17 ms·

Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

342 points by arctux 7y ago

arctux 7y ago
Related earlier post: > 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. Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September_2019_(Statements_about_Epstein) https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...
- melling 7y ago
  I didn’t follow the story. Was Stallman taken out of context? Anyway, he probably should have know better than to weigh in. One’s well thought out response and subtle points can often turn out to have a few holes. In fact... “If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged”
  - smacktoward 7y ago
    > Anyway, he probably should have know better than to weigh in. RMS is not exactly famous for his keen social skills.
    - partialrecall 7y ago
      It really seems like his real 'sin' is not being neurotypical. Should he try to have more tact? Sure, of course. But failing that, the correct response is compassion and gentle correction, not a witchhunt. Not driving him out of his jobs.
      - fwip 7y ago
        I mean, this certainly isn't the first time that he's publicly said that he thinks "consenting pedophilia" is 100% fine, and it's not the first time that people have told him "Hey, don't say that, you're gonna get in trouble." At a certain point it stops looking like ignorance and stubbornness and more like he's got a horse in the race.
        partialrecall 7y ago
        You know he's also recanted that shit, right? > and more like he's got a horse in the race. Has the mob now progressed to insinuating that he's a pedophile himself? Is that what the 'horse in the race' idiom means in this context?
        ceejayoz 7y ago
        Sure. He recanted those comments two days ago (after espousing them on his website at least between 2006 and 2013), and after his comments on the Epstein case started getting attention, which makes it look more like damage control than a genuine change in opinion. https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September_2019_%28Sex_between_an_adult_and_a_child_is_wrong%29 https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...
        partialrecall 7y ago
        I'd say recent statements more accurately reflect somebody's current beliefs than old statements. Considering how badly he's been recently slandered by media outlets leaving out context and mischaracterizing his remarks, I am disturbed by your willingness to exclude that context from your previous comment.
        ceejayoz 7y ago
        As a general rule, I tend to give more credit to consistent and freely offered opinions espoused over years than a sudden conversion immediately after a PR crisis. There's a famous saying: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."
  - vkou 7y ago
    He was dancing on a tightrope. Whether or not his statements were taken out of context requires a mind-reader to intuit what exactly he, uh, meant by them. It's not an interesting defense, and given his prior statements on the subject of statutory rape, I'm having a hard time taking it seriously.
    - michaelmrose 7y ago
      His statement was perfectly comprehensible no mind reading required you are just muddying the waters.
      - happytoexplain 7y ago
        Surely this means you are either unaware of the many people who took his meaning differently, or you believe they somehow don't count?
        michaelmrose 7y ago
        People who actually read the thread and took it differently have poor reading comprehension its all perfectly clear.
        catslam72 7y ago
        I believe they were misled by the numerous reports by leading news sites who claimed he described the victims as willing in their headlines.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - danso 7y ago
    Someone emailed an event for protesting Minsky, and Stallman accused her of wrongly inflating the term "sexual assault" when using it to refer to Minsky and Epstein. Stallman bends over backwards for Minsky, saying that he shouldn't be automatically to blame if Epstein forced someone to have sex with him. It's little different than the absurd pretzel that Lessig bent himself into when trying to defend his friend Joi Ito [0]: > Q: Doesn’t it make sense to you that people would say someone who is taking money from and cozying up with a guy who is a pedophile and who is targeting young women, maybe he shouldn’t lead an institution that includes women? > Lessig: I’m not sure it describes the case, and more importantly, what about the institution? > Q: What do you mean it doesn’t describe the case? > L: I don’t know about the “cozying up to.” > Q: Going to his house, being socially in his orbit, taking money from him. > L: In the context of raising money — just like you would go up there and meet with him in the context of an interview... > L: When you say that he is cozying up to him, that’s something very different from what I understand actually happened, which is: Joi, in the context of his job for the M.I.T. Media Lab, built a relationship with one of the people he’s raising money from. I don't begrudge Lessig and Stallman for attempting to apply what they think is logic and rationality in approaching these topics. I absolutely despise them for their hypocrisy in the way they refuse to acknowledge how they themselves are tainted by irrationality when defending their friends. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/business/lessig-epstein-ito-mit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/business/lessig-epstein-i...
    - tzs 7y ago
      > It's little different than the absurd pretzel that Lessig bent himself into when trying to defend his friend Joi Ito It's massively different, because Joi Ito's interactions with Epstein were after Epstein's sexual atrocities were known. Minsky's were in 2001, which as far as I have been able to find is before Epstein was known to be evil.
      - pryce 7y ago
        Minsky arranged a second conference with Epstein, on Epstein's private island in 2011 [1]. What sources were you using that implied Minsky's contact with Epstein stopped 10 years before that? [1] https://www.pr.com/press-release/383199 https://www.pr.com/press-release/383199
  - tzs 7y ago
    > I didn’t follow the story. Was Stallman taken out of context? Yes. This statement of Stallman's: > We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates. has been reported in several places as Stallman saying Epstein's girls were "entirely willing", completely ignoring that he was not saying they were willing--he was saying that Epstein would have required them to say they were willing. If you have sufficient power over someone to force them to have sex with whomever you want them to, you almost certainly also have sufficient power over them to tell them to pretend to be doing it of the own free will. Epstein was massively evil, but he wasn't massively stupid, so almost certainly would have exercised such power. Stallman was talking about Marvin Minsky's sex with a girl at Epstein's island retreat in 2001, which was a few years before Epstein's sexual atrocities became known. Stallman was arguing that from Minsky's point of view, he probably had no reason to suspect that he was not dealing with a consenting girl.
    - selfawareposter 7y ago
      Except for the part where he got taken to a remote island by a billionaire and was presented with a very young woman who immediately wanted to have sex with him.
      - veemacs 7y ago
        Hindsight is 20/20, scrutinizing our understanding of past events instead of making grandios assumptions is the key to realising justice. Misinterpretting the words of a man because you don't like the way they think is an injustice.
      - tzs 7y ago
        You mean the island that Epstein regularly invited numerous people to in order to discuss assorted legitimate things, like supporting their charities or their research? Epstein's island wasn't some stereotypical villain lair where anyone who steps foot on it must be up to no good. It was a place that he conducted the normal business that any entirely legitimate billionaire would conduct, in addition to the villain stuff. Based on the girl's deposition, it looks like she was there on the record to provide massages to guests, and off the record was forced to make those erotic massages including sex. It is not clear which, if any, recipients of those massages plus sex knew that the sex was something she was forced into. There are no details given on her sex with Minsky other than it happened.
  - selfawareposter 7y ago
    Yes, but it was also awful in context. It was taken directly as the girl being “willing” when what he actually said was that she may have been coerced by Epstein into appearing to be “willing” to Minsky. It doesn’t help that he has a documented history of fucked up comments in this general area.
    - miracle2k 7y ago
      Should news outlets and social media personalities who do purposefully take this comments out of context (and I think there can be little doubt that it is done on purpose [1]) be punished? [1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-defends-epstein-victims-were-entirely-willing https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-r...
      - enriquto 7y ago
        Clearly. This is a false accusation that damaged his work and reputation. At the very least, these news outlets and media personalities must be compelled to apologize publicly.
    - partialrecall 7y ago
      > "she may have been coerced by Epstein into appearing to be “willing” to Minsky." Is that not a possibility?
      - mixologic 7y ago
        Would that somehow absolve Minsky? A "willing" obviously young girl seems to want to have sex with somebody she doesnt know. If Minsky suddenly find himself in the plot to a porno, and just went along with it, then trying to defend his moral culpability is probably a lot out of the bounds of acceptability.
        partialrecall 7y ago
        I didn't say it would absolve Minsky. Somebody who has sex with a prostitute is lower than dirt in my book.
  - forclarity 7y ago
    At least in the case of the Daily Beast article by Blake Montgomery, enough context was included that a plain reading of the quoted material makes clear that the surrounding text and headline were radically incorrect. Journalistic malpractice if not deliberate libel. The author has since doubled down. I, for one, won't be believing a damned thing written by the man in the foreseeable future. I encourage you to make your own determination. Stallman defended Minsky. Judge him for what he said. Don't judge him for a defense of Epstein - he unambiguously condemned Epstein with the rest of us.
  - m000 7y ago
    > Anyway, he probably should have know better than to weigh in. That's the problem with the internet today. It's too toxic to hold any meaningful public discussion. I'd bet that RMS was open to discussing the point he expressed. Because that's what you do on an old-fashioned mailing list. But apparently he got no response to his email. Instead Selam jumped the gun and started, essentially, a shaming campaign on medium. This kind of attitude essentially hushes people who can actually hold a meaningful online discussion, and perhaps revising their starting opinions after one. Instead we only get to hear the voices of people that are righteous about their opinions—be right or wrong. Internet has transformed from an open forum to a shouting contest; if you can't join a big enough shouting group, no need to waste your energy participating.
    - DanBC 7y ago
      He wasn't attempting to have a meaningful discussion though, was he? He was defending a 70 year old who had sex with a coerced child by trying to say that the word "assault" shouldn't carry either its everyday English meaning or its more specific legal meaning, but should instead have some other meaning that he created.
      - m000 7y ago
        I sense a generation gap here. csail-related is a closed mailing list. If you disagree with a point, you are expected to come back with some arguments. Not to leak emails out with zero effort in making a discussion. That's the established mailing list netiquette for almost 30 years. It's also funny that you complain about RMS twisting the "everyday English" meaning of "assault" while at the same time you call "child" someone who you'd most definitely call a "teenager" or "youngster" if you met in person. This urge to abuse words in order to sensationalize an already perfectly valid argument is what RMS was pointing out in the first place.
      - lowmagnet 7y ago
        Redefining words is basically RMS's gimmick.
humble_engineer 7y ago
Maybe Richard will think twice about supporting such bats*!t insane social justice warriors having now become victim to their bigotry and demonizing of his character.
Rebelgecko 7y ago
That's a bummer. All of the articles talking about how MIT SCIENTIST DEFENDS EPSTEIN'S CHILD RAPE RING were incredibly misleading and taking his quotes ridiculously out of context.
- jmull 7y ago
  That’s definitely true. But I think the big problem for him is that his comments were quite troubling even in proper context.
  - geekone 7y ago
    Which ones were troubling? I don't see anything that stands out on the page linked.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      2006: https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20June%202006%20%28Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party%29 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20Jun... > I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing. 2013: https://www.stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#04_January_2013_%28Pedophilia%29 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#04_Janua... > There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children. Wading in with commentary on the Epstein case with those quotes on record is simply not a good look.
      - geekone 7y ago
        Wow yeah I was not aware. Definitely not a good look and those older comments are completely reprehensible and nonsensical to me.
      - marcinzm 7y ago
        Why are people down voting this? ceejayoz cited specific quotes with references. Seems sort of hypocritical to me that people who seem to be arguing for the freedom of intellectual debate do the exact opposite if facts don't line up in their favor.
gumby 7y ago
I am surprised he was being paid by the Institute at all. For decades he was not AFAIK.
- geofft 7y ago
  I don't believe he was. He's listed as a "visiting scientist": https://www.csail.mit.edu/person/richard-stallman https://www.csail.mit.edu/person/richard-stallman I think that just means that some faculty member is sponsoring you to have building access and a login account, more or less. (And the implications of affiliation of course.)
  - gumby 7y ago
    The faculty members in question being Abelson and Sussman.
  - whymauri 7y ago
    There's some less direct symbiotic benefits too, like the LibrePlanet has been at the MIT Stata Center for a couple years (at least). These sorts of things are facilitated by his role, for sure. I hope well-meaning conferences like that don't get disrupted by his resignation.
    - geofft 7y ago
      LibrePlanet has been at Stata through the sponsorship of SIPB, MIT's computer club, which has the ability to book rooms as a student group. Not through Stallman. (disclosure, I am an alum SIPB member.)
      - whymauri 7y ago
        Oooh, nevermind then. An attendee had told me some inaccurate information a few years ago, then. Thanks for the clarification. Glad to hear there probably(?) won't be any complication in future years.
oidmortales 7y ago
This is how you destroy an institution. Now a politically correct person will take his place, likely a young women. She will increase equality and participation, and also those nerd computey things. Funny this is not happening everywhere, just in the west. Makes you think.
- perardi 7y ago
  Yes, I am sure this will destroy an institution with a $16,000,000,000 endowment. Perhaps you should step up, donate, give them a comfortable nest egg so they don’t feel the need to take donations from a convicted sex offender. They are obviously that hard up for cash.
  - harry8 7y ago
    Can't see the flagged comment that this is a response to but what you've said looks entirely reasonable with one, pretty minor, caveat. I've not yet met the academic securing grants and funding who would not have preferred it if exactly none of their time was required to do that. However wealthy the institution. Maybe some enjoy it and prefer it to research? Being the big, important, person hobnobbing with the rich and powerful?
    - wowaname 7y ago
      [Just a note that you can set "showdead" to "yes" in settings to toggle flagged comments]
aazaa 7y ago
Was this his only MIT affiliation?
akuchling 7y ago
Yes, but will he step down from his role with the Free Software Foundation? I'm more concerned about that, since that's a more public-facing role.
- a3n 7y ago
  Unless Epstein gave money to FSF, there will be no public outcry. Most people had never heard of Stallman until Epstein and MIT.
  - favorited 7y ago
    Public outcry isn't the only factor. For example, the director of the GNOME Foundation just requested that RMS resign from the FSF[0], and said severing ties with the FSF is a possibility otherwise. [0] https://blog.halon.org.uk/2019/09/gnome-foundation-relationship-gnu-fsf/ https://blog.halon.org.uk/2019/09/gnome-foundation-relations...
- zbaylin 7y ago
  He has resigned from the FSF https://www.fsf.org/news/richard-m-stallman-resigns https://www.fsf.org/news/richard-m-stallman-resigns
  - pvaldes 7y ago
    Hum, this had escalated quickly, with all the fake news and duck hunting and the strange patterns seen in the last months about how we need a better name for gimp, for moral reasons none less, how great is that apple has now an equivalent to 'festival' and other small strange things. Open source is in a really complicated moment for its survival. Is like we would had arrived to a sort ot 'extinguish and replace' phase.
    - balaksakrionon 7y ago
      Has there been renewed chatter for possibly renaming GIMP? I have been out of the loop but it would be such a shame for the program to be renamed
2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
Finally being seen for the jackass that he is.
esotericn 7y ago
Is anyone else baffled by the idea that discussing something on an intellectual level, even related to a person, has to somehow be a 'defense' or an 'offense'? I've spent basically my entire life discussing things in the abstract. I'm not a politician, I don't make laws, and frankly I wouldn't want that power. To me it makes absolute sense that someone would attempt to "defend" even the most heinous person. It's weird to me that being considered a "defender of X" could even be a bad thing. That's the process by which we collectively make decisions, it's the basis behind stuff like fair trials for example; the lawyer acting for a defendant is not a bad person. It's what (rational) individuals do when they make decisions - even some of the most obviously correct ones - take the opposing side and see where it leads. It doesn't seem to be limited to this case - I don't know if it's a recent thing, having mostly come of age post-Internet. It's just like, really weird. Amongst my real-life friendship groups this sort of "hate mob" type stuff just doesn't exist, pretty much any topic is up for grabs.
- teh_klev 7y ago
  I have, with the best most charitable reading of your post, no idea what you're talking about. Perhaps some context would be useful with regards to Stallman. Edit: in my defence, is op defending Stallman, or Epstein? Honestly, I don't know how Epstein and Stallman are related. I don't follow Stallman's every statement he makes. I simply asked for some context and enlightenment in this headline and esotericn's comment. edit: ok...finally some context from other commenters answering (finally) my question, which I think is this from 11th August 2019: Jeffrey Epstein appears to have committed suicide in his cell. Or perhaps he was murdered — it is not unusual for prisoners to murder prisoners accused of sexual crimes. Epstein was accused of trafficking: bringing people long distances on false pretenses and then pressured them into sex or prostitution. He also reportedly raped some of those people. I believe those accusations, and I think he deserved to be imprisoned. Some of his victims were legally adult. Some were teenage minors. I don't think that makes any moral difference. I don't think rape is less wrong if the victim is over 16. Ok maybe I'm really thick, how does this cause Stallman to resign? His language seems pretty much on par with newspaper of headlines in his "blog". I really don't have an axe to grind either way. I'm trying to get to the bottom of who said what? Edit..again: so thanks to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990293 , this is the crux of the matter: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-09132019142056-0001.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-091320191420... I've not read the full thread so don't have an opinion either way. If Minsky and Stallman were good friends then I can understand Stallman coming to his defence, especially when dead people can't give an account of themselves. That said I kinda feel Stallman's dug a bit of a hole for himself, and may need a bigger shovel to get out.
pvaldes 7y ago
What means CSAIL exactly? What are the responsabilities or goals of this role?
- wyldfire 7y ago
  CSAIL is not a role, it's the institution: "MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory"
  - pvaldes 7y ago
    I understand, ok. And what where the actual role of Stallman in this laboratory? Updated: explained below, answering to mail lists. Resigning does not seem like a big deal.
    - rodgerd 7y ago
      Sexually harassing students, apparently: "“When I was a teen freshman, I went to a buffet lunch at an Indian restaurant in Central Square with a graduate student friend and others from the AI lab. I don’t know if he and I were the last two left, but at a table with only the two of us, Richard Stallman told me of his misery and that he’d kill himself if I didn’t go out with him." (source: https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix-a-a7e41e784f88 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix...)
    - wyldfire 7y ago
      > Resigning does not seem like a big deal. IIRC he had an emeritus position? So the big deal is his loss of reputation/prestige as a result of his involvement and/or comments regarding this scandal. Aside: I am just relaying what I've read so far, I don't know anything about the allegations of offensive things RMS may have said or done.
mindslight 7y ago
What a disappointing course of events. I cannot fathom how an institution such as MIT can have such a thin spine. But I also couldn't fathom the first time I walked into a Sears in a long while (ca 2010) and saw an "online catalog" which merely searched Amazon's website. I can't help but think this is the same creative destruction - rather than falling back to a core strength of traditional reputation, even a learning institution turns into the winds of its own destruction. Force out the type of person who specialized in software philosophy over social skills, in support of the type of person who politics. Because we're all in politics now. (And for all his prescience, RMS still couldn't see Free Software ushering in lynch flash mobs, one of which would eventually go after him.)
- partialrecall 7y ago
  > "Free Software ushering in lynch flash mobs" How did Free Software do that? I don't see how the Free Software movement in practice or in theory has any share of the blame for this social phenomenon.
  - mindslight 7y ago
    Most of the machines that spread the outrage mob were running GNU/Linux or another Free OS. I'm not just being pointlessly obtuse - there is a deeper connection in that when people are given freedom, they don't necessarily just use it for noble purposes. Sure, it can't really be said that the outrage rags and facebooks are Free Software per se - rather they are proprietary viral-outrage-generating machines even though they may be built on top of Free Software. But setting them up would have been a bit harder without Free Software, and having more investment on the line would have perhaps discouraged wanton slander. Really I just think it's a novel juxtaposition - we've had plenty of time to come to terms with Free Software facilitating individualist mal-actions (eg child pornography), but facilitating social mal-actions is a newer thing thing to come to terms with.
75dvtwin 7y ago
> Amongst my real-life friendship groups this sort of "hate mob" type stuff just doesn't exist You have great friendship groups. Do you remember, by any chance how this topic was handled in your discussions (I am genuinely curios) "... Brendan Eich is gone. The creator of JavaScript and co-founder of mozilla.org has quit as Mozilla’s CEO, forced out by the uproar over a donation he made six years ago to a ballot measure against gay marriage. There’s no record of Eich discriminating against gay employees—“I never saw any kind of behavior or attitude from him that was not in line with Mozilla’s values of inclusiveness,” says the company’s chairwoman, ..." [1] [1](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/04/brendan-eich-quits-mozilla-lets-purge-all-the-anti-gay-donors-to-prop-8.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/04/brendan-eich-qui... )
- esotericn 7y ago
  Never came up. If you're after my personal opinion - I think that the whole debate about gay marriage gets muddled because there's basically this interplay between the state and religion. So you end up in this weird place where - those who really believe in the religious aspects of marriage have to be against gay marriage because it's literally "against the rules", it doesn't compile. But then in the real world, we have a state that confers benefits based on marriage - and even in places where civil partnerships are wholly equal in the law, you still have the weird 'status' style thing whereby they're sort of seen as being lesser. To me it's almost completely a nomenclature thing. If we didn't have marriages or civil partnerships, and instead we asked whether two people (of arbitrary sex) should be allowed to cohabit and/or enter a contract with each other to share assets, I think it'd be way simpler. I mean there'd still be the stalwart homophobes that just think it's capital-W Wrong or think that religiously they need to at least publically claim it as being wrong, but what I wrote up there I think is a big part of it.
  - baddox 7y ago
    > So you end up in this weird place where - those who really believe in the religious aspects of marriage have to be against gay marriage because it's literally "against the rules", it doesn't compile. Huh? I think it's widely considered acceptable for a straight person to be against entering into a gay marriage themselves. Supporting government policy that prevents other people from doing so is a very different matter.
Causality1 7y ago
I'm certain there's going to be an immensely interesting biopic about Stallman's life one day. I can think of few people whose bad qualities are contrasted so strongly with their good.
- acjohnson55 7y ago
  I can think of many such people. They're well represented at the top tiers of fields. Steve Jobs, for example.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mattnumbers 7y ago
For what it's worth, RMS' statements on the matter don't appear to concern what is "right", "wrong", or "acceptable" - they appear to concern only the available evidence. Then again, I've only seen the two quotes appearing in the HN threads.
- azernik 7y ago
  They absolutely do - the meat of the outrage is at the e-mail (full thread, in awful formatting, at https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-09132019142056-0001.html?embed=true&responsive=false&sidebar=false https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-091320191420...) is the claim that sex with underage girls should not be considered "assault". EDIT: The specific relevant passage is on page 7. Copied verbatim - line with a '>' is Stallman quoting another e-mail in the thread. """ > Giuffre was 17 at the time; this makes it __rape__ in the Virgin Islands. Does it really? I think it is morally absurd to define "rape" in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17. I think the existence of a dispute about that supports my point that the term "sexual assault" is slippery, so we ought to use more concrete terms when accusing anyone. """
geofft 7y ago
Worth noting that (as far as I know) Stallman was not a paid employee of MIT, certainly not a professor or anything. He had an office because, I believe, Gerry Sussman (and probably others) thought he should have an office. He's listed as a "visiting scientist" on CSAIL's page: https://www.csail.mit.edu/person/richard-stallman https://www.csail.mit.edu/person/richard-stallman He's around on the mailing list (mostly to reply to every mention of software with a question about its license and every website with a demand that it work without JavaScript) but he replies with his GNU address. `finger rms@csail.mit.edu` calls him a "Visitor" and says "Project: mail forwarding." Source: was at MIT a decade ago, was on the CSAIL mailing list until I decided to actually start filtering mail last week (good timing me). Also he somewhat famously left MIT right before starting GNU to ensure MIT wouldn't own the copyrights, and it would be surprising/confusing if he rejoined. (The cynic in me believes he's resigning because it's far more newsworthy to say "resigned from MIT" instead of "resigned from the FSF," especially given all the news headlines calling him "Famous MIT Computer Scientist," and it also has far less of an impact on his life or his goals than resigning from the FSF would.)
- coolandsmartrr 7y ago
  A little tangential, but I didn't know there was a utility called `finger`. Is this supposed to be a profile directory envisioned for an Internet back when it was more decentralized?
  - JadeNB 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_protocol
  - ocschwar 7y ago
    Wow, I'm old
    - esotericn 7y ago
      /CTCP FINGER ocschwar
rrdharan 7y ago
Since I didn't see it elsewhere in this thread in a brief scan, this Vice article has some more context: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbm74x/computer-scientist-richard-stallman-resigns-from-mit-over-epstein-comments https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbm74x/computer-scientist...
RickJWagner 7y ago
Cancel culture claims another. I think the pendulum will swing back, eventually. I hope soon.
smnplk 7y ago
He recently gave a talk at Microsoft. What if he accepted a job offer at Microsoft? :P
notus 7y ago
I think it may also have been because comments like this were resurfacing: https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20June%202006%20%28Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party%29 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20Jun... https://www.stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#04_January_2013_%28Pedophilia%29 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#04_Janua...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
rabite 7y ago
Stallman is a genius and lives a life like an ancient Greek philosopher or wandering prophet. Like many brilliant people who occupy that category, he has no sense of social graces. He writes down the things he thinks. He has virtually no theory of mind, no way to perceive how the people around him are going to react to what he says. In the past, that curse has granted us with great gifts as Stallman had the boldness and fool's spirit of being able to say and think things others would not. That granted us the entire ecosystem of free software, and who knows how decrepit the Internet would be without his contributions. At one point this guy had the entirety of gcc in his head. I can't even fathom the kind of brain that could do that. The other half of this condition is that he doesn't understand a lot of the world. He has no idea how people relate to one another, how they communicate with one another. He's affected by an extreme disability that puts his social abilities on par with many children of single digit ages. What the people are doing who just drove him out of one of the last corners of social prestige he had is bullying a disabled person. There's lots of other people that are affected by circumstances like these. Most of them are children, idly posting away on social media completely unaware that they destroy their futures. I know an autistic refugee that had academic grants cancelled because of something they said on Twitter years ago, when they were 16. Tanner Flake had a politically prominent father and said some off color things in video game communities when he was 9 and 10. Google will never forget it. This is all so perverse. The people doing this stuff are pure evil.
- earenndil 7y ago
  The greek philosophers had a very good understanding of social graces. They had a full understanding of the conventions which they were breaking. They chose, out of principle, to break them anyway.
  - rabite 7y ago
    yeah Diogenes masturbating and shitting in public and pissing on people is surely the sign of a man that has good social graces
eoxenford 7y ago
Throughout this whole brouhaha, I’ve been astonished at how nobody in the mainstream press, nor any of those in tech calling for Stallman’s head, ever challenged the statement that Stallman said Epstein’s victims were “entirely willing.” Indeed, quite the opposite. From the Medium post that kicked the whole thing off [1]: …and then he says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”. And from Vice [2, 3]: Famed Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As 'Entirely Willing' Stallman said the “most plausible scenario” is that one of Epstein’s underage victims was “entirely willing.” And the Daily Beast: Renowned MIT Scientist Defends Epstein: Victims Were ‘Entirely Willing’ Here’s what Stallman actually wrote: We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she [Epstein’s victim] presented herself to him [Marvin Minsky] as entirely willing. In other words, Stallman isn’t saying she was willing, but rather that she likely acted as if she were willing. Lest there be any doubt, the next sentence reads: Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates. So Stallman explicitly acknowledges the likelihood that Epstein coerced these girls and coached them to pretend to be willing to have sex with Minsky and others in Epstein’s circle. At no point does Stallman say they were willing—rather, he suggests the exact opposite. Regardless of what one may think of Stallman, what else he wrote, or any of his other behavior, the wide dissemination and repetition of this lie is absolutely unconscionable. Those promulgating it should be ashamed. [1]: https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec210794 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21... [2]: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-described-epstein-victims-as-entirely-willing https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-sci... [3]: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbm74x/computer-scientist-richard-stallman-resigns-from-mit-over-epstein-comments https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbm74x/computer-scientist... [4]: https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-defends-epstein-victims-were-entirely-willing https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-r...
- yuy910616 7y ago
  This. BS article by Vice and the like... This is terrible
- cannonedhamster 7y ago
accntwithnoname 7y ago
Good riddance. Aside from his recent comments regarding sexual assault that he claims are missunderstood, MIT alum contributed stories of him being a pervert throughout the years. This type of person does not belong at MIT or in Tech. His contributions to the field do not excuse him. “He literally used to have a mattress on the floor of his office. He kept the door to his office open, to proudly showcase that mattress and all the implications that went with it. Many female students avoided the corridor with his office for that reason…I was one of the course 6 undergrads who avoided that part of NE43 precisely for that reason. (the mattress was also known to have shirtless people lounging on it…)” — Bachelor’s in Computer Science, ‘99 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix-a-a7e41e784f88 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix...
- oidmortales 7y ago
  A personal blog of a feminist activist that idolizes women to the point she believe "MIT don't deserve them" is the least reliable source of accusations. Also she's the same girl that leaked the email.
rrss 7y ago
"MIT asks brilliant asshole who wrote gcc and emacs and spends his life whining about software to take down his 'knight for hot chicks' sign and hang out elsewhere."
- povertyworld 7y ago
  Chris Lattner also wrote a compiler and gave it away, all without defending rape. Spare me.
  - rrss 7y ago
    "Brilliant asshole" was not intended as a compliment. MIT should have dissociated with Stallman decades ago.
    - noirscape 7y ago
      Honestly, I was suprised to learn he still used to be around there up until recently. Kinda undermines the entire heroic "Stallman left CSAIL to start GNU" story that is often cited as the origin point for GNU.
      - pseudalopex 7y ago
        He left a paying job at CSAIL. They let him keep an office.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
zenhack 7y ago
Something that I think most folks in this thread are missing, that's hugely important to what actually happened here: This was not an isolated incident. If it were, I'd look at his comments and write it off as his usual tendency to jump on a minor point and derail a conversation with some totally pedantic technicallity, and I do think the thing he actually said in this case has been wildly mis-interpreted and overstated in many places (the bits about him defending Epstein are clearly untrue, and even the author of the blog post that went viral and set off the shitstorm has said so, and sent corrections to the publications she'd spoken to directly). I even agree with his statement that, from a moral standpoint 17 vs. 18 isn't really that important -- we set arbitrary cutoffs for age of consent and it's not like there's a legal determination to be made re: Minsky anyway: he's dead. So from that mailing list thread alone, it reads like a typical autism-spectrum dude missing the social context, making a pedantic point that people read too much into and take the wrong way, and getting himself in trouble. And this is an angle that would naturally draw my own sympathies toward him. But Stallman is on-record as saying he thinks there's such a thing as "consentual pedophila", and given that context, I think folks can be forgiven for reading into his current statements. Ultimately though, the bigger issue isn't even about anything that happened in the past few days. RMS has been behaving inappropriately in more serious ways for decades. There are many stories out there about him harassing and propositioning students, making wildly inappropriate remarks to women, and generally making a bad situation around gender and inclusiveness in tech worse. Everyone I've talked to who has known him in a non-trivial personal capacity has corroberated this. The fact that this email is the thing prompted a blog post that happened to go viral and got people to make a fuss about it is incidental. Even at the FSF's own conferences, he's one of the more frequent violators of the safe space policies that the organizers have put in place. I think the first year the conference had an explicit safe space/anti-harassment policy, he was the only person who violated it (in this case it took the form of a sexualized joke during his closing keynote). I kinda have the same somewhat fearful gut reaction to these kinds of episodes as a lot of geeky guys do. There's a post[1] out there (which I think originally I found through hacker news) that does a pretty good job of analyzing where that reaction is coming from, and why the fear isn't totally illegitimate, but the idea that this is just a mob picking on some misunderstood misfit is just not what's happening here. Folks have been lienient to the point of negligience with him up until now. [1]: https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c
lazyjones 7y ago
Mistake. He was in a position to clarify and correct the wrong impression people got from bad reporting. He chose not to, so bad reporting won (again). Sad times we live in, when even stubborn people like RMS cave in to such pressure.
momokoko 7y ago
Heads up to anyone who might decide to comment in this thread. Its a great way to end your career if something gets read differently than you intended.
iamleppert 7y ago
They need to do more about Stallman. They really need to consider a criminal investigation into his conduct to see if any laws have been violated. I really hope the DA gets involved so he can be held accountable. They should impound his electronics and search them for child porn.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
amanzi 7y ago
I think we should be more worried about the control that media (and especially clickbait-worthy online media) can exert over our lives. It's clear to anyone who has done their research, that his quotes were taken out of context or mis-characterised to create a specific narrative meant to fuel anger and drive visitors to the 'news' websites. It's a real shame that we can no longer discuss certain topics without fear of retribution.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- pornel 7y ago
  His personal website re-states this opinion clearly (see links in other comments). There was nothing mischaracterised or out of context about this. This time he merely made his opinion more visible, and it ended up being the last straw.
  - Liskni_si 7y ago
    I think it's pretty clear to everyone around here that there's quite a difference between saying "Epstein coerced the girl to present herself as completely willing" and saying "she was completely willing". RMS said the former, Vice, The Daily Beast and other media reported he said the latter.
  - amanzi 7y ago
    I have read all of his comments, in the context they were posted, and my position stands. I have no desire to debate his opinions with strangers on the internet, my fear is how misinformation can be spread by clickbait 'journalism' and how it paints a narrative that is near-impossible to fight.
clatan 7y ago
Cancel culture is real
foobar_ 7y ago
Eww Richard Stallman is a creep. Good riddance. Epstein is kinda hot.
hantips 7y ago
Hi
Lewisssss 7y ago
Bye wirdo incels, long life to FSF!

342 points by arctux 7y ago

Related earlier post: > 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. Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September_2019_(Statements_about_Epstein) https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...

melling 7y ago
I didn’t follow the story. Was Stallman taken out of context? Anyway, he probably should have know better than to weigh in. One’s well thought out response and subtle points can often turn out to have a few holes. In fact... “If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged”
- smacktoward 7y ago
  > Anyway, he probably should have know better than to weigh in. RMS is not exactly famous for his keen social skills.
  - partialrecall 7y ago
    It really seems like his real 'sin' is not being neurotypical. Should he try to have more tact? Sure, of course. But failing that, the correct response is compassion and gentle correction, not a witchhunt. Not driving him out of his jobs.
    - fwip 7y ago
      I mean, this certainly isn't the first time that he's publicly said that he thinks "consenting pedophilia" is 100% fine, and it's not the first time that people have told him "Hey, don't say that, you're gonna get in trouble." At a certain point it stops looking like ignorance and stubbornness and more like he's got a horse in the race.
      - partialrecall 7y ago
        You know he's also recanted that shit, right? > and more like he's got a horse in the race. Has the mob now progressed to insinuating that he's a pedophile himself? Is that what the 'horse in the race' idiom means in this context?
        ceejayoz 7y ago
        Sure. He recanted those comments two days ago (after espousing them on his website at least between 2006 and 2013), and after his comments on the Epstein case started getting attention, which makes it look more like damage control than a genuine change in opinion. https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September_2019_%28Sex_between_an_adult_and_a_child_is_wrong%29 https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...
        partialrecall 7y ago
        I'd say recent statements more accurately reflect somebody's current beliefs than old statements. Considering how badly he's been recently slandered by media outlets leaving out context and mischaracterizing his remarks, I am disturbed by your willingness to exclude that context from your previous comment.
        ceejayoz 7y ago
        As a general rule, I tend to give more credit to consistent and freely offered opinions espoused over years than a sudden conversion immediately after a PR crisis. There's a famous saying: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."
- vkou 7y ago
  He was dancing on a tightrope. Whether or not his statements were taken out of context requires a mind-reader to intuit what exactly he, uh, meant by them. It's not an interesting defense, and given his prior statements on the subject of statutory rape, I'm having a hard time taking it seriously.
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    His statement was perfectly comprehensible no mind reading required you are just muddying the waters.
    - happytoexplain 7y ago
      Surely this means you are either unaware of the many people who took his meaning differently, or you believe they somehow don't count?
      - michaelmrose 7y ago
        People who actually read the thread and took it differently have poor reading comprehension its all perfectly clear.
      - catslam72 7y ago
        I believe they were misled by the numerous reports by leading news sites who claimed he described the victims as willing in their headlines.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- danso 7y ago
  Someone emailed an event for protesting Minsky, and Stallman accused her of wrongly inflating the term "sexual assault" when using it to refer to Minsky and Epstein. Stallman bends over backwards for Minsky, saying that he shouldn't be automatically to blame if Epstein forced someone to have sex with him. It's little different than the absurd pretzel that Lessig bent himself into when trying to defend his friend Joi Ito [0]: > Q: Doesn’t it make sense to you that people would say someone who is taking money from and cozying up with a guy who is a pedophile and who is targeting young women, maybe he shouldn’t lead an institution that includes women? > Lessig: I’m not sure it describes the case, and more importantly, what about the institution? > Q: What do you mean it doesn’t describe the case? > L: I don’t know about the “cozying up to.” > Q: Going to his house, being socially in his orbit, taking money from him. > L: In the context of raising money — just like you would go up there and meet with him in the context of an interview... > L: When you say that he is cozying up to him, that’s something very different from what I understand actually happened, which is: Joi, in the context of his job for the M.I.T. Media Lab, built a relationship with one of the people he’s raising money from. I don't begrudge Lessig and Stallman for attempting to apply what they think is logic and rationality in approaching these topics. I absolutely despise them for their hypocrisy in the way they refuse to acknowledge how they themselves are tainted by irrationality when defending their friends. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/business/lessig-epstein-ito-mit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/business/lessig-epstein-i...
  - tzs 7y ago
    > It's little different than the absurd pretzel that Lessig bent himself into when trying to defend his friend Joi Ito It's massively different, because Joi Ito's interactions with Epstein were after Epstein's sexual atrocities were known. Minsky's were in 2001, which as far as I have been able to find is before Epstein was known to be evil.
    - pryce 7y ago
      Minsky arranged a second conference with Epstein, on Epstein's private island in 2011 [1]. What sources were you using that implied Minsky's contact with Epstein stopped 10 years before that? [1] https://www.pr.com/press-release/383199 https://www.pr.com/press-release/383199
- tzs 7y ago
  > I didn’t follow the story. Was Stallman taken out of context? Yes. This statement of Stallman's: > We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates. has been reported in several places as Stallman saying Epstein's girls were "entirely willing", completely ignoring that he was not saying they were willing--he was saying that Epstein would have required them to say they were willing. If you have sufficient power over someone to force them to have sex with whomever you want them to, you almost certainly also have sufficient power over them to tell them to pretend to be doing it of the own free will. Epstein was massively evil, but he wasn't massively stupid, so almost certainly would have exercised such power. Stallman was talking about Marvin Minsky's sex with a girl at Epstein's island retreat in 2001, which was a few years before Epstein's sexual atrocities became known. Stallman was arguing that from Minsky's point of view, he probably had no reason to suspect that he was not dealing with a consenting girl.
  - selfawareposter 7y ago
    Except for the part where he got taken to a remote island by a billionaire and was presented with a very young woman who immediately wanted to have sex with him.
    - veemacs 7y ago
      Hindsight is 20/20, scrutinizing our understanding of past events instead of making grandios assumptions is the key to realising justice. Misinterpretting the words of a man because you don't like the way they think is an injustice.
    - tzs 7y ago
      You mean the island that Epstein regularly invited numerous people to in order to discuss assorted legitimate things, like supporting their charities or their research? Epstein's island wasn't some stereotypical villain lair where anyone who steps foot on it must be up to no good. It was a place that he conducted the normal business that any entirely legitimate billionaire would conduct, in addition to the villain stuff. Based on the girl's deposition, it looks like she was there on the record to provide massages to guests, and off the record was forced to make those erotic massages including sex. It is not clear which, if any, recipients of those massages plus sex knew that the sex was something she was forced into. There are no details given on her sex with Minsky other than it happened.
- selfawareposter 7y ago
  Yes, but it was also awful in context. It was taken directly as the girl being “willing” when what he actually said was that she may have been coerced by Epstein into appearing to be “willing” to Minsky. It doesn’t help that he has a documented history of fucked up comments in this general area.
  - miracle2k 7y ago
    Should news outlets and social media personalities who do purposefully take this comments out of context (and I think there can be little doubt that it is done on purpose [1]) be punished? [1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-defends-epstein-victims-were-entirely-willing https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-r...
    - enriquto 7y ago
      Clearly. This is a false accusation that damaged his work and reputation. At the very least, these news outlets and media personalities must be compelled to apologize publicly.
  - partialrecall 7y ago
    > "she may have been coerced by Epstein into appearing to be “willing” to Minsky." Is that not a possibility?
    - mixologic 7y ago
      Would that somehow absolve Minsky? A "willing" obviously young girl seems to want to have sex with somebody she doesnt know. If Minsky suddenly find himself in the plot to a porno, and just went along with it, then trying to defend his moral culpability is probably a lot out of the bounds of acceptability.
      - partialrecall 7y ago
        I didn't say it would absolve Minsky. Somebody who has sex with a prostitute is lower than dirt in my book.
- forclarity 7y ago
  At least in the case of the Daily Beast article by Blake Montgomery, enough context was included that a plain reading of the quoted material makes clear that the surrounding text and headline were radically incorrect. Journalistic malpractice if not deliberate libel. The author has since doubled down. I, for one, won't be believing a damned thing written by the man in the foreseeable future. I encourage you to make your own determination. Stallman defended Minsky. Judge him for what he said. Don't judge him for a defense of Epstein - he unambiguously condemned Epstein with the rest of us.
- m000 7y ago
  > Anyway, he probably should have know better than to weigh in. That's the problem with the internet today. It's too toxic to hold any meaningful public discussion. I'd bet that RMS was open to discussing the point he expressed. Because that's what you do on an old-fashioned mailing list. But apparently he got no response to his email. Instead Selam jumped the gun and started, essentially, a shaming campaign on medium. This kind of attitude essentially hushes people who can actually hold a meaningful online discussion, and perhaps revising their starting opinions after one. Instead we only get to hear the voices of people that are righteous about their opinions—be right or wrong. Internet has transformed from an open forum to a shouting contest; if you can't join a big enough shouting group, no need to waste your energy participating.
  - DanBC 7y ago
    He wasn't attempting to have a meaningful discussion though, was he? He was defending a 70 year old who had sex with a coerced child by trying to say that the word "assault" shouldn't carry either its everyday English meaning or its more specific legal meaning, but should instead have some other meaning that he created.
    - m000 7y ago
      I sense a generation gap here. csail-related is a closed mailing list. If you disagree with a point, you are expected to come back with some arguments. Not to leak emails out with zero effort in making a discussion. That's the established mailing list netiquette for almost 30 years. It's also funny that you complain about RMS twisting the "everyday English" meaning of "assault" while at the same time you call "child" someone who you'd most definitely call a "teenager" or "youngster" if you met in person. This urge to abuse words in order to sensationalize an already perfectly valid argument is what RMS was pointing out in the first place.
    - lowmagnet 7y ago
      Redefining words is basically RMS's gimmick.

humble_engineer 7y ago

Maybe Richard will think twice about supporting such bats*!t insane social justice warriors having now become victim to their bigotry and demonizing of his character.

Rebelgecko 7y ago

That's a bummer. All of the articles talking about how MIT SCIENTIST DEFENDS EPSTEIN'S CHILD RAPE RING were incredibly misleading and taking his quotes ridiculously out of context.

jmull 7y ago
That’s definitely true. But I think the big problem for him is that his comments were quite troubling even in proper context.
- geekone 7y ago
  Which ones were troubling? I don't see anything that stands out on the page linked.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    2006: https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20June%202006%20%28Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party%29 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20Jun... > I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing. 2013: https://www.stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#04_January_2013_%28Pedophilia%29 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#04_Janua... > There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children. Wading in with commentary on the Epstein case with those quotes on record is simply not a good look.
    - geekone 7y ago
      Wow yeah I was not aware. Definitely not a good look and those older comments are completely reprehensible and nonsensical to me.
    - marcinzm 7y ago
      Why are people down voting this? ceejayoz cited specific quotes with references. Seems sort of hypocritical to me that people who seem to be arguing for the freedom of intellectual debate do the exact opposite if facts don't line up in their favor.

gumby 7y ago

I am surprised he was being paid by the Institute at all. For decades he was not AFAIK.

geofft 7y ago
I don't believe he was. He's listed as a "visiting scientist": https://www.csail.mit.edu/person/richard-stallman https://www.csail.mit.edu/person/richard-stallman I think that just means that some faculty member is sponsoring you to have building access and a login account, more or less. (And the implications of affiliation of course.)
- gumby 7y ago
  The faculty members in question being Abelson and Sussman.
- whymauri 7y ago
  There's some less direct symbiotic benefits too, like the LibrePlanet has been at the MIT Stata Center for a couple years (at least). These sorts of things are facilitated by his role, for sure. I hope well-meaning conferences like that don't get disrupted by his resignation.
  - geofft 7y ago
    LibrePlanet has been at Stata through the sponsorship of SIPB, MIT's computer club, which has the ability to book rooms as a student group. Not through Stallman. (disclosure, I am an alum SIPB member.)
    - whymauri 7y ago
      Oooh, nevermind then. An attendee had told me some inaccurate information a few years ago, then. Thanks for the clarification. Glad to hear there probably(?) won't be any complication in future years.

oidmortales 7y ago

This is how you destroy an institution. Now a politically correct person will take his place, likely a young women. She will increase equality and participation, and also those nerd computey things. Funny this is not happening everywhere, just in the west. Makes you think.

perardi 7y ago
Yes, I am sure this will destroy an institution with a $16,000,000,000 endowment. Perhaps you should step up, donate, give them a comfortable nest egg so they don’t feel the need to take donations from a convicted sex offender. They are obviously that hard up for cash.
- harry8 7y ago
  Can't see the flagged comment that this is a response to but what you've said looks entirely reasonable with one, pretty minor, caveat. I've not yet met the academic securing grants and funding who would not have preferred it if exactly none of their time was required to do that. However wealthy the institution. Maybe some enjoy it and prefer it to research? Being the big, important, person hobnobbing with the rich and powerful?
  - wowaname 7y ago
    [Just a note that you can set "showdead" to "yes" in settings to toggle flagged comments]

aazaa 7y ago

Was this his only MIT affiliation?

akuchling 7y ago

Yes, but will he step down from his role with the Free Software Foundation? I'm more concerned about that, since that's a more public-facing role.

a3n 7y ago
Unless Epstein gave money to FSF, there will be no public outcry. Most people had never heard of Stallman until Epstein and MIT.
- favorited 7y ago
  Public outcry isn't the only factor. For example, the director of the GNOME Foundation just requested that RMS resign from the FSF[0], and said severing ties with the FSF is a possibility otherwise. [0] https://blog.halon.org.uk/2019/09/gnome-foundation-relationship-gnu-fsf/ https://blog.halon.org.uk/2019/09/gnome-foundation-relations...
zbaylin 7y ago
He has resigned from the FSF https://www.fsf.org/news/richard-m-stallman-resigns https://www.fsf.org/news/richard-m-stallman-resigns
- pvaldes 7y ago
  Hum, this had escalated quickly, with all the fake news and duck hunting and the strange patterns seen in the last months about how we need a better name for gimp, for moral reasons none less, how great is that apple has now an equivalent to 'festival' and other small strange things. Open source is in a really complicated moment for its survival. Is like we would had arrived to a sort ot 'extinguish and replace' phase.
  - balaksakrionon 7y ago
    Has there been renewed chatter for possibly renaming GIMP? I have been out of the loop but it would be such a shame for the program to be renamed

2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago

Finally being seen for the jackass that he is.

esotericn 7y ago

Is anyone else baffled by the idea that discussing something on an intellectual level, even related to a person, has to somehow be a 'defense' or an 'offense'? I've spent basically my entire life discussing things in the abstract. I'm not a politician, I don't make laws, and frankly I wouldn't want that power. To me it makes absolute sense that someone would attempt to "defend" even the most heinous person. It's weird to me that being considered a "defender of X" could even be a bad thing. That's the process by which we collectively make decisions, it's the basis behind stuff like fair trials for example; the lawyer acting for a defendant is not a bad person. It's what (rational) individuals do when they make decisions - even some of the most obviously correct ones - take the opposing side and see where it leads. It doesn't seem to be limited to this case - I don't know if it's a recent thing, having mostly come of age post-Internet. It's just like, really weird. Amongst my real-life friendship groups this sort of "hate mob" type stuff just doesn't exist, pretty much any topic is up for grabs.

teh_klev 7y ago
I have, with the best most charitable reading of your post, no idea what you're talking about. Perhaps some context would be useful with regards to Stallman. Edit: in my defence, is op defending Stallman, or Epstein? Honestly, I don't know how Epstein and Stallman are related. I don't follow Stallman's every statement he makes. I simply asked for some context and enlightenment in this headline and esotericn's comment. edit: ok...finally some context from other commenters answering (finally) my question, which I think is this from 11th August 2019: Jeffrey Epstein appears to have committed suicide in his cell. Or perhaps he was murdered — it is not unusual for prisoners to murder prisoners accused of sexual crimes. Epstein was accused of trafficking: bringing people long distances on false pretenses and then pressured them into sex or prostitution. He also reportedly raped some of those people. I believe those accusations, and I think he deserved to be imprisoned. Some of his victims were legally adult. Some were teenage minors. I don't think that makes any moral difference. I don't think rape is less wrong if the victim is over 16. Ok maybe I'm really thick, how does this cause Stallman to resign? His language seems pretty much on par with newspaper of headlines in his "blog". I really don't have an axe to grind either way. I'm trying to get to the bottom of who said what? Edit..again: so thanks to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990293 , this is the crux of the matter: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-09132019142056-0001.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-091320191420... I've not read the full thread so don't have an opinion either way. If Minsky and Stallman were good friends then I can understand Stallman coming to his defence, especially when dead people can't give an account of themselves. That said I kinda feel Stallman's dug a bit of a hole for himself, and may need a bigger shovel to get out.

pvaldes 7y ago

What means CSAIL exactly? What are the responsabilities or goals of this role?

wyldfire 7y ago
CSAIL is not a role, it's the institution: "MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory"
- pvaldes 7y ago
  I understand, ok. And what where the actual role of Stallman in this laboratory? Updated: explained below, answering to mail lists. Resigning does not seem like a big deal.
  - rodgerd 7y ago
    Sexually harassing students, apparently: "“When I was a teen freshman, I went to a buffet lunch at an Indian restaurant in Central Square with a graduate student friend and others from the AI lab. I don’t know if he and I were the last two left, but at a table with only the two of us, Richard Stallman told me of his misery and that he’d kill himself if I didn’t go out with him." (source: https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix-a-a7e41e784f88 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix...)
  - wyldfire 7y ago
    > Resigning does not seem like a big deal. IIRC he had an emeritus position? So the big deal is his loss of reputation/prestige as a result of his involvement and/or comments regarding this scandal. Aside: I am just relaying what I've read so far, I don't know anything about the allegations of offensive things RMS may have said or done.

mindslight 7y ago

What a disappointing course of events. I cannot fathom how an institution such as MIT can have such a thin spine. But I also couldn't fathom the first time I walked into a Sears in a long while (ca 2010) and saw an "online catalog" which merely searched Amazon's website. I can't help but think this is the same creative destruction - rather than falling back to a core strength of traditional reputation, even a learning institution turns into the winds of its own destruction. Force out the type of person who specialized in software philosophy over social skills, in support of the type of person who politics. Because we're all in politics now. (And for all his prescience, RMS still couldn't see Free Software ushering in lynch flash mobs, one of which would eventually go after him.)

partialrecall 7y ago
> "Free Software ushering in lynch flash mobs" How did Free Software do that? I don't see how the Free Software movement in practice or in theory has any share of the blame for this social phenomenon.
- mindslight 7y ago
  Most of the machines that spread the outrage mob were running GNU/Linux or another Free OS. I'm not just being pointlessly obtuse - there is a deeper connection in that when people are given freedom, they don't necessarily just use it for noble purposes. Sure, it can't really be said that the outrage rags and facebooks are Free Software per se - rather they are proprietary viral-outrage-generating machines even though they may be built on top of Free Software. But setting them up would have been a bit harder without Free Software, and having more investment on the line would have perhaps discouraged wanton slander. Really I just think it's a novel juxtaposition - we've had plenty of time to come to terms with Free Software facilitating individualist mal-actions (eg child pornography), but facilitating social mal-actions is a newer thing thing to come to terms with.

75dvtwin 7y ago

> Amongst my real-life friendship groups this sort of "hate mob" type stuff just doesn't exist You have great friendship groups. Do you remember, by any chance how this topic was handled in your discussions (I am genuinely curios) "... Brendan Eich is gone. The creator of JavaScript and co-founder of mozilla.org has quit as Mozilla’s CEO, forced out by the uproar over a donation he made six years ago to a ballot measure against gay marriage. There’s no record of Eich discriminating against gay employees—“I never saw any kind of behavior or attitude from him that was not in line with Mozilla’s values of inclusiveness,” says the company’s chairwoman, ..." [1] [1](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/04/brendan-eich-quits-mozilla-lets-purge-all-the-anti-gay-donors-to-prop-8.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/04/brendan-eich-qui... )

esotericn 7y ago
Never came up. If you're after my personal opinion - I think that the whole debate about gay marriage gets muddled because there's basically this interplay between the state and religion. So you end up in this weird place where - those who really believe in the religious aspects of marriage have to be against gay marriage because it's literally "against the rules", it doesn't compile. But then in the real world, we have a state that confers benefits based on marriage - and even in places where civil partnerships are wholly equal in the law, you still have the weird 'status' style thing whereby they're sort of seen as being lesser. To me it's almost completely a nomenclature thing. If we didn't have marriages or civil partnerships, and instead we asked whether two people (of arbitrary sex) should be allowed to cohabit and/or enter a contract with each other to share assets, I think it'd be way simpler. I mean there'd still be the stalwart homophobes that just think it's capital-W Wrong or think that religiously they need to at least publically claim it as being wrong, but what I wrote up there I think is a big part of it.
- baddox 7y ago
  > So you end up in this weird place where - those who really believe in the religious aspects of marriage have to be against gay marriage because it's literally "against the rules", it doesn't compile. Huh? I think it's widely considered acceptable for a straight person to be against entering into a gay marriage themselves. Supporting government policy that prevents other people from doing so is a very different matter.

Causality1 7y ago

I'm certain there's going to be an immensely interesting biopic about Stallman's life one day. I can think of few people whose bad qualities are contrasted so strongly with their good.

acjohnson55 7y ago
I can think of many such people. They're well represented at the top tiers of fields. Steve Jobs, for example.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mattnumbers 7y ago

For what it's worth, RMS' statements on the matter don't appear to concern what is "right", "wrong", or "acceptable" - they appear to concern only the available evidence. Then again, I've only seen the two quotes appearing in the HN threads.

azernik 7y ago
They absolutely do - the meat of the outrage is at the e-mail (full thread, in awful formatting, at https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-09132019142056-0001.html?embed=true&responsive=false&sidebar=false https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-091320191420...) is the claim that sex with underage girls should not be considered "assault". EDIT: The specific relevant passage is on page 7. Copied verbatim - line with a '>' is Stallman quoting another e-mail in the thread. """ > Giuffre was 17 at the time; this makes it __rape__ in the Virgin Islands. Does it really? I think it is morally absurd to define "rape" in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17. I think the existence of a dispute about that supports my point that the term "sexual assault" is slippery, so we ought to use more concrete terms when accusing anyone. """

geofft 7y ago

Worth noting that (as far as I know) Stallman was not a paid employee of MIT, certainly not a professor or anything. He had an office because, I believe, Gerry Sussman (and probably others) thought he should have an office. He's listed as a "visiting scientist" on CSAIL's page: https://www.csail.mit.edu/person/richard-stallman https://www.csail.mit.edu/person/richard-stallman He's around on the mailing list (mostly to reply to every mention of software with a question about its license and every website with a demand that it work without JavaScript) but he replies with his GNU address. `finger rms@csail.mit.edu` calls him a "Visitor" and says "Project: mail forwarding." Source: was at MIT a decade ago, was on the CSAIL mailing list until I decided to actually start filtering mail last week (good timing me). Also he somewhat famously left MIT right before starting GNU to ensure MIT wouldn't own the copyrights, and it would be surprising/confusing if he rejoined. (The cynic in me believes he's resigning because it's far more newsworthy to say "resigned from MIT" instead of "resigned from the FSF," especially given all the news headlines calling him "Famous MIT Computer Scientist," and it also has far less of an impact on his life or his goals than resigning from the FSF would.)

coolandsmartrr 7y ago
A little tangential, but I didn't know there was a utility called `finger`. Is this supposed to be a profile directory envisioned for an Internet back when it was more decentralized?
- JadeNB 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_protocol
- ocschwar 7y ago
  Wow, I'm old
  - esotericn 7y ago
    /CTCP FINGER ocschwar

rrdharan 7y ago

Since I didn't see it elsewhere in this thread in a brief scan, this Vice article has some more context: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbm74x/computer-scientist-richard-stallman-resigns-from-mit-over-epstein-comments https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbm74x/computer-scientist...

RickJWagner 7y ago

Cancel culture claims another. I think the pendulum will swing back, eventually. I hope soon.

smnplk 7y ago

He recently gave a talk at Microsoft. What if he accepted a job offer at Microsoft? :P

notus 7y ago

I think it may also have been because comments like this were resurfacing: https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20June%202006%20%28Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party%29 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20Jun... https://www.stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#04_January_2013_%28Pedophilia%29 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#04_Janua...

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

rabite 7y ago

Stallman is a genius and lives a life like an ancient Greek philosopher or wandering prophet. Like many brilliant people who occupy that category, he has no sense of social graces. He writes down the things he thinks. He has virtually no theory of mind, no way to perceive how the people around him are going to react to what he says. In the past, that curse has granted us with great gifts as Stallman had the boldness and fool's spirit of being able to say and think things others would not. That granted us the entire ecosystem of free software, and who knows how decrepit the Internet would be without his contributions. At one point this guy had the entirety of gcc in his head. I can't even fathom the kind of brain that could do that. The other half of this condition is that he doesn't understand a lot of the world. He has no idea how people relate to one another, how they communicate with one another. He's affected by an extreme disability that puts his social abilities on par with many children of single digit ages. What the people are doing who just drove him out of one of the last corners of social prestige he had is bullying a disabled person. There's lots of other people that are affected by circumstances like these. Most of them are children, idly posting away on social media completely unaware that they destroy their futures. I know an autistic refugee that had academic grants cancelled because of something they said on Twitter years ago, when they were 16. Tanner Flake had a politically prominent father and said some off color things in video game communities when he was 9 and 10. Google will never forget it. This is all so perverse. The people doing this stuff are pure evil.

earenndil 7y ago
The greek philosophers had a very good understanding of social graces. They had a full understanding of the conventions which they were breaking. They chose, out of principle, to break them anyway.
- rabite 7y ago
  yeah Diogenes masturbating and shitting in public and pissing on people is surely the sign of a man that has good social graces

eoxenford 7y ago

Throughout this whole brouhaha, I’ve been astonished at how nobody in the mainstream press, nor any of those in tech calling for Stallman’s head, ever challenged the statement that Stallman said Epstein’s victims were “entirely willing.” Indeed, quite the opposite. From the Medium post that kicked the whole thing off [1]: …and then he says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”. And from Vice [2, 3]: Famed Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As 'Entirely Willing' Stallman said the “most plausible scenario” is that one of Epstein’s underage victims was “entirely willing.” And the Daily Beast: Renowned MIT Scientist Defends Epstein: Victims Were ‘Entirely Willing’ Here’s what Stallman actually wrote: We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she [Epstein’s victim] presented herself to him [Marvin Minsky] as entirely willing. In other words, Stallman isn’t saying she was willing, but rather that she likely acted as if she were willing. Lest there be any doubt, the next sentence reads: Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates. So Stallman explicitly acknowledges the likelihood that Epstein coerced these girls and coached them to pretend to be willing to have sex with Minsky and others in Epstein’s circle. At no point does Stallman say they were willing—rather, he suggests the exact opposite. Regardless of what one may think of Stallman, what else he wrote, or any of his other behavior, the wide dissemination and repetition of this lie is absolutely unconscionable. Those promulgating it should be ashamed. [1]: https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec210794 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21... [2]: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-described-epstein-victims-as-entirely-willing https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-sci... [3]: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbm74x/computer-scientist-richard-stallman-resigns-from-mit-over-epstein-comments https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbm74x/computer-scientist... [4]: https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-defends-epstein-victims-were-entirely-willing https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-r...

yuy910616 7y ago
This. BS article by Vice and the like... This is terrible
cannonedhamster 7y ago

accntwithnoname 7y ago

Good riddance. Aside from his recent comments regarding sexual assault that he claims are missunderstood, MIT alum contributed stories of him being a pervert throughout the years. This type of person does not belong at MIT or in Tech. His contributions to the field do not excuse him. “He literally used to have a mattress on the floor of his office. He kept the door to his office open, to proudly showcase that mattress and all the implications that went with it. Many female students avoided the corridor with his office for that reason…I was one of the course 6 undergrads who avoided that part of NE43 precisely for that reason. (the mattress was also known to have shirtless people lounging on it…)” — Bachelor’s in Computer Science, ‘99 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix-a-a7e41e784f88 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix...

oidmortales 7y ago
A personal blog of a feminist activist that idolizes women to the point she believe "MIT don't deserve them" is the least reliable source of accusations. Also she's the same girl that leaked the email.

rrss 7y ago

"MIT asks brilliant asshole who wrote gcc and emacs and spends his life whining about software to take down his 'knight for hot chicks' sign and hang out elsewhere."

povertyworld 7y ago
Chris Lattner also wrote a compiler and gave it away, all without defending rape. Spare me.
- rrss 7y ago
  "Brilliant asshole" was not intended as a compliment. MIT should have dissociated with Stallman decades ago.
  - noirscape 7y ago
    Honestly, I was suprised to learn he still used to be around there up until recently. Kinda undermines the entire heroic "Stallman left CSAIL to start GNU" story that is often cited as the origin point for GNU.
    - pseudalopex 7y ago
      He left a paying job at CSAIL. They let him keep an office.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

zenhack 7y ago

Something that I think most folks in this thread are missing, that's hugely important to what actually happened here: This was not an isolated incident. If it were, I'd look at his comments and write it off as his usual tendency to jump on a minor point and derail a conversation with some totally pedantic technicallity, and I do think the thing he actually said in this case has been wildly mis-interpreted and overstated in many places (the bits about him defending Epstein are clearly untrue, and even the author of the blog post that went viral and set off the shitstorm has said so, and sent corrections to the publications she'd spoken to directly). I even agree with his statement that, from a moral standpoint 17 vs. 18 isn't really that important -- we set arbitrary cutoffs for age of consent and it's not like there's a legal determination to be made re: Minsky anyway: he's dead. So from that mailing list thread alone, it reads like a typical autism-spectrum dude missing the social context, making a pedantic point that people read too much into and take the wrong way, and getting himself in trouble. And this is an angle that would naturally draw my own sympathies toward him. But Stallman is on-record as saying he thinks there's such a thing as "consentual pedophila", and given that context, I think folks can be forgiven for reading into his current statements. Ultimately though, the bigger issue isn't even about anything that happened in the past few days. RMS has been behaving inappropriately in more serious ways for decades. There are many stories out there about him harassing and propositioning students, making wildly inappropriate remarks to women, and generally making a bad situation around gender and inclusiveness in tech worse. Everyone I've talked to who has known him in a non-trivial personal capacity has corroberated this. The fact that this email is the thing prompted a blog post that happened to go viral and got people to make a fuss about it is incidental. Even at the FSF's own conferences, he's one of the more frequent violators of the safe space policies that the organizers have put in place. I think the first year the conference had an explicit safe space/anti-harassment policy, he was the only person who violated it (in this case it took the form of a sexualized joke during his closing keynote). I kinda have the same somewhat fearful gut reaction to these kinds of episodes as a lot of geeky guys do. There's a post[1] out there (which I think originally I found through hacker news) that does a pretty good job of analyzing where that reaction is coming from, and why the fear isn't totally illegitimate, but the idea that this is just a mob picking on some misunderstood misfit is just not what's happening here. Folks have been lienient to the point of negligience with him up until now. [1]: https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c

lazyjones 7y ago

Mistake. He was in a position to clarify and correct the wrong impression people got from bad reporting. He chose not to, so bad reporting won (again). Sad times we live in, when even stubborn people like RMS cave in to such pressure.

momokoko 7y ago

Heads up to anyone who might decide to comment in this thread. Its a great way to end your career if something gets read differently than you intended.

iamleppert 7y ago

They need to do more about Stallman. They really need to consider a criminal investigation into his conduct to see if any laws have been violated. I really hope the DA gets involved so he can be held accountable. They should impound his electronics and search them for child porn.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

amanzi 7y ago

I think we should be more worried about the control that media (and especially clickbait-worthy online media) can exert over our lives. It's clear to anyone who has done their research, that his quotes were taken out of context or mis-characterised to create a specific narrative meant to fuel anger and drive visitors to the 'news' websites. It's a real shame that we can no longer discuss certain topics without fear of retribution.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pornel 7y ago
His personal website re-states this opinion clearly (see links in other comments). There was nothing mischaracterised or out of context about this. This time he merely made his opinion more visible, and it ended up being the last straw.
- Liskni_si 7y ago
  I think it's pretty clear to everyone around here that there's quite a difference between saying "Epstein coerced the girl to present herself as completely willing" and saying "she was completely willing". RMS said the former, Vice, The Daily Beast and other media reported he said the latter.
- amanzi 7y ago
  I have read all of his comments, in the context they were posted, and my position stands. I have no desire to debate his opinions with strangers on the internet, my fear is how misinformation can be spread by clickbait 'journalism' and how it paints a narrative that is near-impossible to fight.

clatan 7y ago

Cancel culture is real

foobar_ 7y ago

Eww Richard Stallman is a creep. Good riddance. Epstein is kinda hot.

hantips 7y ago

Lewisssss 7y ago

Bye wirdo incels, long life to FSF!