9 ms·

The media's hit piece on Richard Stallman

62 points by thinkingemote 7y ago

nkjoep 7y ago
Confirmed also from FSF: https://twitter.com/fsf/status/1173780935910797312 https://twitter.com/fsf/status/1173780935910797312
chasing 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
- Dork1234 7y ago
  Did they really provoke RMS into saying anything? Seems like he put his own foot into his mouth?
cududa 7y ago
If you can’t see the problem with making such arguments, you don’t belong in a leadership position, period.
- devoply 7y ago
  Leadership does not mean stay woke or we'll cancel you. Stallman should not have stepped down.
  - namesbc 7y ago
    How about don't defend child rape or we'll remove you from any position of power over another human?
    - prongletown 7y ago
      People have been harping on "staying woke" and "cancel culture" as a way of criticizing changing values about sexual abuse and positions of power. When you dig into every case where you see this, there's almost always reasonable context.
    - craigsmansion 7y ago
      How about not alleging dead people are violent child rapists without any evidence, and then, when being called out on your false allegations, create a media storm of manufactured outrage to punish the person who called you out on them?
    - viklove 7y ago
      I don't think anyone is defending child rape, but rather questioning what even constitutes "child rape." There's obviously a difference between a 7 year old and a 17 year old, and using one term (child) to describe both cases seems strange.
      - VikingCoder 7y ago
        Really? You don't think anyone is defending sex with minors? "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." https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%202006%20(Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party) https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20...
  - prongletown 7y ago
    This is not an issue of "staying woke". Arguing that statutory rape is "absurd" is not "staying woke". Stallman said some things that were deeply troubling to a lot of people, myself included. That aside... His judgement in making these statements, in a public way, was extremely poor. As a representative of FSF and MIT, he stepped far out of the boundary of what's considered reasonable. Leadership means knowing how to lead, and that includes not demoralizing your organization with controversy. He didn't step down. He was fired with the option of keeping his dignity.
    - devoply 7y ago
      It's in fact morally absurd to have it be statutory rape in one jurisdiction and not in another, depending on age. That's a fact, if you don't like it you can kindly go bury you head in the woke sand.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - VikingCoder 7y ago
        It's "morally absurd" for different jurisdictions to self-govern? Or for them to disagree with each other? What universal age do you think everyone in all jurisdictions should be forced to accept, and how do you intend to enforce your moral superiority on them?
        devoply 7y ago
        Taken logically some jurisdictions have legislation and legislators that allows for and perhaps it could be argued support rape according to other jurisdictions. Given this is the case how does such a rape supporting jurisdiction have any legal authority whatsoever to for instance compel another jurisdiction to turn over people guilty of other crimes say murder? And vice versa, according to the rape supporting jurisdiction how can one which supports imprisoning innocent people for things which are not criminal have any legal relationship to the other?
- taylodl 7y ago
  Is someone who follows the herd or is afraid to state an unpopular opinion on a contentious topic your idea of a leader? I don't think so, in fact I think they're the exact opposite. This world needs people who are willing to go to the mat for their contentious ideas, regardless of how misguided they may appear to be so long as there's evidence of reasoning. Otherwise how do we progress? A lot of today's mainstream thought was once contentious, even illegal. I really don't understand this attitude at all.
  - Analemma_ 7y ago
    Like it or not, "political capital" is a real thing. It can be spent and depleted, leaving you no more to use on the things you care about. The leader of an organization advocating for a particular cause (free software, in this case) should not go wasting political capital on rants about how "there's no evidence pedophilia harms children". Even if you completely ignore the problematic morality of such statements (which, to be clear, you absolutely should not do), they obviously undermined the mission of the FSF and Stallman should leave on that basis alone.
    - taylodl 7y ago
      Lost in this discussion is RMS was defending Marvin Minsky, not Jeffrey Epstein. That was unequivocally clear in RMS' public statements. Why step into the fray and defend Marvin Minsky? For starters Minsky is dead and as such is unable to defend himself. Is it still not considered poor form to attack dead people? Especially prominent, accomplished dead persons such as Marvin Minsky? Who also happens to have been a lifelong friend and mentor of RMS, someone whom RMS looked up to? The way I see it RMS was correct to spend his political capital defending his late friend Marvin Minsky. If only everybody had a friend like that.
      - eesmith 7y ago
        I never lost that in the discussion. We speak ill of dead people all the time. We've been speaking ill of the dead for a long time. "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones." Adam Lanza was the Sandy Hook murderer. He can't speak for himself. Is that not an attack on his moral character? Omitting the bad things someone did, to only look at the good, whitewashes history. RMS was absolutely correct to spend as much political capital as he wants to defend Minsky. In this case though, that political capital was also being used to keep his position at MIT and at the FSF. Once spent, he no longer had the support.
VikingCoder 7y ago
> Stallman’s second argument, points out the inconsistencies regarding the age of consent, as the victim was 17, many countries and states within the U.S. have an age of consent ranging from 16 to 18. Stallman is merely pointing out how the same act can be legal or illegal in a span of a few miles. "is merely pointing out"? No. That is completely inaccurate. He's saying it is "morally absurd" to have such a law: > 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.
- gruez 7y ago
  >He's saying it is "morally absurd" to have such a law: >> 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. That's not the impression I got when reading that quote. I don't think when he says "define rape", he was talking about the legal point of view.
  - VikingCoder 7y ago
    Really? "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." https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%202006%20(Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party) https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20...
    - gruez 7y ago
      >Really? Is the alternate interpretation not plausible? After all, there's a reason why in such cases it's called "statutory rape" rather than just "rape". >https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20.. https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20.... Again, not sure how that supports your original comment. He says he's skeptical whether it's harmful. It's reasonable interpret that as him disapproving of such laws, on the basis that there isn't enough evidence. However, I'm not sure how that supports the claim he thinks such laws are "morally absurd".
sp332 7y ago
This specific point was discussed to death in several threads yesterday. And why does the title call out "the media" instead of VICE? Or even just Edward Ongweso Jr.? It's trying to frame this as two sides in a fight where one side is lying. It dismisses the decades of Stallman's abuse of his positions at FSF and MIT which are the real reason he should have been removed.
- yuy910616 7y ago
  `the decades of Stallman's abuse of his positions at FSF and MIT which are the real reason he should have been removed` Yep. this
- scohesc 7y ago
  Because it's the absolute laziness of other media companies that see articles posted on other journalism sites and blindly copy-paste it instead of doing their own investigation. It ends up most of the time causing witchhunts and it turns out we're making mountains out of mole hills.
  - 2_listerine_pls 7y ago
    Just saw a TechCrunch article with a title saying Richard was defending Epstein. edit: what's up with the downvotes
    - amanzi 7y ago
      Exactly - this why 'media' is being called out here.
  - DanBC 7y ago
    > it turns out we're making mountains out of mole hills. Except we're not, are we? We're talking about RMS's firmly held, often repeated, views on child sexual abuse. He keeps saying that it's not that harmful; that images are fine; that coercion isn't force. This latest episode, where he interjects his "well actually" to say that assault is the wrong word (because he mistakenly thinks assault requires use of force) is yet another example where he could have said nothing, or he could have done a little bit of research before speaking. Instead chose to deliver his weird definition of assault in a thread to defend the actions of Minsky.
ajross 7y ago
I'm as much a RMS booster as you'll find, but he dug his own grave here. At a point in history when we're finally realizing that the kind of deeply sexist culture among our elites (i.e. one where male billionaire sex peddlers drive opinions among exclusively male elites by trading their harem of more-or-less-plausibly-consenting-maybe nubile girls) is toxic, Stallman walked right in with a "well, you know, this wasn't technically sexual assault". I mean, he's not wrong. But he's missing the point, ethically. And given that his whole schtick is an ethical position... I dunno. It's time to step aside. Free Software can find better evangelists.
- zzzcpan 7y ago
  You are missing the point here. It was a targeted attack on Stallman through mass media, social media.
  - YuriGrinshteyn 7y ago
    It was targeted at the man who did and said a lot of bad things...
  - sp332 7y ago
    He's being "attacked" by FSF board members and employees, other free software foundations, and FLOSS advocates.
    - gruez 7y ago
      >He's being "attacked" by FSF board members and employees, other free software foundations, and FLOSS advocates. Source on this? The only articles/blogs I've seen on this are from Vice, Selam G. (MIT alumni, unclear what her other affiliations are), and the Gnome foundation.
      - sp332 7y ago
        Former board member https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html & https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1172293871109320704 https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1172293871109320704 Founder of FSF's GPL Compliance Labs https://twitter.com/NovalisDMT/status/1172573166956437505 https://twitter.com/NovalisDMT/status/1172573166956437505 Former FSF staff https://twitter.com/georgialyle/status/1173788445732462593 https://twitter.com/georgialyle/status/1173788445732462593 FSF member since 2004 https://twitter.com/downey/status/1172328679889756162 https://twitter.com/downey/status/1172328679889756162 Other members https://twitter.com/dustyweb/status/1173690170090168320 https://twitter.com/dustyweb/status/1173690170090168320 & https://twitter.com/j00bar/status/1172309099410669568 https://twitter.com/j00bar/status/1172309099410669568 Free Software Conservancy https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/sep/16/rms-does-not-speak-for-us/ https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/sep/16/rms-does-not-spea... Senior staff technologist at EFF https://twitter.com/cooperq/status/1173789555993956352 https://twitter.com/cooperq/status/1173789555993956352 Forbes writer and "FOSS advocate" https://twitter.com/killyourfm/status/1173014344973598722 https://twitter.com/killyourfm/status/1173014344973598722 Director of community for DIAL Community (part of the Open Source Center at the UN Foundation) https://twitter.com/cooperq/status/1173789555993956352 https://twitter.com/cooperq/status/1173789555993956352 Tech author https://twitter.com/mwlauthor/status/1173690259277848576 https://twitter.com/mwlauthor/status/1173690259277848576 [Not sure how to describe Sarah Jeong briefly] https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/561785170538553344 https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/561785170538553344
AstralStorm 7y ago
I wonder, why Stallman just won't sue Vice for the hatchet job they did? Defamation suits are a thing, and it would be a high profile one. He has access to some very good lawyers and can allege both lots of income and reputation, with damages.
- faissaloo 7y ago
  Is there some kind of nonfree software he needs to use in order to sue someone? If not I'd assume he's already in the process of doing it
overlordofdata 7y ago
Just because the law is different somewhere else doesn't mean the law here is invalid. Stallman lives in the US, and should be help to US standards. People use the 'legal in europe' reasoning to justify many things. My parents used it to give me alcohol as a child. Did that make it right? No, it didn't. Should europe change? That's up to them. We are all still evolving. Some do it at a different pace.

62 points by thinkingemote 7y ago

Confirmed also from FSF: https://twitter.com/fsf/status/1173780935910797312 https://twitter.com/fsf/status/1173780935910797312

chasing 7y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

Dork1234 7y ago
Did they really provoke RMS into saying anything? Seems like he put his own foot into his mouth?

cududa 7y ago

If you can’t see the problem with making such arguments, you don’t belong in a leadership position, period.

devoply 7y ago
Leadership does not mean stay woke or we'll cancel you. Stallman should not have stepped down.
- namesbc 7y ago
  How about don't defend child rape or we'll remove you from any position of power over another human?
  - prongletown 7y ago
    People have been harping on "staying woke" and "cancel culture" as a way of criticizing changing values about sexual abuse and positions of power. When you dig into every case where you see this, there's almost always reasonable context.
  - craigsmansion 7y ago
    How about not alleging dead people are violent child rapists without any evidence, and then, when being called out on your false allegations, create a media storm of manufactured outrage to punish the person who called you out on them?
  - viklove 7y ago
    I don't think anyone is defending child rape, but rather questioning what even constitutes "child rape." There's obviously a difference between a 7 year old and a 17 year old, and using one term (child) to describe both cases seems strange.
    - VikingCoder 7y ago
      Really? You don't think anyone is defending sex with minors? "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." https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%202006%20(Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party) https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20...
- prongletown 7y ago
  This is not an issue of "staying woke". Arguing that statutory rape is "absurd" is not "staying woke". Stallman said some things that were deeply troubling to a lot of people, myself included. That aside... His judgement in making these statements, in a public way, was extremely poor. As a representative of FSF and MIT, he stepped far out of the boundary of what's considered reasonable. Leadership means knowing how to lead, and that includes not demoralizing your organization with controversy. He didn't step down. He was fired with the option of keeping his dignity.
  - devoply 7y ago
    It's in fact morally absurd to have it be statutory rape in one jurisdiction and not in another, depending on age. That's a fact, if you don't like it you can kindly go bury you head in the woke sand.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - VikingCoder 7y ago
      It's "morally absurd" for different jurisdictions to self-govern? Or for them to disagree with each other? What universal age do you think everyone in all jurisdictions should be forced to accept, and how do you intend to enforce your moral superiority on them?
      - devoply 7y ago
        Taken logically some jurisdictions have legislation and legislators that allows for and perhaps it could be argued support rape according to other jurisdictions. Given this is the case how does such a rape supporting jurisdiction have any legal authority whatsoever to for instance compel another jurisdiction to turn over people guilty of other crimes say murder? And vice versa, according to the rape supporting jurisdiction how can one which supports imprisoning innocent people for things which are not criminal have any legal relationship to the other?
taylodl 7y ago
Is someone who follows the herd or is afraid to state an unpopular opinion on a contentious topic your idea of a leader? I don't think so, in fact I think they're the exact opposite. This world needs people who are willing to go to the mat for their contentious ideas, regardless of how misguided they may appear to be so long as there's evidence of reasoning. Otherwise how do we progress? A lot of today's mainstream thought was once contentious, even illegal. I really don't understand this attitude at all.
- Analemma_ 7y ago
  Like it or not, "political capital" is a real thing. It can be spent and depleted, leaving you no more to use on the things you care about. The leader of an organization advocating for a particular cause (free software, in this case) should not go wasting political capital on rants about how "there's no evidence pedophilia harms children". Even if you completely ignore the problematic morality of such statements (which, to be clear, you absolutely should not do), they obviously undermined the mission of the FSF and Stallman should leave on that basis alone.
  - taylodl 7y ago
    Lost in this discussion is RMS was defending Marvin Minsky, not Jeffrey Epstein. That was unequivocally clear in RMS' public statements. Why step into the fray and defend Marvin Minsky? For starters Minsky is dead and as such is unable to defend himself. Is it still not considered poor form to attack dead people? Especially prominent, accomplished dead persons such as Marvin Minsky? Who also happens to have been a lifelong friend and mentor of RMS, someone whom RMS looked up to? The way I see it RMS was correct to spend his political capital defending his late friend Marvin Minsky. If only everybody had a friend like that.
    - eesmith 7y ago
      I never lost that in the discussion. We speak ill of dead people all the time. We've been speaking ill of the dead for a long time. "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones." Adam Lanza was the Sandy Hook murderer. He can't speak for himself. Is that not an attack on his moral character? Omitting the bad things someone did, to only look at the good, whitewashes history. RMS was absolutely correct to spend as much political capital as he wants to defend Minsky. In this case though, that political capital was also being used to keep his position at MIT and at the FSF. Once spent, he no longer had the support.

VikingCoder 7y ago

> Stallman’s second argument, points out the inconsistencies regarding the age of consent, as the victim was 17, many countries and states within the U.S. have an age of consent ranging from 16 to 18. Stallman is merely pointing out how the same act can be legal or illegal in a span of a few miles. "is merely pointing out"? No. That is completely inaccurate. He's saying it is "morally absurd" to have such a law: > 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.

gruez 7y ago
>He's saying it is "morally absurd" to have such a law: >> 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. That's not the impression I got when reading that quote. I don't think when he says "define rape", he was talking about the legal point of view.
- VikingCoder 7y ago
  Really? "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." https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%202006%20(Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party) https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20...
  - gruez 7y ago
    >Really? Is the alternate interpretation not plausible? After all, there's a reason why in such cases it's called "statutory rape" rather than just "rape". >https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20.. https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20.... Again, not sure how that supports your original comment. He says he's skeptical whether it's harmful. It's reasonable interpret that as him disapproving of such laws, on the basis that there isn't enough evidence. However, I'm not sure how that supports the claim he thinks such laws are "morally absurd".

sp332 7y ago

This specific point was discussed to death in several threads yesterday. And why does the title call out "the media" instead of VICE? Or even just Edward Ongweso Jr.? It's trying to frame this as two sides in a fight where one side is lying. It dismisses the decades of Stallman's abuse of his positions at FSF and MIT which are the real reason he should have been removed.

yuy910616 7y ago
`the decades of Stallman's abuse of his positions at FSF and MIT which are the real reason he should have been removed` Yep. this
scohesc 7y ago
Because it's the absolute laziness of other media companies that see articles posted on other journalism sites and blindly copy-paste it instead of doing their own investigation. It ends up most of the time causing witchhunts and it turns out we're making mountains out of mole hills.
- 2_listerine_pls 7y ago
  Just saw a TechCrunch article with a title saying Richard was defending Epstein. edit: what's up with the downvotes
  - amanzi 7y ago
    Exactly - this why 'media' is being called out here.
- DanBC 7y ago
  > it turns out we're making mountains out of mole hills. Except we're not, are we? We're talking about RMS's firmly held, often repeated, views on child sexual abuse. He keeps saying that it's not that harmful; that images are fine; that coercion isn't force. This latest episode, where he interjects his "well actually" to say that assault is the wrong word (because he mistakenly thinks assault requires use of force) is yet another example where he could have said nothing, or he could have done a little bit of research before speaking. Instead chose to deliver his weird definition of assault in a thread to defend the actions of Minsky.

ajross 7y ago

I'm as much a RMS booster as you'll find, but he dug his own grave here. At a point in history when we're finally realizing that the kind of deeply sexist culture among our elites (i.e. one where male billionaire sex peddlers drive opinions among exclusively male elites by trading their harem of more-or-less-plausibly-consenting-maybe nubile girls) is toxic, Stallman walked right in with a "well, you know, this wasn't technically sexual assault". I mean, he's not wrong. But he's missing the point, ethically. And given that his whole schtick is an ethical position... I dunno. It's time to step aside. Free Software can find better evangelists.

zzzcpan 7y ago
You are missing the point here. It was a targeted attack on Stallman through mass media, social media.
- YuriGrinshteyn 7y ago
  It was targeted at the man who did and said a lot of bad things...
- sp332 7y ago
  He's being "attacked" by FSF board members and employees, other free software foundations, and FLOSS advocates.
  - gruez 7y ago
    >He's being "attacked" by FSF board members and employees, other free software foundations, and FLOSS advocates. Source on this? The only articles/blogs I've seen on this are from Vice, Selam G. (MIT alumni, unclear what her other affiliations are), and the Gnome foundation.
    - sp332 7y ago
      Former board member https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html & https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1172293871109320704 https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1172293871109320704 Founder of FSF's GPL Compliance Labs https://twitter.com/NovalisDMT/status/1172573166956437505 https://twitter.com/NovalisDMT/status/1172573166956437505 Former FSF staff https://twitter.com/georgialyle/status/1173788445732462593 https://twitter.com/georgialyle/status/1173788445732462593 FSF member since 2004 https://twitter.com/downey/status/1172328679889756162 https://twitter.com/downey/status/1172328679889756162 Other members https://twitter.com/dustyweb/status/1173690170090168320 https://twitter.com/dustyweb/status/1173690170090168320 & https://twitter.com/j00bar/status/1172309099410669568 https://twitter.com/j00bar/status/1172309099410669568 Free Software Conservancy https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/sep/16/rms-does-not-speak-for-us/ https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/sep/16/rms-does-not-spea... Senior staff technologist at EFF https://twitter.com/cooperq/status/1173789555993956352 https://twitter.com/cooperq/status/1173789555993956352 Forbes writer and "FOSS advocate" https://twitter.com/killyourfm/status/1173014344973598722 https://twitter.com/killyourfm/status/1173014344973598722 Director of community for DIAL Community (part of the Open Source Center at the UN Foundation) https://twitter.com/cooperq/status/1173789555993956352 https://twitter.com/cooperq/status/1173789555993956352 Tech author https://twitter.com/mwlauthor/status/1173690259277848576 https://twitter.com/mwlauthor/status/1173690259277848576 [Not sure how to describe Sarah Jeong briefly] https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/561785170538553344 https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/561785170538553344

AstralStorm 7y ago

I wonder, why Stallman just won't sue Vice for the hatchet job they did? Defamation suits are a thing, and it would be a high profile one. He has access to some very good lawyers and can allege both lots of income and reputation, with damages.

faissaloo 7y ago
Is there some kind of nonfree software he needs to use in order to sue someone? If not I'd assume he's already in the process of doing it

overlordofdata 7y ago

Just because the law is different somewhere else doesn't mean the law here is invalid. Stallman lives in the US, and should be help to US standards. People use the 'legal in europe' reasoning to justify many things. My parents used it to give me alcohol as a child. Did that make it right? No, it didn't. Should europe change? That's up to them. We are all still evolving. Some do it at a different pace.