesson, but it is something for society to improve on.
I was saying that it isn't ok for the charming, suave guy to do it either.
Which seem to go against all goals of diversity and inclusiveness. If we strive for more diverse community we have accept quirks of some people. Only in purely homogeneous group everybody can be comfortable and not offended.
Midly Autistic, not-good-looking man: Shows signs of autism
Society: "No! Not like that! Kill it! Kill it!"
Honestly curious, when did he say that?
> I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.
https://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html
> The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia" also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally--but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.
> Some rules might be called for when these acts directly affect other people's interests. For incest, contraception could be mandatory to avoid risk of inbreeding. For prostitution, a license should be required to ensure prostitutes get regular medical check-ups, and they should have training and support in insisting on use of condoms. This will be an advance in public health, compared with the situation today.
In this specific example he is not against rape because he is trying to redefine rape to make his colloeague look less guilty of rape.
In general, if you have any sources for your claims feel free to share them (I can't find any sources quoting stallman saying anything that vaguely resembles a pro-rape argument, and I've gone through most comments in the section).
More specifically, Stallman didn't ever say that raping children doesn't harm them, if your definition of rape is sex without consent (that's the legal definition in my country). He said that if you have consensual sex with a minor then that may not be harmful for him/her (the fact that this is not "raping children" follows from the very definition of rape).
I'm trying to leave my feelings aside but you really seem to be misquoting Stallman to try to make a point. I really hope I'm wrong about this so I'm genuinely curious about what did you mean when you said he stated that "raping children doesn't harm them".
Stallman didn't care.
People, even many of the ones advocating for inclusivity, are extremely unforgiving of autistic traits and will dogpile on any social faux-pass accidentally made.
There's a difference between tolerating it to a degree and letting leaders continue uncomfortable awkwardness. If it's enough to distance people, maybe they're not a great candidate for a leader. That doesn't remove anything from their achievements and abilities to contribute or to spread new ideas. The post says "If an occasional social gaffe or failed attempt at humor is all it takes to get thrown out on the street" - entirely omitting the space occupied by almost all of us: between homelessness and being a leader of a global movement/organisation.
We can at the same time tolerate awkwardness and hold our local and global leaders to high standards.
Isn't the whole point of a 'leader' that they challenge the status quo not bite their tongue to follow it?
There's lots of leaders who love the status quo and organise people around it. No challenging needed. (for example priests being leaders for a small local community)
This isn't the followers saying "no, that's not ok", this is large institutions saying "no" on behalf of a vocal few.
Despite how you are dancing around responses, from where I see it: You are clearly denying him a platform by saying he shouldnt be a 'leader' (ie. keep his posts). You are making that decision by institutions instead of individuals. You are holding all the worlds 'leaders' to your own moral views which is logically inconsistent.
His reputation was set on fire and burned to the ground, he was expelled from his life's work, might even have become homeless as a direct result, and most of the people he considered friends or friendly vanished over night (tho, some remain as you pointed out, but decidedly few) destroying most of his social (support) network.
Exactly, is it hard to imagine he doesn't want to take a blow torch to his own creation just as a last "fuck you" farewell?
>happy to semi-publically state his opinions about sexual assault
He said sexual assault is bad. How dare he?!
There's plenty of troubling stuff in his writing.
If you find anything else he's said troubling please provide me some references as I'm trying to read anything that may help me to understand this episode. (I've already read about his former and present opinions on paedophilia)
You are saying that socially awkward people shouldn't be leaders. RMS can't change, he isn't socially awkward by choice. That's his personality.
I disagree. Leaders have flaws, and social awkwardness isn't anywhere near the top of the worst flaws. In fact, in RMS' case, I think it was part of the reason for his success in promoting free software.
Honestly, they got him because they could. There's plenty of politicians, including state heads, regularly making offensive and sexist comments. I haven't seen anyone attempting or even proposing a coup because of that. It usually gets a day or two on the news, and then is remembered only in jokes.
> That doesn't remove anything from their achievements and abilities to contribute or to spread new ideas.
Of course it does, because being a leader is the ability "to contribute or to spread new ideas". Moreover, in this particular case, we're hearing plenty of voices trying to retroactively deny RMS's achievements.
> entirely omitting the space occupied by almost all of us: between homelessness and being a leader of a global movement/organisation.
In this particular case, it was a jump over that space occupied by almost all of us. In a blink of an eye, this incident made an old person not employable and apparently (according to the TFA) homeless. Maybe a different, more emotionally and intellectually balanced person could handle this and resume a fulfilling but low-profile life. But such people don't generally end up with achievements or roles as RMS did. It takes a pretty unbalanced person to persist in pushing views that go against the commercial zeitgeist so long, so successfully, and without compromise.
He already entered his retirement age. (Unless I miscalculated) He's a clever man - if he's got no retirement fund, or stable accommodation by now, that's a different issue and only brought forwards faster, not created now.
I mean, if the accommodation was provided entirely unofficially by MIT this whole time and was yanked away without warning, I really sympathise. But I find that idea unlikely without some good confirmation.
Perhaps you need to read about more episodes:
> I worked 10 years ago at VA Linux which had Richard Stallman on its board of directors. You might have heard that Stallman applied his open source ideas to his publicly open marriage as well. The problem was that he was more than open. He made overt sexual advances to women at work. One young woman who worked next to me was so upset from his multiple advances that she took it to senior management. She was able to deal with the problem without taking the issue outside the company. I don’t know the details, but she was given advanced warning anytime Stallman was headed over so that she could leave. He was a creep and women at the company knew to stay away.
* https://daringfireball.net/2019/09/richard_stallmans_disgrac...
I haven't read the description of anything that resembles sexual abuse by RMS.
(edited to remove an unintended reference to sexual assault)
The excerpt is from an e-mail that John Gruber received in 2011. It is the written testimony of someone who witnessed the events in question first hand.
Given this, I'd expect (A) this is close to the worst concrete evidence that one can find on Stallman's misbehaviours, everywhere; and (B ) it's not exactly unbiased. Sure it sounds bad, but I would like details. Because at the same time, there's also this tale that sounds a lot more objective, verifiable & facts-based https://archive.is/7qepC. E.g :
> One remarkable thing about the FSF at that time, when we worked out of dinky spare offices on the campus of MIT, was the degree of participation by women. In the tiny society that was then the FSF, women were more prominent than I had seen in Silicon Valley, or acadamia prior. The general culture of inclusiveness and tolerance that RMS fostered meant that, at least when I was there alongside Bushnell, that social circle in and around the organization was feminized and all the stronger for it.
It somewhat makes me think that, coming from the greatest Apple fanboy ever, Gruber forgot that on many accounts Steve Jobs too had a personal hygiene problem.
If we don’t have a specific account and details are unknown, then I don’t think this is a fair characterization.
Ive had others think Stallman is creepy too. They actively avoided him, but he never did anything to them.
Sexual advances in and of themselves are not illegal - but again we don’t have a true source for this information. Assuming this is all 100% factually accurate and the sentiment is properly related: it sounds Inappropriate, but if he wasn’t fired, it sounds like it wasn’t far enough outside the acceptable conduct to warrant anything.
That's not how things work. Workplace "justice" is quite dependent on things like internal politics and personal affiliations. You can't rely tell how bad something was by the disciplinary response.
1. As far as I can tell, he was never on the board of VA Linux.
2. RMS was never married. https://www.quora.com/Is-Richard-Stallman-married
3. It is a widely known that if anyone ever associates RMS with "open source", he will interject to say that he vehemently disagrees with open source and had nothing to do with its creation. The fireball guy who posted this story, clearly knows very little of RMS to post this without mentioning the fact that this part absolutely is false.
4. He dislikes the word "open" in general, and would never ever use it to describe anything he was involved in. Again, key fact that is clearly false.
5. RMS does not usually have bad hygiene.
6. One of the people who coined "open source" was involved with VA Linux, his name was Eric S Raymond. Perhaps this this is about him.
He does, actually. But yes, the story is most likely about ESR, and he's been quite open about his polyamorous relationships.
> followed up with a post relaying numerous first-hand reports from women subjected to Stallman’s harassment. One example:
The example it then lists (about Stallman at a buffet lunch) is the only "first-hand" report of harassment contained in the follow-up post. This is actually pivotal to the whole daringfireball post as he is purporting to have an ironclad case of harassment but there's only a single first-person account and an email he received about something happening to somebody else at VA Linux (I can't find any reference for Stallman ever being on the board of directors at VA Linux, although they changed their name a number of times which doesn't make things any easier).
Eric S. Raymond ("ESR") was an author of the Open Source Definition and a member of the VA Linux board:
https://www.linux.com/news/eric-raymond-responds-changes-va-...
I find no current links indicating Stallman was ever on the VA Linux, or any other corporate board. Neither his personal bio nor Wikipedia bio mention any.
This sword cuts both ways.
MIT is not a kindergarten, they are adult people moving in an adult work context.
It has been said here, that some women are so terrified of Stallman that will carry plants around with they. If true this would speak volumes but not about RMS; about those women!
I assume that there are a lot of very smart but socially awkward people (men and women) in MIT. Excentricity and twisted humour is not a trait exclusive of men. Sex jokes are not exclusive of men. A fully growth women, so terrified of any contact with men to barricade herself behind a geranium all day, should raise a red flag. Maybe somebody in the administration could stop chasing the "big bad men" and kindly try to help this women to improve her social skills instead.
Dealing with sex and relationships is part of being an adult. Any adult women should be able to stop and deal elegantly with an undesired proposition. Men act nervous, clumsy and awkward all the time when try to develop a romantic relationship. This does not convert them in monsters. Is just the human nature.
Just a smile and a "thanks, but not thanks" should be enough, and this is a skill that can be learned also.
Cool victim blaming.
> Any adult women should be able to stop and deal elegantly with an undesired proposition.
They're in a professional environment, they shouldn't have to deal with this.
Tell that to all the millions of people who are happily married to people they met in professional environments.
Ahh, cool, so we can keep harassing women insofar as there are sometimes positive benefits.
For many people, the workplace is where they spend the largest chunk of their life and thus the primary method of socializing and developing relationships.
There are workplaces where this is inappropriate. There are situations, such as imbalances of power, making this inappropriate. But it is far less appropriate, edging on trolling, for you to categorize every single work relationship as "women being harassed in the workplace".
Do know it is possible to develop a romantic relationship without harassing the other person. If you're not acquainted with the method, for the sake of your potential partners, please familiarize yourself.
Try reading my post again, my dude. Maybe go a little slower. Read it backwards to forwards, forwards to backwards, and then try setting aside ideological goggles for a second.
We're talking about a workplace where women are doing something completely and totally bizarre: they're carrying around plants so they don't have to engage with someone. There's no situation in which that isn't totally bizarre--people don't just walk around with potted plants for the fun of it.
So, I say, "Hey, maybe they shouldn't have to deal with this," yet I'm the one who needs to "familiarize yourself." What a deranged cadre of people the lot of you are--you're so desperate to explain away this abuse that you can't even keep the context of a thread only 3 or 4 posts deep.
When you replied to that post, you stopped talking about MIT and Stallman, and you addressed a general situation: "Is it okay to have romantic relationships in the workplace". Maybe you should quit jumping on the opportunity to call people deranged/desperate/whatever and revise your own posts, because it's possible you're in the wrong.
Not. We need to use the correct terms. Victim blaming would be suggesting that the woman triggered the situation somehow. I'm not saying this at all.
I'm talking about the reaction. IF that history was real [and not just a silly rumour] then we must notice that there is more than a people acting weird here. To freak out and carry an antiviolator house plant because you received a twisted visit card with dirty humour, once, well... this is not normal either, IMHO.
> They're in a professional environment, they shouldn't have to deal with this.
Fair point. 100% agree with that, but if you put several adult people in a room, they will inevitably try to develop relationships.
There is also no reason that "male" should be a relevant qualifier.
> OP: "CBP waved me through with hardly a word last week (TSA did grumble at me, for not moving fast enough through their fondling queue)." > > RMS: I generally ask, "Could I please be checked by a woman? It's not fair that only gays get to enjoy this."
I don't have a link, but I have not seen this one grow or change at all, everyone referring to it refers to the same thing.
And that one is pretty damn creepy.
I've met Stallman. He made everyone feel uncomfortable because of the smell. He is mentally ill and incredibly talented.
Should we drug him until he becomes acceptable to middle class women and in the process reduce him to the average drone programmer?
Can you please cite your sources for this claim?
I doubt Stallman was any more unpleasant to women than to men, or showed any greater or lesser social graces. He has never, ever held back about any of his opinions or actions. I’m sure you could get him to admit to things that would get almost anyone fired by most jobs in under ten minutes and he wouldn’t deny any of it afterwards.
People like Stallman don’t do professional because he’s not a faker. He’s not trying to make money or buy prestige. He just wants free software.
Oh this is hilarious. Do you realize how many people -- not just men -- in CS, physics, mathematics are autistic, especially in places like MIT? Places like that are teeming with autistic people who somehow manage not to make their students and colleagues uncomfortable. I'll even be so bold as to claim neurotypicals are actually a minority in some of those subjects.
This is really strange atempt to spin his firing as some sort of evidence that autistic men are being oppressed in CS academia and tech. As anyone who's been in either of those environmets, that's clearly NOT the case.
The idea that autistic people do not make allistic people uncomfortable is completely at odds with my experience. The more obviously autistic someone is the less allistic people want to be near them. People who are crushing monomaniacal bores with poor social skills are tolerated if they have some valuable skills, keep to themselves, or parrot the party line.
Autistic people can make allistic people uncomfortable by sitting quietly in the corner of a room. They look funny, they stim, they do that flappy thing with their hands, or rock.
Stallman wasn’t oppressed. He was booted for being a huge outspoken driven asshole with no political nous, but he’s been a huge outspoken equal opportunity asshole for decades.
The problem is you are attributing the low end of high functioning with all of them. Either you have also met autistic people much closer to normal than that, or you simply haven't noticed them because you can't tell the difference.
>I’m not saying he’s oppressed. He’s a super giant nerd and people don’t like nerds
At some point most people mature enough to realize that everyone's a nerd about something and stop caring. Most people with a college education and an actual career end up meeting all sorts of people and realizing that cliques are stupid. There are still some high schoolesque antics at every company, but generally that has been my experience.
Do you have any citations for that (for the fact that there's a significant proportion of autistic people who study/work at the MIT)? It's come up a few times in the comment section of this article, and I can't find sources for that claim.
Honestly the first time I read it I dismissed it as an exaggeration, but you (and others) seem convinced enough to use it to back some of your opinions on this topic. Before this, I would've thought that thoughts like that were merely stereotypes result of ignorance.
[1]https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8d4e/4958856859323ecacca918...
> Stereotype (In)Accuracy in Perceptions of Groups and Individuals
> Are stereotypes accurate or inaccurate? We summarize evidence that stereotype accuracy is one of the largest and most replicable findings in social psychology. We address controversies in this literature, including the long-standing and continuing but unjustified emphasis on stereotype inaccuracy, how to define and assess stereotype accuracy, and whether stereotypic (vs. individuating) information can be used rationally in person perception. We conclude with suggestions for building theory and for future directions of stereotype (in)accuracy research.
This is an incredibly ignorant opinion. Lots of high functioning autistic people develop reasonable social skills. People still probably notice if they hang around with us long enough, but non-shitty people (aka apparently almost everyone but you) don't default to thinking they are creepy perverts that they must escape from.
Some autistic people are so socially stunted that they have trouble interacting with people at all, but there are a lot of us that have successful careers, friends, wives, etc. We're a little weird but most of us aren't freaks. Try having some compassion.
If by some chance you have formed this opinion due to a personal struggle with autism. Theres ways to learn decent social skills.
I don’t think autistic people are creepy perverts. I think that normal people pretty much automatically think they’re creepy because there’s something off about the way they interact socially. The degree of offness varies but if you never had it you were never autistic.
If you’re under the impression people are accepting go to an autism or asperger’s support group. You will be quickly disabused of your high opinion of humanity.
https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2019/04/24/on-stimming-a...
> Being able to pass as nonautistic is an important skill. We live in a world full of people who hate autistic people. Other people find the natural way our bodies move to be upsetting or repulsive to look at. It is not realistic to expect nonautistic people to change, so those of us who can acquire the skill of passing will often be better able to achieve our goals if we can pass.
I don't know that there's a better way for society to accept us than for us to do our best to learn normal social behavior and for them to be understanding when they see that we're trying, even if we fail. Surely you don't expect normal people to just get constantly insulted forever to spare the feelings of a tiny percentage of the population.
And obviously due to variance, bad luck, ignorant local populations/culture, etc, some autistic people will inevitably have a worse experience with people than mine.
I said Stallman was an equal opportunity autistic asshole rather than a sexual predator. You impugned my social skills.
I never said people felt threatened by autistic people. They’re disgusted. Just like fat or ugly people. People aren’t creeped out by scary, violent men, they’re afraid of them. Being creeped out is about disgust, not fear.
I have no comment about society because that’s every individual’s own problem, just like being fat or ugly. No one except maybe your family and friends care, so deal with it or suffer or deal with it and suffer. But don’t sugar coat it and pretend things are ok and people are nice. This is a fallen world and if you find your way into a pleasant part it’s through continuous, vigourous effort.
Neurotypical people don’t like autistic people, and would prefer to avoid them to the greatest extent possible.
The other extreme is the way you interpret my statements to mean that I have some delusionally idealistic view of humanity. Reality lies between your overly bleak assessment of average people and the perfectly accepting world you mistakenly attributed to me.
I acknowledge that some people are jerks. However, most people try to get along with people when they interact with them. The people who don't, or who are unusually bad at it are often the neurotypical people.
The word creepy can mean fear or disgust. Frequently in the context of women thinking a guy is a creep, they mean some amount of both. If that's not what you meant, fair enough.
Are you disgusted by fat people, the mentally disabled, or people that aren't beautiful? I don't think that's as normal as you seem to think it is.
There are verifiable prejudices towards overweight people but you make it sound like people can't stand to see them.
Also, don't you think all sorts of self-help groups are self selecting for people with negative experiences?
Please elaborate?
You are making me feel unwelcome on this forum and your comment is unprofessional.
> Yes, because of people like you, Geoff. When people like Stallm ....
It's because of people like you that allegations ruin people's life.
When there's nothing to prove, you are talking about what could have
People aren't attacking you personally.
Rather, people are criticizing your argument.
lies where told. There are plenty people afraid of pointing this out, lest they be called an "apologist" for something. Is that because of "people like you, Barrin92"?
How do you know this? How do you know that he deliberately tries to make women uncomfortable? I don't think any women is comfortable near a fat, bearded virgin that eats things off his foot, but to accuse him of deliberately making women uncomfortable implies that he knows some of his actions are off limits and he's deliberately crossing the line. You're just attributing malice when there's a simple answer - he's socially awkward, he doesn't know what the limits are.
He doesn’t do it deliberately (probably). The accusations are only that he does it.
> I don't think any women is comfortable near a fat, bearded virgin that eats things off his foot
None of the things you just listed were part of the reasons they gave.
> but to accuse him of deliberately making women uncomfortable
Again – deliberate not necessary for this to be a bad thing.
In case you haven’t seen it and/or for your browsing convenience, here’s a link to the main set of actual issues in question: https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-appendi... (the fact that I’m linking this doesn’t mean I agree with every word of it or take its truth as a given, by the way – just pointing out that you’re arguing against a non-position)
There are good reasons to defend (some of) Stallman's behavior, saying he don't know better is not one of them. If anything, it only makes me feel better about his current situation: Oh, the whole problem is that he didn't knew what he was doing? Well, he's learning a hell of a lesson now.
If you have something to share, put the effort to be specific. Now you are just throwing general accusations.
I don't see why you have to attack the author here, but let me ask you this -- if I "feel" unwelcomed by your conduct, for whatever reason, on a "private" mailing list, then should you be forced to resign?
I would not call it anything less than a disgrace for anyone involved.
On the other hand, so far, no one has come forward to denounce anything (harassment or similar) about Stallman.
It seems to me that Stallman's lack of social adherence is the reason why he's being attacked. Not actual facts.
All this is irrelevant to the quite real and undeniable truth that it's not because he "made women feel unwelcome in the workplace" that he was sacked. This is pure after-the-fact rationalization. He was sacked for having the wrong opinion and not knowing when to shut up.
Such intentional smear campaign makes me seriously question the author of the piece, because if they had an obvious case of wrongdoing, no such intentional misquoting would indeed be necessary.
I'm 6 foot+ and 200 pounds+. I make certain women uncomfortable simply by existing. They will view every action I take through a lens of being frightened and intimidated.
Do I deserve to get fired? Obviously not.
I have also had different women ask me to join a meeting because the audience wasn't listening to them because they were so physically small. They needed someone with authority to say "shut up and listen". Those women have no issues with me whatsoever and enlist my assistance
Clearly the problem isn't with me, should the women frightened of me get fired instead? Obviously not.
Now what?
However, the fact that he is homeless has nothing to do with the discussion. It just adds some "feeling" to the problem which should not be there. A MacArthur fellow (1990) is supposed to be able to manage his life (or get someone to do so).
That's something that can make normal people kill themseleves at the worst, or throw them into a pretty bad emotional turmoil with some very real effects on their life.
Intelligence has nothing to do with this.
I'm not saying that RMS has committed any crimes of course, but there are other reasons that people do not see him as a political figure that they can rally behind in the modern day. A lot of this is entirely about image. People feel uncomfortable having an aging, socially irrepressible person in charge of an organisation which they support. A (seemingly false) allegation is all that it took to bring those qualms to the fore.
Also I note that the author tacitly avoids the other comments which RMS has historically made, in particular with regards to abuse of minors, instead focusing on the one which was incorrectly taken out of context.
This was a final straw situation.
1. He said/did thing x. He must lose his livelihood and be annihilated.
2. He did not say thing x, but he said y which is basically thing x.
3. He said neither x or y, but he essentially deserves this anyway because of other things he may have done or said. They may have not offended anyone at the time to cause this level of outrage, but clearly combined with what he may have said recently, his time was up anyway.
4. He may not have deserved what happened to him, but maybe he should have just kept his mouth shut about issue x. If me and my friends accused him, then he probably wasn't innocent.
(5.) Write medium/Quillette/twitter post: I was part of the mob until it came for me.
"The end justifies the means" makes it sound like he was a Nazi soldier.
Tell me what you mean by "the means".
https://twitter.com/bcrypt/status/1173731697159835648
I don’t think it’s subscribing to or endorsing cancel culture to ask for that. RMS being a rude, insensitive jerk is not because he’s an aspie (claiming such is rude to aspies who manage to not be assholes), but because he is a selfish and self-absorbed person.
https://twitter.com/rakyll/status/1174141125902229504
We deserve better leadership.
If you want to do a better job; go do it.
It seems to me that the exact opposite is happening here. He is "hunted" because of his uncompromising stance on freedom for software users. The eccentricity is just an excuse, useful to gather a horde of angry people, but inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.
If anything, I'd almost agree on the fact that RMS made (as ironic as this sounds) selling free software more difficult than if it was any standard corporate drone in his place. He's a great idealist, but he's not really good at selling things...
I'm tempted to agree with you that he might have made it more difficult. It's not just the message you use to sell something, it's also the way in which. If people associate FSF too much with RMS it could be harmful for FSF, because they'll assume it just appeals to the 'eccentric bunch'.
It's not just about one incidence of some mistakenly pedantic comments, as has been made clear by many, many people. It's a pattern of behaviour over years combined with no interest in listening to other people or accepting that he might be in the wrong. His behaviour towards women in particular has resulted in a lot of people sharing stories of his behaviour which, on their own, should be enough for someone to be considered a problem. This latest incident is just what it took to finally tip things over the edge.
This article then goes on to talk about people like Stallman being needed, or essential for something like free software. It doesn't matter, even if it was true, which there is no way of proving, it's pure assertion. Phrases like "required someone who couldn’t take a hint" might sound all perseverance and dedication to this writer, but perhaps going and asking women what comes to mind when they hear about people like this might be an eye opener.
Without him students wouldn't have as many free tools? Maybe, but maybe they would have other tools, better tools, built by the people his behaviour, and the behaviour of people like him, have driven from the industry before they got a chance to have the impact that people like him seem to assume is a right.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21113873
I might have to add a bunch of sources since we seem to have a lot of people in denial. The responses to the Medium article are... not nice.
RMS still refuses to take any sort of criticism, even now.
People refuse to see the problem in this very thread.
That is what's wrong with tech. Not wanting to see the problem.
walter lewin was at mit for 43 years before he was exposed and fired for sexual abuse.
That you chose not to find these examples yourself speaks to your character.
This is a tough rhetorical device. I’ve read quite a bit about this recently. I am not a huge RMS reader and while I’ve known of him for 25 years or so, I haven’t nearly read everything he said and everything written by people who met him.
So maybe he does have a pattern of behavior that’s negative enough to be fired. But maybe he doesn’t have a pattern but some people incorrectly perceive a pattern. It’s tough without proper data to differentiate.
What I have read is a half dozen accounts of not really clearly defined “charges” like “he asked me out once” and “someone told me that women at MIT keep plants to wars him off” and “he made jokes about virgins.”
Granted, I don’t know the method for cancellation but even if everything I read on HN is true. If every story ends up being completely accurate in the most negative way possible, thats like 20 things over 40 years. And not a pattern unless implicitly add in much more.
I think that these anecdotes are useful if I’ve already decided RMS is a misogynist and I want to back in some evidence. But I feel like if this were given to a jury of his peers he would be acquitted
It also seems weird to me how these few stories are presented as evidence as if they count for a lot. That’s scary as I’m not sure how anyone can defend themselves against faulty evidence. Or even to determine if it’s faulty.
So we run the risk of going into a weird mob event where only negative evidence can be presented. There is no defender. There is no real judge.
This is not a healthy way to treat people. And I don’t think it’s a good way to produce good software.
I feel like if all this was handed to a judge or jury it wouldn’t meet the standard for civil verdicts either.
It’s only when I see this stuff presented in the tumbler verse world of most uptweets is true or whatever that it seems to stick.
It’s certainly currently effective, but I don’t know how sustainable it is because it seems like a poor way to produce quality things.
Perhaps there will be a critical mass of people who just adhere to a rational ideal and break the boycotts to the extent where we can have a parallel world that ignores such style of medium-post fueled discussion.
There is no particular charge to defend so it is indefensible. It is more insinuation than accusation. It also sounds vaguely convincing without needing to provide any actual evidence or cite any specific instance, and turns singular instances of not-really-a-problem into a 'pattern' (eg, like what happened to his door sign).
> But maybe he doesn’t have a pattern but some people incorrectly perceive a pattern.
I went to a Stallman talk on Free Software once when he was in Australia. The questions he fielded after the talk where honestly jawdropping and one of the first encounters I had with how little some people understand subtle arguments.
"Software must be free, but people can be paid to work on it!" then "So what you are saying is that people should work without getting paid?" style exchanges.
Stallman is defiantly no stranger to having his words misunderstood. It wasn't even malicious, people just didn't understand him.
They ware free to develop whatever they want. If they do not wish to be a part of the GNU project that is fine, make your own project and develop whatever you want.
If people out there were willing to put in the years to create better software than what the GNU project provides than they would have done so.
And a lot of great free software has been created outside of GNU.
It is like saying that unless you get commit rights to the Linux kernel, or if you didn't partake in Linux development you could not write software. Maybe Linus called you an idiot.
Your argument is that if Linux hadnt written the kernel we would have had a better operating system today.
Being a part of a project is not a right, it is a privilege. Writing free software is something anyone can do, and they can do it a lot better because of GNU/Linux. Just do it.
We do have some evidence as to how likely that is given that projects such as Mastodon, NodeJS, GIMP and others have been forked by groups claiming to be dissatisfied with the 'toxic' behavior around said projects. They have indeed produced elaborate code of conducts, but no computer code to speak of.
In September 2019, it was reported that Stallman had made statements on an internal CSAIL listserv in defense of deceased MIT professor Marvin Minsky, in relation to Virginia Giuffre's deposition that she was directed to have sex with Minsky by Jeffrey Epstein.[117][118] As a response, Stallman resigned from both MIT and the Free Software Foundation.[119][120][121]
"What this is really all about" is wildly subjective for such a circumstance (not a legal criminal context with judge/crime). This might be what it's "really about" to some, like the activists campaigning for this.
For the institutions making the decisions (MIT, FSF) I'm pretty sure this is "all about" scandal. One highly visible scandalous statement. A pattern of scandalous statements. Rumour os scandalous behavior. Most importantly, the promise of further scandal unless you disassociate from him.
I think RMS is one of those judgments that people would make differently in public and in private.
Let's say I found 10 times over two decades where you did something inappropriate (I think the average person would be a saint if this was the number of times they erred in two decades) and put them all into a single article. Would that mean you have a "pattern of behavior"? It would certainly present as one. Or merely that you are human and occasionally say or do dumb, inappropriate things? It seems at this case that all of the "pattern of behavior" was speech in this case, and not particularly egregious in any instance.
About what exactly? Are the "other people" also as humble in their opinions?
> This latest incident
There is no "incident", his comments are entirely fair if quoted properly.
> it's pure assertion
much like the the "stories of his behaviour"
> going and asking women what comes to mind when they hear about people like this
What a standard to aspire to - forget "presumption of innocence", the new standard is "what come to mind" for whatever bias floats from the unconscious at the time.
The most disgusting thing is that whose who witch-hunted him, from their higher moral ground, will face no consequences at all.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. At the very least, the FSF has lost some annual contributions...
Now let's address the underlying point: You don't get X good thing without Y bad behaviour. I don't agree with this. It's a weird sort of blackmail "Put up with my bad behaviour because you need me". Firstly, For all we know, if we had been less tolerant of bad treatment of people in the free software movement, it'd be a much more powerful movement today than if we had allowed a small number of toxic individuals to take leadership roles and drive out many potential contributors. I see that as no less likely than the scenario put out in this defense.
Secondly, this attitude shifts the responsibility away from the individual for their actions. If someone has a lot to contribute but it never happens because their attitude sucks, that's on them. It's not on us to enable them.
Consider the following: Humans have limited capacity, thus time, money and energy spent limiting Y inhibits resources available to creating X.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_No_Asshole_Rule
* https://hbr.org/2007/03/why-i-wrote-the-no-asshole-rule
* https://www.td.org/insights/dont-tolerate-brilliant-jerks
* https://www.inc.com/jim-schleckser/why-netflix-doesn-t-toler...
I can't see how packaging insults as a solution improves anything.
2) Not all people have an easy time learning not to be an asshole (and some literally can't). Thus, the resource-cost varies.
3) If one is just blunt, people can often misinterpret that as being an asshole. But factually, the blunt person is just blunt, and the "victim" is just disgruntled, which, at least in my opinion, makes the "victim" the actual asshole if he decides to judge the blunt person because of that.
There are certainly many assholes who deserve to be criticized, but we should allow the benefit of doubt to all parties first.
They argue with a single example of how getting rid of a salesman at a company, who was an asshole, but had great results, that the following year, the company's revenue went up (correlation does not imply causation). Then, OTOH, they argue that every company needs a "token asshole" citing Steve Jobs as an example (in direct contradiction to the previous cited example).
On the whole, there doesn't seem to be enough scientific evidence to support the anti-asshole sentiment, just a bunch of opinions, hamstrung with authoritative arguments.
I'd refer again to the drill sergeant as a hyperbole as to why some people are assholes, and how it serves the greater good in defiance to the brunt of people having to accept such assholery.
Or in other words, a person who is brilliant thanks to his lack of common sense would not have been brilliant if he had common sense. And convincing a person without common sense that learning common sense would be good for him is very hard, most likely he will just ignore it like he did all other common sense things he have been told to do in his life. Therefore it is inevitable that asshole leaders who lack common sense will continue to appear and thrive, because those with common sense can't do the job.
Better yet, consider the following: things are more complicated that ridiculous oversimplification.
Happens in the corporate world all the time though, was Microsoft ever really punished (beyond a wrist slap) for it's antitrust? Steve Jobs was notoriously a pedantic asshole, who gets to punish that?
I think the word "toxic" (people/places/cultures) is becoming vague and overused to the point of becoming the new badspeak - Can we just dismiss Stallman as "toxic"? Is the lynch-mob/fact-poor culture attacking Stallman not also "toxic"?
Now he had an error. The error that doesn't make sense to him but obviously the SIC is not happy but instead of trying to dig into his algorithms they try to argue with the compiler.
Good luck with that.
It's not on you, maybe, but I'd be willing to put up with somebody's shit if they get the job done. And especially then if no one else has gotten it done so far.
Einstein bonked his cousin. And postulated the Theories of Relativity. Yeah, you'd think he could've thought of a better name.
I care about results, if someone's nice, that's a bonus. But don't deny the fact either, that some people will be nice because they need to hide an incompetence. I know, and they know, if you have the results, that that is the most important thing, being nice is optional. Not being nice also does not imply being rude, just neutral, by the way.
EDIT: And as a German, I'm intrinsically aware of the stereotype that we're often labelled as "rude", when we're actually being direct. So, who's at fault here? No one is, but we'd all go a long way to take a step back and realize, what's actually going on.
EDIT2: And I also often have to put up with the reverse of this, people who are so goddamned nice, I can't be mad at them for any longer than a few seconds, but basically can't get shit done. As an employee who often had to clean-up after others, I often got pissed at this, but fortunately, that's no longer my case.
I should've been more precise in this: Seemingly terrible people deserve an accurate evaluation that does not rely on "feelings" or the lynch-mob.
Definitions of an "ass(hole)" are pretty subjective, and the tolerances here vary far greater than those that are racist or sexist. You shouldn't mix them up.
This is, of course, different from being blunt, quiet, or other sorts of personality quirks people can associate negatively with. But I would say the line between proper and improper workplace behavior is more defined than people think.
I think the fear you are bringing up is the slippery slope into people being fearful of every interaction, but that will always need to be managed just like privacy and security and there will never be a one size fits all. But there certainly can be some pretty simple baselines established. Unions do it all the time - to varying degrees of success.
You are totally correct.
I see no reason to tolerate people that go around lying and digging dirt in order to defame people...
I also see no reason to tolerate people that blindly jump on rumours in order to push their political goals.
I definitively see no reason to tolerate people that seek to erode principles of justice on which our society is founded.
"Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism."
What about BSD?
Here is a good explanation of the difference...
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/Free-vs-Ope...
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#ModifiedBSD
Developer freedom… I guess you could consider that quite elitist, if you think about it (freedom for the ‰ or ‱).
More to your point, I have seen a lot less outreach on software freedom from BSD than from rms.
If my understanding is correct, BSD only started becoming free software in 1989 with the release of Net/1, and even then large chunks of the codebase were not free software.
GNU, on the other hand, kicked off some years before, in 1983.
What is wrong with that, if indeed the accusations were inflated and inaccurate?
As far as I can see from this case, he is correct. He could have expressed himself better, but we're talking about RMS here.
The author missed the point of the Me Too movement. Lot of other powerful people were not publicly accused for decades because they were powerful and could easily silence their accusers.
this is certainly not the case for Stallman, as proven by the continuous stream of angry criticism that he has been receiving from many people through the years. It does not seem that RMS held any real power over anybody (except maybe for the handful of FSF employees). The fact that this criticism, which has already existed openly, has had a real effect on the FSF and MIT is obviously due to pressures from higher-ups, not from twitter pawns.
Either I am vastly overestimating the quality of american top university education, or the first option is highly unlikely. So, who benefits from Stallman getting removed from the picture? Or, given that the original author was also from MIT, maybe it was just some sort of personal grievance?
It seems totally possible that some graduate mechanical engineer totally misread a text. Mechanical engineers aren't known for being social butterflys.
> visiting professor has a poor grasp of social context and an inability to synchronise with other people.
I am not that interested about the broader political context. I would like to know who (and why) shot Franz Ferdinand so to speak.
[1] https://www.prepscholar.com/sat/s/colleges/MIT-SAT-scores-GP... [2] https://blog.prepscholar.com/sat-percentiles-and-score-ranki...
But when social media archaeologists revive past 'thought crimes' from 20+ years ago to use against anyone, it is ridiculous to completely silence and exclude them from society, especially someone like Stallman who is very principled in his cause.