4 ms·

I never much liked Richard Stallman. But he's a freethinker, and freethinkers necessarily exist outside the mainstream. So, despite not liking him, I also don

I never much liked Richard Stallman. But he's a freethinker, and freethinkers necessarily exist outside the mainstream. So, despite not liking him, I also don't like this turn of events. It does seem arbitrary to me that the same sexual encounter is classified as rape in Arizona and not rape in Virginia. I suppose we have to draw that line somewhere arbitrary. But I wonder if it was a mistake to classify what is called "statutory rape" as "rape" at all. We can make it illegal without calling it rape. That said, to me, this doesn't seem like a hill worth dying on. But then Stallman is not known for being picky about hills. People like him (or loathe him) because he's principled, and therefore no hill is too small.

flukus 7y ago
> That said, to me, this doesn't seem like a hill worth dying on I don't think he saw it as a hill worth dying on, just a random hill he happened to be shot on. It's part of a random scattering of thoughts he makes public. Either way, I'm cancelling my FSF donations for caving into this witch hunt. It's long demise will be helmed by people that stand for nothing less they offend someone.
- mgalgs 7y ago
  > Either way, I'm cancelling my FSF donations for caving into this witch hunt. If the FSF experiences a drop in donations couldn't they interpret that as people trying to distance themselves with Stallman, and he's basically synonymous with the FSF?
  - edoceo 7y ago
    If you leave/cancel tell them why, to remove ambiguity.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- scrollaway 7y ago
  > I don't think he saw it as a hill worth dying on If you know Stallman at all, you know that he sees every single hill as a hill worth dying on. It's kinda the problem.
  - cameldrv 7y ago
    It's the problem now, but specifically this tendency of Stallman is why the FSF exists at all, and why there was a compiler and a complete, freely available Unix userspace already available for Linus to bundle with his kernel, and voila, free Unix. It's also the reason we have an Open Source movement, that being the watered down and more corporately palatable version of Stallman's idealistic vision. Yes, he's totally uncompromising, has no sense of pragmatic tradeoffs or weighing one thing against another or deciding what is a good hill to die on. That's not the way I think is best to live my life, and it's probably best that most people don't live theirs that way either. Still, there should be a place in the world for people like him to have the freedom to be able to create and run their own organization with their own ideals.
    - ihatemondays 7y ago
      > It's also the reason we have an Open Source movement, that being the watered down and more corporately palatable version of Stallman's idealistic vision. If you ever talked with Stallman, read his texts, listened to his talks, you'd know that in certain ways Stallman's views are much weaker than what most people think they are. He doesn't have any issue with corps taking over the FOSS world as long as it compiles on trisquel and comes with a free license. That's why I'm glad that he's going away now. Hope we can get someone who actually will stand up against the issues that the FOSS world is facing now in his seat.
      - wott 7y ago
        > He doesn't have any issue with corps taking over the FOSS world as long as it compiles on trisquel and comes with a free license. The attitude you describe is much more represented by Linus Torvalds, and by the BSD folks, than by the GNU / GPL folks.
- armitron 7y ago
  Doing the same. I will also make sure to let them know why. I'm disgusted by MIT, FSF and everyone who's entered this witch hunt asking for blood.
nikdaheratik 7y ago
The "turn of events" in this case is losing his job because he made the organisations associated with him look bad. And I think it's completely fair for them to kick him to the curb in this case. No one person too important to lose if they turn into a liability. And in this case, I think RMS was well past that point.
paxys 7y ago
He can continue to be a freethinker all his life, which is his right. What isn't though, is having unconditional support from two powerful industry organizations. They can choose their own values, same as him.
- pg_is_a_butt 7y ago
  If only he could convince the president of one of the organizations to protect him...
dheera 7y ago
RMS also resigned from CSAIL just now: https://www.thedailybeast.com/richard-stallman-famed-mit-computer-scientist-who-defended-jeffrey-epstein-resigns https://www.thedailybeast.com/richard-stallman-famed-mit-com...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

flukus 7y ago

> That said, to me, this doesn't seem like a hill worth dying on I don't think he saw it as a hill worth dying on, just a random hill he happened to be shot on. It's part of a random scattering of thoughts he makes public. Either way, I'm cancelling my FSF donations for caving into this witch hunt. It's long demise will be helmed by people that stand for nothing less they offend someone.

mgalgs 7y ago
> Either way, I'm cancelling my FSF donations for caving into this witch hunt. If the FSF experiences a drop in donations couldn't they interpret that as people trying to distance themselves with Stallman, and he's basically synonymous with the FSF?
- edoceo 7y ago
  If you leave/cancel tell them why, to remove ambiguity.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
scrollaway 7y ago
> I don't think he saw it as a hill worth dying on If you know Stallman at all, you know that he sees every single hill as a hill worth dying on. It's kinda the problem.
- cameldrv 7y ago
  It's the problem now, but specifically this tendency of Stallman is why the FSF exists at all, and why there was a compiler and a complete, freely available Unix userspace already available for Linus to bundle with his kernel, and voila, free Unix. It's also the reason we have an Open Source movement, that being the watered down and more corporately palatable version of Stallman's idealistic vision. Yes, he's totally uncompromising, has no sense of pragmatic tradeoffs or weighing one thing against another or deciding what is a good hill to die on. That's not the way I think is best to live my life, and it's probably best that most people don't live theirs that way either. Still, there should be a place in the world for people like him to have the freedom to be able to create and run their own organization with their own ideals.
  - ihatemondays 7y ago
    > It's also the reason we have an Open Source movement, that being the watered down and more corporately palatable version of Stallman's idealistic vision. If you ever talked with Stallman, read his texts, listened to his talks, you'd know that in certain ways Stallman's views are much weaker than what most people think they are. He doesn't have any issue with corps taking over the FOSS world as long as it compiles on trisquel and comes with a free license. That's why I'm glad that he's going away now. Hope we can get someone who actually will stand up against the issues that the FOSS world is facing now in his seat.
    - wott 7y ago
      > He doesn't have any issue with corps taking over the FOSS world as long as it compiles on trisquel and comes with a free license. The attitude you describe is much more represented by Linus Torvalds, and by the BSD folks, than by the GNU / GPL folks.
armitron 7y ago
Doing the same. I will also make sure to let them know why. I'm disgusted by MIT, FSF and everyone who's entered this witch hunt asking for blood.

nikdaheratik 7y ago

The "turn of events" in this case is losing his job because he made the organisations associated with him look bad. And I think it's completely fair for them to kick him to the curb in this case. No one person too important to lose if they turn into a liability. And in this case, I think RMS was well past that point.

paxys 7y ago

He can continue to be a freethinker all his life, which is his right. What isn't though, is having unconditional support from two powerful industry organizations. They can choose their own values, same as him.

pg_is_a_butt 7y ago
If only he could convince the president of one of the organizations to protect him...

dheera 7y ago

RMS also resigned from CSAIL just now: https://www.thedailybeast.com/richard-stallman-famed-mit-computer-scientist-who-defended-jeffrey-epstein-resigns https://www.thedailybeast.com/richard-stallman-famed-mit-com...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]