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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 org

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.

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.