The page links to just that blog post, but the post links to other reports, and an earlier open letter had many links (https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix) to RMS's own blog; to substantiate their claim that RMS holds views objectionable to them.
> The page links to just that blog post, but the post links to other reports, and an earlier open letter had many links (https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix) to RMS's own blog; to substantiate their claim that RMS holds views objectionable to them.
But it seems like he's disavowed those comments (and did so prior to that website being compiled):
> "Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it," Stallman wrote. "Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per [sic] psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that. I am grateful for the conversations that enabled me to understand why."
Many, many people have come forward, especially women, relating horrible experiences with RMS covering the last 30 years - which you are promptly disregarding as "alleged". If you do more research, you'll find many more non-anonymous stories from people about RMS's behavior.
For example, the FSF employees formed a union specifically to defend themselves against his behavior.[1][2]
This is how abusers continue their abuse - hiding behind others who keep excusing their behavior. RMS's behavior, regardless of cause, is not acceptable.
> Many, many people have come forward, especially women, relating horrible experiences with RMS covering the last 30 years - which you are promptly disregarding as "alleged". If you do more research, you'll find many more non-anonymous stories from people about RMS's behavior.
I couldn't care less about RMS stupid ideas on his personal website. But if he abused people, that is really worrying. Thus, I have read all the anonymous and non-anonymous stories about him that I could find by following these links. I assume that all of these stories are true. But there's really nothing to it. All of such stories of "abuse" are variations of the following four:
1. he asked me out very awkwardly and I had to say no
2. he's a really bad flatmate
3. he spoke loudly over me at a conference
4. I have read his opinions and that made me uncomfortable
Really? Does any of this even merit a call for "accountability"? It seems very childish to me. As if he systematically farted in elevators. Of course, that's not nice, but does it really merit all this kerfuffle? Let people be weird!
No first-hand experience is enough any more, RMS has become the figurehead for that sector of tech that actually believes "cancel culture" exists because they're worried it's coming for their own abhorrent views next.
I must say, of all institutions, this one makes me the saddest to hear from. Of course, like others perhaps ought to do elsewhere, I will not demonize them as a whole because they said something I don't like, as I believe their mission is sincere and more important. Still, a bad taste is left in my mouth.
Indeed, it's a real disgrace that EFF is joining the dogpile since they have Internet free speech as one of their stated goals: https://www.eff.org/issues/free-speech
I have the same feeling. Heck, they could even use this opportunity to straighten the repeated lies that Stallman was defending Epstein when the opposite is true. Instead, they chose to link to a hate piece by Selam G.
I wonder... What happened to the law? In the past, when someone was accused, they were brought to court and could defend themselves, and in the end the judge/jury declared them guilty or not. These days, the mob seems like a caricature of dystopian Judge Dredd - police, judge, jury and executioner combined.
It's a travesty that the EFF is linking Selam G.'s blog post as evidence of RMS's poor behavior. That article grossly mischaracterizes RMS's statements and makes it sound like he defended Epstein, which he didn't. This means that the author of this statement didn't bother to read RMS actual comments on the Epstein-Minsky issue, or that he linked Selam G.'s hit piece on purpose. Either way, this portrays EFF as an organization that doesn't care about truth. Also, I would've assumed that EFF, an organization that has promoting free speech on the Internet as one of its stated goals [1], would be against mob justice, but apparently these days they are more concerned with petty virtue signalling.
The whole situation is even more absurd if you take into account the fact we're tech folks, we're supposed to be good at logic, reasoning, and detecting bias. In this particular case, it looks like people have problems parsing a simple sentence, and projecting their own meaning onto it. At this point nobody seems to care what Stallman actually said, it only matters that the crowd already passed sentence and you will be criticized if you disagree.
> we're supposed to be good at logic, reasoning, and detecting bias.
And that's why you don't understand at all what's going on.
It's very simple. RMS is somewhere in the pig, bore, masher triad especially towards women. And he was protected for decades by people that are either dead, like the rapist Marvin Minsky. Or who's reputations and power were incinerated by their association with Epstein.
With no one left to protect him he got run out on a rail.
I think you might be confusing Minsky with Epstein[0]:
> Virginia Giuffre testified in a 2015 deposition in her defamation lawsuit against Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell that Maxwell directed her to have sex with Minsky among others. There has been no allegation that sex between them took place nor a lawsuit against Minsky's estate. Minsky's widow, Gloria Rudisch, says that he could not have had sex with any of the women at Epstein's residences, as they were always together during all of the visits to Epstein's residences.
It is a basic human right to be considered innocent until proven guilty. In this case, we only know than one person was asked to have sex with Minsky, but it might have never happened. We will never know. But calling a dead man rapist just like that makes me said.
You might want to cut down on the adjectives if you want your argument to be taken seriously.
> With no one left to protect him he got run out on a rail.
RMS wasn't "protected" by anyone. RMS has made several controversial statements in the past 30-40 years, most of which are on his website. People did notice it back then too. But apart from rolling their eyes at some of his stances, no one cared, no one felt victimized by those statements, and people went back to their lives as usual. But in today's world of outrage culture, some people have made it their personal agenda to destroy a person's life if they've uttered anything deemed wrongthink by them. RMS is a victim of this attitude.
It really does a disservice to the people in history who have actually been murdered due to a religious decree to compare their fates to somebody stepping down (temporarily) from a leadership role at a private institution.
A sad statement. I feel like EFF is here joining some school bullies.
Had to check if (Finnish) EFFI had stated anything like that but fortunately it seems they are not really affiliated with EFF. Thus no need to cancel EFFI membership..
FSF reelecting Stallman puts the org in an awkward position. He was previously let go for a reason. If he has been reelected, it suggests that circumstances have changed to preclude the original reason, the decisions made leading up to the original removal were somehow flawed, or some other cause, and many of the third option causes here aren't particularly savory. FSF could clarify by releasing a statement about their decision to re-elect him, but I have not yet seen one.
Organizations that make a controversial decision and then reverse that decision without explanation are perceived (fairly or unfairly) as having weak leadership and a lack of ability to commit to difficult choices, and the criticism they are now pulling down on themselves is not surprising. I have to wonder if such a perception will harm FSF and their goals in the medium term.
In the short-term, it's already costing the organization volunteer support.
32 comments
[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 986 ms ] thread- Stallman reminding folks of the lack of key evidence in the allegations against Minsky.
- A graffiti on his door at MIT
- The fact he had a mattress in his office
- Some awkward social interactions he allegedly had (it's all anonymous, there's no way to know)
All from a blog-post.
[0] https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-appendix...
But it seems like he's disavowed those comments (and did so prior to that website being compiled):
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/richard-stallman...
> "Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it," Stallman wrote. "Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per [sic] psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that. I am grateful for the conversations that enabled me to understand why."
But this issue isn't all that his detractors have found objectionable.
For example, the FSF employees formed a union specifically to defend themselves against his behavior.[1][2]
This is how abusers continue their abuse - hiding behind others who keep excusing their behavior. RMS's behavior, regardless of cause, is not acceptable.
It's not "Cancel Culture", it's accountability.
[1] https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1374499598853545986 [2] https://twitter.com/_msw_/status/1374541822693761025
I couldn't care less about RMS stupid ideas on his personal website. But if he abused people, that is really worrying. Thus, I have read all the anonymous and non-anonymous stories about him that I could find by following these links. I assume that all of these stories are true. But there's really nothing to it. All of such stories of "abuse" are variations of the following four:
1. he asked me out very awkwardly and I had to say no
2. he's a really bad flatmate
3. he spoke loudly over me at a conference
4. I have read his opinions and that made me uncomfortable
Really? Does any of this even merit a call for "accountability"? It seems very childish to me. As if he systematically farted in elevators. Of course, that's not nice, but does it really merit all this kerfuffle? Let people be weird!
This was a joke that someone played on him [1] and he removed it as soon as he found it.
[1] https://whoisylvia.medium.com/richard-stallman-has-been-vili...
New organizations are needed.
I wonder... What happened to the law? In the past, when someone was accused, they were brought to court and could defend themselves, and in the end the judge/jury declared them guilty or not. These days, the mob seems like a caricature of dystopian Judge Dredd - police, judge, jury and executioner combined.
[1] https://www.eff.org/issues/free-speech
And that's why you don't understand at all what's going on.
It's very simple. RMS is somewhere in the pig, bore, masher triad especially towards women. And he was protected for decades by people that are either dead, like the rapist Marvin Minsky. Or who's reputations and power were incinerated by their association with Epstein.
With no one left to protect him he got run out on a rail.
I think you might be confusing Minsky with Epstein[0]:
> Virginia Giuffre testified in a 2015 deposition in her defamation lawsuit against Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell that Maxwell directed her to have sex with Minsky among others. There has been no allegation that sex between them took place nor a lawsuit against Minsky's estate. Minsky's widow, Gloria Rudisch, says that he could not have had sex with any of the women at Epstein's residences, as they were always together during all of the visits to Epstein's residences.
It is a basic human right to be considered innocent until proven guilty. In this case, we only know than one person was asked to have sex with Minsky, but it might have never happened. We will never know. But calling a dead man rapist just like that makes me said.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Minsky#Association_with...
You might want to cut down on the adjectives if you want your argument to be taken seriously.
> With no one left to protect him he got run out on a rail.
RMS wasn't "protected" by anyone. RMS has made several controversial statements in the past 30-40 years, most of which are on his website. People did notice it back then too. But apart from rolling their eyes at some of his stances, no one cared, no one felt victimized by those statements, and people went back to their lives as usual. But in today's world of outrage culture, some people have made it their personal agenda to destroy a person's life if they've uttered anything deemed wrongthink by them. RMS is a victim of this attitude.
And maybe death-by-accusation is a reaction of societal chemistry that must run to its conclusion.
Hopefully the pending dark age at which this sort of action hints is a brief one.
Perspective.
Came away with the notion that he's an original thinker, and getting to heavy with labels is not helpful.
--
Your feedback is noted.
Organizations that make a controversial decision and then reverse that decision without explanation are perceived (fairly or unfairly) as having weak leadership and a lack of ability to commit to difficult choices, and the criticism they are now pulling down on themselves is not surprising. I have to wonder if such a perception will harm FSF and their goals in the medium term.
In the short-term, it's already costing the organization volunteer support.
https://itwire.com/open-source/foss-developers-launch-petiti...