> Mr. Stallman is personally known to me. I could testify that he is extremely obnoxious. Due to his handicap, he has little perception of what the feelings and reactions of others might be to his thoughts and actions...
I was sat 1 meter away from Bruce at a convention when Stallman had stood up to interrupt the presentation from some marketing woman from google on a point of principle regarding an error she made in speech about the BSD license). He then turned his ire on Perens and publicly admonished him for his more pragmatic views on something related that I have now sadly forgotten.
I mention only to say i know the kind of treatment Bruce got from Richard as I was in the sightline of the pointing and the high pitched unmistakable loud voice calling him out in a room of hundreds of people.
He just laughed it off with a gesture. He seemed very affable and polite in our brief conversation.
edit a google has turned up someone who took notes including some of the detail i gave above
Richard Stallman will be punished until the day he dies. And then they will vandalize his grave.
All I can do is to try not to commit crimes [1] myself, lest I be similarly removed from employment, stripped of accolade, and banished forever.
[1] I'm LGBT and very open and inclusive with everyone (including democrats and republicans), but I seriously worry that eating meat might one day be frowned upon and punished.
edit: the idea that maybe we should give him a chance is persecuted, too. Nevermind that our entire careers are built on his shoulders and that no US court has found him guilty of a crime -- off with his head!
> I seriously worry that eating meat might one day be frowned upon and punished
That’s perhaps too drastic and a little unprecedented. The trajectory we’re on I think leads to discouraging procreation in certain groups. A child that isn’t born is a lineage that doesn’t harm the climate.
We’ve already witnessed a historic outpouring of the eugenic impulse to control disease. I think it’s most likely over the coming century we’ll discover genocide is okay as long as it happens in slow motion, since there is precedent for genocide.
>[1] I'm LGBT and very open and inclusive with everyone (including democrats and republicans), but I seriously worry that eating meat might one day be frowned upon and punished.
If that happens you could just come to Asia. That cult of climate guilt is entirely a western things; in China people'd give someone weird looks for being vegetarian for non-religious reasons. And to the people coming to down vote this: there are a over a billion people who don't share your radical environmentalist views and never will, suck it up.
It seems a copout to blame his behaviour on his Autism. Plenty of people on the spectrum go about daily life without making grandiose public statements about pedophiles or eating toe jam in public - even for an Autistic person it's obvious that this will cause a negative reaction.
Of course. But Stallman was quite eloquent and had a well-adjusted social network. Arguing that Stallman's neurological wiring made him completely unaware that, for example, having bad personal hygeine was off-putting and anti-social is ridiculous. He must have been told this literally hundreds of times by people he trusts.
For people who says they are all for inclusion and equality, they seem to be quite selective in the type of personalities that they allowed to be in their group.
Perhaps Larry David should produce a "toe incident" episode.
It's ridiculous that people continue to bring that up due to lack of real material.
I suspect there's more than one type of autism, in Stallman's case it seems that he has no filter at all and always speaks the truth (i.e. what he really thinks).
Give a neurotypical person a truth serum and you might be surprised. And you'll have more material that the 10 points of the Stallman inquisitors.
>It's ridiculous that people continue to bring that up due to lack of real material.
That's an indicator that there are no real material. Or the source of his mistreatment of women being the "And hot girls" sticker on his office, that some intern placed to make a joke.
Look the people that denounce him. All corporate lobbyists. This looks to me like a political move to eliminate an uncomfortable stone in the road to total control of software.
There is no context in which this is acceptable. It is emotional abuse regardless of whether you consider it a joke. Based on all other anecdotes of RMS' behavior around women, there is zero basis for believing that this was intended for amusement rather than emotional manipulation.
Plenty of times. I've never threatened to do violence to myself or anyone else depending on their response, however - and neither has anyone I know, nor has any non-abusive person.
I've never even heard someone talking like that when I was a teenager, and if I had, my reaction (and the reaction of most of my friends) would have been "Oh wow, geez..."
Maybe girls around you found it funny, I don't know, but women around Stallman clearly didn't. It's not a joke if nobody finds it funny.
Also, apparently it's controversial, but being unable to distinguish "telling a joke" from "creeping people out" should disqualify anyone from being a public figurehead. It's like a software engineer not being able to tell bubble sort from quicksort.
This is the article that started the whole "RMS defended epstein" lie. It contained a lot of other lies that the author has refused to fix. Considering all that I would say that it is not trustworthy. Even if it is true there is a good chance that it was taken out of context or was a joke. The first one sounds like one, as for the second, I can't defend it but I think that someone who says that needs support rather than harassment, or could be said in jest, for example "oh woe me, what shall I do, I have no real reason to continue living if I can't be with you!", considering how the article tried as hard as possible to misrepresent what he said it sounds possible.
Regardless, even if the suicide case happened as they said, I am not aware of him repeating it. Someone probably told him that this is wrong and he never did it again, isn't this exactly what we want? For people not to repeat their mistakes and stop what makes other uncomfortable? You are not born innately knowing that this is a bad thing.
Bruce Perens maintains that Stallmen is employed by the FSF. According to all their tax filings, he has not ever drawn a salary. Perhaps those with stronger legal education than mine can answer: how does the ADA apply to boards?
I'm no fan of Stallman, but I do find it worrying that some companies can unilaterally decide to sink the FSF if they don't like what it's doing. Of course, any foundation with companies on its board is at risk for that, but the fact that people who support Free Software, who ideally should shun corporate control of software, are cheering it on is disappointing, and is directly due to the kind of easy judgement people are rendering upon each other.
> I'm no fan of Stallman, but I do find it worrying that some companies can unilaterally decide to sink the FSF if they don't like what it's doing.
Why? That's like, the entire basis of every organization, that supporters don't have to support it. If a company selling a product behaves in a way you don't want to support you stop buying, if a charity stops supporting a cause you stop supporting it, etc.
The real question is why every single major company in America is vigorously enforcing social norms that significant portions of the population, often a majority, don’t even agree with. This is very different than other eras.
Is that the real question? I don't really think so, but even if it were it's one with numerous obvious answers.
Some obvious answers:
Companies are made of people, so decisions that are made are often a reflection of the values of those people, not necessarily those of some country or another.
That some group of companies tends to be American is unsurprising since (a) America owns tons of 'loud' industries like tech, so it will always seem this way, and (b) unsurprisingly the values of those who make up a company are tied to some extent by their background.
Companies may feel that their targeted consumer groups are likely sympathetic with some specific social norm.
Companies may feel that the issue is in fact bad for business ie: that someone is a bad fit for a role, is incompetent, etc.
Some of RMS’s behaviour seems excusable, but I think a majority of the population would support the social norm by which anybody who publicly states that possession of child pornography should not be illegal [1] is disqualified from leadership positions. As far as I know, RMS has not resiled from this position, although he has conceded that the actual sexual abuse of children should be per se illegal.
A person who has a very strong opinion on computational freedom has an unpopular political opinion that directly follows from data privacy? gasp
If RMS were a leader at a church or youth club, yes we'd rightly worry about where that view was coming from. But your data being your business is squarely within the goals of the FSF, and RMS staking out unpopular opinions based on their implications for his philosophy is precisely why he has been so prescient.
I agree with the first sentence (Whence the e-giant custodians?)but not the second. Every major institution throughout history (kingdoms, churches, trade companies) has enforced top-down norms and expectations (i.e prescriptive norms). This was the case even mid- and late- 20th century America (i.e post-Sexual Revolution). There were respites from the prying eyes of society. Secret parties, meetups with friends, country clubs, and, for the technically-inclined, an early Internet/BBS/Usenet culture. But they were all generally exceptions to prescriptive norms of the general society (notwithstanding the existence of their own specially-tailored conventions) simply because few people were aware of these things at the time or cared enough to make a big stink out of them to a large enough audience.
I think you missed my point. The rules of general society have always been written by a tiny elite regardless of said society's size or purpose. Just one reinforced by the masses either out of ignorance, zealous belief, or uncritical support. It's the latter portion of society that one generally has to worry about when finding an escape valve.
These days the big difference isn't so much about who's writing the rules so much as its about the tools available to these people/companies/interest groups and their respective motives/criteria for using them.
How is a "You can't lead an organisation and be a role model if your views hurt a significant amount of people in the organisation" a non-judicial punishment? If you can't read or write you would also probably not lead a large organization, and it's not punishment. Can you rejoin if you have learned reading and writing? Yes.
Stallman is not a janitor but in top management (I have the highest respect for janitors but they are not required to be a role model of the organization).
"Thus, they are bound by the Americans with Disability Act and other applicable law to make accommodations for a handicapped employee."
Totally agree, but I won't make a blind person the watchout guy on a ship. There are limits to inclusion.
[Edit] HN you made me giggle this morning. This gets quite some downvotes and for a short time was Karma negative - so people try to cancel me with downvotes for my opinion because they think RMS is cancelled for his opinion. Believing two different things at the same time - or believing one thing by doing the opposite is the real turing test. Nice insight, thanks.
As I understand it, it is non judicial because there is no judiciary system involved.
This doesn't imply it's not an irrational action, i.e. you may justifiably avoid a person/thing that is linked with immoral behavior even if there is no sentence (say, avoid bitcoin because of climate issues).
How are his views not important when the entire mission of the FSF is to spread a very particular point of view?
When RMS is advocating for zoophilia and necrophilia (he's finally relented on pedophilia, though, after many years of also defending "consensual" pedophilia), it hurts the advocacy for his other causes. You can't effectively simultaneously champion two such disparate causes without one cause seeping into the other.
Edit: Sigh, here it is, let's trot it out again, 2006 is when he was defending pedophilia:
> 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
Please refrain from libelous statements. I’ve never read anything from Stallman that defends any behavior a reasonable person would identify as Paedophilia, rather objections on the extremal formal definitions the US judiciary has for the status of “child”
This is a subtle ad hominem. There are many reasonable people who would describe Stallman's particular pedantry around the definitions of "child" to be pedophilia-apology. Describing anyone who disagrees with you, including the person you're replying to, as "not a reasonable person" is unbecoming of hacker news.
It's also absolutely not libel, and it's rather silly to throw such terms around.
> I’ve never read anything from Stallman that defends any behavior a reasonable person would identify as Paedophilia
Stallman defended legalization of pedophilia by name (and in the context of an overt political effort to eliminate age of consent entirely) and only recanted that support after the controversy over Minsky erupted in 2019 (which, given the somewhat related subject matter, also brought heightened, though not the first, attention to that advocacy.)
> He directly addressed child pornography by saying that “making such photos should be a crime, and is a crime, but that is no reason to prohibit possessing copies of the photos.”
The point Stallman made, in the most deliberately urticant and confrontational possible way, is:
Are you willing to incarcerate people for drawings? However disturbing the subject?
> 26 October 2014 (Prison for cartoon)
A man in the UK has been sentenced for prison for having a cartoon depicting a fictional child in some sort of sexual situation.
The advocates of this kind of censorship started by saying they were trying to protect real children from being abused in order to take their photos. Making such photos should be a crime, and is a crime, but that is no reason to prohibit possessing copies of the photos.
However, they have already gone far beyond that. No child was harmed in drawing the cartoon.
To criminalize possession of copies of anything published — no matter what it is — is oppressive, and leads to many other forms of tyranny.
The part I quoted is clearly about photos, not drawings. I think arguing that possessing child pornography should be legal is “defending behavior a reasonable person would identify as Paedophilia.” Your reference to the formal definition of “child” made me think that you were unaware that Stallman had argued for this, and were attributing his cancellation solely to his remarks about statutory rape.
So, now you've read what I quoted about Stallman defending pedophilia, right? He calls it pedophilia, he says he's skeptical it's harmful. That's a defense.
Now you have read something you had not read before. I am glad to have shown you something you didn't know.
Can't say that makes much sense to me. Stallman's contribution is inextricable from his views. He's not on the FSF board as a programmer hacking on Emacs - surely it is to advocate and advance the cause of free software. His views on software, copyright, etc are obviously pretty relevant. His views on other matters are relevant at least insofar as they affect his ability to advocate effectively.
Stallman is just as free to contribute as you are I are. And he's been contributing over the last few years to the GNU Project.
The question at hand is whether he's an appropriate person to place in a leadership position of an activism organization. And frankly, there's no "should" there - there's only the blunt question of whether he's helping the organization achieve its activism goals or not. If his personal beliefs or actions are making the targets of the activism not be interested in listening, then he's undermining the work of his fellow activists, whether or not he intends to. If his affiliation with the organization threatens funding, then he's putting the organization at risk, whether or not we think that ought to be a relevant factor for donors. (And it goes the other way too, of course.)
The goal of the free software movement is to convince people that software freedom is important and to produce free software. It is a hard enough task. Changing the goals to be
to convince people that, first, they should stop caring about Richard Stallman's views, and then after that, that they should care about software freedom, just makes the task even harder.
> How is a "You can't lead an organisation and be a role model if your views hurt a significant amount of people in the organisation" a non-judicial punishment? If you can't read or write you would also probably not lead a large organization, and it's not punishment.
Is it a decision? Yes.
Is it a decision made in the name of public interest? Yes.
Is it a decision that relates to some kind of transgression? Yes.
Is it a decision that seriously affects a person's liberty and pursuit of happiness? Yes.
Is it a decision made out of a fair trial? No.
Just because the labels "justice, diversity, inclusivity, equity" are displayed on a mob that harasses and assaults people doesn't make it less of a mob.
Also Stallman didn't "hurt" anyone. This is ridiculous.
> Totally agree, but I won't make a blind person the watchout guy on a ship. There are limits to inclusion.
Generally speaking, a blind person can't do anything to improve their vision.
A person with a social disability can learn coping strategies to perform better in social situations, in spite of their disability. In the literature on ASD, this process even has a name – "masking". They may never be as good at social stuff as someone without a social disability, they may find social situations draining, etc, but they can improve.
People with ASD [0] often have poor social intuition, but they can learn to think consciously about things which other people can identify intuitively. There's no reason why Stallman couldn't do that as well. Sometimes, given enough time, what first had to be learnt consciously can become more automatic, even intuitive.
Has Stallman been taking actions to try to improve as a result of this public controversy? No idea. But it is at least possible he has. Maybe he's been seeing a therapist. Maybe he's even shared that fact with the FSF board, and maybe they've taken that into account in their decision to reinstate him, but of course it wouldn't be appropriate for the FSF board to share that kind of private medical information publicly.
Of course, we also have to consider the fact that he is 68. Increasing cognitive rigidity is a natural consequence of ageing, and people can find it harder to change ingrained habits at 68 than if they were 20 or 30 or 40 years younger. Even so, I don't think being 68 makes change impossible, just harder.
[0] I'm not saying Stallman has ASD, simply that he may. Quite a few years ago he publicly expressed the opinion that he doesn't have ASD/autism/Asperger's, but I don't believe that was based on a professional evaluation, simply a case of "self-undiagnosis". Also, his comments demonstrate he doesn't have a good understanding of ASD, so I don't think his "self-undiagnosis" should be given a lot of weight. He obviously has signs of broad autism phenotype (BAP), but whether it is just BAP or whether it is ASD is something which only a professional can answer. BAP is not a clinical diagnosis, it is a very common subclinical condition. I don't think the BAP-vs-ASD boundary is important for this discussion – people with BAP have many of the same issues that people with ASD do, just to a milder and less disabling degree.
"Maybe he's even shared that fact with the FSF board, and maybe they've taken that into account in their decision to reinstate him"
If they had, it would be a good idea to have written into the press release.
"Of course, we also have to consider the fact that he is 68. Increasing cognitive rigidity is a natural consequence of ageing, and people can find it harder to change ingrained habits at 68 than if they were 20 or 30 or 40 years younger."
So you think someone with cognitive rigidity who can't change his habits is a good fit for a leadership role?
> If they had, it would be a good idea to have written into the press release.
If someone discloses to their employer that they are seeing a therapist, it would be inappropriate for their employer to put that disclosure in a press release. (Board members aren’t technically employees but I think the principle is the same.)
> So you think someone with cognitive rigidity who can't change his habits is a good fit for a leadership role?
If the FSF board wants to give him the opportunity to demonstrate an ability to change, why shouldn’t they? Also, they are much better judges of whether he is trying to change, and whether or not he’s having success in that, than external observers such as you or I can be. They are engaged in communications with him to which the general public are not privy
> If the FSF board wants to give him the opportunity to demonstrate an ability to change, why shouldn’t they?
Because of the forseeable adverse impact on other people to whom thet are responsible?
> Also, they are much better judges of whether he is trying to change, and whether or not he’s had success in that, than external observers such as you or I can be.
The at least one FSF board member who departed, and the FSF’s management who likewise resigned over the issue, OTOH, are in at least an equally good position to the Board members who supported the move.
> Because of the forseeable adverse impact on other people to whom thet are responsible?
Some people don't want to have anything to do with an FSF in which Stallman is still involved. Other people don't want to have anything to do with an FSF in which Stallman is definitely excluded. Whatever they do is going to have an adverse impact, so they have to make a judgement call.
> The at least one FSF board member who departed, and the FSF’s management who likewise resigned over the issue, OTOH, are in at least an equally good position to the Board members who supported the move.
I don't know if we should interpret their resignation as a judgement that Stallman can't change (or isn't interested in changing), or as an expression of the view that other factors are more important in deciding whether he should be on the board than that one.
"If someone discloses to their employer that they are seeing a therapist, it would be inappropriate for their employer to put that disclosure in a press release."
In principle yes, but not if that was the reason the person could not have the leadership role in the first place.
If someone confides in you their private medical information, it is inappropriate to put that information in a press release without their permission, full stop, no exceptions. Certainly morally, and possibly even legally.
"Is it okay if I put your private medical information in our press release?"–many people would view that question as inappropriate to even ask.
>if your views hurt a significant amount of people
Stallman's views hurt people in the sense that some people got offended that he believed in things that they did not. None of his views could hurt people in any other way, he never posted any racist/sexist/transphobic/etc views.
Downvotes are not cancelling. Downvotes won't get you fired. Nobody will bully you for being downvoted (or even having this opinion really). They just show that people find your argument dishonest or disagree with you.
if you were leading an organization, and had grown it from nothing to being important, then if you are removed from that organization for things you have said that is obviously a punishment, if it is done without a court taking part it is non-judicial punishment. Of course non-judicial punishments exist all over the place and that's just the way the world works, although really for some of the things he's done I think he might open up to judicial (civil court) punishment as well.
Now imagine that the org has fought corporate-enforced "norms" for decades and suddenly you've been ousted because of corporate-enforced norms. That's edging closer to what happened to RMS.
different norms than they have been dedicated to fighting, and probably the corporate enforced norms here are not ones that the corporations actually care about enforcing but only do so because they feel threatened by other, non-corporate enforced norms.
> Thus, they are bound by the Americans with Disability Act and other applicable law to make accommodations for a handicapped employee.
Does ADA require an airline to employ a blind pilot? Besides allowing his service dog?
This essay starts with reason and ends with a slapstick statement equivalent to Walmart being required to keep employing a greeter with (movie cliche type) Tourette’s.
There is no defined end to this non judicial punishment, especially not in this case where there has been no improvement in the cause and apparently there never will be. It’s not for mr. Perens to decide differently.
You have to pass a visual exam for the AME to certify you as a pilot; once you get the certification, however, going blind later won't necessarily revoke it.
If history is any indication, then yes, he can. He had created the movement that has transformed the industry forever and motivated dosens of thousands developers to contribute their efforts towards Free Software.
And he did it because of the very qualities he is vilified now: persistence, pedantry, having strong opinions.
Regardless of whether he created the movement, the FSF has IMO largely been on the wrong end of the movement for years. FSF has been a poor so-called leader of the open source movement for many years.
This entire focus on his supposed personal failings is a distraction. Even if RMS had completely reformed his behavior, he should not be running the FSF —- someone with a vision for the FSF that is still relevant should be in charge.
Would you please kindly provide some more expanded argumentation about FSF being "on the wrong end of the movement for years"?
I would also like to hear your ideas what should a "vision for the FSF that is still relevant" include? It will be OK for me if you will please kindly tell what is wrong with current 'FSF vision'.
Or as a more personal example, I will not contribute directly to any open source projects under the FSF umbrella because I won’t deal with their obnoxious contributor agreement process. As far as I can tell, the world and the FSF gain nothing except maybe prestige from this process, but they definitely keep contributors away.
Can you explain how technical disagreements about implementation of technology make FSF "on the wrong end of the movement for years"? FSF has valid reasons to be wary of potential threats to software freedoms, and they are extremely dedicated to their mission of providing and protecting said freedoms.
Also, you probably do not understand the mindset of this movement. It is not a priority to have the best and shiniest toys and instruments. It is about freedoms, and freedoms only, even despite this way will cause significant inconveniences. It is unacceptable to compromise even the slightest part of freedoms to provide better convenience. This path is not for everybody, but I'm glad someone walks on it, if only to be a safeguard against abuse done by major software vendors. And FSF is very successful in acting as such.
> because I won’t deal with their obnoxious contributor agreement process
This process is in place for a very valid reason, perfectly explained here [1].
> Can you explain how technical disagreements about implementation of technology make FSF "on the wrong end of the movement for years"? FSF has valid reasons to be wary of potential threats to software freedoms, and they are extremely dedicated to their mission of providing and protecting said freedoms.
I’m pretty sure that almost everyone involved thought that the IR approach was technically superior. This included the people writing the code and the people who wanted to use the code. The FSF’s dedication to the cause caused a bunch of users to move to LLVM, which is not GPL.
As for the copyright assignment, the amount of paperwork and annoyance when I tried to sign up was absurd, so I gave up.
That is a straw man. Stallman has been quite effective in most areas, certainly more than the interim presidents who quickly got very corporate with all the familiar BS language.
We don't need another infiltrated Linux Foundation.
RMS is abusive. I'm autistic too. When I've behaved in similar ways, I've been similarly forced to account for my behavior. I resent the fact that ostensible defense of him as a person on the spectrum is so ideological. I distrust most of his defenders' sincerity when they talk about his neurodivergence, and I don't consider them allies.
You clearly are not an expert on autism. The disease is a huge spectrum of different behaviors, from almost normal, to severe retardation. I've seen RMS in real life, he's borderline can't take care of himself, that's not being abusive.
I've met RMS in real life and talked to him on multiple occasions. He can absolutely take care of himself and it's a little insulting to RMS to say that he can't. (Who took care of him between when he left his job at MIT and when the FSF got enough funding to hire him an assistant, if he wasn't taking care of himself?)
Not everyone is fine all of the time, and autistic personalities can get high and lows. To me, he seem quite normal and a cool guy that likes make totally inappropriate jokes or comments (that makes them even more funny), but I'm a little autistic myself.
> make totally inappropriate jokes or comments (that makes them even more funny)
That is completely different if you are but of those jokes and if you know that those jokes are funny to people, because they express what others think about you.
If you read the comment I linked, I explained why I don't think that is relevant–you don't need to have problems with rhythm to meet the diagnostic criteria for Aspergers syndrome (or ASD under the current DSM-5). Stallman's comments reveal that he has a poor understanding of the diagnostic criteria (or at least he did when he made those comments, many years ago–he may have improved his understanding since), which is why I don't think one should put much weight on them.
I read your comment already. You talked about part of what the journalist quoted like it was all Stallman said. He went on to say he has some of the characteristics. He described how they affected his life. He discussed a book about subclinical mental disorders by Harvard psychiatry professor John Ratey. He suggested he might have what's called broader autism phenotype now.
The strongest plausible interpretation of what he said is he understood the distinction between clinical and subclinical presentations and the part about rhythm was incidental. It's clear he had some understanding at least. Insisting he must have thought rhythm was a diagnostic criterion and that completely invalidates his understanding is the weakest plausible interpretation at best.
The boundary between ASD and BAP isn't always clear even to experienced clinicians. Someone who isn't an experienced clinician, their judgement of which side of that line a person lies on is much more likely to be wrong. That's true even when the person in question is their own self. Given that, how much weight should we give to Stallman's opinion on the issue?
And, this isn't directed at you personally, but I think a lot of people who bring "Stallman says he doesn't have it" into the argument don't display any awareness of the concept of BAP.
I didn’t claim to be an expert. He’s not abusive because he can’t take care of himself. He’s abusive because he’s mean spirited and takes advantage of being excused for it because of his celebrity. I was never afforded that. Take your expertise and shove it up someone who isn’t a nobody.
Edit: I regret saying anything please carry on praising the guy who treats people like garbage because people enable him. I’ll just go back to doing my best to triangulate my emotional reactions with empathy so I can survive and have moderately healthy relationships.
Seems to me that Stillman has gone through an obsessive amount of effort to avoid having to change his boorish behavior. You and I would get fired for a lot less.
I think you're absolutely right about the enablement aspect.
Stallman seems to have been protected from normal social feedback at least since starting at MIT as a graduate student in the 1970s.
Most reasonably functioning autistic people seem able to improve their social skills, at least to some degree, as they mature, if only as a conscious act ("masking").
The bubble Stallman lived in seems to either have prevented him from doing that, or worse, possibly allowed him to willfully ignore such personal development.
You see this unproductive coddling in the Perens article, which simply assumes Stallman's "handicap" is a fact of life over which he couldn't possibly have any conscious control.
In my experience, that's rarely the case, unless you're dealing with much more severely handicapped individuals, who may not even be verbal.
I'm not going to defend RMS' words or actions (I don't even know what the entire case against him is, and the more extreme this gets the less I want to pry into his personal life). I do think people are losing their minds to assassinate the guy.
RMS has given us our entire industry and careers. Without free software, you wouldn't have a job. I wouldn't either. Take a moment and let the gravity of that sink in.
(take a moment)
He apologized and spent several years away from the organization he founded. Why does it have to be the rest of his natural life? We're murdering him and taking his baby.
Why do people nowadays believe in permanent assassination of character? Unending punishment?
People have redemption arcs.
The stupid movies, books, and tv shows that everyone in this thread watches have forgiveness and grace in them. Why do we deny them to our fellow humans?
I'm an atheist, but Jesus preached against this kind of thing, and I think we could learn from some of his teachings. Throwing stones and forgiveness.
I got cut off by the Hacker News negative karma filter for the downvotes I got, but I typed out a comment I was pretty happy with. (It was to this comment [2]) I'll include it here instead:
> There ought to be a place for RMS in our discourse. Just not this one.
I'm trying to think of the limit of humanity here, when we're all living in the metaverse and aren't tied to physical bodies anymore. Complete freedom, and the ability to disassociate ourselves from our corporeal bodies. Assume new identities at will.
In the future, you'd ban the "RMS account" for misbehavior, but he'd be free to join again under a new one, free from the judgments and baggage of the old account. He'd just lack all of the accolades and gear he'd built up.
What you're doing now is calling for RMS permadeath in meatspace. He can't restart. It's game over.
Since there is no ability to restart IRL lives, why don't we have forgiveness as a feature?
The US penal system has a notion of when punishments have been meted out. He's stepped down for several years. Was it not long enough of a punishment?
Are we saying that some people may never forgive RMS? And that we're restricting his access indefinitely to satisfy the people who hold grudges eternally?
What sort of bug in humanity is that?
Maybe certain people think we should stop letting people out of jail.
> He apologized and spent several years away from the organization he founded.
September 2019 — March 2021 isn’t “several years”. Many of the othern elements of your description are similarly creative interpretations of the facts.
To be clear, I am not defending what RMS said, but "defending child rape" is oversimplifying and over exaggerating his position. His remark related to the age of consent being different in different places (states/countries).
After one person wrote that "Giuffre was 17 at the time; this makes it rape in the Virgin Islands," Stallman responded, "I think it is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17."
Minsky (and Minsky's wife) disputed the claims that he had sex with Giuffre. Stallman was not supporting child rape, he was objectively looking at how a local government can criminalize behavior that is not illegal in many other jurisdictions.
To be clear, Stallman was not supporting Epstein, and I am not supporting any of them, but Perens' point about Stallman being shunned because he was insensitive is spot on.
You cannot take one sentence by Stallman and ignore all the rest, Stallman has a year long history of trivializing child rape. This is not about one sentence discussing the age of consent (which in my opinion has little place in a discussion about a child rape and trafficking ring, but that’s debatable)
> To be clear, I am not defending what RMS said, but "defending child rape" is oversimplifying and over exaggerating his position.
He explicitly supported a political campaign that aimed to immediately reduce the age of consent to 12 and ultimately eliminate it, on the basis that sex acts that were “consensual pedophilia” was not only not an oxymoron, but also something that wasn’t harmful.
(He also raised questions about rhe factual guilt of someone accused of nonconsensually sexually exploiting an Epstein-trafficked young woman, but that wasn’t where he defended child rape.)
> He explicitly supported a political campaign that aimed to immediately reduce the age of consent to 12
No he absolutely didn't, certainly not explicitly. He linked to the news item and added a sentence of commentary, he did it for 3 news items that day and thousands over the decades.
Marriage at 12 doesn't mean sex at 12. California has a law against "any lewd or lascivious act" with a child under 14 for example. Spouses aren't exempt.[1] And age of consent means without judicial or parental approval.
> In doing this, I believe that the FSF board felt that punishment should have an end, especially in the case of the first punishment, and should include an opportunity for the punished to demonstrate that he has reformed his behavior.
That's an entirely reasonable theory. Would the FSF care to confirm it?
How come the FSF hasn't said anything about why Stallman is back on the board - not even an announcement? Why are they just making oblique references as if they're embarrassed by it?
If the entirety of the FSF's statements are a tweet saying that LibrePlanet speakers didn't know about Stallman's "announcement," a statement about "governance," and several resignations, how are they giving an opportunity for Stallman to demonstrate that he has reformed his behavior? Why not put out a simple statement saying that Stallman is back on the board for such-and-such reasons?
Frankly, if you looked only at the FSF's website and not at the rest of the internet, you'd be extremely confused what's going on and why there's a need for "work to improve governance at the FSF."
It'd be great if this were a "learning opportunity" for Stallman, if it admitted the "possibility of reform". The FSF has taken zero steps to make it happen, and they are destabilizing the free software movement all the while.
> How come the FSF hasn't said anything about why Stallman is back on the board - not even an announcement?
The entirety of the FSF top-tier management resigning over this (the people that actually would do the work of directing staff to put together an announcement, reviewing it, approving it, etc.) probably has some impact on the lack of a coordinate communication campaign from the FSF. The Board (whose also lost at least one member) doesn’t do the day-to-day work, or even directly manage that work.
Don't worry, most of those kind of people are so miserable that their life is already a living hell. That's why they're so keen to make the rest of us join them; misery loves company.
A well written piece by Perens, but his focus on Stallman's disability leaves the reader to reach the point on their own, which may be difficult for some (perhaps those with similar issues to Stallman).
The point is that people (and corporations) should be more tolerant of the views of others. They are not required to agree, but they should not automatically push the "cancel" button. I don't agree with everything that Stallman believes (for example, GPL3), but I have no desire to shun him.
I will likely be modded down for expressing my next opinion: The same thing applies to those who support(ed) President Donald Trump. There was once a day when most US citizens would respect the office of President even when they did not hold the same views as the occupant. Why is there so much hate for those (47%?) who supported, or still support him and his political philosophies?
Can we not act like the Second World War and consequently Karl Popper’s “ The Open Society and Its Enemies” didn’t happen?
You cannot run a tolerant society without being intolerant to those that want to destroy it.
You are right, that there is too much intolerance in today’s society, but I don’t think that it’s the case here. I think Stallman’s public statements about child rape deserve all the shunning he got.
After one person wrote that "Giuffre was 17 at the time; this makes it rape in the Virgin Islands," Stallman responded, "I think it is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17."
> You cannot run a tolerant society without being intolerant to those that want to destroy it.
Popper predicated that right on the right to self-defense against people who use "fists or pistols" instead of words to argue.
Has RMS been out there punching or shooting people or using some other physical violence? Last I knew he wasn't even accused of intolerance at all but of some absurd defense of his now-dead friend who was accused of going to Epstein's island.
Child rape is a form of violence. You think we should tolerate sentences like the following? Richard Stallman: “I am sceptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children.”
Replying to myself because the above was instantly modded to oblivion.
Is free speech dead? Are we back to the ways of Stalin, Khrushchev, and Mao? Should all non-conformant speech be cancelled? What will our future be like if that is the case?
There is a conflict here: on one hand we want diversity, accept people with their differences, their handicap or education. On the other hand we want them to behave the same way we do, otherwise we reject them.
So your company should have people with handicap, but that have no effect on others.
And diverse genders, but you should consider them all the same, even if we know we have diverse bodies, needs and behaviors.
And diverse cultural and religious background, but it should be ignored like if we all agreed on how life works.
Living together do mean we have to live by common rules and try to fit, but you can't have your cake and both way: if you increase diversity, you will increase friction.
If you ask for diversity and you want them to be just like you, think just like you, or act just like you, it's not going to work.
I've rarely seen SJWs behave respectfully to others who weren't like them or were of some group they considered protected. It doesn't seem to be about respectfulness.
It looks to be about a superficial diversity: of ethnicity, sex, gender, (dis-)ability etc, but not of thought.
Possibly, but I don't see a lot of acceptance for actual diversity in diversity circles. There's a core they share (political stance, worldview) that's essential for being allowed. Diversity is allowed beyond that, but that's really no different than anywhere else. Trump fans of lots of different backgrounds get along great, because they share what they consider important.
The diversity movement is primarily concerned with allowing diversity outside of the core issues, while strictly forbidding it within, and purging those who don't comply, regardless of their gender, sex, ethnicity etc.
> Trump fans of lots of different backgrounds get along great, because they share what they consider important.
I haven't thought about this earlier, but there is some truth to it. When I'm with my rightish colleagues, I can basically say anything I like, the worst I risk is being called a stupid commie. Of course they know we have very different opinions, but there is no problem - basically I feel free to discuss anything.
With my leftish friends, I really need to be much more careful. Frankly, I'm not up to date about all the current developments especially in the trans sphere, and I'm not sure if the thing that appears in my mind is the right one to say. And when I say something wrong, they are really outraged. They take it personally. So I find myself a bit more quiet when I' with them, and I keep my opinions about important issues to myself.
> With my leftish friends, I really need to be much more careful. Frankly, I'm not up to date about all the current developments especially in the trans sphere, and I'm not sure if the thing that appears in my mind is the right one to say. And when I say something wrong, they are really outraged. They take it personally. So I find myself a bit more quiet when I' with them, and I keep my opinions about important issues to myself.
This is not a friend, imo. There are plenty of leftists that aren't performative and don't practice consistent outrage. I've known some of these people too and they're exhausting. Do yourself a favor and get new leftist friends.
In practice, respect is a spectrum that includes people sensitivity, education, social context, legality, and is not an absolute.
Drawing a picture of God may be worship for some, and disrespectful for others. For more daily simple things, it's the same.
If you want an autistic person to behave like you, with empathy, you are not asking for respect. The person may not be disrespecting you.
I had an asperger in my class last year, always interrupting me during my explanations. You can enrage that it was disrespect. Or you can understand he just didn't see he was disturbing the flow of the course.
Many on twitter would have accused him on mansplaining. I just asked him directly to keep interruptions limited to the time break. He complied, happy to have a clear instruction on how to deal with the situation.
I don’t know how you understand accountability but people who have clinically-diagnosed mental conditions that keep them from having full agencies over their actions are out of the question. The online political discourse you are referring to rests on the assumption that people with bigoted views and behaviors have no such diagnoses and are willfully embracing and practicing bigotry on their own.
You don’t even need to define absolutes, for god’s sakes. The point is that people shouldn’t bring their politics to the office, and they do that by not discriminating on anyone on the basis of anything, which necessitates respecting and valuing everyone equally. The problem is that, simply, people don’t do that and actively refuse to do that, because they feel that their inherently divisive views shouldn’t sow divisiveness in the office. It makes no sense.
So if a vegan is offended when you eat a meat sandwich at the office, how do you know who is respecting who?
Society is currently not vegan in majority, so you could say they should adapt. Also you could adapt the point of view they are trying to do the least of harm, and are suffering from the harm you do. Then, you should adapt.
Diversity is bound to cause friction. That's just how it is.
There is no simple good answer to that.
It's always case by case. What's right today it not what's right tomorrow.
A vegan can take all the offense they want to take so long as they don’t take it out on someone in the office, because there are so many reasons why doing so is wrong (sowing division is one, as mentioned in previous comment) even if veganism itself is scientifically and ethically justified. I’ll leave it at that unless you actually want to talk about veganism in length.
But, going back to the variables that diversity actually pertains to, such as race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion, it’s not as ambiguous and complicated as you make it out to be. You cannot be discriminating people on those grounds because all that really matters in the workplace is what each individual brings to the table. You know, the output that you’re actually getting compensated for. I run a small business and I like to draw talent from a diverse pool of applicants, but anybody who makes sexist or racist remarks isn’t getting hired or is definitely getting fired because I don’t like assholes who introduce non-work related friction in the office, though I really just don’t like working with assholes.
What you also said about the minority adjusting to the majority is just disagreeable. There are so many periods in history where majority of humans believed something about the world that is also wrong. There also always tends to be an objective basis of right and wrong where a clear purpose is defined, so maybe you should clarify your purpose instead of dealing with ethics from a purely abstract level.
So you draw the line at "no turmoil at the office". That's what important to you. That's what you value. That's what you consider respect.
One person can be offended, but its on the person to take on themself. You can go anywhere you want with this.
If I masturbate on my chair during my break, I don't harm anybody. Do you take offense ? Why ? I don't harm you. But the majority of society would feels it's weird, so you would not allow it. No more "the offended person should just keep the peace" here.
Besides, with your example, you can't hire an autistic person.
The person will cause turmoil.
Just like a person in a wheelchair will need an elevator.
So there is some sort of diversity that you decide up front not to accept by design.
> But, going back to the variables that diversity actually pertains to, such as race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion,
You are limited diversity to a class of parameters you valid. Diversity is, by definition, completely open. You don't decide to limit what's diverse. People are people, they are different. That's diversity.
> the output that you’re actually getting compensated for
People are more than robots outputting thing. They interact and create likes and dislikes. They talk about something else than work, or they don't feel they belong. The "only" work culture is an illusion, work doesn't happen in a vacuum.
But I can see you are starting to use words such as "asshole", which indicate to me this conversation stopped being about sharing idea.
I assure you I read all your arguments and took them in consideration carefully, and wish you a good day.
As I said, no need to talk about absolutes and abstracts. Society as a whole isn’t the context, the context is the workplace, and context is key. There’s no question about how masturbating openly in the office is offensive, and there isn’t a single culture in the world where that is acceptable. I would certainly fire an employee who does that even during break time because the property they’d be doing it on would still be my property, and it certainly would affect the level of comfort and therefore productivity of my employees, so the example you provided is still unambiguously wrong in the office context.
> You are limited diversity to a class of parameters you valid. Diversity is, by definition, completely open. You don't decide to limit what's diverse. People are people, they are different. That's diversity.
Neither do you get to decide exactly what kind of diversity companies can aim for. It might not be explicit in the language, but you should know that companies are not going for unqualified diversity, where they put people from marginalized groups with the people who vocally marginalize them. Diversity initiatives typically aim to assemble a workforce that draws talent from multiple groups of people, but also except those that would actively hurt such people, because if they don’t draw a line, all that companies will end up creating is unproductive office drama. The argument about diversity being “completely open by definition” is actually irrelevant since diversity can be qualified and “diverse” != “universal”.
You can find traits which are signs of respect in one culture and yet offensive in others. The only way to reconcile that is to not attempt to impose your definition of respect onto others. Not always super easy to do, of course.
I would be perfectly fine if a development of a project would be done by strangers behind incognito aliases. I don't care if the contributed code comes from Black woman or Caucasian man or some cat who had learned to code. I believe that it is absolutely irrelevant topic that is forced on the industry by whatever reasons. If is not like the barrier to entry is too high: anyone who can afford a $500 PC and internet can have access to all the learning materials in the world.
1. The meaning of $500 varies wildly across earth. It's not much work to figure that out.
2. It depends on the kind of project. If you want a community project, a project that lives and breathes, you don't just need to put out code, but also inspire use and new contributors. For that, a pleasant atmosphere helps, and have existing contributors seem approachable. For that, you need to project not being a tiny club of likeminded, or worse, outright similar, people. This tends to discouraged interest and participation. It also tends towards a particular internal culture having way too much overlap with a particular culture is my experience. Teams consisting of 30 year old male computer scientists will have a particular kind of banter/small talk utterly incompatible with many other backgrounds. Not having too much of one kind of team member protects you from this, making on boarding easier.
Oh, come on! This argument appears so often, but it is absolutely irrelevant: a person without a computer is unlikely to participate in the Free Software movement, with rms at the helm or without.
And living and breathing projects: all projects would be more healthy if they were all strict to business. No activism of any kind, but the one aimed at improving the product. You don't need to fight for gender equality if you don't care about the sex of the contributor!
If sex means zero to you, then both sexes are truly equal, because 0 equals 0.
It's up to you to ignore perfectly clear social science and facts on the ground, but don't expect others to believe your particular brand of opinion without any supporting evidence of it working. (And before you reach back to the 90ies or earlier: you're missing something!)
Diversity is like any characteristic, it has pros and cons.
It makes optimizing harder, add friction and augment costs.
But it also force evolution, and make a system more adapted and resiliant, healthier on the long run.
As usual, it depends, and intensity matters. Those questions don't have a definitive anwser, even cute ones like "just be nice to each others".
But regardless or whether we do need diveristy, it is promoted currently as the progressive point of view. If you go on social media and claim we don't want diversity, you will have a serious backslash. From the same persons that will ask autistic persons to behave like an average person. Hence my point on the dissonance.
> And diverse genders, but you should consider them all the same, even if we know we have diverse bodies, needs and behaviors.
The point of having the knowledge that our bodies and needs are different as dictated by sex (not gender, if you’re talking about bodies) is to respect and value each other equally despite the things that we cannot change about our biologies.
If what you just said is how adversaries of gender equality and women empowerment think, then it is no wonder that there’s a lot of toxic disagreement on the matter. I suppose it’s difficult for such people to wrap their heads around why having gender-based sports divisions is justified and not inherently sexist, and that both are equally dignified categories.
I don't think this argument makes sense. In fact if we follow it to its conclusion, it's an additional reason for RMS to be removed from his job.
1. RMS is not being punished by the FSF.
He does not have any right to a particular job, even as the founder of an organization. Many people, including FSF board members, believed he was not competent to serve the organization in a leadership role.
One could argue about whether getting excoriated on social media is a "non-judicial punishment". Perens seems to be decrying a rush to judgment, contrasting it with jury duty. But the most damning criticism is coming from people who worked with RMS closely, and who for years even shielded him from the consequences of his own actions. These people have thought long and hard about their experiences.
2. RMS is not obviously asking for any understanding nor promising to be better.
RMS has publicly described himself as having autistic characteristics. He seems to be saying he's sub-clinical. But, if he believes that this is the source of his difficulties, this is a private matter between him and his employer. So, our ability to judge here is limited.
However, at least from public statements, he does not seem to be invoking that defense, or asking for understanding. In fact, he doesn't seem to be even interested in any harms he has caused. Surely this would be step one?
Perens may well believe that RMS' problem is autism. But it matters what RMS believes and does. If he really has a disability but is denying it has any impact, this is even more of a reason to remove him.
3. Frankly this entire argument does such a disservice to the many men and women who live with autism/Asperger's Syndrome. A lot of them do struggle with norms. But they also feel bad when they inadvertently cause others pain. And most of them find a modus vivendi with others. This seems very unlike how RMS' interactions have been described, including to me by people who've worked with him, and what I've also personally seen at public events.
4. Personally it makes me very sad that we're having this argument. I don't take any pleasure in seeing RMS removed from a position of honor. I think he's one of the greatest thinkers of his time, and documents like "The Right to Read" ought to be in textbooks. There ought to be a place for RMS in our discourse. Just not this one.
He's called himself "borderline autistic" in at least one published profile in the Toronto Star, back in 2000. But you're right, he's also walked that back too. In 2008 he described himself as mostly normal with "a few of the characteristics"
I agree that the vast majority of complaints against him are unreasonable. But without some sort of apology or promise to do better, what are we supposed to tell those 10% with valid issues?
No offense but I find this argument to be in bad faith. You would not say that for someone being fired due to being lgbt, would you? (whether it is legal or not is irrelevant here as this is about moral rights)
He was not ostracized because they found him "not competent to serve the organization in a leadership role" but rather because they were outraged at his opinions (combined with a misrepresentation of his statements along with lies and half-truths -- the pleasure cards, the mit office label, etc).
>Many people, including FSF board members, believed he was not competent to serve the organization in a leadership role.
All 4 of your points imply that a person needs to defend themselves from online vigilantes like yourself, when the opposite is true. Your feelings and desire for comformity with the social norms of the day are your problem, not his.
The US has a functioning court system - we don't need vigilantes like yourself, and there's no legal case here.
In case you're not familiar with history, what you're suggesting is replaying the Communist Red Terror or Maoist purges, but 70 years later in the US.
I don't doubt that RMS can contribute to the free software foundation without putting him in a position where his handicaps will injure others. In a professional setting I helped manage an individual with similar challenges and focus. Our solution was to buffer them with a couple of "handler" individuals who would not trigger the individual's quirks, and who could pass their contributions on to the organization in a reliable way.
My feelings on RMS is that he should not be on the board, and he should directly participate on any "official" communications channel, be it email or code reviewing. Rather, a channel should be provided for him to respond, and within that channel should be a process to capture the essence of the response that is important without the offensive bits.
This has little to do with RMS but instead the appalling attitude of those who are in favor of cancel culture.
Historians have failed you: this behavior and mentality will lead to a dark dead end. We must be tolerant and even accepting of those with whom we disagree with. Opinions are fleeting, but we are all human and that won’t change in our lifetime.
You can tolerate people without putting them in positions of leadership. No one has a right to a seat on the FSF board - it's dependent on behavior in accordance with the organization's principles.
So who should have access to “position of leadership”. Self interested, condescending, cunning sociopaths or can we also have obsessive, unpleasantly naive but ethically consistent individuals?
Can we please stop armchair-diagnosing RMS and excusing his behaviour based on this armchair diagnosis? Or even worse, calling it a disability like Bruce Perens does, in some kind of effort to gain sympathy, or perhaps appeal to ADA?
First of all, nobody has ever actually diagnosed RMS and he himself has rejected that folk diagnosis when offered to him. If dude wanted psychiatric help, he could get it.
Second of all, the diagnosis, if it were accurate, is no excuse. Lots of people on the spectrum know how to behave.
Finally, even if was autistic and even if we could excuse his behaviour by his autism, he's not fit to be in any kind of leadership position. Yelling at people when they use the wrong words, which is his main and constant strategy, does not help the cause of free software. Technological self-abnegation, while giving him an aura of sainthood, does little to actually put free software in the hands of users.
Stallman can keep blogging if he wants, he can keep up his self-abnegation, but he doesn't have to be in the decision board of the FSF to do this.
>If dude wanted psychiatric help, he could get it.
Just to touch on this and not the other issues - many people who are diagnosable as having some problem refuse diagnosis, this does not mean they don't have the problem they could be diagnosed as having.
> Yelling at people when they use the wrong words, which is his main and constant strategy, does not help the cause of free software.
Arguably the reason you're using the term "free software" is because of RMS' incessant chastising. The only thing as relentless as RMS are the forces that continually eat away at the central thesis of his movement--the necessity for users to have access to the source code of the software they use as requisite for softwarefreedom.
Does the movement need RMS going forward? I don't know. I'm not even sure it can stay as strong as it is, regardless of his participation. I have more certainty, however, that it wouldn't be as successful as it was and currently is without him. His conflation of the utilitarian and political character of software was rather unique. Even today the vast majority of people find the comparison either impractical, trite, or otherwise inapposite. Comparable concepts, like Lessig's "code is law", aren't quite the same and in any event haven't had the staying power.
>Lots of people on the spectrum know how to behave.
It is called a spectrum because it contains a lot of different conditions that vary significantly.
>but he doesn't have to be in the decision board of the FSF to do this
Please re-evaluate this statement. One could as well use "you don't have to be in the decision board of the FSF to be gay". He certainly does not need to be in the decision board of the FSF to do this but you do not need to be in the decision board of the FSF to do pretty much anything.
I would argue that being in the decision board (instead of being the president) of the FSF is a good position for him. He can continue steering the FSF on things regarding software freedom, can continue giving his talks, and the face of the FSF will be someone who is more desirable by donors and deals with people better I guess?
Punishments should have limits, but the point of removing a toxic member of a team is not to punish the individual. If I hang out with a group of friends, and one of those friends repeatedly makes some of the rest of us uncomfortable, I will stop inviting that person to our gatherings. This is not meant as a rehabilitory or a punitive measure. It's simply a group of people who aren't comfortable with someone else's presence asking that person to leave.
Stallman was removed because many found his presence unacceptable to their continued participation. Having removed him, that remains the case.
In addition to being poorly reasoned, this article is also somewhat contradictory. First, it argues that shunning should be temporary because the shunned must be given a chance to prove that they have reformed their behavior. Then it argues that Mr. Stallman's behavior is clearly based in his handicap and accommodations must be made for it. These two arguments don't work together. If he can control his behavior, his handicap need not be accommodated. If he cannot, there is no point to reassessing whether he has reformed.
Here's someone who spent about two decades of his life at the FSF, including as executive director, and won the FSF's award for contributions to free software on the same day that RMS announced his return: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html
Bushnell hasn't been working on HURD for a long time. He joined a religious order and works for google.
> Here's someone who spent about two decades of his life at the FSF
Kuhn is now the president of a competing organisation to the FSF that doesn't mind promoting Facebook or Google for their outreach.
> Here's a whole bunch of GNU project maintainers
Guix has been in disagreement with rms since he didn't want to adopt a CoC for GNU because it was "too punitive" in intent, and suggested using GNU's Kind Communications Guidelines instead.
> Here's a couple of high-profile GCC contributors
Nathan Sidwell is a Facebook engineer who instigated the removal of rms from the gcc steering committee. After the committee did so for technical reasons, he accused them of not being punitive enough towards rms and proceeded to tally various personal suspicions against rms.
Today I learned the name of one of the first toxic people who seriously suggested to write gcc in C++. And they are admitting it themselves! What a tragedy. Of course, RMS was, rightfully again, the main opposing force. We live in sad, sad times.
Quoting this person's message:
> Interactions I've had with the SC, beyond maintainer appointment, seem to run into RMS.
Sounds like a feature to me! The main purpose of RMS's presence is precisely to keep away idiotic proposals like those of Nathan Sidwell.
Paraphrasing Torvalds, to keep people like Nathan out.
Being serious, the world needs an easily bootstrappable C compiler. It's a crucial pillar of our society, and we lost it a few years ago. That is a shame.
Right, the question was whether there are people who have meaningfully contributed to GNU who disagree with RMS, or the only complainers are internet randos. Obviously the answer to that question is a list of people who have previously been active FSF or GNU contributors and now are either inactive or have public disagreements with RMS.
(By the way, Kuhn was on the board of the FSF while he was leading this "competing organization." The fact that this was not seen as a conflict of interest, and that the FSF has awarded him for his work at this "competing organization," implies that they are not actually competitors.)
Who, then, has the right to criticize RMS, if they don't? It sort of seems like anyone who raises a criticism of RMS can have that criticism dismissed because they've become a critic of RMS.
Who is a legitimate part of the free software movement other than RMS himself?
I only provided background information on the people you mentioned, not that their criticism should be dismissed because of it.
> Who, then, has the right to criticize RMS
I doubt there is a collective answer, but I encourage everyone to look into the various affiliations of both proponents and detractors of rms' reinstatement and make their own decisions on whom they should trust.
> Who, then, has the right to criticize RMS, if they don't?
Only people who are pure, demonstrated by worship of RMS, are free to criticize him. Of course, if they do so, they are no longer pure, and lose that license.
> Stallman was removed because many found his presence unacceptable to their continued participation.
If someone decided not to participate in Free Software because they couldn't stand Stallman, then they don't have a strong urge to do so anyway. It is likely that they didn't even participate at all, but were seeking some attention and did virtue signalling.
Does anyone really believe Sara Mei would have contributed to GNU 20 years ago?
You seem to be new to this argument. Are you aware that we have had a bifurcated Open Source / Free Software movement since the 1990s? And how that came to be?
There were real philosophical disagreements, and I'm not even saying RMS had the wrong side of the argument. But he definitely gave everyone a huge incentive to go off and do something different because at least you wouldn't be working with RMS.
I can think of several people off the top of my head who attempted to work with RMS, were immediately repelled, and then went off to do other things with freely distributed software.
Why would anyone working on Free Software would need to work with rms personally? It is not like it's some weird cult where you need to be initiated into it by the high priest. We have created our software and released it under GNU GPL / AGPL licences without ever meeting anyone.
As for 'bifurcation': it happened because different people have different goals when they release their software. Some are driven by some idealistic values, others do it because it fits in their business plan for whatever reasons. Thus different groups of people might have different requirements to freedoms they grant to their code.
How exactly does one allow another to prove that they have reformed their role as a potential legal liability without exposing people to that person?
The government enjoys sovereign immunity when it frees people who have served their jail time and it enjoys a monopoly of power. The FSF does not enjoy the same level of legal protection when RMS harasses women, nor does it have a monopoly on anything.
What's interesting is that in this particular case, we did kind of get a sort of "jury" vote in the two open letters to the FSF: One asking that he be removed (3000 signatures), and one asking that he be kept on (5000 signatures).
The counterletter accepted signatures for longer than the original letter, and it was heavily promoted in the Eastern bloc, which is very sympathetic towards causes that exclude women and other minorities.
The original letter is signed by many of us who actually write the free software and who are part of GNU. I recognise people in the original letter I've collaborated on GNU software with, people I've met at conferences, people I've worked on bug reports with.
There are a few personalities in the counterletter, but if we're going by "jury of peers" there are far more peers in the original letter than the counterletter. The signatures in the two letters are a clear case of quantity vs quality.
Yes, yes, and I'm sure the other camp would have similar complaints about the quality of your camp's signatures and membership. This is how it always goes when people square off on emotional topics: Victory through decibels.
One side of signatories is writing the free software we all use and has regularly and directly dealt with rms. The other side is shitposting in 4chan and probably has never had to meet rms.
I saw the letter being drafted and promoted in /g/ and if you go there now you'll find threads talking about it, I bet. But it is 4chan and threads don't stay up long or get archived, so you can be content in thinking I'm lying if you prefer.
Much like the letter against him was being drafted and promoted in the open? I fail to see the sinister edge of this in either camp. I took a look, and both letters garnered many comments (for and against) on many platforms as they were being written and promoted, as it should be when doing such things. They are collective actions, after all.
The quality of the sites where each letter was promoted is not the same. That was my point. They weren't all promoted to the same people and the type of signatories show: people who actually work on the software vs people who don't.
Not everything is the same to everything else. Nuance and distinction is possible.
It was not "promoted in the Eastern bloc". People from those regions could sign it under their real names without repercussions.
The anti-Stallman letter is signed by the usual SJW developers who jump at any chance to cancel someone. Some of these went straight to positions of power in projects without having contributed anything of value.
These developers represent less than 5% of projects, the other 95% either does not care or is scared to sign the pro-Stallman letter.
> People from those regions could sign it under their real names without repercussions.
Precisely this; conversely, many people who signed the anti-Stallman letter were in positions where they would risk repercussions for not signing it, though it's (by design) hard to be sure to what extent that's why they signed it.
> either does not care
To be fair, I suspect >50% fall into this category.
Yes it was, the counterletter was posted on Russian forums a number of times, and it was regularly promoted in 4chan's /g/ too, where it was also drafted. There's probably still /g/ threads promoting the counterletter right now, as this is a cause celebre for 4chan. It's a 4chan-written letter promoted in the Russian-speaking internet. Russia has a well-documented state-sponsored homophobia and that attitude trickles down to many of her citizens in various ways.
In its introduction, the article contrasts "being able to decide what business you deal with" with "the non-judicial punishment of individuals". I'm not a fan how it simultaneously grouped it together - it's setting the scene up for others to do motte-and-bailey defense (using the business/voting facet to defend abuse towards individuals). But even more surprisingly, the article seems to be oblivious as to why cancellation has teeth - it involves chaining these two facets together.
A bunch of Internet strangers shunning you or calling you names can be distressing, but is mostly inconsequential. The problem starts when the crowd issues or implies a threat - threat of weaponizing this "key part of having a free market" against organizations associated with the victim. Threat of amplifying a negative message to a larger crowd still, to the point it could impact a company's bottom-line, a foundation's mission. Only then the victim is being cancelled, as the groups around them cut ties to save themselves.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 264 ms ] threadI was sat 1 meter away from Bruce at a convention when Stallman had stood up to interrupt the presentation from some marketing woman from google on a point of principle regarding an error she made in speech about the BSD license). He then turned his ire on Perens and publicly admonished him for his more pragmatic views on something related that I have now sadly forgotten.
I mention only to say i know the kind of treatment Bruce got from Richard as I was in the sightline of the pointing and the high pitched unmistakable loud voice calling him out in a room of hundreds of people.
He just laughed it off with a gesture. He seemed very affable and polite in our brief conversation.
edit a google has turned up someone who took notes including some of the detail i gave above
https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8941
All I can do is to try not to commit crimes [1] myself, lest I be similarly removed from employment, stripped of accolade, and banished forever.
[1] I'm LGBT and very open and inclusive with everyone (including democrats and republicans), but I seriously worry that eating meat might one day be frowned upon and punished.
edit: the idea that maybe we should give him a chance is persecuted, too. Nevermind that our entire careers are built on his shoulders and that no US court has found him guilty of a crime -- off with his head!
That’s perhaps too drastic and a little unprecedented. The trajectory we’re on I think leads to discouraging procreation in certain groups. A child that isn’t born is a lineage that doesn’t harm the climate.
We’ve already witnessed a historic outpouring of the eugenic impulse to control disease. I think it’s most likely over the coming century we’ll discover genocide is okay as long as it happens in slow motion, since there is precedent for genocide.
If that happens you could just come to Asia. That cult of climate guilt is entirely a western things; in China people'd give someone weird looks for being vegetarian for non-religious reasons. And to the people coming to down vote this: there are a over a billion people who don't share your radical environmentalist views and never will, suck it up.
I dont see many autistic people putting racial slurs in their names but here you are.
It's ridiculous that people continue to bring that up due to lack of real material.
I suspect there's more than one type of autism, in Stallman's case it seems that he has no filter at all and always speaks the truth (i.e. what he really thinks).
Give a neurotypical person a truth serum and you might be surprised. And you'll have more material that the 10 points of the Stallman inquisitors.
That's an indicator that there are no real material. Or the source of his mistreatment of women being the "And hot girls" sticker on his office, that some intern placed to make a joke.
Look the people that denounce him. All corporate lobbyists. This looks to me like a political move to eliminate an uncomfortable stone in the road to total control of software.
>I recall being told early in my freshman year “If RMS hits on you, just say ‘I’m a vi user’ even if it’s not true.”
>Richard Stallman told me of his misery and that he’d kill himself if I didn’t go out with him.
There are plenty of primary sources, and they're not "corporate lobbyists". RMS is toxic.
I said exactly that many times to girls when I was a teenager. It was a joke. Taken out of context, those phrases can mean anything good or bad.
Oh for christ's sake. Have you ever tell a joke to talk to a girl?
Maybe girls around you found it funny, I don't know, but women around Stallman clearly didn't. It's not a joke if nobody finds it funny.
Also, apparently it's controversial, but being unable to distinguish "telling a joke" from "creeping people out" should disqualify anyone from being a public figurehead. It's like a software engineer not being able to tell bubble sort from quicksort.
Can you explain the joke? What's the set up? What's the punchline? What expectations are being subverted? Is it somehow a pun?
You're claiming it's a joke, but I struggle to see how this works on any level as a joke.
Regardless, even if the suicide case happened as they said, I am not aware of him repeating it. Someone probably told him that this is wrong and he never did it again, isn't this exactly what we want? For people not to repeat their mistakes and stop what makes other uncomfortable? You are not born innately knowing that this is a bad thing.
Why? That's like, the entire basis of every organization, that supporters don't have to support it. If a company selling a product behaves in a way you don't want to support you stop buying, if a charity stops supporting a cause you stop supporting it, etc.
Some obvious answers:
Companies are made of people, so decisions that are made are often a reflection of the values of those people, not necessarily those of some country or another.
That some group of companies tends to be American is unsurprising since (a) America owns tons of 'loud' industries like tech, so it will always seem this way, and (b) unsurprisingly the values of those who make up a company are tied to some extent by their background.
Companies may feel that their targeted consumer groups are likely sympathetic with some specific social norm.
Companies may feel that the issue is in fact bad for business ie: that someone is a bad fit for a role, is incompetent, etc.
etc
It's so obvious I wonder why one would even ask.
[1] https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix
If RMS were a leader at a church or youth club, yes we'd rightly worry about where that view was coming from. But your data being your business is squarely within the goals of the FSF, and RMS staking out unpopular opinions based on their implications for his philosophy is precisely why he has been so prescient.
These days the big difference isn't so much about who's writing the rules so much as its about the tools available to these people/companies/interest groups and their respective motives/criteria for using them.
Unsupported claim.
Stallman is not a janitor but in top management (I have the highest respect for janitors but they are not required to be a role model of the organization).
"Thus, they are bound by the Americans with Disability Act and other applicable law to make accommodations for a handicapped employee."
Totally agree, but I won't make a blind person the watchout guy on a ship. There are limits to inclusion.
[Edit] HN you made me giggle this morning. This gets quite some downvotes and for a short time was Karma negative - so people try to cancel me with downvotes for my opinion because they think RMS is cancelled for his opinion. Believing two different things at the same time - or believing one thing by doing the opposite is the real turing test. Nice insight, thanks.
This doesn't imply it's not an irrational action, i.e. you may justifiably avoid a person/thing that is linked with immoral behavior even if there is no sentence (say, avoid bitcoin because of climate issues).
When RMS is advocating for zoophilia and necrophilia (he's finally relented on pedophilia, though, after many years of also defending "consensual" pedophilia), it hurts the advocacy for his other causes. You can't effectively simultaneously champion two such disparate causes without one cause seeping into the other.
Edit: Sigh, here it is, let's trot it out again, 2006 is when he was defending pedophilia:
> 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/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20...
It's also absolutely not libel, and it's rather silly to throw such terms around.
Stallman defended legalization of pedophilia by name (and in the context of an overt political effort to eliminate age of consent entirely) and only recanted that support after the controversy over Minsky erupted in 2019 (which, given the somewhat related subject matter, also brought heightened, though not the first, attention to that advocacy.)
https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix
The point Stallman made, in the most deliberately urticant and confrontational possible way, is:
Are you willing to incarcerate people for drawings? However disturbing the subject?
> 26 October 2014 (Prison for cartoon) A man in the UK has been sentenced for prison for having a cartoon depicting a fictional child in some sort of sexual situation.
The advocates of this kind of censorship started by saying they were trying to protect real children from being abused in order to take their photos. Making such photos should be a crime, and is a crime, but that is no reason to prohibit possessing copies of the photos.
However, they have already gone far beyond that. No child was harmed in drawing the cartoon.
To criminalize possession of copies of anything published — no matter what it is — is oppressive, and leads to many other forms of tyranny.
Now you have read something you had not read before. I am glad to have shown you something you didn't know.
The question at hand is whether he's an appropriate person to place in a leadership position of an activism organization. And frankly, there's no "should" there - there's only the blunt question of whether he's helping the organization achieve its activism goals or not. If his personal beliefs or actions are making the targets of the activism not be interested in listening, then he's undermining the work of his fellow activists, whether or not he intends to. If his affiliation with the organization threatens funding, then he's putting the organization at risk, whether or not we think that ought to be a relevant factor for donors. (And it goes the other way too, of course.)
The goal of the free software movement is to convince people that software freedom is important and to produce free software. It is a hard enough task. Changing the goals to be to convince people that, first, they should stop caring about Richard Stallman's views, and then after that, that they should care about software freedom, just makes the task even harder.
Is it a decision? Yes.
Is it a decision made in the name of public interest? Yes.
Is it a decision that relates to some kind of transgression? Yes.
Is it a decision that seriously affects a person's liberty and pursuit of happiness? Yes.
Is it a decision made out of a fair trial? No.
Just because the labels "justice, diversity, inclusivity, equity" are displayed on a mob that harasses and assaults people doesn't make it less of a mob.
Also Stallman didn't "hurt" anyone. This is ridiculous.
Generally speaking, a blind person can't do anything to improve their vision.
A person with a social disability can learn coping strategies to perform better in social situations, in spite of their disability. In the literature on ASD, this process even has a name – "masking". They may never be as good at social stuff as someone without a social disability, they may find social situations draining, etc, but they can improve.
People with ASD [0] often have poor social intuition, but they can learn to think consciously about things which other people can identify intuitively. There's no reason why Stallman couldn't do that as well. Sometimes, given enough time, what first had to be learnt consciously can become more automatic, even intuitive.
Has Stallman been taking actions to try to improve as a result of this public controversy? No idea. But it is at least possible he has. Maybe he's been seeing a therapist. Maybe he's even shared that fact with the FSF board, and maybe they've taken that into account in their decision to reinstate him, but of course it wouldn't be appropriate for the FSF board to share that kind of private medical information publicly.
Of course, we also have to consider the fact that he is 68. Increasing cognitive rigidity is a natural consequence of ageing, and people can find it harder to change ingrained habits at 68 than if they were 20 or 30 or 40 years younger. Even so, I don't think being 68 makes change impossible, just harder.
[0] I'm not saying Stallman has ASD, simply that he may. Quite a few years ago he publicly expressed the opinion that he doesn't have ASD/autism/Asperger's, but I don't believe that was based on a professional evaluation, simply a case of "self-undiagnosis". Also, his comments demonstrate he doesn't have a good understanding of ASD, so I don't think his "self-undiagnosis" should be given a lot of weight. He obviously has signs of broad autism phenotype (BAP), but whether it is just BAP or whether it is ASD is something which only a professional can answer. BAP is not a clinical diagnosis, it is a very common subclinical condition. I don't think the BAP-vs-ASD boundary is important for this discussion – people with BAP have many of the same issues that people with ASD do, just to a milder and less disabling degree.
If they had, it would be a good idea to have written into the press release.
"Of course, we also have to consider the fact that he is 68. Increasing cognitive rigidity is a natural consequence of ageing, and people can find it harder to change ingrained habits at 68 than if they were 20 or 30 or 40 years younger."
So you think someone with cognitive rigidity who can't change his habits is a good fit for a leadership role?
If someone discloses to their employer that they are seeing a therapist, it would be inappropriate for their employer to put that disclosure in a press release. (Board members aren’t technically employees but I think the principle is the same.)
> So you think someone with cognitive rigidity who can't change his habits is a good fit for a leadership role?
If the FSF board wants to give him the opportunity to demonstrate an ability to change, why shouldn’t they? Also, they are much better judges of whether he is trying to change, and whether or not he’s having success in that, than external observers such as you or I can be. They are engaged in communications with him to which the general public are not privy
Because of the forseeable adverse impact on other people to whom thet are responsible?
> Also, they are much better judges of whether he is trying to change, and whether or not he’s had success in that, than external observers such as you or I can be.
The at least one FSF board member who departed, and the FSF’s management who likewise resigned over the issue, OTOH, are in at least an equally good position to the Board members who supported the move.
Some people don't want to have anything to do with an FSF in which Stallman is still involved. Other people don't want to have anything to do with an FSF in which Stallman is definitely excluded. Whatever they do is going to have an adverse impact, so they have to make a judgement call.
> The at least one FSF board member who departed, and the FSF’s management who likewise resigned over the issue, OTOH, are in at least an equally good position to the Board members who supported the move.
I don't know if we should interpret their resignation as a judgement that Stallman can't change (or isn't interested in changing), or as an expression of the view that other factors are more important in deciding whether he should be on the board than that one.
In principle yes, but not if that was the reason the person could not have the leadership role in the first place.
"Is it okay if I put your private medical information in our press release?"–many people would view that question as inappropriate to even ask.
Yes.
But I didn't say it is appropriate, me saying this was only in your head.
Stallman's views hurt people in the sense that some people got offended that he believed in things that they did not. None of his views could hurt people in any other way, he never posted any racist/sexist/transphobic/etc views.
Downvotes are not cancelling. Downvotes won't get you fired. Nobody will bully you for being downvoted (or even having this opinion really). They just show that people find your argument dishonest or disagree with you.
Does ADA require an airline to employ a blind pilot? Besides allowing his service dog?
This essay starts with reason and ends with a slapstick statement equivalent to Walmart being required to keep employing a greeter with (movie cliche type) Tourette’s.
There is no defined end to this non judicial punishment, especially not in this case where there has been no improvement in the cause and apparently there never will be. It’s not for mr. Perens to decide differently.
And he did it because of the very qualities he is vilified now: persistence, pedantry, having strong opinions.
This entire focus on his supposed personal failings is a distraction. Even if RMS had completely reformed his behavior, he should not be running the FSF —- someone with a vision for the FSF that is still relevant should be in charge.
I would also like to hear your ideas what should a "vision for the FSF that is still relevant" include? It will be OK for me if you will please kindly tell what is wrong with current 'FSF vision'.
And now: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-hardening/CAHk-=whA6zru0BaNm4u...
Or as a more personal example, I will not contribute directly to any open source projects under the FSF umbrella because I won’t deal with their obnoxious contributor agreement process. As far as I can tell, the world and the FSF gain nothing except maybe prestige from this process, but they definitely keep contributors away.
Also, you probably do not understand the mindset of this movement. It is not a priority to have the best and shiniest toys and instruments. It is about freedoms, and freedoms only, even despite this way will cause significant inconveniences. It is unacceptable to compromise even the slightest part of freedoms to provide better convenience. This path is not for everybody, but I'm glad someone walks on it, if only to be a safeguard against abuse done by major software vendors. And FSF is very successful in acting as such.
> because I won’t deal with their obnoxious contributor agreement process
This process is in place for a very valid reason, perfectly explained here [1].
[1]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html
I’m pretty sure that almost everyone involved thought that the IR approach was technically superior. This included the people writing the code and the people who wanted to use the code. The FSF’s dedication to the cause caused a bunch of users to move to LLVM, which is not GPL.
As for the copyright assignment, the amount of paperwork and annoyance when I tried to sign up was absurd, so I gave up.
Clearly he can.
We don't need another infiltrated Linux Foundation.
People with a manic depressive disorder can have both great highs and deep lows at different periods.
We should be tolerant of everyone as much as we can.
That is completely different if you are but of those jokes and if you know that those jokes are funny to people, because they express what others think about you.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26537802
The strongest plausible interpretation of what he said is he understood the distinction between clinical and subclinical presentations and the part about rhythm was incidental. It's clear he had some understanding at least. Insisting he must have thought rhythm was a diagnostic criterion and that completely invalidates his understanding is the weakest plausible interpretation at best.
And, this isn't directed at you personally, but I think a lot of people who bring "Stallman says he doesn't have it" into the argument don't display any awareness of the concept of BAP.
Edit: I regret saying anything please carry on praising the guy who treats people like garbage because people enable him. I’ll just go back to doing my best to triangulate my emotional reactions with empathy so I can survive and have moderately healthy relationships.
I'm like, it's his hill he can die on it.
Stallman seems to have been protected from normal social feedback at least since starting at MIT as a graduate student in the 1970s.
Most reasonably functioning autistic people seem able to improve their social skills, at least to some degree, as they mature, if only as a conscious act ("masking").
The bubble Stallman lived in seems to either have prevented him from doing that, or worse, possibly allowed him to willfully ignore such personal development.
You see this unproductive coddling in the Perens article, which simply assumes Stallman's "handicap" is a fact of life over which he couldn't possibly have any conscious control.
In my experience, that's rarely the case, unless you're dealing with much more severely handicapped individuals, who may not even be verbal.
RMS publicly defended child rape. Someone like that should not get to define what freedom means.
RMS has all the right not to get attacked about his awkward behavior, but he has to feel the consequences on his ideological thought.
This little bit right here sounds fascist.
I'm not going to defend RMS' words or actions (I don't even know what the entire case against him is, and the more extreme this gets the less I want to pry into his personal life). I do think people are losing their minds to assassinate the guy.
RMS has given us our entire industry and careers. Without free software, you wouldn't have a job. I wouldn't either. Take a moment and let the gravity of that sink in.
(take a moment)
He apologized and spent several years away from the organization he founded. Why does it have to be the rest of his natural life? We're murdering him and taking his baby.
Why do people nowadays believe in permanent assassination of character? Unending punishment?
People have redemption arcs.
The stupid movies, books, and tv shows that everyone in this thread watches have forgiveness and grace in them. Why do we deny them to our fellow humans?
I'm an atheist, but Jesus preached against this kind of thing, and I think we could learn from some of his teachings. Throwing stones and forgiveness.
=========================================================
I got cut off by the Hacker News negative karma filter for the downvotes I got, but I typed out a comment I was pretty happy with. (It was to this comment [2]) I'll include it here instead:
> There ought to be a place for RMS in our discourse. Just not this one.
I'm trying to think of the limit of humanity here, when we're all living in the metaverse and aren't tied to physical bodies anymore. Complete freedom, and the ability to disassociate ourselves from our corporeal bodies. Assume new identities at will.
In the future, you'd ban the "RMS account" for misbehavior, but he'd be free to join again under a new one, free from the judgments and baggage of the old account. He'd just lack all of the accolades and gear he'd built up.
What you're doing now is calling for RMS permadeath in meatspace. He can't restart. It's game over.
Since there is no ability to restart IRL lives, why don't we have forgiveness as a feature?
The US penal system has a notion of when punishments have been meted out. He's stepped down for several years. Was it not long enough of a punishment?
Are we saying that some people may never forgive RMS? And that we're restricting his access indefinitely to satisfy the people who hold grudges eternally?
What sort of bug in humanity is that?
Maybe certain people think we should stop letting people out of jail.
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26708215
September 2019 — March 2021 isn’t “several years”. Many of the othern elements of your description are similarly creative interpretations of the facts.
That's 16 to 18 months, not far from 24. This is such a nitpick.
Why don't you address the rest of my comment?
Well, dispatch the ideological police then.
After one person wrote that "Giuffre was 17 at the time; this makes it rape in the Virgin Islands," Stallman responded, "I think it is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17."
Minsky (and Minsky's wife) disputed the claims that he had sex with Giuffre. Stallman was not supporting child rape, he was objectively looking at how a local government can criminalize behavior that is not illegal in many other jurisdictions.
To be clear, Stallman was not supporting Epstein, and I am not supporting any of them, but Perens' point about Stallman being shunned because he was insensitive is spot on.
He explicitly supported a political campaign that aimed to immediately reduce the age of consent to 12 and ultimately eliminate it, on the basis that sex acts that were “consensual pedophilia” was not only not an oxymoron, but also something that wasn’t harmful.
(He also raised questions about rhe factual guilt of someone accused of nonconsensually sexually exploiting an Epstein-trafficked young woman, but that wasn’t where he defended child rape.)
No he absolutely didn't, certainly not explicitly. He linked to the news item and added a sentence of commentary, he did it for 3 news items that day and thousands over the decades.
It's right here, 2006-06-05: https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html
The lowest age of consent is 16 -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_age_in_the_United_Sta...
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
That's an entirely reasonable theory. Would the FSF care to confirm it?
How come the FSF hasn't said anything about why Stallman is back on the board - not even an announcement? Why are they just making oblique references as if they're embarrassed by it?
If the entirety of the FSF's statements are a tweet saying that LibrePlanet speakers didn't know about Stallman's "announcement," a statement about "governance," and several resignations, how are they giving an opportunity for Stallman to demonstrate that he has reformed his behavior? Why not put out a simple statement saying that Stallman is back on the board for such-and-such reasons?
Frankly, if you looked only at the FSF's website and not at the rest of the internet, you'd be extremely confused what's going on and why there's a need for "work to improve governance at the FSF."
It'd be great if this were a "learning opportunity" for Stallman, if it admitted the "possibility of reform". The FSF has taken zero steps to make it happen, and they are destabilizing the free software movement all the while.
The entirety of the FSF top-tier management resigning over this (the people that actually would do the work of directing staff to put together an announcement, reviewing it, approving it, etc.) probably has some impact on the lack of a coordinate communication campaign from the FSF. The Board (whose also lost at least one member) doesn’t do the day-to-day work, or even directly manage that work.
The point is that people (and corporations) should be more tolerant of the views of others. They are not required to agree, but they should not automatically push the "cancel" button. I don't agree with everything that Stallman believes (for example, GPL3), but I have no desire to shun him.
I will likely be modded down for expressing my next opinion: The same thing applies to those who support(ed) President Donald Trump. There was once a day when most US citizens would respect the office of President even when they did not hold the same views as the occupant. Why is there so much hate for those (47%?) who supported, or still support him and his political philosophies?
You cannot run a tolerant society without being intolerant to those that want to destroy it.
You are right, that there is too much intolerance in today’s society, but I don’t think that it’s the case here. I think Stallman’s public statements about child rape deserve all the shunning he got.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/richard-stallman...
After one person wrote that "Giuffre was 17 at the time; this makes it rape in the Virgin Islands," Stallman responded, "I think it is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17."
https://thenextweb.com/dd/2019/09/13/free-software-icon-rich...
Popper predicated that right on the right to self-defense against people who use "fists or pistols" instead of words to argue.
Has RMS been out there punching or shooting people or using some other physical violence? Last I knew he wasn't even accused of intolerance at all but of some absurd defense of his now-dead friend who was accused of going to Epstein's island.
>I think Stallman’s public statements about child rape deserve all the shunning he got.
You just invoked Hitler's logic for the holocaust and blood libel in the same post against a person of Jewish ethnicity.
- demonize a large group of people collectively
- accuse RMS of making statements he did not make
So, no, not very much like Hitler at all.
Is free speech dead? Are we back to the ways of Stalin, Khrushchev, and Mao? Should all non-conformant speech be cancelled? What will our future be like if that is the case?
So your company should have people with handicap, but that have no effect on others.
And diverse genders, but you should consider them all the same, even if we know we have diverse bodies, needs and behaviors.
And diverse cultural and religious background, but it should be ignored like if we all agreed on how life works.
Living together do mean we have to live by common rules and try to fit, but you can't have your cake and both way: if you increase diversity, you will increase friction.
If you ask for diversity and you want them to be just like you, think just like you, or act just like you, it's not going to work.
That is a false statement. We want people to behave respectfully of others, not the same way we do.
It looks to be about a superficial diversity: of ethnicity, sex, gender, (dis-)ability etc, but not of thought.
The diversity movement is primarily concerned with allowing diversity outside of the core issues, while strictly forbidding it within, and purging those who don't comply, regardless of their gender, sex, ethnicity etc.
I haven't thought about this earlier, but there is some truth to it. When I'm with my rightish colleagues, I can basically say anything I like, the worst I risk is being called a stupid commie. Of course they know we have very different opinions, but there is no problem - basically I feel free to discuss anything.
With my leftish friends, I really need to be much more careful. Frankly, I'm not up to date about all the current developments especially in the trans sphere, and I'm not sure if the thing that appears in my mind is the right one to say. And when I say something wrong, they are really outraged. They take it personally. So I find myself a bit more quiet when I' with them, and I keep my opinions about important issues to myself.
This is not a friend, imo. There are plenty of leftists that aren't performative and don't practice consistent outrage. I've known some of these people too and they're exhausting. Do yourself a favor and get new leftist friends.
In practice, respect is a spectrum that includes people sensitivity, education, social context, legality, and is not an absolute.
Drawing a picture of God may be worship for some, and disrespectful for others. For more daily simple things, it's the same.
If you want an autistic person to behave like you, with empathy, you are not asking for respect. The person may not be disrespecting you.
I had an asperger in my class last year, always interrupting me during my explanations. You can enrage that it was disrespect. Or you can understand he just didn't see he was disturbing the flow of the course.
Many on twitter would have accused him on mansplaining. I just asked him directly to keep interruptions limited to the time break. He complied, happy to have a clear instruction on how to deal with the situation.
You don’t even need to define absolutes, for god’s sakes. The point is that people shouldn’t bring their politics to the office, and they do that by not discriminating on anyone on the basis of anything, which necessitates respecting and valuing everyone equally. The problem is that, simply, people don’t do that and actively refuse to do that, because they feel that their inherently divisive views shouldn’t sow divisiveness in the office. It makes no sense.
Society is currently not vegan in majority, so you could say they should adapt. Also you could adapt the point of view they are trying to do the least of harm, and are suffering from the harm you do. Then, you should adapt.
Diversity is bound to cause friction. That's just how it is.
There is no simple good answer to that.
It's always case by case. What's right today it not what's right tomorrow.
[0]https://fablesofaesop.com/the-miller-his-son-and-their-ass.h...
But, going back to the variables that diversity actually pertains to, such as race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion, it’s not as ambiguous and complicated as you make it out to be. You cannot be discriminating people on those grounds because all that really matters in the workplace is what each individual brings to the table. You know, the output that you’re actually getting compensated for. I run a small business and I like to draw talent from a diverse pool of applicants, but anybody who makes sexist or racist remarks isn’t getting hired or is definitely getting fired because I don’t like assholes who introduce non-work related friction in the office, though I really just don’t like working with assholes.
What you also said about the minority adjusting to the majority is just disagreeable. There are so many periods in history where majority of humans believed something about the world that is also wrong. There also always tends to be an objective basis of right and wrong where a clear purpose is defined, so maybe you should clarify your purpose instead of dealing with ethics from a purely abstract level.
One person can be offended, but its on the person to take on themself. You can go anywhere you want with this.
If I masturbate on my chair during my break, I don't harm anybody. Do you take offense ? Why ? I don't harm you. But the majority of society would feels it's weird, so you would not allow it. No more "the offended person should just keep the peace" here.
Besides, with your example, you can't hire an autistic person.
The person will cause turmoil.
Just like a person in a wheelchair will need an elevator.
So there is some sort of diversity that you decide up front not to accept by design.
> But, going back to the variables that diversity actually pertains to, such as race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion,
You are limited diversity to a class of parameters you valid. Diversity is, by definition, completely open. You don't decide to limit what's diverse. People are people, they are different. That's diversity.
> the output that you’re actually getting compensated for
People are more than robots outputting thing. They interact and create likes and dislikes. They talk about something else than work, or they don't feel they belong. The "only" work culture is an illusion, work doesn't happen in a vacuum.
But I can see you are starting to use words such as "asshole", which indicate to me this conversation stopped being about sharing idea.
I assure you I read all your arguments and took them in consideration carefully, and wish you a good day.
> You are limited diversity to a class of parameters you valid. Diversity is, by definition, completely open. You don't decide to limit what's diverse. People are people, they are different. That's diversity.
Neither do you get to decide exactly what kind of diversity companies can aim for. It might not be explicit in the language, but you should know that companies are not going for unqualified diversity, where they put people from marginalized groups with the people who vocally marginalize them. Diversity initiatives typically aim to assemble a workforce that draws talent from multiple groups of people, but also except those that would actively hurt such people, because if they don’t draw a line, all that companies will end up creating is unproductive office drama. The argument about diversity being “completely open by definition” is actually irrelevant since diversity can be qualified and “diverse” != “universal”.
You can find traits which are signs of respect in one culture and yet offensive in others. The only way to reconcile that is to not attempt to impose your definition of respect onto others. Not always super easy to do, of course.
I would be perfectly fine if a development of a project would be done by strangers behind incognito aliases. I don't care if the contributed code comes from Black woman or Caucasian man or some cat who had learned to code. I believe that it is absolutely irrelevant topic that is forced on the industry by whatever reasons. If is not like the barrier to entry is too high: anyone who can afford a $500 PC and internet can have access to all the learning materials in the world.
1. The meaning of $500 varies wildly across earth. It's not much work to figure that out. 2. It depends on the kind of project. If you want a community project, a project that lives and breathes, you don't just need to put out code, but also inspire use and new contributors. For that, a pleasant atmosphere helps, and have existing contributors seem approachable. For that, you need to project not being a tiny club of likeminded, or worse, outright similar, people. This tends to discouraged interest and participation. It also tends towards a particular internal culture having way too much overlap with a particular culture is my experience. Teams consisting of 30 year old male computer scientists will have a particular kind of banter/small talk utterly incompatible with many other backgrounds. Not having too much of one kind of team member protects you from this, making on boarding easier.
Oh, come on! This argument appears so often, but it is absolutely irrelevant: a person without a computer is unlikely to participate in the Free Software movement, with rms at the helm or without.
And living and breathing projects: all projects would be more healthy if they were all strict to business. No activism of any kind, but the one aimed at improving the product. You don't need to fight for gender equality if you don't care about the sex of the contributor!
If sex means zero to you, then both sexes are truly equal, because 0 equals 0.
It makes optimizing harder, add friction and augment costs.
But it also force evolution, and make a system more adapted and resiliant, healthier on the long run.
As usual, it depends, and intensity matters. Those questions don't have a definitive anwser, even cute ones like "just be nice to each others".
But regardless or whether we do need diveristy, it is promoted currently as the progressive point of view. If you go on social media and claim we don't want diversity, you will have a serious backslash. From the same persons that will ask autistic persons to behave like an average person. Hence my point on the dissonance.
The point of having the knowledge that our bodies and needs are different as dictated by sex (not gender, if you’re talking about bodies) is to respect and value each other equally despite the things that we cannot change about our biologies.
If what you just said is how adversaries of gender equality and women empowerment think, then it is no wonder that there’s a lot of toxic disagreement on the matter. I suppose it’s difficult for such people to wrap their heads around why having gender-based sports divisions is justified and not inherently sexist, and that both are equally dignified categories.
1. RMS is not being punished by the FSF.
He does not have any right to a particular job, even as the founder of an organization. Many people, including FSF board members, believed he was not competent to serve the organization in a leadership role.
One could argue about whether getting excoriated on social media is a "non-judicial punishment". Perens seems to be decrying a rush to judgment, contrasting it with jury duty. But the most damning criticism is coming from people who worked with RMS closely, and who for years even shielded him from the consequences of his own actions. These people have thought long and hard about their experiences.
2. RMS is not obviously asking for any understanding nor promising to be better.
RMS has publicly described himself as having autistic characteristics. He seems to be saying he's sub-clinical. But, if he believes that this is the source of his difficulties, this is a private matter between him and his employer. So, our ability to judge here is limited.
However, at least from public statements, he does not seem to be invoking that defense, or asking for understanding. In fact, he doesn't seem to be even interested in any harms he has caused. Surely this would be step one?
Perens may well believe that RMS' problem is autism. But it matters what RMS believes and does. If he really has a disability but is denying it has any impact, this is even more of a reason to remove him.
3. Frankly this entire argument does such a disservice to the many men and women who live with autism/Asperger's Syndrome. A lot of them do struggle with norms. But they also feel bad when they inadvertently cause others pain. And most of them find a modus vivendi with others. This seems very unlike how RMS' interactions have been described, including to me by people who've worked with him, and what I've also personally seen at public events.
4. Personally it makes me very sad that we're having this argument. I don't take any pleasure in seeing RMS removed from a position of honor. I think he's one of the greatest thinkers of his time, and documents like "The Right to Read" ought to be in textbooks. There ought to be a place for RMS in our discourse. Just not this one.
Oh, has he? Last I heard he actually rejected that. When did he openly call himself autistic?
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2551458/asperger-s-oxy...
You can't apologize once there is a mixture of 10% truth and 90% defamation.
The libelous press will then print that the target has apologized for 100%, and therefore has validated the libel.
No offense but I find this argument to be in bad faith. You would not say that for someone being fired due to being lgbt, would you? (whether it is legal or not is irrelevant here as this is about moral rights)
He was not ostracized because they found him "not competent to serve the organization in a leadership role" but rather because they were outraged at his opinions (combined with a misrepresentation of his statements along with lies and half-truths -- the pleasure cards, the mit office label, etc).
>Many people, including FSF board members, believed he was not competent to serve the organization in a leadership role.
It would be great if these people too didn't try to misrepresent what he said. Such as in http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html
The US has a functioning court system - we don't need vigilantes like yourself, and there's no legal case here.
In case you're not familiar with history, what you're suggesting is replaying the Communist Red Terror or Maoist purges, but 70 years later in the US.
Shame on you.
My feelings on RMS is that he should not be on the board, and he should directly participate on any "official" communications channel, be it email or code reviewing. Rather, a channel should be provided for him to respond, and within that channel should be a process to capture the essence of the response that is important without the offensive bits.
Historians have failed you: this behavior and mentality will lead to a dark dead end. We must be tolerant and even accepting of those with whom we disagree with. Opinions are fleeting, but we are all human and that won’t change in our lifetime.
First of all, nobody has ever actually diagnosed RMS and he himself has rejected that folk diagnosis when offered to him. If dude wanted psychiatric help, he could get it.
Second of all, the diagnosis, if it were accurate, is no excuse. Lots of people on the spectrum know how to behave.
Finally, even if was autistic and even if we could excuse his behaviour by his autism, he's not fit to be in any kind of leadership position. Yelling at people when they use the wrong words, which is his main and constant strategy, does not help the cause of free software. Technological self-abnegation, while giving him an aura of sainthood, does little to actually put free software in the hands of users.
Stallman can keep blogging if he wants, he can keep up his self-abnegation, but he doesn't have to be in the decision board of the FSF to do this.
Just to touch on this and not the other issues - many people who are diagnosable as having some problem refuse diagnosis, this does not mean they don't have the problem they could be diagnosed as having.
Arguably the reason you're using the term "free software" is because of RMS' incessant chastising. The only thing as relentless as RMS are the forces that continually eat away at the central thesis of his movement--the necessity for users to have access to the source code of the software they use as requisite for software freedom.
Does the movement need RMS going forward? I don't know. I'm not even sure it can stay as strong as it is, regardless of his participation. I have more certainty, however, that it wouldn't be as successful as it was and currently is without him. His conflation of the utilitarian and political character of software was rather unique. Even today the vast majority of people find the comparison either impractical, trite, or otherwise inapposite. Comparable concepts, like Lessig's "code is law", aren't quite the same and in any event haven't had the staying power.
It is called a spectrum because it contains a lot of different conditions that vary significantly.
>but he doesn't have to be in the decision board of the FSF to do this
Please re-evaluate this statement. One could as well use "you don't have to be in the decision board of the FSF to be gay". He certainly does not need to be in the decision board of the FSF to do this but you do not need to be in the decision board of the FSF to do pretty much anything.
I would argue that being in the decision board (instead of being the president) of the FSF is a good position for him. He can continue steering the FSF on things regarding software freedom, can continue giving his talks, and the face of the FSF will be someone who is more desirable by donors and deals with people better I guess?
Direct link: https://stallmansupport.org/ (it debunks various attacks against him)
2nd throwaway because tor accounts have a limited number of posts it seems.
Stallman was removed because many found his presence unacceptable to their continued participation. Having removed him, that remains the case.
In addition to being poorly reasoned, this article is also somewhat contradictory. First, it argues that shunning should be temporary because the shunned must be given a chance to prove that they have reformed their behavior. Then it argues that Mr. Stallman's behavior is clearly based in his handicap and accommodations must be made for it. These two arguments don't work together. If he can control his behavior, his handicap need not be accommodated. If he cannot, there is no point to reassessing whether he has reformed.
Were any of these people actually contributing in any meaningful sense, or just "participating"?
Here's the lead developer of the HURD: https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa...
Here's someone who spent about two decades of his life at the FSF, including as executive director, and won the FSF's award for contributions to free software on the same day that RMS announced his return: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html
Here's a whole bunch of GNU project maintainers, publishing a statement on gnu.org: https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-pr...
Here's a couple of high-profile GCC contributors: https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235091.html https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235096.html
Bushnell hasn't been working on HURD for a long time. He joined a religious order and works for google.
> Here's someone who spent about two decades of his life at the FSF
Kuhn is now the president of a competing organisation to the FSF that doesn't mind promoting Facebook or Google for their outreach.
> Here's a whole bunch of GNU project maintainers
Guix has been in disagreement with rms since he didn't want to adopt a CoC for GNU because it was "too punitive" in intent, and suggested using GNU's Kind Communications Guidelines instead.
> Here's a couple of high-profile GCC contributors
Nathan Sidwell is a Facebook engineer who instigated the removal of rms from the gcc steering committee. After the committee did so for technical reasons, he accused them of not being punitive enough towards rms and proceeded to tally various personal suspicions against rms.
https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-April/235267.html
> https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-April/235267.html
Today I learned the name of one of the first toxic people who seriously suggested to write gcc in C++. And they are admitting it themselves! What a tragedy. Of course, RMS was, rightfully again, the main opposing force. We live in sad, sad times.
Quoting this person's message:
> Interactions I've had with the SC, beyond maintainer appointment, seem to run into RMS.
Sounds like a feature to me! The main purpose of RMS's presence is precisely to keep away idiotic proposals like those of Nathan Sidwell.
Being serious, the world needs an easily bootstrappable C compiler. It's a crucial pillar of our society, and we lost it a few years ago. That is a shame.
(By the way, Kuhn was on the board of the FSF while he was leading this "competing organization." The fact that this was not seen as a conflict of interest, and that the FSF has awarded him for his work at this "competing organization," implies that they are not actually competitors.)
Who, then, has the right to criticize RMS, if they don't? It sort of seems like anyone who raises a criticism of RMS can have that criticism dismissed because they've become a critic of RMS.
Who is a legitimate part of the free software movement other than RMS himself?
> Who, then, has the right to criticize RMS
I doubt there is a collective answer, but I encourage everyone to look into the various affiliations of both proponents and detractors of rms' reinstatement and make their own decisions on whom they should trust.
Only people who are pure, demonstrated by worship of RMS, are free to criticize him. Of course, if they do so, they are no longer pure, and lose that license.
If someone decided not to participate in Free Software because they couldn't stand Stallman, then they don't have a strong urge to do so anyway. It is likely that they didn't even participate at all, but were seeking some attention and did virtue signalling.
Does anyone really believe Sara Mei would have contributed to GNU 20 years ago?
There were real philosophical disagreements, and I'm not even saying RMS had the wrong side of the argument. But he definitely gave everyone a huge incentive to go off and do something different because at least you wouldn't be working with RMS.
I can think of several people off the top of my head who attempted to work with RMS, were immediately repelled, and then went off to do other things with freely distributed software.
As for 'bifurcation': it happened because different people have different goals when they release their software. Some are driven by some idealistic values, others do it because it fits in their business plan for whatever reasons. Thus different groups of people might have different requirements to freedoms they grant to their code.
In turn, desperate people who cling at the position for emotional reasons are not all that great.
The government enjoys sovereign immunity when it frees people who have served their jail time and it enjoys a monopoly of power. The FSF does not enjoy the same level of legal protection when RMS harasses women, nor does it have a monopoly on anything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Return_to_FSF
The original letter is signed by many of us who actually write the free software and who are part of GNU. I recognise people in the original letter I've collaborated on GNU software with, people I've met at conferences, people I've worked on bug reports with.
There are a few personalities in the counterletter, but if we're going by "jury of peers" there are far more peers in the original letter than the counterletter. The signatures in the two letters are a clear case of quantity vs quality.
Yeah, the quality of the signatories is obvious.
Sorry, but there really is nothing here.
Not everything is the same to everything else. Nuance and distinction is possible.
The anti-Stallman letter is signed by the usual SJW developers who jump at any chance to cancel someone. Some of these went straight to positions of power in projects without having contributed anything of value.
These developers represent less than 5% of projects, the other 95% either does not care or is scared to sign the pro-Stallman letter.
Precisely this; conversely, many people who signed the anti-Stallman letter were in positions where they would risk repercussions for not signing it, though it's (by design) hard to be sure to what extent that's why they signed it.
> either does not care
To be fair, I suspect >50% fall into this category.
Yes it was, the counterletter was posted on Russian forums a number of times, and it was regularly promoted in 4chan's /g/ too, where it was also drafted. There's probably still /g/ threads promoting the counterletter right now, as this is a cause celebre for 4chan. It's a 4chan-written letter promoted in the Russian-speaking internet. Russia has a well-documented state-sponsored homophobia and that attitude trickles down to many of her citizens in various ways.
A bunch of Internet strangers shunning you or calling you names can be distressing, but is mostly inconsequential. The problem starts when the crowd issues or implies a threat - threat of weaponizing this "key part of having a free market" against organizations associated with the victim. Threat of amplifying a negative message to a larger crowd still, to the point it could impact a company's bottom-line, a foundation's mission. Only then the victim is being cancelled, as the groups around them cut ties to save themselves.