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I'm so relieved to find that at least on hacker news people can still evaluate this situation with reason. Out there it's a witch hunt and Stallman is now a wit

I'm so relieved to find that at least on hacker news people can still evaluate this situation with reason. Out there it's a witch hunt and Stallman is now a witch. RMS is a great man but sadly has difficulties communicating with the wider world. This has been true of many great minds throughout history. It's sad to see it happen to one of my own heroes but I believe history will do him justice if we continue to fight for free software. I wish somebody would have simply advised him not to speak on such matters because nothing good could become of it. Maybe he needed a PR manager. That sounds awful, but apparently this is what the world wants: carefully filtered speech that doesn't stray far from what people already agree with.

gdfasfklshg4 7y ago
> I wish somebody would have simply advised him not to speak on such matters because nothing good could become of it. Maybe he needed a PR manager. That sounds awful, but apparently this is what the world wants: carefully filtered speech that doesn't stray far from what people already agree with. The world needs everyone to speak about every topic. If we all self censor then only the extremists will be speaking.
- al_form2000 7y ago
  And everybody can speak about anything. As long as they don't care being hounded by the neo-puritan prudes and lose job, career, social standing.
- brnt 7y ago
  > The world needs everyone to speak about every topic. If we all self censor then only the extremists will be speaking. Thinking in extremes (we all self-censor or everyone speaks out on every topic) is the first step towards extremism. There is a middle ground. Our curse is being unable to pin it down, while forever having to search for it. Democracy is hard. And it should be. Easy solutions are not going to be democratic.
- lazyjones 7y ago
  > but apparently this is what the world wants: carefully filtered speech that doesn't stray far from what people already agree with. Let's never forget that famous G.B. Shaw quotation, always appropriate in such situations. http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/692.html http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/692.html I don't want to live in a world where everyone has to take great care all the time to fulfil the FotM expectations of certain noisy people who believe they're a majority.
- merb 7y ago
  > The world needs everyone to speak about every topic. If we all self censor then only the extremists will be speaking. actually stallman was one of the extremists and he wasn't happy if somebody with the middle ground spoke about free software/open source software.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - roenxi 7y ago
    Stallman was extreme, but practically speaking he has never had any power and never tried to gather any. His extremism is characterised by pedantically talking about the logical conclusions of actions and working strictly within and through the legal system to accomplish his goals. That is a type of extremism that is very uncomfortable when it is used against something held personally important, but it is exactly the type of extremism that we want more of. Organisers of extra-legal justice mobs are the sort of extremists we can generally do without.
  - h0h0h0h0111 7y ago
    I think that's fine though. Extremists exist to help the rest of us work out which shade of grey looks right to us.
- 0x445442 7y ago
  While I don't agree with everything RMS said I'm not bothered by it either. However, I tend to have the same effect on people when I think I'm just being honest but it comes off as offensive. It's a hard balancing act, on the one hand people need to be able to deal with facts and reality, even if it's offensive to them. On the other hand we don't want our speech to act as sand in the machinery of communication.
- rnernento 7y ago
  Yeah, I want to live in a world where people are afraid to speak what they truly believe even if it's controversial. They should be so afraid of losing everything they just keep their heads down and their mouths shut. Nothing bad ever happens in societies that operate like that.
- lanevorockz 7y ago
  Wise worlds, extremism is rising because of Cancel Culture. People might not speak but they will certainly act.
hackworks 7y ago
Twitter has become a breeding ground for mobs and unjustified moral policing. I started following people based on the technical work they have done and was hoping to learn or get inspired them. Apart from a very few, every accomplished technologist have started using Twitter and their followers to attack others. This is nothing but the witch hunt from medieval times done differently. I have interacted with RMS in Emacs developer list, he has a strong opinion and nothing more, nothing less. He is not trying to create a mob and nor is he starting an upraising. If you have an opinion, voice it and leave it. Yes, I agree RMS needed a PR to tread the land mine ridden modern life. Overall, it is sad to see RMS and his work getting trivialized for totally unrelated reasons.
- k__ 7y ago
  While I resent most these attacks, the "I'm only here for the tech" stand, many tech-people have, deeply disgusts me. Edit: I'm not saying the work of a person can't be good if he did bad things. I think it's important not to glorify people. Free software is important for all of us, but so is a stand against sexsim or the likes.
  - ehonda 7y ago
    Are you saying it disgusts you when they choose to keep their political opinions private? How come?
    - kgraves 7y ago
      Because to them, everything IS political.
    - mcphage 7y ago
      Because only certain people are in a position to be able to keep their political opinions private. For many people, the very fact of their life is inherently a political statement. So the "keep political opinions private" crowd is merely the people who can keep their opinions private telling everyone else to clear out.
DaniloDias 7y ago
I prefer applying compassion to people who say stupid shit. I also prefer weirdos to Pearl Clutchers. A segment of the world may want homogeneity, but I don’t. I don’t particularly like Stallman, but I also appreciate his weirdness.
- wccrawford 7y ago
  >I prefer applying compassion to people who say stupid shit. I very much prefer this, too, so long as they show they know what they did wrong and are clear that they'll work to do better in the future.
Cacti 7y ago
Do you really need a PR person to know that suggesting underage sex is OK is a risky topic of conversation? Like, come on. This isn’t a subtle mine field here, it’s not rocket science, and any adult, particularly someone as nominally smart as RMS, should be aware that suggesting 14 year old girls (particularly ones with a non-zero probability of being _trafficked_!!) engaging in sex with 60 year old men is a risky freaking topic. I don’t approve of the current political climate (re: freedom of speech) but RMS is a grown man and he should know better. Not going to lose sleep over this one.
- rumanator 7y ago
  > Do you really need a PR person to know that suggesting underage sex is OK is a risky topic of conversation? This comment is infuriatingly wrong. Stallman did nothing of the sort. Stallman's "crime" was having the audacity of pointing out that the technical definition of the crime matching the accusations was statutory rape. That's it. And now he's out of a job.
  - vladsanchez 7y ago
    The problem is that RMS didn't state it like you did. He's a victim of his own pedantry. A victim of his own indiscretions. He didn't need to opine about such hateful acts. No job and no reputation.
    - Insanity 7y ago
      Well he didn't _need_ to voice his opinion on copyright and proprietary software either. But I am glad he did. Look I agree what he did was dumb, but he is free to voice an opinion on anything he likes. We don't have to agree with it but we don't have to turn it into a witch hunt either..
      - Cacti 7y ago
        yes, and the FSF should be free to fire him as well. him being fired isn’t a witch hunt.
thrownaway954 7y ago
"Maybe he needed a PR manager." No... he needed a PR manager desperately and I'm very surprised that the FSF or MIT never even considered nor assigned one to him. I know he's a grown man and is responsible for what he says, but he is, was, whatever, a figure to the CS community and as such should have had his public comments vetted more.
- criddell 7y ago
  > I'm very surprised that the FSF or MIT never even considered nor assigned one to him You think he would have cooperated? I can't imagine Stallman being happy with having a filter for the things he wants to say or being told to not say something.
  - thrownaway954 7y ago
    "I can't imagine Stallman being happy with having a filter" Yeah... How happy do you think he is now??? I can guarantee he is sitting at home right now replaying the last week over in his head wishing he would have kept his mouth shut. What is next for this dude? He will NEVER be able to get a job ANYWHERE cause no one will want to be associated with him. I HIGHLY doubt he made enough money to just retire... So really... What's next for him? Everyone thinks filters are control and evil, however, sometimes they are there for your protection.
    - lostjohnny 7y ago
      > How happy do you think he is now “I’m always happy when I’m protesting.” — Richard Stallman
    - toyg 7y ago
      > How happy do you think he is now?? You underestimate the level RMS operates at. Somebody who dedicates his life to an ideal is not going to cry about the occasional setback. > He will NEVER be able to get a job ANYWHERE You really underestimate RMS. There is a world beyond the US, that doesn't really care that much about PC culture. Roman Polanski never stopped working, and he actually did have sex with a minor.
smallmancontrov 7y ago
I'm far from certain RMS's only offense was difficulty communicating, but the "evolution" of his statements as they traveled through the media was terrifying to witness. Stallman: > the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Selam G. > [Stallman] says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”. VICE: > Stallman insists that the “most plausible scenario” is that Epstein’s underage victims were “entirely willing” while being trafficked. New York Post: > MIT scientist says Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre was ‘entirely willing’
- lostjohnny 7y ago
  There's something we have to accept here, that he could be right. It could be true. I'm not saying I agree with him or that I would have said the same things (I'm no Stallman, nobody cares about what I say anyway) but what he said was just the result of logical reasoning For example if you look at the titles it's easy to dismiss RMS as someone who favours rapists, but in the article he's always quoted in full and the things he said are a bit different For example quoting the VICE article > RMS: “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.” And he's not entirely wrong. Rape in rape even in space at the age of 93.
  - ivanhoe 7y ago
    Well, no, rape is not just a forceful rape, because the law says that minors up to some age are not capable of making decisions on who they have sex with willingly, and thus it's up to adults to be responsible and avoid such encounters. Legally minors can't have a willing sex with an adult. So it's a rape and not alright even if both parties were fully willing, if nothing else then because the law says so. Somewhere else it might not be, but they were not somewhere else. Different cultures have different ideas on what is the appropriate age of consent, and the age is sort of "arbitrary" chosen, but it comes from the tradition and America is very puritan in pretty much everything else compared to Europe, so the same applies to this too. That's just the well established moral norm in the US society, so breaking it is obviously deeply anti-social and evil behavior, regardless of what age of consent is in my country or France or Brazil. Everyone involved was American, so even if you argue against the laws, still American moral and culture norms apply.
dominotw 7y ago
I feel out of loop here. Can someone fill me in as to what happened.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  Basically this: https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20870050/richard-stallman-resigns-mit-free-software-foundation-epstein https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20870050/richard-stallman...
  - tunap 7y ago
    Anyone have a link to the actual text of chain letter? I don't want others' interpretation, that link is to an incomplete summary with links to other incomplete summaries. Cursory search leads to pages of other "summaries", and yet searching 'site:motherboard.com stallman chain letter' nets ZERO results? WTF?
    - Sacho 7y ago
      This source was provided by Vice in their article. https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929/09132019142056-0001.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929/091320191...
      - tunap 7y ago
        Thank you much, Sacho. I would never have clicked on the Vice article link. For those who may be confused, &/or on mobile, the PDF is in order from last post to first. Very unfortunate RS decided to be pedantic here. While he never excused the behavior(AFAIR), it is a poor & insensitive time to argue legal minutiae, IMO. I am disappointed by his callousness. However, I am not ready to join the partially informed lynch mob. I hope those who make policies in media & enforce the laws do not let side-shows & obfuscations get in the way of bringing every last monster who visited Epstein's island to justice. PS: Google captcha to post on HN now? No thanks, henceforth.
    - AwaAwa 7y ago
lostjohnny 7y ago
> I wish somebody would have simply advised him not to speak on such matters because nothing good could become of it Everything good that came out of RMS is exactly because he didn't listen to those advising him to stay quiet.
sgt 7y ago
It's disappointing to read many of the comments on HN today. As we know, rms is a very dear person to most of the Computer Science and programmer community. Through the years, he's said many shocking things. We've often disagreed with him. He's been extremely stubborn. At some points it's been comical. Yet we still see him as a technology treasure, and we should keep this in mind before judging him harshly based on a single e-mail. rms is actually reacting logically here, yet also emotionally as he's wanting to protect his friend - the late Marvin Minsky. Seemingly by letting go of common sense, and sure enough this is just cause for harsh criticism. But by simply removing a living legend from his position because he's not able to be politically correct, is far worse in my opinion. (I assume he was asked to leave). This same lack of political correctness also happens to be one of his strengths. It built his character. It's not perfect. I don't know what more to write at this point. It's ridiculous and turning into a witch hunt against someone we actually owe a great deal of gratitude.
- lanevorockz 7y ago
  It is completely stupid standard to only support people that think exactly like you. That's not how communities are run, that's how communities are ruined. So sad that young people completely ignorant about society and social interaction became so unreasonable that they want to punish every single living person.
  - colechristensen 7y ago
    He was defending his friend who, at the age of 74, is accused of having sex with a 17 year old girl on a billionaire's private island. Is that a matter of diverse thinking? If you think so, I'm interested to know your reasoning.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  He was defending his friend who, at the age of 74, is accused of having sex with a 17 year old girl on a billionaire's private island. That is what he was defending. The intellectual quibbles about this and that he was bringing up are irrelevant when faced with the above fact. That isn't about political correctness, it isn't a "witch hunt". RMS did something incredibly inappropriate in an incredibly inappropriate place and was fired. He deserved it.
decoyworker 7y ago
I find it ridiculous that he has trouble communicating ideas as an engineer.
- lostjohnny 7y ago
  You, sir, made my day!
  - decoyworker 7y ago
    My point was that good engineers can write.
    - justsubmit 7y ago
      You must be an engineer.
SkyBelow 7y ago
>Out there it's a witch hunt and Stallman is now a witch. There is a new religion forming among those who have largely rejected religions of the past and Stallman is guilty of blasphemy. If he only loses his job he will be far luckier than others who are guilty of similar blasphemy.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  He was defending his friend who, at the age of 74, is accused of having sex with a 17 year old girl on a billionaire's private island. I think that's blasphemy to anyone with an once of reason and compassion in this world. It is not zealotry of some new paranoid movement that drove RMS failure. It was reason and good judgement.
colechristensen 7y ago
There are a chain of media reports which inaccurately portray what Stallman was saying. But look past that into what was happening. Stallman was trying to defend Minsky who had sex with someone, a teenager, nearly 60 years younger than him on a billionaire's private island. There isn't an imaginable circumstance where what happened there was not, even in the best possible light, incredibly creepy. His intellectual arguments were understandable in a way, but in the context of defending Minsky and in the venue they were wildly inappropriate and indefensible. It doesn't matter how "great" you are or how socially awkward, any institution should fire you for doing something like that.
- washadjeffmad 7y ago
  Stallman wasn't defending Minsky, he was explaining why Minsky didn't need any defense with the evidence as presented. That Epstein instructed an underage to have sex does not mean that she did. RMS points out that she did not ever say that she and Minksy had sex, although the prosecutor implied it, and there was a witness account that Minsky declined and warned someone else about what happened during the event. Pointing this out should not be a problem. So please look past the media's witch hunt and into what's actually been said.
  - colechristensen 7y ago
    I read it. I saw RMS defending statutory rape by supposing that the young woman would have appeared willing when the perpetrator, his friend, was more than four times her age. Doesn't matter if the accused event happened or not. Defending the hypothetical in that manner gets you fired.
    - Allower 7y ago
      Maybe you never noticed but statutory rape is not rape. And its definitely not even statutory rape since he hasn't been convicted yet (innocent until proven guilty ya know..). Who cares if you find it "creepy".. thats not a reason to fire someone.
    - 7y ago
harryh 7y ago
Perhaps the President of the FSF, an organization which has a huge influence on the technical community, should be someone who doesn't have difficulty communicating with the wider world. Strong communication skills being important to that sort of job.
roguecoder 7y ago
It is not “difficulties communicating with the wider world” when he only hit on women, he only gave women pleasure cards, he only sexualised women in his talks, and he not only refused to take feedback on that behavior, he actively corcumvented any clear rules he was given. He was not acting in good faith. If he had cared about his political movement more than his dick we wouldn’t be here, but here we are.
enriquto 7y ago
How can we help him? Does joining the FSF (or donating) serve any purpose for that?
KirinDave 7y ago
For what it's worth, lots of us have been trying to have him be removed for being a sexist dirtbag for a long time. No one really needed media sensationalism to draw a pattern of behavior unbefitting the leadership of the FSF. That some random people overstated some aspects of his Epstein thoughts isn't really why this happened. It's also a bit ironic you've decided to call it a witch hunt. Witch hunts happened when folks decided to start blaming women for everything without even a veneer of logic or civility. And here we are with a man, having possessed a long history of specific behaviors, being called to account for exactly those behaviors. It's ironic simply because the privileges RMS was exercising are so ingrained in your worldview that demanding he stop treating women like lesser beings is–to you, at least fundamentally irrational and unfair demand. RMS had hundreds of other controversial opinions. Uttering them did not result in this. In fact, no single act of sexism got him here either. So suggesting that this is merely society punishing a misunderstood outsider on a whim is itself pretty uncalled for.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- atypicaluser 7y ago
  So... sexism in and of itself ought to be a punishable offense?
  - _jal 7y ago
    Oh, stop it. The GP clearly did not say that. If you need to scroll up and read it again, do so.
  - KirinDave 7y ago
    Are we talking about RMS? If so, RMS wasn't "punished." Folks were tired of his bad leadership and demanded he leave, because he was consistently bad at his leadership job. You can decide this is punishment and it might feel that way to RMS, but I think we can all agree sexism is a bad trait to have in the most senior leadership position of an organization founded around principles of liberty in expression and action. RMS was bad for that cause, and he couldn't keep his position on pure tenure and prestige anymore.
yibg 7y ago
The world doesn’t need to be one of two extremes, either filtered everything or say whatever you want. Words have consequences, and while you are free to say whatever, others are free to react to it too. You don’t get a free pass for saying ridiculous things just because free speech | difficulties communicating | you’ve done great things or whatever. I don’t want a world where everything is filtered but I do want people to think about the impact of what they say before they say it.
X6S1x6Okd1st 7y ago
This isn't the first time, I'd bet plenty of people have tried to advise him and he ignored them. He's been speaking on these topics for long enough to have heard thousands of people consoling him to stop.
chris_wot 7y ago
Do you think he would have listened? Something tells me he would have spoken about it on principle, in that he believes in freedom of speech.
schwurb 7y ago
> That sounds awful, but apparently this is what the world wants: carefully filtered speech that doesn't stray far from what people already agree with. No, it is sufficient already to not blurt out controversial things at bat-shit-insanely-bad timings. Similar to how people would be mad at Einstein if he pulled a non-ironic "Yeah, but to be honest he wasn't THAT great" a friends funeral. I don't like mobs and I lament the fact that one such important figure in computing has such difficulties making himself understood. But that does not mean that the world has a problem somehow. It just happens to be a world that is not fine-tuned to Stallman-communication and that values reducing sexism higher than technical accuracy. Some people don't work that way, some people get therapy to allign themselves, some withdraw from society, some manage to get by. Stallman happened to fall on the friction side of things this time.
john_moscow 7y ago
In the present day and age you can only evaluate it with reason as long as you are anonymous. If you use your real name and give any comment that can be remotely construed as supporting sex offenders or racists, your political enemies will send the angry mob your way. Your counter-arguments won't be heard, you won't be given a chance to explain or defend yourself in a mutually respectful discussion, instead you political weight will be voided overnight and someone much more flexible in their beliefs will take your place.
tapesonthefloor 7y ago
>Stallman is now a witch Funny that you evoke misogyny at this point, given how RMS is primarily a godawful human being to women, the vast majority of which your comment is ignorant of, willfully or otherwise. This has been his godawful personality and behaviour at MIT for decades. It hasn't gone unreported. It hasn't gone unnoticed. But few appear to have ever acted on it appropriately, and the appropriate action here is removing him from any and all communities where he can do damage. It's occurring years too late, but at least it's occurring. It's sad that it took his association with a worldwide pedophilia/human trafficking ring to accomplish this, given his decades of ghastly abuse of peers/colleagues/students. Even more sad that after this association has been revealed, communities like this one are significantly in self-defense mode. If your response to this story is to get defensive, or to use keywords like "free speech," you have questions you need to ask yourself. Very serious questions. Questions that I guarantee your various communities want answers to before you engage with them further. https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/d59r46/richard_stallman_resigns_from_mit_over_epstein/f0kpd5w/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/d59r46/richard...
butterfi 7y ago
I totally agree, this could have all been avoided if someone pulled him aside and told him to sit on his hands. RMS is brilliant, but he does seem to be tone deaf. Now is not the time for old white men of privilege to be commenting on the sexuality of young women. (not that it ever was appropriate)
jjtheblunt 7y ago
The world wants fewer people justifying pedophiles.

gdfasfklshg4 7y ago

> I wish somebody would have simply advised him not to speak on such matters because nothing good could become of it. Maybe he needed a PR manager. That sounds awful, but apparently this is what the world wants: carefully filtered speech that doesn't stray far from what people already agree with. The world needs everyone to speak about every topic. If we all self censor then only the extremists will be speaking.

al_form2000 7y ago
And everybody can speak about anything. As long as they don't care being hounded by the neo-puritan prudes and lose job, career, social standing.
brnt 7y ago
> The world needs everyone to speak about every topic. If we all self censor then only the extremists will be speaking. Thinking in extremes (we all self-censor or everyone speaks out on every topic) is the first step towards extremism. There is a middle ground. Our curse is being unable to pin it down, while forever having to search for it. Democracy is hard. And it should be. Easy solutions are not going to be democratic.
lazyjones 7y ago
> but apparently this is what the world wants: carefully filtered speech that doesn't stray far from what people already agree with. Let's never forget that famous G.B. Shaw quotation, always appropriate in such situations. http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/692.html http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/692.html I don't want to live in a world where everyone has to take great care all the time to fulfil the FotM expectations of certain noisy people who believe they're a majority.
merb 7y ago
> The world needs everyone to speak about every topic. If we all self censor then only the extremists will be speaking. actually stallman was one of the extremists and he wasn't happy if somebody with the middle ground spoke about free software/open source software.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- roenxi 7y ago
  Stallman was extreme, but practically speaking he has never had any power and never tried to gather any. His extremism is characterised by pedantically talking about the logical conclusions of actions and working strictly within and through the legal system to accomplish his goals. That is a type of extremism that is very uncomfortable when it is used against something held personally important, but it is exactly the type of extremism that we want more of. Organisers of extra-legal justice mobs are the sort of extremists we can generally do without.
- h0h0h0h0111 7y ago
  I think that's fine though. Extremists exist to help the rest of us work out which shade of grey looks right to us.
0x445442 7y ago
While I don't agree with everything RMS said I'm not bothered by it either. However, I tend to have the same effect on people when I think I'm just being honest but it comes off as offensive. It's a hard balancing act, on the one hand people need to be able to deal with facts and reality, even if it's offensive to them. On the other hand we don't want our speech to act as sand in the machinery of communication.
rnernento 7y ago
Yeah, I want to live in a world where people are afraid to speak what they truly believe even if it's controversial. They should be so afraid of losing everything they just keep their heads down and their mouths shut. Nothing bad ever happens in societies that operate like that.
lanevorockz 7y ago
Wise worlds, extremism is rising because of Cancel Culture. People might not speak but they will certainly act.

hackworks 7y ago

Twitter has become a breeding ground for mobs and unjustified moral policing. I started following people based on the technical work they have done and was hoping to learn or get inspired them. Apart from a very few, every accomplished technologist have started using Twitter and their followers to attack others. This is nothing but the witch hunt from medieval times done differently. I have interacted with RMS in Emacs developer list, he has a strong opinion and nothing more, nothing less. He is not trying to create a mob and nor is he starting an upraising. If you have an opinion, voice it and leave it. Yes, I agree RMS needed a PR to tread the land mine ridden modern life. Overall, it is sad to see RMS and his work getting trivialized for totally unrelated reasons.

k__ 7y ago
While I resent most these attacks, the "I'm only here for the tech" stand, many tech-people have, deeply disgusts me. Edit: I'm not saying the work of a person can't be good if he did bad things. I think it's important not to glorify people. Free software is important for all of us, but so is a stand against sexsim or the likes.
- ehonda 7y ago
  Are you saying it disgusts you when they choose to keep their political opinions private? How come?
  - kgraves 7y ago
    Because to them, everything IS political.
  - mcphage 7y ago
    Because only certain people are in a position to be able to keep their political opinions private. For many people, the very fact of their life is inherently a political statement. So the "keep political opinions private" crowd is merely the people who can keep their opinions private telling everyone else to clear out.

DaniloDias 7y ago

I prefer applying compassion to people who say stupid shit. I also prefer weirdos to Pearl Clutchers. A segment of the world may want homogeneity, but I don’t. I don’t particularly like Stallman, but I also appreciate his weirdness.

wccrawford 7y ago
>I prefer applying compassion to people who say stupid shit. I very much prefer this, too, so long as they show they know what they did wrong and are clear that they'll work to do better in the future.

Cacti 7y ago

Do you really need a PR person to know that suggesting underage sex is OK is a risky topic of conversation? Like, come on. This isn’t a subtle mine field here, it’s not rocket science, and any adult, particularly someone as nominally smart as RMS, should be aware that suggesting 14 year old girls (particularly ones with a non-zero probability of being _trafficked_!!) engaging in sex with 60 year old men is a risky freaking topic. I don’t approve of the current political climate (re: freedom of speech) but RMS is a grown man and he should know better. Not going to lose sleep over this one.

rumanator 7y ago
> Do you really need a PR person to know that suggesting underage sex is OK is a risky topic of conversation? This comment is infuriatingly wrong. Stallman did nothing of the sort. Stallman's "crime" was having the audacity of pointing out that the technical definition of the crime matching the accusations was statutory rape. That's it. And now he's out of a job.
- vladsanchez 7y ago
  The problem is that RMS didn't state it like you did. He's a victim of his own pedantry. A victim of his own indiscretions. He didn't need to opine about such hateful acts. No job and no reputation.
  - Insanity 7y ago
    Well he didn't _need_ to voice his opinion on copyright and proprietary software either. But I am glad he did. Look I agree what he did was dumb, but he is free to voice an opinion on anything he likes. We don't have to agree with it but we don't have to turn it into a witch hunt either..
    - Cacti 7y ago
      yes, and the FSF should be free to fire him as well. him being fired isn’t a witch hunt.

thrownaway954 7y ago

"Maybe he needed a PR manager." No... he needed a PR manager desperately and I'm very surprised that the FSF or MIT never even considered nor assigned one to him. I know he's a grown man and is responsible for what he says, but he is, was, whatever, a figure to the CS community and as such should have had his public comments vetted more.

criddell 7y ago
> I'm very surprised that the FSF or MIT never even considered nor assigned one to him You think he would have cooperated? I can't imagine Stallman being happy with having a filter for the things he wants to say or being told to not say something.
- thrownaway954 7y ago
  "I can't imagine Stallman being happy with having a filter" Yeah... How happy do you think he is now??? I can guarantee he is sitting at home right now replaying the last week over in his head wishing he would have kept his mouth shut. What is next for this dude? He will NEVER be able to get a job ANYWHERE cause no one will want to be associated with him. I HIGHLY doubt he made enough money to just retire... So really... What's next for him? Everyone thinks filters are control and evil, however, sometimes they are there for your protection.
  - lostjohnny 7y ago
    > How happy do you think he is now “I’m always happy when I’m protesting.” — Richard Stallman
  - toyg 7y ago
    > How happy do you think he is now?? You underestimate the level RMS operates at. Somebody who dedicates his life to an ideal is not going to cry about the occasional setback. > He will NEVER be able to get a job ANYWHERE You really underestimate RMS. There is a world beyond the US, that doesn't really care that much about PC culture. Roman Polanski never stopped working, and he actually did have sex with a minor.

smallmancontrov 7y ago

I'm far from certain RMS's only offense was difficulty communicating, but the "evolution" of his statements as they traveled through the media was terrifying to witness. Stallman: > the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Selam G. > [Stallman] says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”. VICE: > Stallman insists that the “most plausible scenario” is that Epstein’s underage victims were “entirely willing” while being trafficked. New York Post: > MIT scientist says Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre was ‘entirely willing’

lostjohnny 7y ago
There's something we have to accept here, that he could be right. It could be true. I'm not saying I agree with him or that I would have said the same things (I'm no Stallman, nobody cares about what I say anyway) but what he said was just the result of logical reasoning For example if you look at the titles it's easy to dismiss RMS as someone who favours rapists, but in the article he's always quoted in full and the things he said are a bit different For example quoting the VICE article > RMS: “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.” And he's not entirely wrong. Rape in rape even in space at the age of 93.
- ivanhoe 7y ago
  Well, no, rape is not just a forceful rape, because the law says that minors up to some age are not capable of making decisions on who they have sex with willingly, and thus it's up to adults to be responsible and avoid such encounters. Legally minors can't have a willing sex with an adult. So it's a rape and not alright even if both parties were fully willing, if nothing else then because the law says so. Somewhere else it might not be, but they were not somewhere else. Different cultures have different ideas on what is the appropriate age of consent, and the age is sort of "arbitrary" chosen, but it comes from the tradition and America is very puritan in pretty much everything else compared to Europe, so the same applies to this too. That's just the well established moral norm in the US society, so breaking it is obviously deeply anti-social and evil behavior, regardless of what age of consent is in my country or France or Brazil. Everyone involved was American, so even if you argue against the laws, still American moral and culture norms apply.

dominotw 7y ago

I feel out of loop here. Can someone fill me in as to what happened.

giancarlostoro 7y ago
Basically this: https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20870050/richard-stallman-resigns-mit-free-software-foundation-epstein https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20870050/richard-stallman...
- tunap 7y ago
  Anyone have a link to the actual text of chain letter? I don't want others' interpretation, that link is to an incomplete summary with links to other incomplete summaries. Cursory search leads to pages of other "summaries", and yet searching 'site:motherboard.com stallman chain letter' nets ZERO results? WTF?
  - Sacho 7y ago
    This source was provided by Vice in their article. https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929/09132019142056-0001.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929/091320191...
    - tunap 7y ago
      Thank you much, Sacho. I would never have clicked on the Vice article link. For those who may be confused, &/or on mobile, the PDF is in order from last post to first. Very unfortunate RS decided to be pedantic here. While he never excused the behavior(AFAIR), it is a poor & insensitive time to argue legal minutiae, IMO. I am disappointed by his callousness. However, I am not ready to join the partially informed lynch mob. I hope those who make policies in media & enforce the laws do not let side-shows & obfuscations get in the way of bringing every last monster who visited Epstein's island to justice. PS: Google captcha to post on HN now? No thanks, henceforth.
  - AwaAwa 7y ago

lostjohnny 7y ago

> I wish somebody would have simply advised him not to speak on such matters because nothing good could become of it Everything good that came out of RMS is exactly because he didn't listen to those advising him to stay quiet.

sgt 7y ago

It's disappointing to read many of the comments on HN today. As we know, rms is a very dear person to most of the Computer Science and programmer community. Through the years, he's said many shocking things. We've often disagreed with him. He's been extremely stubborn. At some points it's been comical. Yet we still see him as a technology treasure, and we should keep this in mind before judging him harshly based on a single e-mail. rms is actually reacting logically here, yet also emotionally as he's wanting to protect his friend - the late Marvin Minsky. Seemingly by letting go of common sense, and sure enough this is just cause for harsh criticism. But by simply removing a living legend from his position because he's not able to be politically correct, is far worse in my opinion. (I assume he was asked to leave). This same lack of political correctness also happens to be one of his strengths. It built his character. It's not perfect. I don't know what more to write at this point. It's ridiculous and turning into a witch hunt against someone we actually owe a great deal of gratitude.

lanevorockz 7y ago
It is completely stupid standard to only support people that think exactly like you. That's not how communities are run, that's how communities are ruined. So sad that young people completely ignorant about society and social interaction became so unreasonable that they want to punish every single living person.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  He was defending his friend who, at the age of 74, is accused of having sex with a 17 year old girl on a billionaire's private island. Is that a matter of diverse thinking? If you think so, I'm interested to know your reasoning.
colechristensen 7y ago
He was defending his friend who, at the age of 74, is accused of having sex with a 17 year old girl on a billionaire's private island. That is what he was defending. The intellectual quibbles about this and that he was bringing up are irrelevant when faced with the above fact. That isn't about political correctness, it isn't a "witch hunt". RMS did something incredibly inappropriate in an incredibly inappropriate place and was fired. He deserved it.

decoyworker 7y ago

I find it ridiculous that he has trouble communicating ideas as an engineer.

lostjohnny 7y ago
You, sir, made my day!
- decoyworker 7y ago
  My point was that good engineers can write.
  - justsubmit 7y ago
    You must be an engineer.

SkyBelow 7y ago

>Out there it's a witch hunt and Stallman is now a witch. There is a new religion forming among those who have largely rejected religions of the past and Stallman is guilty of blasphemy. If he only loses his job he will be far luckier than others who are guilty of similar blasphemy.

colechristensen 7y ago
He was defending his friend who, at the age of 74, is accused of having sex with a 17 year old girl on a billionaire's private island. I think that's blasphemy to anyone with an once of reason and compassion in this world. It is not zealotry of some new paranoid movement that drove RMS failure. It was reason and good judgement.

colechristensen 7y ago

There are a chain of media reports which inaccurately portray what Stallman was saying. But look past that into what was happening. Stallman was trying to defend Minsky who had sex with someone, a teenager, nearly 60 years younger than him on a billionaire's private island. There isn't an imaginable circumstance where what happened there was not, even in the best possible light, incredibly creepy. His intellectual arguments were understandable in a way, but in the context of defending Minsky and in the venue they were wildly inappropriate and indefensible. It doesn't matter how "great" you are or how socially awkward, any institution should fire you for doing something like that.

washadjeffmad 7y ago
Stallman wasn't defending Minsky, he was explaining why Minsky didn't need any defense with the evidence as presented. That Epstein instructed an underage to have sex does not mean that she did. RMS points out that she did not ever say that she and Minksy had sex, although the prosecutor implied it, and there was a witness account that Minsky declined and warned someone else about what happened during the event. Pointing this out should not be a problem. So please look past the media's witch hunt and into what's actually been said.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  I read it. I saw RMS defending statutory rape by supposing that the young woman would have appeared willing when the perpetrator, his friend, was more than four times her age. Doesn't matter if the accused event happened or not. Defending the hypothetical in that manner gets you fired.
  - Allower 7y ago
    Maybe you never noticed but statutory rape is not rape. And its definitely not even statutory rape since he hasn't been convicted yet (innocent until proven guilty ya know..). Who cares if you find it "creepy".. thats not a reason to fire someone.
  - 7y ago

harryh 7y ago

Perhaps the President of the FSF, an organization which has a huge influence on the technical community, should be someone who doesn't have difficulty communicating with the wider world. Strong communication skills being important to that sort of job.

roguecoder 7y ago

It is not “difficulties communicating with the wider world” when he only hit on women, he only gave women pleasure cards, he only sexualised women in his talks, and he not only refused to take feedback on that behavior, he actively corcumvented any clear rules he was given. He was not acting in good faith. If he had cared about his political movement more than his dick we wouldn’t be here, but here we are.

enriquto 7y ago

How can we help him? Does joining the FSF (or donating) serve any purpose for that?

KirinDave 7y ago

For what it's worth, lots of us have been trying to have him be removed for being a sexist dirtbag for a long time. No one really needed media sensationalism to draw a pattern of behavior unbefitting the leadership of the FSF. That some random people overstated some aspects of his Epstein thoughts isn't really why this happened. It's also a bit ironic you've decided to call it a witch hunt. Witch hunts happened when folks decided to start blaming women for everything without even a veneer of logic or civility. And here we are with a man, having possessed a long history of specific behaviors, being called to account for exactly those behaviors. It's ironic simply because the privileges RMS was exercising are so ingrained in your worldview that demanding he stop treating women like lesser beings is–to you, at least fundamentally irrational and unfair demand. RMS had hundreds of other controversial opinions. Uttering them did not result in this. In fact, no single act of sexism got him here either. So suggesting that this is merely society punishing a misunderstood outsider on a whim is itself pretty uncalled for.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
atypicaluser 7y ago
So... sexism in and of itself ought to be a punishable offense?
- _jal 7y ago
  Oh, stop it. The GP clearly did not say that. If you need to scroll up and read it again, do so.
- KirinDave 7y ago
  Are we talking about RMS? If so, RMS wasn't "punished." Folks were tired of his bad leadership and demanded he leave, because he was consistently bad at his leadership job. You can decide this is punishment and it might feel that way to RMS, but I think we can all agree sexism is a bad trait to have in the most senior leadership position of an organization founded around principles of liberty in expression and action. RMS was bad for that cause, and he couldn't keep his position on pure tenure and prestige anymore.

yibg 7y ago

The world doesn’t need to be one of two extremes, either filtered everything or say whatever you want. Words have consequences, and while you are free to say whatever, others are free to react to it too. You don’t get a free pass for saying ridiculous things just because free speech | difficulties communicating | you’ve done great things or whatever. I don’t want a world where everything is filtered but I do want people to think about the impact of what they say before they say it.

X6S1x6Okd1st 7y ago

This isn't the first time, I'd bet plenty of people have tried to advise him and he ignored them. He's been speaking on these topics for long enough to have heard thousands of people consoling him to stop.

chris_wot 7y ago

Do you think he would have listened? Something tells me he would have spoken about it on principle, in that he believes in freedom of speech.

schwurb 7y ago

> That sounds awful, but apparently this is what the world wants: carefully filtered speech that doesn't stray far from what people already agree with. No, it is sufficient already to not blurt out controversial things at bat-shit-insanely-bad timings. Similar to how people would be mad at Einstein if he pulled a non-ironic "Yeah, but to be honest he wasn't THAT great" a friends funeral. I don't like mobs and I lament the fact that one such important figure in computing has such difficulties making himself understood. But that does not mean that the world has a problem somehow. It just happens to be a world that is not fine-tuned to Stallman-communication and that values reducing sexism higher than technical accuracy. Some people don't work that way, some people get therapy to allign themselves, some withdraw from society, some manage to get by. Stallman happened to fall on the friction side of things this time.

john_moscow 7y ago

In the present day and age you can only evaluate it with reason as long as you are anonymous. If you use your real name and give any comment that can be remotely construed as supporting sex offenders or racists, your political enemies will send the angry mob your way. Your counter-arguments won't be heard, you won't be given a chance to explain or defend yourself in a mutually respectful discussion, instead you political weight will be voided overnight and someone much more flexible in their beliefs will take your place.

tapesonthefloor 7y ago

>Stallman is now a witch Funny that you evoke misogyny at this point, given how RMS is primarily a godawful human being to women, the vast majority of which your comment is ignorant of, willfully or otherwise. This has been his godawful personality and behaviour at MIT for decades. It hasn't gone unreported. It hasn't gone unnoticed. But few appear to have ever acted on it appropriately, and the appropriate action here is removing him from any and all communities where he can do damage. It's occurring years too late, but at least it's occurring. It's sad that it took his association with a worldwide pedophilia/human trafficking ring to accomplish this, given his decades of ghastly abuse of peers/colleagues/students. Even more sad that after this association has been revealed, communities like this one are significantly in self-defense mode. If your response to this story is to get defensive, or to use keywords like "free speech," you have questions you need to ask yourself. Very serious questions. Questions that I guarantee your various communities want answers to before you engage with them further. https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/d59r46/richard_stallman_resigns_from_mit_over_epstein/f0kpd5w/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/d59r46/richard...

butterfi 7y ago

I totally agree, this could have all been avoided if someone pulled him aside and told him to sit on his hands. RMS is brilliant, but he does seem to be tone deaf. Now is not the time for old white men of privilege to be commenting on the sexuality of young women. (not that it ever was appropriate)

jjtheblunt 7y ago

The world wants fewer people justifying pedophiles.