
It's time to talk about post-RMS Free Software - ingve
https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html
======
rubbingalcohol
> Remove everyone, if we must, and let something much better be built from the
> ashes.

This is cancel culture taken to the extreme. Now that everything is built, the
builders are expendable. They're "problematic."

We're facing down a new form of puritanism that is a greater threat to civil
rights than the "problematic" individuals they seek to destroy.

No defense for RMS' statement, it's absurd, but if there's no moderation
whatsoever in regards to a proportionate response (eg. he's either "clean" or
"unclean"), then no one else is safe as the mob ratchets up its criteria for
existing as a virtuous person.

~~~
mjg59
The issue isn't one problematic statement. It's a history of behaviour that's
documented to have driven multiple people away from the free software
community and an absolute unwillingness on his part to do anything about it.
If your movement's leadership acts in a way that hurts the movement, what's
the appropriate response? Everything short of pushing RMS out has been tried
already.

~~~
rubbingalcohol
People who run away from something when their feelings get hurt are no great
loss to whatever "movement" they're too weak to contribute to. Free Software
has much bigger problems than these losers.

~~~
mjg59
I personally know high quality developers who refuse to work on free software
projects because of Stallman. It's not a matter of weakness, it's a matter of
principle.

~~~
rubbingalcohol
So they only work on commercial software projects because of Richard Stallman?

~~~
mjg59
Yes. They concluded that working in communities that wouldn't tolerate people
like RMS was more important than working on free software.

~~~
ratww
This is a disingenuous argument.

I work on some free software projects and most people don't even know who RMS
is. There are multiple Free/Open Source software associations, projects and
communities to choose, all with different people working on them, some of them
don't tolerate such behavior.

If none of those fit, people can just create their own and choose who to
associate with.

------
deanclatworthy
I grow more and more tired of these discussions. Talks of banishing people
because they’re ignorant, rude, sexist. Conferences are getting shut down,
people are having their world turned upside down for being ignorant. Every
topic is a hot potato. I feel i can’t even have a reasonable conversation
about diversity, ignorance, or whatever the controversy of the day is. It’s
easier to just be quiet than express opinions.

~~~
Jonnax
Why can't you have a reasonable discussion?

Stallman emailed a big mailing list for a computer science department the
following about a child sex trafficking victim:

"The reference reports the claim that Minsky had sex with one of Epstein’s
harem…Let’s presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it). ...

We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she
presented herself to him as entirely willing."

Is this acceptable to you?

~~~
kweinber
If a person has sex with a minor without knowing they are a minor it is a
crime. But should they lose their livelihood and reputation if they didn’t
know the parts that make it a crime or didn’t commit the coercion themselves?

If I buy a car cheaply at auction that was seized as part of a drug-dealing
crime and then get busted for having drugs still stashed in the doors, I am
now a drug offender. I did not knowingly do it nor did I mean to hurt people
with drug trafficking so should I lose my livelihood and reputation?

If buy a unknowingly stolen Gucci handbag on the street for a cheap price
(thinking it could be a knockoff).... you get the picture.

I’m not defending drug traffickers, child rapists, or appropriating stolen
goods, I am wondering if knowingly participating in the moral violation that
defines the crime should make the reputational difference... or should you be
persona non grata regardless? Is that Stallman’s question?

~~~
mindslight
Let's say you knowingly stash the drugs in your car doors and are then
arrested, convicted, serve your sentence, and are released. Should you then
have the rest of your life extrajudiciously ruined by a group of people who
have dedicated their lives to harassing drug dealers because their own kids
died of drug overdoses?

Because applying metered justice and preventing ongoing escalating feuds is
the entire point of the _justice system_. We're in this clusterfuck because
people don't feel it is working, and they are not wrong. Specifically here, we
all expect Epstein's close associates to reliably quash deeper investigation -
investigation into their guilt went cold with Epstein's body.

And I'm generally for grassroots direct action, but this frenzy doesn't seem
directed towards making up for the failings of the system, but rather scoring
points against easy targets for the thrill of it. RMS himself was nowhere near
this island, rather he simply had the audacity to question the lynch mob's
narrative! With a reaction like this, how can it be said that these pitchforks
are in the service of justice?

------
mikeash
Jesus Christ, HN.

I read this article and my reaction was: damn, I knew RMS was weird and
opinionated, but I didn’t know he was evil.

I come here to see how others react to this revelation and what do I find? “By
golly, what is the world coming to when you can’t even defend child rape
without someone calling for your removal from leadership?”

Y’all motherfuckers need Jesus.

------
Ensorceled
What am I even reading in this thread?

> The perpetrator is a victim, there's no doubt about that. Psychopaths aren't
> born, they are created through trauma in a society that doesn't give a crap
> about humans.

> This is cancel culture taken to the extreme.

> I grow more and more tired of these discussions. Talks of banishing people
> because they’re ignorant, rude, sexist.

Stallman is, and has, defending child sex trafficking and rape.

------
cycloptic
The salient point is that free software is a movement consisting of many
individuals with their own viewpoints. If you want to support free software
without endorsing the behavior of this man then donate your time, money,
attention, to a different free software organization. There are a lot of them
[0].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_and_open-
source_s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_and_open-
source_software_organizations)

------
fouc
If you click through to the first to links of the post, it's really quite an
eye opener.

------
Jonnax
Oh. I didn't realise Stallman's rigid stance to freedom of software also
extended to having sex with children and victims of sex trafficking.

It's amazing how much hanging out in the tech world you don't hear anything
about this.

Of course, just like he argues that a perpetrators is the real victim. I'm
sure I'll read some article about how admirable Stallman's views are.

~~~
codr7
I thought this much would be obvious by now, but here we go. The people who
traffic and rape children are mainly found among the filthy rich so called
elite. If you want to do something about that, punching RMS won't help.

The thing about RMS is that he prefers to use his own brain and is not afraid
to stand up for his views, which is an increasingly rare phenomenon. So rare
that its nearly considered a crime these days.

The perpetrator is a victim, there's no doubt about that. Psychopaths aren't
born, they are created through trauma in a society that doesn't give a crap
about humans.

~~~
Jonnax
So he uses his own brain to advocate for the "elite" and that's somehow
admirable.

~~~
codr7
That sounds very unlikely to me, and would need to be backed up by solid
proof.

I think you need to take a chill pill and figure out where all the hate is
coming from.

~~~
Jonnax
Solid proof? The emails he sent to the mailing list is the proof.

What hate exactly? It seems there's plenty of people even on this site
defending him.

Could explain what you're implying that I'm missing?

------
zzo38computer
I think just because someone may be bad at one thing, does not necessarily
mean they are bad at other stuff too.

Also, I think you should have the right to your opinion. But, people who have
other opinion also must have right to their opinion, too, rather than only
one.

These are just as true with Stallman as with Minsky, and also the other people
who complain about it, I think.

I don't like it either that they did that sex, and I fail to see how "the most
plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing",
but I think it make sense that you should not "accusation inflation", even
though other people might says differently. I do not defend rapists, but also
do not accuse them of other stuff too automatically.

Whether or not you use GPL and Emacs and so on are entirely different
decisions than those reports they mention, though. It is separate, even if
done by the same person.

------
twd99
it is all about rms being rms. When an act of illegal copying copyrighted
material is called piracy, he pedantically says that it is a wrong term,
because piracy is a penal crime that involves violence and forcible property
theft.

when a pimp presents an underage woman to a customer, he pedantically says
that it wasn't an assault.

I've read the whole email thread and didn't see him defending child rape and
sex trafficking. Maybe ones who are quick to condemn him should read something
but the medium post

------
shadowgovt
A useful self-test on this topic is to consider the following question:

If we really needed to talk about the inception of ReiserFS, should we bail
Reiser out of prison for a bit and pay him a speaker's fee? Or can we content
ourselves with considering his technology while excluding the man?

It turns out, opinions differ on this. And while I'm not implying that RMS's
words are worse than Reiser's actions, I'm noting that the fact some people
believe the answer is "Yes, we do bail him out of prison for a bit" is telling
on where people in our industry set the bar on dividing a person's works and
their other qualities.

------
xkapastel
I didn't read this as RMS minimizing sex trafficking or defending rapists. I
read it as him making an inappropriate argument about semantics in entirely
the wrong place. These are very different things, and it seems like many
people, including the author of that Medium article, really want it to be the
first instead of the second.

~~~
Jonnax
How old is this man?

He's not stupid. He knows what he's doing.

What a cop out to say "no he was just really hung up about grammar. "

~~~
DanBC
He's autistic and he probably has trouble with communication. He might not
know that it's a terrible idea to quibble about why his preferred definition
of assault is better than the commonly accepted and used definition.

~~~
mikeash
Surely an autistic person is still capable of learning these things.

If he is not capable of that, then he’s disastrously unqualified to be leading
an advocacy organization.

~~~
DanBC
I'm not defending him.

------
lidHanteyk
Who remembers Jimi Hendrix?

------
new_realist
Open source software is driven by powerful economic forces, not by RMS or his
politics. In contrast, “free” software is a sideshow. The FSF is mostly
irrelevant these days.

It’s interesting to note the history of the GNU project, which bootstrapped
itself by ripping off pre-existing BSD licensed projects and publishing new
implementations as GPL. Open source predates “free” software.

