I was out of the loop about what Stallman was being smeared for.
"Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it," Stallman wrote. "Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per [sic] psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that. I am grateful for the conversations that enabled me to understand why."
I'm of the opinion that people who are known for x, e.g., their opinions on FOSS, should stay in their lane and only really discuss topics they have a good grasp of, otherwise they're soon going to be lambasted for any momentary lapse of judgement or lack of knowledge.
That isn't to say that I'm saying Stallman should shut the fuck up about anything that isn't software, but I am saying that it's a problem that would have been easily avoided with common sense applied.
If you are in the public eye, and your career depends on your reputation and public image, it would be beneficial to have a third-party coach you through basics of interacting with press, thinking many times before speaking etc.
Nobody asked him for these opinions. He's the last person I'd want an opinion on these topics from, and all I want to hear about from Stallman is FOSS, maybe culture. Nothing else, that's not what he's known for.
You are mistaken to think Stallman is primarily a software person. He is a leader of a social movement, with social goals (freedom from the shackles of proprietary software) achieved by strategic investment in software development and legal battles over the decades. From this lens, it is quite his lane.
I don't think people like Stallman need to be actively supported. If what they have to say is valuable then that's what counts, especially if he is genuine in his activism.
Whilst Stallman has made a lot of very astute and smart observations and contributions throughout his lifetime, he's increasingly irrelevant in a world that's changed many times over since he was last truly relevant to what's happening for anybody.
He's a great speaker and writer, he's fascinating to listen to, but some arguments of his lack substance and solutions other than "this is bad, so don't use it".
> going to be lambasted for any momentary lapse of judgement or lack of knowledge.
I believe at some point the problem must be solved at the source. Perhaps idealistic, but I believe it can be possible if values adapt as they did in the past.
While his statements certainly are controversial and everyone is very free to disagree, the real problem are those that decry verbal opinions and demand consequences. Often the most judgmental that have most shortcomings themselves and I believe that was fairly transparent with vocal accusers of Stallman.
Disappointing in recent years where companies and institutions that reacted full of panic at any hint of a negative press and just ruthlessly evicted employees to not succumb to a "toxic work atmosphere" (which they have just created by reacting as they did). Having the back of your employees in principle until guilt is proved is a value itself. Something self-evident but what many companies just as evidently lack.
Otherwise we need to adhere to the old rules of PR and that often means that we will be ruled by stupidity or some emotional gratification by randomly formed groups. And the rules of PR will also apply to everyone that has a public persona on the net. They would need some form of PR firm or have a good talent see through emotional needs of listeners.
I don't believe that your career does depend on reputation as much as it did in the past for that matter. Just because there are many more channels today. There still is a mainstream, but it lost relevance in comparison.
> people who are known for x, e.g., their opinions on FOSS, should stay in their lane
Sorry, but no.
You don’t get to put people in lanes.
They real issue is, once you grow a following, whatever you say will be magnified. It doesn’t matter what you mean when you broadcast; you have gradually less control of what is understood. So you need to think about how things are received. Eccentrics have it hard.
I'm not putting anyone in their lane, I'm saying they should stay in it if they want to continue doing what they're doing otherwise at some point it's going to inevitably turn to shit for them.
Do I want to hear what x thinks about y if y isn't x's area of expertise? No, I'd rather hear from someone whose area of expertise is actually y, otherwise why am I being presented that information like it's somehow meaningful having come from x because they have a following? It's a logical fallacy. Cults of personality are damaging to the causes they purport to support through their activism.
> Do I want to hear what x thinks about y if y isn't x's area of expertise? No, I'd rather hear from someone whose area of expertise is actually y, otherwise why am I being presented that information like it's somehow meaningful having come from x because they have a following?
Who says I do? You seem to miss the point of my comment entirely. If talking heads want to continue doing what they're doing, they should stick to what they know about and keep their opinions on sex between adults and minors to themselves. Given his age and eloquence, there was absolutely zero excusing what's been said. OK, he "learned" from it after being effectively cancelled and pushed out of doing what he does, but so what?
Somebody who purports to be a source of moral righteousness who judges others and tells others how to live in terms of software and what services and hardware they use had an appalling take on something very important, ergo maybe they aren't someone to listen to anymore if they couldn't reign themselves in over something so basic.
> You seem to miss the point of my comment entirely.
You are correct. In fact, I've still missed your point. If you don't want to hear what x thinks about y if y isn't x's area of expertise, then the simple solution is just not to listen to x. If you're not listening to Stallman (as you seem to imply here), I don't see how there is a problem here at all.
The problem is that his uninformed bad takes outside of his area of expertise damages his activism within software and diminishes any of his contributions to software.
A second problem is placing value upon what he has to say because there's a cult of personality surrounding him as an intellectual, but the reality is that his area of expertise and rationality is in fact niche and specific rather than general, as evidenced by his comments.
> The problem is that his uninformed bad takes outside of his area of expertise damages his activism within software and diminishes any of his contributions to software.
I don't see how his comments diminished his contributions to software. They were entirely irrelevant to his contributions to software.
> A second problem is placing value upon what he has to say because there's a cult of personality surrounding him as an intellectual, but the reality is that his area of expertise and rationality is in fact niche and specific rather than general, as evidenced by his comments.
I'm still not really understanding your point here. I agree his expertise does not extend to the subjects on which he famously opined. For that reason, I mostly ignored what he had to say on this subject.
Here's[1] the quoted statement. But given that this was brought up in relation to Esptein case, there's[2] also a fragment about "mischaracterised" media coverage from the same day:
> I want to respond to the misleading media coverage of messages I posted about Marvin Minsky's association with Jeffrey Epstein. The coverage totally mischaracterised my statements.
> Headlines say that I defended Epstein. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've called him a "serial rapist", and said he deserved to be imprisoned. But many people now believe I defended him — and other inaccurate claims — and feel a real hurt because of what they believe I said.
> I'm sorry for that hurt. I wish I could have prevented the misunderstanding.
That was an old statement. It wasn't that statement which prompted the pressure to resign. He said two things that caused the uproar:
These are the two things he said that were controversial and prompted the pressure to resign:
1) He said that Marvin Minsky's sexual misconduct was being mischaracterized as violent sexual assault when no evidence existed of that, as far as I know he was correct about this.
2) He said that in his opinion the difference between having sex with a 17 year old and an 18 year old was not so great that one of them should be referred to as rape, regardless of the age of consent where it happened.
The age of consent is 16 in well over half of the US (including the state Stallman lives in) so I don't find that second statement terribly controversial. The real problem was that this was all said in the context of Minsky and Epstein when the pitchforks were out. Stallman denounced Epstein several times but he was friends with Minsky and didn't like the accusations against Minsky being mischaracterized.
> He said that Marvin Minsky's sexual misconduct was being mischaracterized as violent sexual assault when no evidence existed of that, as far as I know he was correct about this.
Not quite. He said that when the woman was told to go offer sex to Epstein's guests she would have been told to make it seem like it was consensual.
This should not have been controversial. Of course someone forcing someone else to offer people sex is going to instruct them not to let on that they are being forced.
> He said that in his opinion the difference between having sex with a 17 year old and an 18 year old was not so great that one of them should be referred to as rape, regardless of the age of consent where it happened.
In this particular case, she was over the age of consent. Sometime later, in part in response to the Epstein situation, they raised the age of consent to 18.
> The age of consent is 16 in well over half of the US
The guy is a hologram of a 1960s hippie, with almost no meaningful stuff to say about the current world. He should probably be writing philosophical books in his own solitude, instead of expressing opinions about stuff he is detached from.
Disagree. He has as much right to express himself about stuff he has a meaningful understanding of, or otherwise, in any forum that will have him, as you do. If you don't care for what he says, you can just ignore him.
I won't comment on "hologram of a 1960s hippie" because you said it like it's a bad thing.
I’m not extremely informed, but the former president of the aclu defended stallman a few years ago. Scroll down to about 2/3rds of the way down for the detailed quotes
Eg,
> But a number of the ideas for which Richard Stallman has been attacked and punished are ideas that I as a feminist advocate of human rights find completely correct and positive from the perspective of women’s equality and dignity!
> "I have an announcement to make," Stallman said at the FSF's LibrePlanet conference. "I'm now on the Free Software Foundation board of directors once again... Some of you will be happy at this and some might be disappointed, but who knows. In any case, that's how it is. And I'm not planning to resign a second time."
I get that not everyone is perfectly well rounded but how do you fail at messaging this poorly? "...some might be disappointed, but who knows. In any case, that's how it is." Just a giant middle finger.
I'm sure plenty of Stallman-types will say everyone is not being generous enough or that cancel culture is going too far, but your job on the board of a foundation is implicitly a social one and if you can't not piss off 90% of the people around you then you are still bad at your job and unfit for it.
Richard Stallman is a victim of the NGO/Media Industrial Complex. His aloofness makes it easier for him to be a target, but let's be honest, if those people want someone taken down, it will happen.
People need to be a little less gullible when they see a news campaign trying to take out yet another anti-establishment voice. In a world where propaganda and manipulation have never been so powerful and coordinated, just because a bunch of voices start yelling smoke, doesn't mean there's fire. Or doesn't mean that the fire is anything more than a lit match not deserving your attention. The selective guidance of your attention and outrage always end up doing one thing: supporting the goals of the 1% at the expense of the 99%.
Also people need to show more tolerance for someone having the occasional wrongthink (especially since he says he was convinced and changed his mind about adult/child sex years ago). Stallman is human, same as you. Unless you're an NPC, you almost certainly have one or two beliefs that would get you targeted and canceled if people found out about it. If you say you don't, if all your beliefs happen to line up with the Twitterati on every issue, then perhaps you should engage in some self-reflection.
The thing is that some of what is brought in his defense contains inaccuracies. Example "Trans Women Do Not Harass Anyone". There are numerous such cases, be it activists indulging in such methods for political purposes or plain old creeps. I know the subject is touchy. I am not saying it is the norm. I am saying such things have happened multiple times. I know people are reluctant to admit such facts as they feel it paints a target on a community. However, I do not believe that it is ever just to discard instances of malevolence, regardless of the perpetrator's identity. And the actions of individuals are their responsibility, not that of their identity group. I know that for many this humanist outlook has been superseded by a collectivist one, where society is merely a collection of overlapping and competing identity-based factions.
Unfortunately the various hoof-in-mouth statements (about child-adult sex, the Esptein-Minsky remarks) aren't the main reason people are seeking to "cancel" RMS.
Rather, it's that he apparently had something of habit of hitting on students, and otherwise "creating a negative environment" for women at MIT.
Oh, and for the mattress.
At least, that's what people have said (according to sources very easily findable). In the words of one of the persons affected:
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.”
— Bachelor’s in Computer Science, ’04
Putting aside any other stuff that gets said about him, I find it pretty baffling how an obvious joke made at Stallman's expense (that many of us geeks have heard directed towards us, usually as a lighthearted self-deprecating inner circle humor) gets repeated as an example that's somehow supposed to characterize his misconduct.
The point is that these women had an apparently justified need to be concerned about unwanted sexual advances a certain senior staff member. And to be prepared to fend them off if necessary.
It wasn't about dorky geek humor, or making fun of RMS per se.
Disagree. While it contained a dose of humor -- the primary message clearly was not humor, but the serious need to warn others about the need to be wary of this guy.
As buttressed by the data points in the sibling comment to mine.
It strongly suggest that it is a reference to the editor war. Very probable that Stallman hitting on students never happened and it was indeed a vehicle of humor. In any case, if it did happen, there need to be primary sources, not some bad faith rumors.
Which numerous credible accounts? I believe this was more likely a smear campaign and some might have jumped on the train considering the nature of the accusations.
We're going in circles here. You know the citation I'm referring to; you also know that the source you're linking to mostly doesn't address those items (except for one, and mostly by spin and in a way I just don't credible).
Some might have jumped on the train considering the nature of the accusations.
Betsy S, I regret that this misunderstanding caused you distress.
I never intended to demand anything of you. I only ever wished you well.
"Betsy, I regret that with this misunderstanding on your part, you caused yourself distress. But it certainly wasn't in any way a reasonable consequence of anything I said. I only ever wished you the sublime wellness of an acquaintance with me."
Note he doesn't deny stating that he would kill himself as a result of of her failing to see just how "well" she would be if she were to go out with him.
Due to his eccentricity, Stallman has always been a target of jokes, ranging from lighthearted to truly mean, both deserved and not, in various communities worldwide, even among people who have never interacted with him in any way. I lack information needed to assess his behavior, so I don't try to, but whenever I hear stories like "Stallman hates plants" or "tell him you're a vi user" it doesn't make the claims appear stronger. Quite the opposite actually - the newcomers being "warned" are obviously going to miss all the context behind these jokes and easily assume that the man has to be dangerous, whether that was the intention or not.
I'd assume that a person familiar with rms who would like to seriously warn someone about his misbehavior would go out of their way to not make it seem like a joke.
"he has creeped out some women by making passes at them (or so they tell me)."
"He flirts with anyone who is female, even if they are underage. He is creepy in person, in a way that I cannot adequately describe. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that he kept women out of open source and free software, and many of his ideas stayed even after he left."
"I remember being walked around campus by an upperclassman getting advice during my freshman year at MIT. "Look at all the plants in her office," referring to a professor. "All the women CSAIL professors keep massive amounts of foliage" s/he said. "Stallman really hates plants.""
"rms was in the whisper network as a creep when I was in undergrad late last millennium, and I wasn’t even at MIT"
Those don't have something to hang a joke on, so aren't passed on at much.
The plant thing is yet another obvious joke made at Stallman's expense. At MIT, Stallman was not seen as some kind of powerful figure whose authority people would be afraid to challenge. He was seen as an awkward irritating nerd many people made fun of (which seems to be missed by pretty much all of these "newcomers being warned about Stallman" reports). With so many of these accusations boiling down just to "people don't like nerds", it's hard to take them seriously. And when you add things like giving "pleasure cards" being interpreted as unwanted advances, it's just a painful to watch sad grotesque.
I don't particularly have any opinion on the person, but do think that a biography written by a journalist known for diving deep, or such, would be far more impactful than a curated list from fans.
46 comments
[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 105 ms ] threadI was out of the loop about what Stallman was being smeared for.
"Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it," Stallman wrote. "Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per [sic] psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that. I am grateful for the conversations that enabled me to understand why."
That isn't to say that I'm saying Stallman should shut the fuck up about anything that isn't software, but I am saying that it's a problem that would have been easily avoided with common sense applied.
If you are in the public eye, and your career depends on your reputation and public image, it would be beneficial to have a third-party coach you through basics of interacting with press, thinking many times before speaking etc.
Nobody asked him for these opinions. He's the last person I'd want an opinion on these topics from, and all I want to hear about from Stallman is FOSS, maybe culture. Nothing else, that's not what he's known for.
Whilst Stallman has made a lot of very astute and smart observations and contributions throughout his lifetime, he's increasingly irrelevant in a world that's changed many times over since he was last truly relevant to what's happening for anybody.
He's a great speaker and writer, he's fascinating to listen to, but some arguments of his lack substance and solutions other than "this is bad, so don't use it".
I believe at some point the problem must be solved at the source. Perhaps idealistic, but I believe it can be possible if values adapt as they did in the past.
While his statements certainly are controversial and everyone is very free to disagree, the real problem are those that decry verbal opinions and demand consequences. Often the most judgmental that have most shortcomings themselves and I believe that was fairly transparent with vocal accusers of Stallman.
Disappointing in recent years where companies and institutions that reacted full of panic at any hint of a negative press and just ruthlessly evicted employees to not succumb to a "toxic work atmosphere" (which they have just created by reacting as they did). Having the back of your employees in principle until guilt is proved is a value itself. Something self-evident but what many companies just as evidently lack.
Otherwise we need to adhere to the old rules of PR and that often means that we will be ruled by stupidity or some emotional gratification by randomly formed groups. And the rules of PR will also apply to everyone that has a public persona on the net. They would need some form of PR firm or have a good talent see through emotional needs of listeners.
I don't believe that your career does depend on reputation as much as it did in the past for that matter. Just because there are many more channels today. There still is a mainstream, but it lost relevance in comparison.
Sorry, but no.
You don’t get to put people in lanes.
They real issue is, once you grow a following, whatever you say will be magnified. It doesn’t matter what you mean when you broadcast; you have gradually less control of what is understood. So you need to think about how things are received. Eccentrics have it hard.
Do I want to hear what x thinks about y if y isn't x's area of expertise? No, I'd rather hear from someone whose area of expertise is actually y, otherwise why am I being presented that information like it's somehow meaningful having come from x because they have a following? It's a logical fallacy. Cults of personality are damaging to the causes they purport to support through their activism.
So don't listen to him?
Somebody who purports to be a source of moral righteousness who judges others and tells others how to live in terms of software and what services and hardware they use had an appalling take on something very important, ergo maybe they aren't someone to listen to anymore if they couldn't reign themselves in over something so basic.
You are correct. In fact, I've still missed your point. If you don't want to hear what x thinks about y if y isn't x's area of expertise, then the simple solution is just not to listen to x. If you're not listening to Stallman (as you seem to imply here), I don't see how there is a problem here at all.
A second problem is placing value upon what he has to say because there's a cult of personality surrounding him as an intellectual, but the reality is that his area of expertise and rationality is in fact niche and specific rather than general, as evidenced by his comments.
I don't see how his comments diminished his contributions to software. They were entirely irrelevant to his contributions to software.
> A second problem is placing value upon what he has to say because there's a cult of personality surrounding him as an intellectual, but the reality is that his area of expertise and rationality is in fact niche and specific rather than general, as evidenced by his comments.
I'm still not really understanding your point here. I agree his expertise does not extend to the subjects on which he famously opined. For that reason, I mostly ignored what he had to say on this subject.
> I want to respond to the misleading media coverage of messages I posted about Marvin Minsky's association with Jeffrey Epstein. The coverage totally mischaracterised my statements.
> Headlines say that I defended Epstein. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've called him a "serial rapist", and said he deserved to be imprisoned. But many people now believe I defended him — and other inaccurate claims — and feel a real hurt because of what they believe I said.
> I'm sorry for that hurt. I wish I could have prevented the misunderstanding.
[1] https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...
[2] https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...
"per" was a pretty early non-gendered pronoun, i'm surprised the editor wasn't aware of it in 2021
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/sic-meaning-us...
These are the two things he said that were controversial and prompted the pressure to resign:
1) He said that Marvin Minsky's sexual misconduct was being mischaracterized as violent sexual assault when no evidence existed of that, as far as I know he was correct about this.
2) He said that in his opinion the difference between having sex with a 17 year old and an 18 year old was not so great that one of them should be referred to as rape, regardless of the age of consent where it happened.
The age of consent is 16 in well over half of the US (including the state Stallman lives in) so I don't find that second statement terribly controversial. The real problem was that this was all said in the context of Minsky and Epstein when the pitchforks were out. Stallman denounced Epstein several times but he was friends with Minsky and didn't like the accusations against Minsky being mischaracterized.
Not quite. He said that when the woman was told to go offer sex to Epstein's guests she would have been told to make it seem like it was consensual.
This should not have been controversial. Of course someone forcing someone else to offer people sex is going to instruct them not to let on that they are being forced.
> He said that in his opinion the difference between having sex with a 17 year old and an 18 year old was not so great that one of them should be referred to as rape, regardless of the age of consent where it happened.
In this particular case, she was over the age of consent. Sometime later, in part in response to the Epstein situation, they raised the age of consent to 18.
> The age of consent is 16 in well over half of the US
It is 16 or under in most of Europe [1].
[1] https://www.ageofconsent.net/continent/europeI won't comment on "hologram of a 1960s hippie" because you said it like it's a bad thing.
Eg,
> But a number of the ideas for which Richard Stallman has been attacked and punished are ideas that I as a feminist advocate of human rights find completely correct and positive from the perspective of women’s equality and dignity!
https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web
> "I have an announcement to make," Stallman said at the FSF's LibrePlanet conference. "I'm now on the Free Software Foundation board of directors once again... Some of you will be happy at this and some might be disappointed, but who knows. In any case, that's how it is. And I'm not planning to resign a second time."
I get that not everyone is perfectly well rounded but how do you fail at messaging this poorly? "...some might be disappointed, but who knows. In any case, that's how it is." Just a giant middle finger.
I'm sure plenty of Stallman-types will say everyone is not being generous enough or that cancel culture is going too far, but your job on the board of a foundation is implicitly a social one and if you can't not piss off 90% of the people around you then you are still bad at your job and unfit for it.
People need to be a little less gullible when they see a news campaign trying to take out yet another anti-establishment voice. In a world where propaganda and manipulation have never been so powerful and coordinated, just because a bunch of voices start yelling smoke, doesn't mean there's fire. Or doesn't mean that the fire is anything more than a lit match not deserving your attention. The selective guidance of your attention and outrage always end up doing one thing: supporting the goals of the 1% at the expense of the 99%.
Also people need to show more tolerance for someone having the occasional wrongthink (especially since he says he was convinced and changed his mind about adult/child sex years ago). Stallman is human, same as you. Unless you're an NPC, you almost certainly have one or two beliefs that would get you targeted and canceled if people found out about it. If you say you don't, if all your beliefs happen to line up with the Twitterati on every issue, then perhaps you should engage in some self-reflection.
(EDIT: removed some unnecessary language)
Rather, it's that he apparently had something of habit of hitting on students, and otherwise "creating a negative environment" for women at MIT.
Oh, and for the mattress.
At least, that's what people have said (according to sources very easily findable). In the words of one of the persons affected:
It wasn't about dorky geek humor, or making fun of RMS per se.
As buttressed by the data points in the sibling comment to mine.
Don't know what to tell you other than that this belief is plainly at odds with numerous credible accounts to the contrary.
http://techrights.org/2021/04/24/rms-false-accusations/
For accusations of this kind, some evidence must be provided.
We're going in circles here. You know the citation I'm referring to; you also know that the source you're linking to mostly doesn't address those items (except for one, and mostly by spin and in a way I just don't credible).
Some might have jumped on the train considering the nature of the accusations.
As if women don't know when they're being hit on.
Note he doesn't deny stating that he would kill himself as a result of of her failing to see just how "well" she would be if she were to go out with him.
I'd assume that a person familiar with rms who would like to seriously warn someone about his misbehavior would go out of their way to not make it seem like a joke.
"he has creeped out some women by making passes at them (or so they tell me)."
"He flirts with anyone who is female, even if they are underage. He is creepy in person, in a way that I cannot adequately describe. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that he kept women out of open source and free software, and many of his ideas stayed even after he left."
"I remember being walked around campus by an upperclassman getting advice during my freshman year at MIT. "Look at all the plants in her office," referring to a professor. "All the women CSAIL professors keep massive amounts of foliage" s/he said. "Stallman really hates plants.""
"rms was in the whisper network as a creep when I was in undergrad late last millennium, and I wasn’t even at MIT"
Those don't have something to hang a joke on, so aren't passed on at much.