
In Defense of Richard Stallman - ash
https://geoff.greer.fm/2019/09/30/in-defense-of-richard-stallman/
======
coldtea
Diversity -- but no diversity of opinion...

Inclusiveness -- but let's ostracize the non-conforming aspie...

Fairness -- but let's fire people or make them resign from unrelated positions
for their personal opinions, because obviously all of a person's life should
serve as a big PR, and god forbid they don't play the role 24/7\. Someone
might call them for it on Twitter, and what could their employee/organization
do other than fire them? (in the "Land of the free" nonetheless)

Not to mention the blatant conformity and blandness -- punishing
experimentation, personality, eccentricity, being the devil's advocate,
controversiality, and, worse of all, being 'unprofessional' (as if the FSF is
something akin to 1970s IBM)...

First they came for Patch Adams...

The current environment rewards the worst kind of scum: holier-than-thou
hypocritical tell-tales and people who enjoy yielding power over others by
drawing lynch-mobs.

I have wrote against Epstein here in several threads, but I could have lunch
with a person who has controversial opinions on the matter like Stallman.
People like those who finger-pointed and cheered on the personal consequences
on Stallman, I'd prefer to live in another universe from.

Are you happy now? Justice for Epstein's victims served? (on someone who never
even met Epstein)

Speak up now, or don't bother to cry crocodile tears and set up the "black
ribbon" when we eventually lose Stallman, and tell stories of how he inspired
you, etc...

~~~
claudeganon
I’m not sure if this is just more grandstanding of the “SJWs run amok”
variety, but in case you’re unaware, his recent comments were just the tip of
the iceberg:

[https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-
appendi...](https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix-
a-a7e41e784f88)

Someone else downthread also linked about how a woman he worked with on a
Linux project had to be warned of his arrival ahead of time so she could leave
because of his aggressive advances toward her.

~~~
roenxi
Something like 50% of that article isn't Stallman related, and some of the
choice quotes are a bit unbelievable. Eg:

> 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.”

That sounds like a joke. I mean, it is a joke. That isn't a serious
comment/strategy on harassment. No creep has ever been forestalled by someone
claiming to be a vi user.

1 stupid opinion and 3 negative comments, one of which looks like a joke, from
1980 to 2019 isn't evidence of a problem with Stallman.

~~~
FactolSarin
I don't know. Have you ever read Stallman's appearance requirements[1]? I
mean, yeah, it's probably a joke. But I wouldn't be shocked it it were true
either.

[1] [https://github.com/ddol/rre-
rms/blob/master/rider.txt](https://github.com/ddol/rre-
rms/blob/master/rider.txt)

~~~
roenxi
Yes I have. It is more reasonable than people give it credit for. If most of
the people honestly catalogued all their quirks they'd end up with something
fairly similar. Usually the courtesy when travelling is to put up with
whatever the host provides, but that is less realistic when someone spends a
lot of time travelling.

How is a host meant to figure any of the details in that rider out ahead of a
Stallman visit without him telling them? It could easily be a log of all the
things that have gone wrong for him in the past.

People like to go to the parrot quote. It wouldn't at all surprise me if a
Stallman fan who was putting him up the the night tried to buy a parrot if
they thought it would make him happy. The man's selfless dedication to the
public good has earned him a couple of true believers over the years.

It is also comprehensive and doesn't mention anything about Vi.

------
CPLX
Our culture has made a very bright line decision that sex with minors is
unacceptable. Expressing doubt about this cultural norm, or especially
advocating against it, is considered unacceptable. Of course one can argue
with the merits of those two facts, but they are plainly true and fairly
widely accepted.

The very concept of statutory rape reinforces how clear this judgment is. The
reference to "statutory" means that the mere facts of the act taking place
mean that the conduct is off limits. Things like "consent" or even a
misrepresentation of the person's age are generally considered irrelevant.

As a society we've decided that there aren't really exceptions to this. If sex
with minors occurs it's not OK, there isn't much need to further investigate
why it happened.

Stallman, and anyone else commenting here, has really no basis to claim
ignorance of this phenomenally clear social norm, which if broken will result
in being fired from just about any public facing institution. It's on a pretty
short list of such norms, alongside things like displaying your genitals in a
board meeting, ones highly principled views on nudism notwithstanding.

While I appreciate the efforts to make this into some kind of principled
argument, I don't find "first they came for the people advocating for sex with
minors" to be particularly compelling.

Nobody has suggested he be fined or jailed. His actions just make him
unqualified to be a leader. The other people in those organization do get to
have a say too you know.

~~~
lagadu
> His actions just make him unqualified to be a leader.

So you're saying that the only people qualified to be "a leader" are the ones
who subscribe to your particular flavour of groupthink and no other? Nice
thought policing there.

~~~
GarrickDrgn
Yes, we are saying that only people who subscribe to the "don't rape children"
flavour of groupthink should be respected in public discourse.

~~~
michannne
Gaslighting. Stallman never advocated for raping minors.

~~~
CPLX
He's made multiple comments spread over many years that make it clear he
disagrees with the core concept of statutory rape, by repeatedly invoking
"consent" or "willingness" and similar.

The whole point of the concept is that there's no such thing as willingness or
consent with minors, that the very nature of the act having taken place
constitutes rape.

A statement like "there is little evidence to justify the widespread
assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children" means he's
saying adults raping children is OK.

He literally wrote that on his blog. It's still there.[0]

I mean, what do you think is going to happen when you do stuff like that?

He definitely has a legal right to do it, and on that I'd defend him to the
death. But he doesn't have a legal right to work at MIT or anywhere else
that's not comfortable with a leader who says stuff like this.

[0] [https://stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-
feb.html#04_January_2...](https://stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-
feb.html#04_January_2013_%28Pedophilia%29)

~~~
dredmorbius
Within recent memory, the age of legal marriage has been as low as 14 in
certain US states. New York State raised the minimum from 14 to 18 in 2017:

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-ends-child-marriage-
ra...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-ends-child-marriage-raising-age-
of-consent-from-14-to-18/)

The same article notes that two states, North Carolina and Alaska have a
specified minimum age of 14, and 27 states _lack_ any specific minimum age.

I'm not arguing that the low (or no) minimum age laws are right. I _am_
pointing out that standards, and laws, within the US, and within the past few
years, have included marriage, and presumably sexual relations, among minors.

That has been changing, but it's a change that's well within the lifetimes of
many adults. Richard Stallman, aged 66, has lived through a period of pretty
profound change around many of these norms. Again, not to excuse behaviour,
but possibly to explain a possible basis for it.

Strong cultural shifts, should you have the pleasure of living through some
yourself, are remarkable to witness and experience.

------
Barrin92
> They focused on his tone deaf communication style and awkward demeanor. They
> spoke of behavior from decades ago and pointed out the fact that he had a
> mattress in his office.

It wasn't just awkward demeanor. He actively made women feel unwelcome in the
workplace and behaved unprofessionally over and over again.

> He held his positions at MIT, GNU, and the FSF for over thirty years, and in
> that time nobody accused him of coercion, unwanted touching, or verbal
> harassment

Yes, because of people like you, Geoff. When people like Stallman behave like
they do and say the things they say they don't have to face the consequences
because people don't want to speak up, because they're afraid of being called
liars or censors. That's how authority figures and popular individuals keep
getting away with it.

The second paragraph of the post is irrelevant and further proves the point.
Stallman's contributions to free software don't excuse his conduct.

~~~
sergiosgc
> It wasn't just awkward demeanor. He actively made women feel unwelcome in
> the workplace and behaved unprofessionally over and over again.

Every episode I read about fell into the category of "socially awkward adult
male". If we can't, as a group, tolerate awkwardness, we are very much down
the rabbit hole of mandatory social conformity.

By all means, point me to a real abuse scenario by Stallman. I like being
proven wrong.

~~~
throw0101a
> _Every episode I read about fell into the category of "socially awkward
> adult male". If we can't, as a group, tolerate awkwardness, we are very much
> down the rabbit hole of mandatory social conformity._

Perhaps you need to read about more episodes:

> _I worked 10 years ago at VA Linux which had Richard Stallman on its board
> of directors. You might have heard that Stallman applied his open source
> ideas to his publicly open marriage as well. The problem was that he was
> more than open. He made overt sexual advances to women at work. One young
> woman who worked next to me was so upset from his multiple advances that she
> took it to senior management. She was able to deal with the problem without
> taking the issue outside the company. I don’t know the details, but she was
> given advanced warning anytime Stallman was headed over so that she could
> leave. He was a creep and women at the company knew to stay away._

* [https://daringfireball.net/2019/09/richard_stallmans_disgrac...](https://daringfireball.net/2019/09/richard_stallmans_disgrace)

~~~
sergiosgc
I'm sorry for the specific request, but it must be a first hand account of an
event. This second hand account can easily be the result of RMS being a
difficult person to be around, for any number of reasons, constructed via word
of mouth into a sexual issue.

I haven't read the description of anything that resembles sexual abuse by RMS.

(edited to remove an unintended reference to sexual assault)

~~~
foldr
Why are you shifting the goalposts to sexual assault? No-one here is saying
that RMS has sexually assaulted anyone, and he wasn't fired due to allegations
of that nature.

~~~
sergiosgc
Sorry, it was unintended. Thanks for pointing it out. I edited the text.

------
Insanity
I don't know RMS personally, but from what I've seen and read about him, he's
a bit eccentric. There's nothing wrong with that, but people tend to dislike
or distrust those whom are different from what society considers 'normal'. I
suspect part of the 'witch hunt' was in part fueled by this eccentricity.

~~~
enriquto
> I suspect part of the 'witch hunt' was in part fueled by this eccentricity.

It seems to me that the exact opposite is happening here. He is "hunted"
because of his uncompromising stance on freedom for software users. The
eccentricity is just an excuse, useful to gather a horde of angry people, but
inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

~~~
klingonopera
Doesn't this imply that proprietary software vendors were pushing for his
resignation? I mean, yeah, sure, but in all honesty, I never considered the
FSF to be that influential.

If anything, I'd almost agree on the fact that RMS made (as ironic as this
sounds) selling free software more difficult than if it was any standard
corporate drone in his place. He's a great idealist, but he's not really good
at selling things...

~~~
Insanity
Yeah, his appeal to ideals might work for some (it does appeal to me). But
surely that's not the best way of selling things to the majority of the
population, let alone companies.

I'm tempted to agree with you that he might have made it more difficult. It's
not just the message you use to sell something, it's also the way in which. If
people associate FSF too much with RMS it could be harmful for FSF, because
they'll assume it just appeals to the 'eccentric bunch'.

~~~
klingonopera
Yeah, from the looks of things, the FSF might become more of a threat to
proprietary software vendors now, if they have new charismatic leader (at the
risk of selling-out on their ideals, though).

~~~
enriquto
wait, are you saying that RMS was not charismatic enough?

------
toxik
Humanity is converging on ideological monoculture. There is one correct way to
think, and if you're dumb enough to step outside of those bounds, people
_will_ come after you, and destroy whatever you have. One comment here even
suggested that RMS is a rapist in so many words, really?

I submit that you cannot have innovation without inconvenient characters. You
must allow a plurality of ideas and ideals to exist, even those that you find
dumb or repulsive.

I don't personally like RMS very much, he seems like an annoying person, but
he should not have had his life ruined for what amounted to an pedantic
argument on a mailing list.

~~~
barry-cotter
Even the US isn’t an ideological monoculture. The woke are ~8% of the US
population. No one in China cares. The social strata in India and Pakistan
that ape the English speaking world is on the retreat politically.

This cultural moment is mostly a US thing, and to a lesser extent an
Anglosphere thing, with especially English proficient vassal states like the
Dutch or Scandinavians also taking part. If it ever burns out in the US it’ll
just disappear everywhere else in short order.

RMS life was not ruined for an argument on a mailing list, but because he has
no allies because he’s constitutionally incapable of playing politics.

~~~
toxik
It may be true that "the woke," as they are so disparagingly called, is a
small group. Actually, I'd say 8% isn't a very small group at all -- but that
is besides the point. The point is that this small group has much more than 8%
impact on the outcomes of events like these. They may be 8% of the general
population, but they are 99% of the people who care at all.

~~~
ukj
Relevant reading:

1\. [https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-
dict...](https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-
of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15)

2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)

Logical conclusion: To be intolerant of intolerance is a moral virtue.

I am having trouble deciding if this is a race to the top or bottom.

------
Traster
There's quite a lot in this. I don't think it's helpful to throw in stuff like
"He is now likely homeless" \- gossip/rumour I'm sure this author would be
decrying if the other side of the argument had brought it up. We don't know
anything about RMS's personal life and shouldn't speculate.

Now let's address the underlying point: You don't get X good thing without Y
bad behaviour. I don't agree with this. It's a weird sort of blackmail "Put up
with my bad behaviour because you need me". Firstly, For all we know, if we
had been less tolerant of bad treatment of people in the free software
movement, it'd be a much more powerful movement today than if we had allowed a
small number of toxic individuals to take leadership roles and drive out many
potential contributors. I see that as no less likely than the scenario put out
in this defense.

Secondly, this attitude shifts the responsibility away from the individual for
their actions. If someone has a lot to contribute but it never happens because
their attitude sucks, that's on them. It's not on us to enable them.

~~~
klingonopera
> You don't get X good thing without Y bad behaviour.

Consider the following: Humans have limited capacity, thus time, money and
energy spent limiting Y inhibits resources available to creating X.

~~~
throw0101a
While life is short, it is long enough that people can learn not to be
assholes / jerks IMHO:

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_No_Asshole_Rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_No_Asshole_Rule)

* [https://hbr.org/2007/03/why-i-wrote-the-no-asshole-rule](https://hbr.org/2007/03/why-i-wrote-the-no-asshole-rule)

* [https://www.td.org/insights/dont-tolerate-brilliant-jerks](https://www.td.org/insights/dont-tolerate-brilliant-jerks)

* [https://www.inc.com/jim-schleckser/why-netflix-doesn-t-toler...](https://www.inc.com/jim-schleckser/why-netflix-doesn-t-tolerate-brilliant-jerks.html)

~~~
klingonopera
1) There's a reason drill sergeants aren't exactly known to be friendly...

2) Not all people have an easy time learning not to be an asshole (and some
literally can't). Thus, the resource-cost varies.

3) If one is just blunt, people can often misinterpret that as being an
asshole. But factually, the blunt person is just blunt, and the "victim" is
just disgruntled, which, at least in my opinion, makes the "victim" the actual
asshole if he decides to judge the blunt person because of that.

There are certainly many assholes who deserve to be criticized, but we should
allow the benefit of doubt to all parties first.

~~~
quickthrower2
It’s a fine line between blunt and asshole. To pull off being blunt you need
some additional empathy and social grace. The other person has to feel that
your blunt but they respect it. Otherwise you’ll be seen as an asshole.
Assholery really is in the eyes and ears of the beholder.

------
kolektiv
Sigh. No.

It's not just about one incidence of some mistakenly pedantic comments, as has
been made clear by many, many people. It's a pattern of behaviour over years
combined with no interest in listening to other people or accepting that he
might be in the wrong. His behaviour towards women in particular has resulted
in a lot of people sharing stories of his behaviour which, on their own,
should be enough for someone to be considered a problem. This latest incident
is just what it took to finally tip things over the edge.

This article then goes on to talk about people like Stallman being needed, or
essential for something like free software. It doesn't matter, even if it was
true, which there is no way of proving, it's pure assertion. Phrases like
"required someone who couldn’t take a hint" might sound all perseverance and
dedication to this writer, but perhaps going and asking women what comes to
mind when they hear about people like this might be an eye opener.

Without him students wouldn't have as many free tools? Maybe, but maybe they
would have other tools, better tools, built by the people his behaviour, and
the behaviour of people like him, have driven from the industry before they
got a chance to have the impact that people like him seem to assume is a
right.

~~~
computerex
He worked in MIT for over 30 years, do share _any evidence at all_ of the
pattern you are referring to.

~~~
interpenetrate
>He worked in MIT for over 30 years

walter lewin was at mit for 43 years before he was exposed and fired for
sexual abuse.

~~~
computerex
He sent inappropriate messages in an online course, there are no accusations
against him, proven or unproven regarding his career at MIT. And what point
are you trying to make with your statement? Lewin supposedly asked a student
to do sexual role playing with him and asked for inappropriate videos. Richard
Stallman hasn't done anything of the sort and if you disagree provide proof.

------
haukilup
This pretty much sums up my opinions on the matter. I'm glad someone else took
the time to write it up and share it with others.

------
gnomewascool
AFACT, the strongest argument in favour of the removal of RMS is by Thomas
Bushnell[0]. The best counter-argument to that, which I could find, is by
Thomas Lord[1][2]. I haven't found any replies to the latter.

(There's also the meta-issue that rule-by-lying-journalists-and-misinformed-
mob is terrifying and despicable, but it doesn't affect the object-level
question of whether RMS significantly contributed and/or contributes towards
making MIT and the free-software world unwelcoming to women.)

[0] [https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-
depa...](https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-
rms-18e6a835fd84)

[1]
[https://twitter.com/thomas_lord/status/1174433645110513664](https://twitter.com/thomas_lord/status/1174433645110513664)

[2]
[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1174433645110513664.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1174433645110513664.html)

------
imgabe
Sadly, a large number of people seem to have decided that their feelings are
more important than the truth. That if something makes you feel bad, this
means it _is_ bad and must be destroyed.

This is like how a dark basement might be scary to a child. A normal adult
would explain that the basement is actually harmless, and teach the child to
see it for what it really is and learn not be afraid of it. The feelings-first
crowd would have us simply destroy all basements.

Feelings are important and can help point you in a direction, but they need to
be tempered with reason and logic before resulting in action.

People who act solely on feelings are also easy to manipulate because talented
writers, actors, etc can evoke strong feelings about anything regardless of
facts.

~~~
sipos
IMHO, the modern left has become very harsh in condemning people, showing very
little compassion, and engaging in witch-hunts. I think t his is extremely
unhelpful.

I think this has arisen out of a feeling of righteousness as a result of
having been morally right on many things in the past several decades, but it
is just indulging the same human tenancy to hate others that perceived as not
being part of one's tribe as racism etc, but with a better superficial
justification. It is, IMHO, more unhelpful though. People can see racism is
bad, but it is quite easy to fall into the trap of thinking that abusing a
racist is perfectly fine, and go along with it, but there is a reason we don't
use vigilante justice for everything. People become outraged at the treatment
of people that they see as unfair, and, IMHO, this is where hatred of
political correctness, and unwillingness to engage in attempts to be more
progressive come from. IMHO, this hatred by the left, and with-hunt like
behaviour, is at least as big an obstacle to progress on many social justice
issues as people holding bigoted views that it seeks to break down, because it
makes the bigoted people look reasonable.

At the beginning of this issue, I saw headlines or twitter comments alleging a
lot of things, read what RMS had actually said, and concluded that the
headlines and tweets are bullshit, and dismissed them all, resolving to never
believe this type of thing without examining the evidence myself again. This
would probably have led to me dismissing a lot of complaints about people in
positions of power, assuming they they are similarly unreliable. A friend has
said that there are other examples of RMS being disrespectful towards women,
but I haven't had a chance to look at them yet, and are not prepared to
believe them without evidence, because I have seen that much of what is said
second-hand is complete crap. People exaggerating what he has said probably
did so because they want to see action and create a safer space for victimised
groups, especially women, in CS, but the effect has been to make all
allegations highly suspect, at least to me, and I suspect many others, thus
having the opposite effect. In a world where allegations that aren't true
aren't extremely rare, no allegation can believed without a lot of evidence,
and most crimes don't leave much.

The effect of these social media with-hunts that happen when anyone says
anything objectionable has been to make most of the population highly
resistant to condemning people I think, making it hard to do so when someone
actually says something terrible. I think that a significant part of the
reason that there is someone who advocated sexual assault as president of the
US is that people have heard wolf-cries about people so much that they just
don't care if they hear that someone has advocated sexual assault, because
last time they heard that, the person had just said something mildly
insensitive or something, and so they have started dismissing all allegations
unless they have a lot more evidence behind them.

I think that people on the left going overboard in hating their opponents have
created more problems for their side than their opponents. I say this as
someone who is extremely left wing on most issues. Exaggerating things is
never helpful I don't think.

------
johnday
It does rather smack of the old police tactic: When someone's known to have
done something Bad, but the police cannot prove it, they send them to prison
for a minor crime such as tax evasion.

I'm not saying that RMS has committed any crimes of course, but there are
other reasons that people do not see him as a political figure that they can
rally behind in the modern day. A lot of this is entirely about image. People
feel uncomfortable having an aging, socially irrepressible person in charge of
an organisation which they support. A (seemingly false) allegation is all that
it took to bring those qualms to the fore.

Also I note that the author tacitly avoids the other comments which RMS has
historically made, in particular with regards to abuse of minors, instead
focusing on the one which was incorrectly taken out of context.

~~~
Ensorceled
This is a weird way to think of it. All of these organizations have been
putting up with Stallman's problematic behavior for a long time. This incident
reopened a dark chapter in MIT history, too soon and Stallman has a history
of, at best, minimizing the impact of pedophilia.

This was a final straw situation.

~~~
johnday
I agree with you, that's roughly what I was saying. The events of the last few
weeks were the catalyst that allowed people to start externalising those
things, small or big, which they had previously been withholding in the name
of "getting on".

------
rvz
Funny enough on how the industry has taken free-software and its 'open-source'
derived ideas for granted and they have all originated from the FSF and its
founder RMS.

But when social media archaeologists revive past 'thought crimes' from 20+
years ago to use against anyone, it is ridiculous to completely silence and
exclude them from society, especially someone like Stallman who is very
principled in his cause.

------
gargalatas
We live in a world that you cant diverge a little bit. You can't have a
different personality. You can't just say the truth or be technically corrent
because it may also happen to be politically incorrent.

You have to go with the flow. But still people expect from you to be a
superstar of what you are doing.

------
lettergram
@dang

Can we please stop removing Stallman discussions from the front page?

I understand we want to keep things civil on HN, but the reality is that this
dramatically impacts this community and all developers - probably more than we
realize on the surface. I Discussing it and essentially letting everyone voice
their thoughts is a way to both (a) come to consensus and (b) potentially see
view points.

As it stands the “media” has a voice, most developers come to Hacker News.

~~~
oska
I would imagine that it's been automatically removed due to a large number of
people flagging it, rather than manually removed by the admins.

My understanding is that automatic removals (from flagging) get reviewed and
unremoved if the admins don't see a good case for the submission being flag-
worthy.

~~~
TeMPOraL
There's also anti-flamewar system in HN that penalizes stories that accrue too
many comments too quickly; I'm betting this is what makes this and similar
stories drop from the front page very fast.

~~~
doubleunplussed
It's kind of a shame. Some issues just create a lot of discussion. This one is
controversial, and maybe you could call it a flame war, but I'd prefer it stay
up.

I'm finding these threads by googling "Hacker News Stallman" every couple of
days.

------
sannee
> There are two possibilities here. Either the author of the Medium post was
> not capable of correctly parsing the sentence, or she didn’t care about
> truth and was leveling as many accusations as possible in the hope that one
> would stick.

Either I am vastly overestimating the quality of american top university
education, or the first option is highly unlikely. So, who benefits from
Stallman getting removed from the picture? Or, given that the original author
was also from MIT, maybe it was just some sort of personal grievance?

~~~
roenxi
The core of the drama is a MIT visiting professor has a poor grasp of social
context and an inability to synchronise with other people.

It seems totally possible that some graduate mechanical engineer totally
misread a text. Mechanical engineers aren't known for being social butterflys.

~~~
sannee
Being capable to extract precise logical meaning from text is something
everyone with STEM education learns in their introductory mathematics courses.
It has nothing to do with social ability.

> visiting professor has a poor grasp of social context and an inability to
> synchronise with other people.

I am not that interested about the broader political context. I would like to
know who (and why) shot Franz Ferdinand so to speak.

~~~
roenxi
It is unlikely that anyone was acting in bad faith here. Unless there is
compelling evidence it is safest to assume that people were hasty and didn't
stop to think and try to exercise a little tolerance and reflection.

~~~
sannee
I think it is safe to assume that the author is super good at reading
comprehension. The SAT [1] scores of MIT students seem to be in the top 5% of
population [2].

[1] [https://www.prepscholar.com/sat/s/colleges/MIT-SAT-scores-
GP...](https://www.prepscholar.com/sat/s/colleges/MIT-SAT-scores-GPA) [2]
[https://blog.prepscholar.com/sat-percentiles-and-score-
ranki...](https://blog.prepscholar.com/sat-percentiles-and-score-rankings)

------
gosub
I hope RMS is safe, and that someone finds a way to let us all help him, in
any meaningful way.

The most disgusting thing is that whose who witch-hunted him, from their
higher moral ground, will face no consequences at all.

~~~
lazyjones
> _The most disgusting thing is that whose who witch-hunted him, from their
> higher moral ground, will face no consequences at all._

I wouldn't be so sure about that. At the very least, the FSF has lost some
annual contributions...

~~~
Grangar
Are they the ones to blame for this all though?

------
scarejunba
Funny, the "professionals" took over. I knew it was inevitable when software
engineers started arguing for certification, talked about how they were so
much better people because they hated writing code outside their jobs, talking
about how people learning to code was a conspiracy to ruin software engineer
salaries, and began constraining strictly the spaces that people could act in.
All that was always a harbinger of IBM-as-life.

Of course this is inevitable. When I was young, you just did what you did and
tried to find other people who also did what you did. Maybe they liked you,
maybe they didn't. If they didn't you found someone else or you made that
group of people. It was all about freely associating.

The nerds got beaten but that was always going to happen when this thing
became big.

When Terry Davis (of Losethos fame) said deeply offensive things that were
personally offensive to me, we all tried to understand that it came from a
troubled mind, that we could admire the work without tolerating the outbursts.
With the socially awkward folks, it was even easier. We could gently direct
while moderating their extremes.

Cancel culture is a mistake. I'm not bold enough to face it under my real name
so I'm just going to weather it under the tarps where my people stand with
their tenets like lit beacons barely visible in a storm. If you invoke
Crocker's Rules, if you can forgive and redirect, and if you can disagree with
words without invoking nuclear retribution, you can find the rest of us in our
scattered micro-communities.

Good luck.

------
forgot_user1234
this just makes me sad. I believe, everything Stallman said but I could never
say it out loud. He did. He was right.

"Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a
specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism."

~~~
frollo
And, somewhat ironically, he is being criticized in non specific terms which
allow moral vagueness (which is the only reason this specific witch hunt is
still going on).

------
ukj
It seems the damage is done and cannot be reversed.

About the only lesson you can learn from this is that if you really cherish
Freedom of Speech, then you actually require Fuck-you money to practice that
right effectively.

------
fergie
> You don’t get the free software movement without a person like Richard
> Stallman. Its success depended on a stubborn pedantic ideologue. It required
> someone who couldn’t take a hint.

This is really the crux of the matter. Richard Stallman should absolutely be
held accountable for the stupid things that he has said. The problem is that
humanity _really_ needs people like Richard Stallman- very few others have
made such a practical (Emacs) and political impact on software, and by
extension, the world as we know it. There aren't many Richard Stallmans, and
if you get rid of all them then _really_ bad things will happen.

It is equally important that he is punished, that he repents, and that he
continues his work.

~~~
nql
I agree. Some of the posters say that software would have been better if the
people he made uncomfortable weren't made uncomfortable by him and thus
continued making software. That is extremely implausible. People who do
software because it is something they are passionate about would not be so
fragile, and that is necessary to make ground breaking changes.

I sometimes hear people say "if tech wasn't stereotyped as a bunch of nerds,
there would be more women in it". This ignores the fact that there is a strong
causal relationship between being perceived as a nerd and having a serious
interested in software. It's like saying "if I didn't hold people who do
software in contempt, then I might have done software!".

------
gunibert
As an observer from the outside i have to say, that i am as an "privileged
white male" will pay much attention to what i will say in the future. This is
my conclusion about what happened here and happened to Linus.

The feeling that you have to be super sensitive will close more doors then
before - prove me wrong.

~~~
magicalhippo
One should indeed be careful about what one says at work.

When at work it's very different from when I'm at home with my mates. Me and
my coworkers have to share space, and so the dynamics are not the same. If one
of my mates gets hurt by my jokes at his expense, he can just decide not meet
me. At work, my coworkers don't really have a choice.

On a related note, the Mercedes F1 team just fired four employees, apparently
for making a poll of when one of their coworkers would break his Ramadan fast.
Maybe funny for a group of pals, but not fitting at the workplace.

[https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/146280/mercedes-
dismissed-...](https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/146280/mercedes-dismissed-
staff-for-diversity-breach)

~~~
monsieurbanana
At home with your mates? What about streaming with your mates? Or in a public
conference unrelated to your work with your mates? Or just anywhere where you
could be recorded?

The kind of people that grossly misinterpreted (and I use these words because
my English isn't good enough to use stronger words while remaining polite)
Stallman's comment about Minksy won't care about the situation or context.

------
craftoman
Stallman is missing, many fear of social isolation or even suicide. You can't
ruin someone's career & life based on an opinion that was "leaked" and
consider the fact that Italy's former prime minister was involved in an actual
orgy with underage models but no one cared about and this guy is still one of
the most respectable persons in Italy.

------
EmeraldMoon
Thanks a lot for writing this post, and for sharing it.

> By satisfying the mob today, we are sacrificing our future. That’s the real
> risk.

Precisely.

------
neoldian
I will leave these two links here. The parallels are striking.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Red_Guards...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Red_Guards_and_the_destruction_of_the_%22Four_Olds%22)

------
Maxbunny
While I am also saddened by the dishonest nature of the reporting on the
Minsky accident and the cowardly lack of push back against it, one should not
go to the other extreme and simply dismiss all the complaints about Stallman's
behavior as him merely being "a clueless aspie". A good example is his emacs
virgin joke, which he as as I read specifically made about individual female
members of the audience. Due to our hysterical politicized environment we are
not able to deal with incidents like this : acknowledge that behavior like
this is unprofessional but does not make Stallman a horrible monster,
especially since he indeed stopped making that joke after some criticism.

------
blackhaz
Why do we even need to invoke Stallman's achievements as an excuse here? What
did the man say - he expressed his opinion that accusations of sexual assault
are probably inflated and inaccurate. For fuck's sake!

~~~
sgt
>he expressed his opinion that accusations of sexual assault are probably
inflated and inaccurate.

What is wrong with that, if indeed the accusations were inflated and
inaccurate?

As far as I can see from this case, he is correct. He could have expressed
himself better, but we're talking about RMS here.

------
jdefr89
If I know anything about human behavior than these incidents were a final
excuse to get rid of Stallman. I personally don’t care for him, but he has
done so much for FOSS. Also I am surprised more people trying to condemn him
are not seeing that Stallman is basically autistic. People are essentially
being mad over someone with autism acting in some ways autistic.. C’mon people
need to start cutting some people a damn break this worlds lost all sanity..

------
glandium
Do we need another rehash? The only thing new I learned here is that his log
showed a resignation from the GNU project leadership
([https://archive.is/wHrTo](https://archive.is/wHrTo)), which has since been
removed, and that came only two days after saying he wouldn't, joking about
being a nuisance at the same time ([https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-
gnu/2019-09/msg00008...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-
gnu/2019-09/msg00008.html))

Edit: as for the "maybe homeless" claim, as far as I know, it's his life
style. Relatedly, I've heard many horror stories of people who hosted him.
Here's one I saw recently (with more in the replies):
[https://mobile.twitter.com/migueldeicaza/status/117398128703...](https://mobile.twitter.com/migueldeicaza/status/1173981287037751297)

------
lettergram
I’m glad this is on the front page. My previous posts on the whole RMS “thing”
had been removed or disappeared to quickly from the front page to discuss.

Honestly, I’d Remove the “flame war” system for the day. I feel Hacker News
needs some discourse. The vocal minority is drowning out the masses.

------
high_derivative
The 4 steps of cancel culture, or socially sanctioned sadism:

1\. He said/did thing x. He must lose his livelihood and be annihilated.

2\. He did not say thing x, but he said y which is basically thing x.

3\. He said neither x or y, but he essentially deserves this anyway because of
other things he may have done or said. They may have not offended anyone at
the time to cause this level of outrage, but clearly combined with what he may
have said recently, his time was up anyway.

4\. He may not have deserved what happened to him, but maybe he should have
just kept his mouth shut about issue x. If me and my friends accused him, then
he probably wasn't innocent.

(5.) Write medium/Quillette/twitter post: I was part of the mob until it came
for me.

------
dependsontheq
Why is there so much hero worship in technology? Compared to other business
areas we have myriads of heroes and fallen angels. If you think about it, it
just doesn’t make a lot of sense, yes there are a lot of people that move
technology forward by several years... and without those people some
developments would have taken longer. But there is nearly no example where I
would be willing to say without hero x - y would never have happened. Is this
something psychological? Is this about us having a feeling of agency and not
just being simple players on the field of Moore’s Law?

~~~
mLuby
Because powerful software can still be created by an individual. As with
authors, artists, and composers, that lends itself to the heroic tale, of a
lone genius toiling in secret to reveal a stunning breakthrough to the world.

Physical industries require groups of people, so you don't usually see heroes
emerge from them.

(BTW I agree with you that "without [hero], [advance] wouldn't have happened"
is suspect.)

------
chippy
In the words of the Artificial Intelligence from War Games "this is all a
strange game in which the only winning move is not to play."

Let's hope that we can still play chess together.

------
zonidjan
> Stallman made some technically-correct-but-utterly-tactless comments

No. No, he didn't. He made some technically incorrect comments. Regardless of
whether or not what Minsky did _should_ be considered assault, it _is_
considered assault, and (more importantly) it _was_ considered at the time
Minsky is alleged to have done it.

Stallman did not say that what Minsky did shouldn't be assault. He said that
Minsky shouldn't be regarded as having committed assault.

~~~
Aeolun
I don’t follow. According to your statements having sex with a consenting
young female is assault?

------
moomin
_sigh_ I just wrote a screed ripping this apart but seriously, no-one who
liked it will have their minds changed by me.

Instead, I’ll make a point that should concern anyone who actually cares about
Free Software and not dragging it into the culture war: the article claims
Free Software has a bus factor of one (or possibly zero now). That had better
not be the case. And if it is the case, now is the time to do something about
it.

------
DanBC
> blatantly lie about what was said,

I've seen this said a few times, and it needs to be cleared up.

Stallman defended Minsky by saying it wasn't rape and it was assault. To mount
this defence Stallman had to ignore common English definitions for both words,
and he had to ignore the legal definitions of both words.

People are angry at Stallman for what he actually said, not what you think
they think he said.

If you want to say that you want necrophiles to fuck your corpse when you die;
that you think the harms of incestual abuse can be avoided with condom use;
that you think child abuse isn't that harmful; that you think sexual assault
isn't assault unless force or violence is used; that having sex with a
trafficked coerced child isn't rape; then you shouldn't be surprised when
projects want to distance themselves from your views.

> You don’t get the free software movement without a person like Richard
> Stallman

We don't get the free software movement we have without Stallman, but what's
that actually saying? How popular would gnu be if it had someone who was
better at communication involved?

~~~
stochastic_monk
His creepy, shirtless "get on my mattress" calls to female undergrads at MIT
register as more than being awkward or autistic. That alone should be
unacceptable behavior for faculty.

~~~
Igelau
Can you link a source that actually spells it out that he did this, or did you
just fabricate the story?

------
thanatropism
I think the most interesting part of this gotterdamerung is the claim in
“Remove Stallman appendix A” that if the work of a Great Genius hinders The
work of some number of talented skilled folk, then society is ultimately at a
loss.

I’m not certain that this is necessarily true. Or false for that matter. I
have an intuition, possibly colored by an overall culture of hero worship,
that it is false.

This is the rationale: the dynamics large groups of people inevitably
approaches that of a committee. Committees are averaging devices that smooth
potentially groundbreaking ideas out of serious consideration. Genius on the
other hand is not only extraordinarily capable of such groundbreaking ideas
but is able to insist on them doggedly.

OTOH it means that one true genius (and maybe Stallman isn’t one, but true
geniuses have very very often been assholes) is worth almost an infinite
number of merely talented folk.

The ultimate question: what lifted us from mere animal status 10-15K years
ago? A handful of geniuses or a general society awakening?

But also; how may “young talented physicists” it takes to change a lightbulb?

------
sumedh
> He held his positions at MIT, GNU, and the FSF for over thirty years, and in
> that time nobody accused him of coercion, unwanted touching, or verbal
> harassment.

The author missed the point of the Me Too movement. Lot of other powerful
people were not publicly accused for decades because they were powerful and
could easily silence their accusers.

~~~
eej2ya1K
Do you think Richard Stallman was "powerful" enough to "easily silence"
accusers?

~~~
fesoliveira
It's not about what we think, but what people in the receiving end of his
advances thought at the time that was happening. Stallman IS a powerful figure
in the Free Software movement. The mere fact the people are making blog posts
or coming to HN in his defense after what he said, both in the MIT e-mail and
in his blog over the years, is evidence enough of that. While it is hard to
think that Stallman would go after those who accused him of anything, the guy
has a huge enough following that people would be intimidated to make
accusations due to the possibility of push back from the community.

------
dash2
Amid the controversy, I thought this post (indirectly linked from another one
below) makes a pretty strong case, with witnesses albeit anonymous ones, that
RMS has a history of bad behaviour including sexual harassment:

[https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-
appendi...](https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix-
a-a7e41e784f88)

It also links to this, from _1983_ which does not name RMS but is pretty
interesting and damning about the culture of computer science at the time:

[https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~lazowska/mit/?source=post_p...](https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~lazowska/mit/?source=post_page
-----a7e41e784f88----------------------)

Disclaimer: I'm a man, I'm not a feminist, I dislike cancel culture.

------
t0astbread
I wouldn't call the MIT CSAIL list "private communications". Sure, it's not
open to the general public but it is public enough to warrant a public
discussion. (Additionally it has members around the same age as the abuse
victim.)

~~~
FeepingCreature
By that definition, any discussion that was ever leaked was not private, by
virtue of it being leaked.

------
hu3
I'd like to understand HN's ranking algorithm.

At the top of the frontpage:

\- Mesh Spreadsheet - 66 points, 2 hours ago

At the bottom of the frontpage:

\- In Defense of Richard Stallman - 463 points, 1 hour ago

Archive: [http://archive.fo/Mc5qV](http://archive.fo/Mc5qV)

~~~
doubleunplussed
The algorithm supposedly penalises large numbers of comments rapidly being
made. Ostensibly it's a "flamewar detection" mechanism, supposed to discourage
threads full of arguing. Whilst this topic is potentially exactly that, I'm
not sure how the algorithm prevents flagging false positives - sometimes there
is going to be a massive thread for appropriate reasons. I would also like to
be allowed to discuss this issue here without knowing the thread is buried,
even though it is controversial.

------
Chris2048
Perhaps for topics like these we should adopt the rules of
[https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/](https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/)
?

Specifically, rules 1, 2, 4, 8.

------
bariswheel
Amen. Social justice warriors and baseless witch hunt participators are the
armpit of humanity, wanting attention by covering up their own incompetence
and insecurities. Go do something with your life, and mind your own business.

------
Foxboron
>He is now likely homeless and his friends (such as Eric Raymond) have had
trouble contacting him.

and as esr wrote:

>I guess he was sleeping in his office and can’t anymore.

But this hasn't been true for years.

>Until around 1998, my office at MIT was also my residence. I was even
registered to vote from there. Nowadays I have a separate residence in
Cambridge not far from MIT. However, I am rarely there, since I am nearly
always travelling out of town.

[https://stallman.org/rms-lifestyle.html](https://stallman.org/rms-
lifestyle.html)

------
benreesman
[https://stallman.org/archives/2006-may-
aug.html#05%20June%20...](https://stallman.org/archives/2006-may-
aug.html#05%20June%202006%20\(Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party\))

Done. You go on record that it’s sometimes ok to fuck children you’re gonna
have a bad time. Full stop. Who gives a shit that the Minsky comment got
misquoted or whatever, he has worse shit on his website. Why is this a
conversation?

~~~
doubleunplussed
So a while ago people would have said the same about homosexual sex. Luckily,
people questioned it anyway, despite being vilified for doing so. How do you
know which supposedly unconscionable things are actually bad and which are
not, if we are not allowed to question them? Whilst I'm not defending this
particular point, on the meta level we _need_ to be able to question things,
however settled they might seem, or else we will never again recognise the
areas where we _are_ wrong.

A friend of mine is fond of telling people who make such absolute,
unquestioning claims that they would have made an excellent SS officer.

~~~
benreesman
My point isn’t about the substance of his remarks (though I’m firmly in the
“adults shouldn’t fuck children” camp if my position were somehow relevant).

My point is that there are a bunch of people nitpicking that the Minsky
remarks aren’t a tacit endorsement of pedophilia, and maybe they’re not. But
RMS has a tacit endorsement of pedophilia on his website, so if that’s a bad
enough thing to fire someone over then that ship sailed a long time ago.

If tacitly endorsing pedophilia is something MIT is cool with, that’s a
different conversation. I very much doubt they’re cool with it, but I’m not
affiliated with MIT, so you’d have to ask them.

~~~
doubleunplussed
No. Your comment did not read as "my opponents are nitpicking by denying that
he questioned the badness of sex with children", you just stated your belief
in the badness of sex with children and how nothing more needs to be said.
"Full stop". "Why is this a conversation".

And you are now backpedalling.

Stop with this crap, I'm sick of the emotional rhetoric and lies in
everything.

I wish we were in a world where en employee saying something just isn't
considered endorsement, tacit or otherwise, by the employer. Then we wouldn't
be in this mess. And I can't help but notice that activists who want to punish
certain views are the ones encouraging the interpretation of employees' speech
as endorsement by the employer in order to be more effectively able to punish
speech they don't like.

I'm sure they would be less happy if the shoe were on the other foot and
authoritarian rightists were in charge, but they are not looking that far
ahead apparently.

~~~
benreesman
I said “you’re gonna have a bad time”. He’s having a bad time. The fact that
I’m anti-pedophilia is incidental to the fact that the Minsky remarks are not
necessary to establish that RMS is (was?) at least plausibly pro-pedophilia at
one point by his own admission on his own website.

I literally cannot believe that words like “SS Officer” and “authoritarian
rightists” are making an appearance in a conversation that started roughly
with “nah he actually said that shit, here’s the link, and no one should be
surprised that he’s having a terrible time as a result, the Minsky shit is not
necessary to establish that he actually said that”.

I really cannot see why everyone is so fucking super duper hyper charged up
over this. Pedophilia being bad is about as vanilla of a position that it’s
possible to take on anything, and while free speech entitles people in the US
at least to take a different position, it seems like kind of a stretch to
expect anyone’s employer to line up behind that.

------
yeahthat
The idea that sharing an email sent to you is a "leak" that somehow violates
privacy is incoherent. This is doubly so when we are talking about a mailing
list.

------
iammyIP
RMS is a true Hero, he gives his life to fight for the basic human right for
free computing. RMS is a modern historical figure on par with Jesus. His weird
opinions on other topics and clumsy social behaviour do not matter a bit in
comparision and if at all they need to be adressed with love and care, not
cruxification.

------
WatchDog
500+ points in under an hour, yet at the bottom of the front page. Is "flag"
just a super downvote?

------
sprash
Why is hackernews kicking all Stallman threads off the frontpage?

ycombinator seems to have an agenda in this too apparently.

------
dewey
> There would be no copyleft, no GNU General Public License, no Free Software
> Foundation, no GNU userspace (binutils, coreutils, etc), no GNU Compiler
> Collection, and (of course) no Emacs

Like no other decent person would've been able to invent these?

------
slowhadoken
We’re a nation of rats now.

------
baran1
> The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some
> unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they
> had sex.

If someone appears to be having sex with someone that appears to be underage,
the older person appears to be sexually assaulting the younger person. This is
because a minor cannot legally consent which makes non-consensual sex forceful
by definition, hence it is called assault.

In other words: rms was wrong, and now rms is gone.

------
DoreenMichele
_Update: According to his website, Stallman has found housing. He also says he
will continue to head GNU_

Glad to see these updates.

------
wowtip
RMS should sue the publications for defamation and loss of income. Hopefully
someone can help him with this if needed.

------
fallingfrog
Of course the real monsters among the rich and powerful, the clintons, the
trumps, continue to be untouchable.

------
akabaka777
my friend and i use the N word multiple times in our conversation or in chat.
None of us are black. Context matters... Now if one day somebody hacks my
phone and says i am a racist by leaking parts of my messages- is that ethical?
how far are we from censoring others thoughts?

------
chappi42
Thank you for that article!!

It's a shame what a piss-poor narrow-minded society 'the west' has become...

~~~
DanBC
> narrow-minded society

"don't defend the rape of children" isn't narrow minded.

~~~
chappi42
For me what you write is hyperbole and such a loose application of 'rape of
children' belittles a 'real' rape. It also kills discourse: if you risk such a
toxic label (and thousand times multiplied by social media) you be quiet in
future. There the society goes...

------
kome
To add insult to injury, the author of the first libelous article against
Stallman works for a US government contractor in company developing drones and
other killing machines...
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21090851](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21090851)

------
mollerhoj
Many of history's most brilliant people have low emotional intelligence to the
point where their statements seem/are quite anti social.

How far would Linus Torvald have made it in today's political climate?

Jonathan Haidt's The Coddling of the American gives some great insights into
the issue of feelings vs. truth.

------
ykevinator
I'm not sure someone with such bizarre views on consent should be in a
leadership position or be a teacher. I usually agree with articles like this
but then I read stallmans views and they are probably disqualifying.

~~~
roenxi
If you did a survey of any corporate or political organisation there would be
large numbers of unbelievably competent people who hole weird and
objectionable views. If a view isn't relevant to what someone is doing we have
to be able to look past it.

You are underestimating, radically, the diversity of thought amongst humans.
And particularly on the margins of leadership where the people who come up
with new ideas are - obviously they aren't guided by social proof because they
are working on new ideas. They have to be very experimental, and probably
believe all sorts of weird and wonderful things.

If Stallman was the sort of person who only held mainstream views he would not
be in the FSF. Which was a point addressed in this article.

I don't know which views in particular you are talking about, but many of them
are much more mainstream than his critics are admitting to. Particularly the
17-or-18 comment; in Australia consent is age 16 so he had a point there.

~~~
DanBC
> who hole weird and objectionable views

And if they publicly talk about those weird views they may find themselves
being asked to leave their organisation, especially if those views are that
child sexual abuse isn't so bad.

> in Australia consent is age 16 so he had a point there.

Can you link to the Australian law that shows the age of consent for coerced
prostitutes is 16?

~~~
roenxi
Well, yeah. Stallman didn't talk about this sort of thing publicly. His talks
were on software licensing. This latest conversation, for example, was leaked
because originally it was private.

> Can you link to the Australian law that shows the age of consent for coerced
> prostitutes is 16?

Here you go. [http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-
bin/viewdoc/au/legis/nsw/cons...](http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-
bin/viewdoc/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/ca190082/s66c.html)

~~~
DanBC
So that law clearly isn't relevant. How about this?
[http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-
bin/viewdoc/au/legis/nsw/cons...](http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-
bin/viewdoc/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/ca190082/s80b.html)

~~~
roenxi
That law isn't relevant to the age of consent. It is more to do with people
being forced in to sex.

Obviously sexual slavery is illegal. Everyone agrees that that is a bad thing,
and nobody I've heard of has ever tried to argue there is a nuance there.

------
kome
With all the asshole CEOs, managers, office bullies, in this world - of course
we should ruin the life of Richard Stallman. Well done everybody.

------
anatoly
Thank you so much for this post.

------
njloof
This thread should be required reading anytime someone asks why there aren’t
more women in computing science.

------
emilfihlman
100% this post. I'm extremely saddened by the willingness to destroy a man
based on nothing.

------
daffy
How was he ``forced'' to resign?

------
rurban
Thanks

------
foobar_
Every aggressor in all of history always acted out of self-righteous
victimhood.

~~~
FeepingCreature
The Mongols?

~~~
foobar_
The neighbouring tribe thinks we are losers ... let's show them?

------
asutekku
He might’ve been an influential figure, but he’s still a creep. Just because
someone made something once doesn’t mean we should turn a blind eye towards
them.

~~~
sascha_sl
before someone goes into a defensive rage... rms being a creep and
particularly women at MIT going to great lengths to avoid him is well
documented

these remarks, while slightly distorted by the media, are still part of a
pattern of dismissing sexual assault (including the way RMS insists on not
using the word assault despite it being well understood that assault does not
have to be physical violence)

rms is the sort of person who overshoots principled to a point everyone is
tired of talking to them and where in-person criticism dies before it is even
expressed because why bother with someone who will never seek to be better
anyway and that afforded him a lot of leeway, even if i think the means of
removing him now have been not entirely clean, it still was overdue

~~~
goatinaboat
_women at MIT going to great lengths to avoid him is well documented_

Genuine question: where is this documented? I have been using GNU stuff for 25
years and until now have never heard about this. Do you have links to
reputable sources?

~~~
foldr
[https://www.reddit.com/r/justneckbeardthings/comments/2vkeze...](https://www.reddit.com/r/justneckbeardthings/comments/2vkeze/he_calls_it_his_pleasure_card/)

~~~
doubleunplussed
So are weird polyamorous people who are into "cuddle puddles" committing
sexual assault or something similar by advertising that fact?

It seems to me that Stallman advertising that he likes cuddles is
automatically considered creepy, beyond the pale, whereas if a properly woke
community of appropriately diverse individuals did the same, it would be just
considered part of that culture and accepted.

What's more, Stallman used to be part of what that community used to be. He is
a hippie. I bet people not up to speed on him reading about this incident
assume he's an alt-righter who voted for Trump, but he supports Bernie
Sanders, says that Australians should vote for the Greens, and advocates for
weird gender-neutral pronouns.

And he likes cuddles and dared to advertise that fact!

I acknowledge that putting that on a business card is out of line in today's
culture, but god I wish it wasn't. If you are creeped out by an old man
wanting cuddles, but you wouldn't if it were someone else, then you are a
bigot. And if you're creeped out any people at all advertising that they like
cuddles, then that is stifling and the future is going to be bland and full of
lonely people.

~~~
foldr
>So are weird polyamorous people who are into "cuddle puddles" committing
sexual assault or something similar by advertising that fact?

Nobody is accusing RMS of committing sexual assault.

~~~
doubleunplussed
Fine. Are the hypothetical weird poly people ineligible to work for MIT
because they openly advertise their enthusiasm for cuddle puddles?

Edit: also, there are plenty of people accusing Stallman of sexual assault.
But I'm happy to argue under the pretence that that isn't true.

~~~
foldr
Who is accusing RMS of sexual assault?

>Are the hypothetical weird poly people ineligible to work for MIT because
they openly advertise their enthusiasm for cuddle puddles?

If they do it in a professional context, I would say yes.

------
ntzm
This is a bad post

~~~
EmeraldMoon
Care to explain why?

------
youdontknowtho
The article says you don't get the free software movement without RMS.

What about BSD?

~~~
latchkey
Free != Open

Here is a good explanation of the difference...

[https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/Free-vs-
Ope...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/Free-vs-Open-Source-
Software)

~~~
enriquto
The BSD are certainly Free Software today, for they clearly respect the four
freedoms. They did not exist, though, at the beginning of the GNU project.

~~~
latchkey
ModifiedBSD, yes.

[https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-
list.html#ModifiedBSD](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-
list.html#ModifiedBSD)

------
trymnilsen
Am i reading it correctly that the author implies that the end justifies the
means (in this case stallmans behaviour) because without it we would not have
what we have today. Unless you have a time machine that is just speculation.

~~~
jhrmnn
No. The author says that there are no "means" to speak of, there is perhaps a
communication issue Stallman has. The author argues that such issues should be
tolerated to a reasonable degree, otherwise the society as a whole may end up
poorer. I make no claim about the truthfulness of that, but that's what the
author says.

------
pfortuny
Totally right as regards the private mail.

However, the fact that he is homeless has nothing to do with the discussion.
It just adds some "feeling" to the problem which should not be there. A
MacArthur fellow (1990) is supposed to be able to manage his life (or get
someone to do so).

~~~
megous
You're brushing aside the whole social pressure thing.

That's something that can make normal people kill themseleves at the worst, or
throw them into a pretty bad emotional turmoil with some very real effects on
their life.

Intelligence has nothing to do with this.

------
Ensorceled
Can we stop these threads? They are not productive, we have all chosen our
sides on this particular "metoo" vs. "cancel culture" debate and nobody is
having their minds changed.

~~~
Valmar
These threads raise awareness for more people.

Especially people who may not otherwise have known.

Silencing, censoring, the discussion only allows it to keep getting worse,
instead of potentially less worse.

~~~
Ensorceled
There have been plenty of threads on this matter on HN, I think most people
know by now.

I have no power on HN, and thus, no ability to censor.

------
carlo_4002
This article is so wrong in so many ways...

" You don’t get the free software movement without a person like Richard
Stallman."

Well once Stallman pass away, it will be the apocalypsis for the free software
movement

------
sneak
Is it possible for us to have leaders who are driven and excellent, who also
manage to be excellent to other people?

[https://twitter.com/bcrypt/status/1173731697159835648](https://twitter.com/bcrypt/status/1173731697159835648)

I don’t think it’s subscribing to or endorsing cancel culture to ask for that.
RMS being a rude, insensitive jerk is not because he’s an aspie (claiming such
is rude to aspies who manage to not be assholes), but because he is a selfish
and self-absorbed person.

[https://twitter.com/rakyll/status/1174141125902229504](https://twitter.com/rakyll/status/1174141125902229504)

We deserve better leadership.

~~~
roenxi
"We deserve"? Stallman led because he is possibly literally the only person
who stood up and tried to lead. It is difficult to imagine he won any sort of
leadership contest with anyone (on anything apart from technical merit.
Stallman just isn't a political animal). The work he has done is thankless and
probably fairly miserable by an objective standard.

If you want to do a better job; go do it.

------
pron
> In short: Stallman made some technically-correct-but-utterly-tactless
> comments

No, they were not "technically correct." Neither Stallman nor the author of
this post are experts on sexual assault, and neither has the requisite
knowledge to even judge whether the statements were technically correct or
not. If people are too lazy to learn about an issue in some depth, they should
just shut up and listen to the experts. And if they don't want to listen to
the experts, they should at least study the issue in some depth. I'm sure
neither Stallman nor the author of this post would be as forgiving towards
equally clueless, equally stupid comments made about programming by people who
have no clear idea of what it is.

Also, the problem with making those comments, correct or otherwise, wasn't one
of tact. That the author and Stallman don't understand the actual, direct,
real harm in an authority figure making such comments in a public workplace
forum could be either due to innocent ignorance or willful ignorance, but it
is ignorance. And if, in the case of Stallman, he continues to cause this harm
after being warned, _and_ doesn't wish to apologize, _and_ this comes after
decades of inappropriate workplace behavior, then a sane world would show him
the door.

In any event, like a lawyer who doesn't know the law, the author doesn't
address, nor seem to understand, the issue at the heart of the matter, and
puts himself in the same position of ignorance as Stallman. And so the post
isn't so much a defense as it is yet another diatribe on how weird, confusing
and even unfair certain subjects can seem to people who don't understand them
nor really wish to. Thank you, but we know that. Stallman, or anyone for that
matter, deserves better than this Rudy Giuliani "defense."

