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Do you believe he has alienated more women from FOSS than he has inspired people to contribute to it? Considering the frankly extremely low percentage of female

by 4bpp 7y ago

Do you believe he has alienated more women from FOSS than he has inspired people to contribute to it? Considering the frankly extremely low percentage of female contributors, it seems that he would have had to personally (considering that all of the creepy behaviours listed seem to be limited to his meatspace circles) alienate multiple women for every one woman who did wind up working on in free software, which seems unrealistic simply on the basis that most people in FOSS never met Stallman. (On the same basis, I would actually be inclined to believe that he has probably inspired more women specifically than he has alienated, too.) Note also that all of the anecdotes of actual bad behaviour that seem to come up are from about two decades ago, and we seem to be supposed to conclude that the pattern never stopped on the basis of that and a pathologically misquoted and misrepresented email he sent on the Epstein/Minsky case. Considering that the real email is at most slightly tone-deaf, the most likely model of reality to me seems to be that he has fixed that behaviour well over a decade ago, but a number of activists had resolved to never let it go until they found some way to completely destroy any status and reputation he has.

mav3rick 7y ago
You are okay forgiving people as long as their "net impact" is positive? Is it okay for someone to murder a person if they saved more than one life before ?
- knolax 7y ago
  That's not a good analogy because murder are both one time actions. Punishing a murderer who saved before doesn't prevent more people from being saved. A more apt example would be granting clemency to a highly talented surgeon specialized in an operation nobody else can do.
- 4bpp 7y ago
  In general, yes. Murder is a very peculiar case that is hardly suitable to be the benchmark for building our intuitions about trading off harm in general: human lives are not fungible, murder is not reversible, the victims do not generally get a meaningful way of influencing how the murder impacts them etc., all properties that do not apply in the case of being put off a pursuit like FOSS. (Even then, we're sometimes okay accepting murder to save more lives: e.g. the Allies' actions in WWII are considered a heroic even with nearly a century of historical distance) Arguably, the progressive argument for {affirmative action, inverted burden of proof in Title IX, ...} also amounts to "accept some harm if the net impact is positive"; few people claim that these policies will not result in some people being rejected from positions they deserve or punished for crimes they did not commit. Some countries are more explicit about this and actually constitutionally single out matters of life and death as being prohibited from being traded off against each other (e.g. Germany), i.e. the state is not allowed to play in trolley problems. The corollary is that the state, and most everyone, finds it okay to trade off other harms: you can for instance choose to build an airport that will drive down the value of some people's homes and expose them to considerable noise in order to give convenience and good business to a large number of people. I think discouraging some women from participating in FOSS is much closer in quality of harm to "your home is now worth half as much and you have to put up with the noise of planes flying overhead everyday" than "you die a painful and untimely death".
  - mav3rick 7y ago
    Wow I've seen everything on HN to protect RMS. The Allies action was to counter gratuitous aggression and persecution of large swathes of people. Are you telling me RMS has had the same experiences in his life to warrant his egregious behavior ?
    - 4bpp 7y ago
      I don't think my leap from murder to war was greater than your leap from some gauche remarks during a talk in the '90s and a handful of emails lawyering about word choice that might have put some people off working in the speaker's discipline to murder. Other than that, what exactly is your point? At no point did I imply that rms's life history should be compared to the Allied intervention in Europe; I merely brought it up as as an example that proves there is no such thing as a universally accepted rule against trading off murders and people saved. ("Wow, I've seen everything on HN to attack RMS. (...)")
      - mav3rick 7y ago
        If any other person did this, especially someone from FAANG etc. you'll be out with your pitchforks. The double standard is so real.
        DarkWiiPlayer 7y ago
        Let's accuse strangers of double standards based on our assumption of how they'd act. That seems like a constructive way to have a discussion!
        GoblinSlayer 7y ago
        I do want FAANG to threaten me that they will kill themselves if I don't go on a date with them.
  - mav3rick 7y ago
    Also notice how it is almost always okay for "women" to be discouraged and counted as collateral damage. The fact that you do that tells me a lot.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- donatj 7y ago
  Yes? lol. Why does everything always come to the Trolley Problem? I think anyone who was ever in favor of any war would agree that sometimes a death is justified when it saves many more?
  - JamisonM 7y ago
    It is not the Trolley Problem, you seem to misunderstand the issue. There is no binary choice here, it is not comparable.
    - 4bpp 7y ago
      There is one: (1) let Stallman keep his position and inspire/encourage one set of people, while discouraging/putting off another; (2) remove Stallman from his position, foregoing both the inspiration/encouragement and the discouragement/putting off.
    - donatj 7y ago
      > Is it okay for someone to murder a person if they saved more than one life before ? That is a yes or no question. That is literally a binary choice. Yes or no - is murder OK if that murder saves more than one person. That is literally the Trolley Problem.
      - bitofhope 7y ago
        That wasn't really the question, though. There was nothing there about saving lives _by_ murdering someone. It's more like "is it ok do do bad things if you've built up good karma beforehand by doing more good stuff".
        DarkWiiPlayer 7y ago
        Nope. That's a strawman right there. The question is, is it acceptable to tolerate someones bad deeds because the benefits of doing so is greater than the harm.
      - JamisonM 7y ago
- pjmlp 7y ago
  That is what armies happen to do all the time.
  - flatb 7y ago
    Can you explain, in general, how armies and war are ethically relevant to Richard Stallman threatening coworkers to kill himself if they don't go on dates with him, or asking them to lay down topless on a mattress in his office?
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      I was answering to "Is it okay for someone to murder a person if they saved more than one life before ?". Armies don't have much issue with that ethical question.
- lostjohnny 7y ago
  > Is it okay for someone to murder a person if they saved more than one life before ? Murder is a crime. Where is the crime here? It is ok to let go a "fuck you" if that persons did good before.
  - flatb 7y ago
    > Where is the crime here? The analogy is between a good thing not cancelling out a bad thing. The police are not involved. There isn't a crime. He has been pressured for making people very uncomfortable in pursuit of his sexual interests, which is a perfectly good reason to reprieve someone. He has been accused, by several independent parties, of, among other things: -Asking female coworkers to lay down topless on a mattress in his office. -Threatening a colleague to kill himself if he/she didn't go on a date with him. -Posting up signs in his workplace along the lines of "Knight for Justice (Also: Hot Ladies)".
    - lostjohnny 7y ago
      > He has been accused, by several independent parties, of, among other things: Who, exactly? > -Asking female coworkers to lay down topless on a mattress in his office. > -Threatening a colleague to kill himself if he/she didn't go on a date with him. Sooooo, your entire analysis is based on legends circulating since the 90s about a weird man who was even told to be scared by plants? For reference, Thomas Lord, creator of GNU arch (think about Git before Git), who worked for FSF for a long time said One remarkable thing about the FSF at that time, when we worked out of dinky spare offices on the campus of MIT, was the degree of participation by women. In the tiny society that was then the FSF, women were more prominent than I had seen in Silicon Valley, or acadamia prior. p.s.: In the closet-sized "office" Bushnell, McGrath, and I shared for a time we did have some spider plants as part of a running silly joke. They did not actually scare RMS away **OF COURSE** and he usually had helpful criticism and advice of our efforts, from my point of view. > -Posting up signs in his workplace along the lines of "Knight for Justice (Also: Hot Ladies)". Can you tell an inside joke when you see one? p.s. all of us have being young and done some innocent stupid shit, the kinds young people do, like having stupid signs on the door. It doesn't make any of us a criminal.
ariabuckles 7y ago
That's an interesting way of framing it—I expect that no, he hasn't directly dissuaded more people than he's encouraged. But I expect that the second- and third-degree network effects have. MIT has had a huge influence on open source software. Keeping the number of women who contribute to FOSS lower has a snowball effect of discouraging other women from contributing—there are fewer leaders to look up to, and day-to-day misogyny in FOSS spaces goes unchecked more often. As another commenter pointed out, I also don't think net impact is the bar. But besides that, it's very hard to measure, so I prefer to focus on having positive impacts and limiting/fixing negative impacts. I think the things he said on the CSAIL mailing list continue to contribute to a negative environment for women at MIT.
- 4bpp 7y ago
  > But I expect that the second- and third-degree network effects have. MIT has had a huge influence on open source software. Keeping the number of women who contribute to FOSS lower has a snowball effect of discouraging other women from contributing—there are fewer leaders to look up to, and day-to-day misogyny in FOSS spaces goes unchecked more often. Surely second- and third-degree network effects occur on the encouragement side of the equation, too. Why would we expect any putative discouragement of women by Stallman to travel further in the social graph than his encouragement of both men and women? > I think the things he said on the CSAIL mailing list continue to contribute to a negative environment for women at MIT. Which things specifically, and in what way?
  - ariabuckles 7y ago
    I think the negative effects spread further because they skew the field more. I think women are more likely to avoid FOSS because there are few women, even without knowing who RMS is, than men are likely to go into FOSS because of RMS or someone who was inspired by RMS. That's an assumption on my part, but I think making tech more equitable for all people is a worthy goal in itself, even if that doesn't increase the total number of contributors. > Which things specifically, and in what way? Saying that we shouldn't call sexual assault "sexual assault", and implying that there's any way a rich, famous, 73-year-old man can "have sex with" (rape) a 17-year-old girl, whom he has extraordinary power over, and who, in in this case was his friend's trafficking victim. The idea that Minsky's "honour" is in any way more important than harm in what happened to Giuffre perpetuates rape culture. It perpetuates the idea that women are worth less than men, and that it's okay for famous men in CS to rape girls. That emboldens other rapists and makes CS very unwelcoming for rape victims. Minsky should have known. Implying there's any way what he did was okay creates an unwelcoming environment for women, especially young women and girls at MIT. (Background and links from https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec210794 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21... )
dspillett 7y ago
> Do you believe he has alienated more women from FOSS than he has inspired people to contribute to it? Almost certainly not, but at this stage it is not unlikely that he'll put off more than he'll encourage going forward. So by the same "net effect" argument you make for accepting his behaviour up to a point in the recent past, he should go. Live by the sword, get asked to resign because of the sword. > Considering the frankly extremely low percentage of female contributors That low number of female contributors is at least in part due to the impression people have of working in these areas. Allowing him to continue to alienate people works against efforts to rectify that impression (and where it is true rather than just an impression, work to fix the behaviours that are causing the problem). > all of the anecdotes of actual bad behaviour that seem to come up are from about two decades ago Perhaps most, but not all. I've definitely seen some more recent claims, and they were mentioned before this particular episode. They weren't as egregious as the earlier behaviour so he was at least controlling/curbing/changing the creepy behaviour for which I suppose there should be some credit, and there is definitely some curious timing wrt MIT and the Epstein contributions so there is presumably a bit of "throw him under the bus as a distraction" going on, meaning this is a case with significant grey areas, but I think painting him as an entirely innocent victim is a step too far. Let's be fair handed: if we wouldn't accept it from a politician or other celebrity, we shouldn't accept it from someone whose other ideas we agree with either.
TulliusCicero 7y ago
> Do you believe he has alienated more women from FOSS than he has inspired people to contribute to it? If I save a hundred lives as a doctor and then murder one person, does the calculus go in my favor?
- ralfd 7y ago
  > If I save a hundred lives as a doctor and then murder one person, does the calculus go in my favor? It can be. A sharpshooter killing a terrorist and saving 100 lives would be lauded as a hero.
  - shagie 7y ago
    Except now he’s being investigated for kicking a handcuffed prisoner over a cliff.
  - flatb 7y ago
    Do you mean to say that your analogy is relevant to the claims against RMS being partly or completely dismissed as a "necessary evil" comparable to shooting a person who's on a killing spree, when weighted against his contributions? I'm just asking. I got that feeling reading your comment. I get that feeling reading a lot of comments here. I could be wrong. As a reminder, he has been accused, by several independent parties, of, among other things: -Asking female coworkers to lay down topless on a mattress in his office. -Threatening a colleague to kill himself if he/she didn't go on a date with him. -Posting up signs in his workplace along the lines of "Knight for Justice (Also: Hot Ladies)".
  - TulliusCicero 7y ago
    Don't be obtuse, I said murder, not kill. Of course there are some justified instances of killing. Again, if you save a bunch of lives, but then murder someone in cold blood, does the fact that you saved way more than you murdered mean that society ought to look past the murder? After all, your net contribution is very positive!
- GoblinSlayer 7y ago
  Mortality from smallpox vaccine was small, but not zero.

by 4bpp 7y ago

mav3rick 7y ago

You are okay forgiving people as long as their "net impact" is positive? Is it okay for someone to murder a person if they saved more than one life before ?

knolax 7y ago
That's not a good analogy because murder are both one time actions. Punishing a murderer who saved before doesn't prevent more people from being saved. A more apt example would be granting clemency to a highly talented surgeon specialized in an operation nobody else can do.
4bpp 7y ago
In general, yes. Murder is a very peculiar case that is hardly suitable to be the benchmark for building our intuitions about trading off harm in general: human lives are not fungible, murder is not reversible, the victims do not generally get a meaningful way of influencing how the murder impacts them etc., all properties that do not apply in the case of being put off a pursuit like FOSS. (Even then, we're sometimes okay accepting murder to save more lives: e.g. the Allies' actions in WWII are considered a heroic even with nearly a century of historical distance) Arguably, the progressive argument for {affirmative action, inverted burden of proof in Title IX, ...} also amounts to "accept some harm if the net impact is positive"; few people claim that these policies will not result in some people being rejected from positions they deserve or punished for crimes they did not commit. Some countries are more explicit about this and actually constitutionally single out matters of life and death as being prohibited from being traded off against each other (e.g. Germany), i.e. the state is not allowed to play in trolley problems. The corollary is that the state, and most everyone, finds it okay to trade off other harms: you can for instance choose to build an airport that will drive down the value of some people's homes and expose them to considerable noise in order to give convenience and good business to a large number of people. I think discouraging some women from participating in FOSS is much closer in quality of harm to "your home is now worth half as much and you have to put up with the noise of planes flying overhead everyday" than "you die a painful and untimely death".
- mav3rick 7y ago
  Wow I've seen everything on HN to protect RMS. The Allies action was to counter gratuitous aggression and persecution of large swathes of people. Are you telling me RMS has had the same experiences in his life to warrant his egregious behavior ?
  - 4bpp 7y ago
    I don't think my leap from murder to war was greater than your leap from some gauche remarks during a talk in the '90s and a handful of emails lawyering about word choice that might have put some people off working in the speaker's discipline to murder. Other than that, what exactly is your point? At no point did I imply that rms's life history should be compared to the Allied intervention in Europe; I merely brought it up as as an example that proves there is no such thing as a universally accepted rule against trading off murders and people saved. ("Wow, I've seen everything on HN to attack RMS. (...)")
    - mav3rick 7y ago
      If any other person did this, especially someone from FAANG etc. you'll be out with your pitchforks. The double standard is so real.
      - DarkWiiPlayer 7y ago
        Let's accuse strangers of double standards based on our assumption of how they'd act. That seems like a constructive way to have a discussion!
      - GoblinSlayer 7y ago
        I do want FAANG to threaten me that they will kill themselves if I don't go on a date with them.
- mav3rick 7y ago
  Also notice how it is almost always okay for "women" to be discouraged and counted as collateral damage. The fact that you do that tells me a lot.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
donatj 7y ago
Yes? lol. Why does everything always come to the Trolley Problem? I think anyone who was ever in favor of any war would agree that sometimes a death is justified when it saves many more?
- JamisonM 7y ago
  It is not the Trolley Problem, you seem to misunderstand the issue. There is no binary choice here, it is not comparable.
  - 4bpp 7y ago
    There is one: (1) let Stallman keep his position and inspire/encourage one set of people, while discouraging/putting off another; (2) remove Stallman from his position, foregoing both the inspiration/encouragement and the discouragement/putting off.
  - donatj 7y ago
    > Is it okay for someone to murder a person if they saved more than one life before ? That is a yes or no question. That is literally a binary choice. Yes or no - is murder OK if that murder saves more than one person. That is literally the Trolley Problem.
    - bitofhope 7y ago
      That wasn't really the question, though. There was nothing there about saving lives _by_ murdering someone. It's more like "is it ok do do bad things if you've built up good karma beforehand by doing more good stuff".
      - DarkWiiPlayer 7y ago
        Nope. That's a strawman right there. The question is, is it acceptable to tolerate someones bad deeds because the benefits of doing so is greater than the harm.
    - JamisonM 7y ago
pjmlp 7y ago
That is what armies happen to do all the time.
- flatb 7y ago
  Can you explain, in general, how armies and war are ethically relevant to Richard Stallman threatening coworkers to kill himself if they don't go on dates with him, or asking them to lay down topless on a mattress in his office?
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    I was answering to "Is it okay for someone to murder a person if they saved more than one life before ?". Armies don't have much issue with that ethical question.
lostjohnny 7y ago
> Is it okay for someone to murder a person if they saved more than one life before ? Murder is a crime. Where is the crime here? It is ok to let go a "fuck you" if that persons did good before.
- flatb 7y ago
  > Where is the crime here? The analogy is between a good thing not cancelling out a bad thing. The police are not involved. There isn't a crime. He has been pressured for making people very uncomfortable in pursuit of his sexual interests, which is a perfectly good reason to reprieve someone. He has been accused, by several independent parties, of, among other things: -Asking female coworkers to lay down topless on a mattress in his office. -Threatening a colleague to kill himself if he/she didn't go on a date with him. -Posting up signs in his workplace along the lines of "Knight for Justice (Also: Hot Ladies)".
  - lostjohnny 7y ago
    > He has been accused, by several independent parties, of, among other things: Who, exactly? > -Asking female coworkers to lay down topless on a mattress in his office. > -Threatening a colleague to kill himself if he/she didn't go on a date with him. Sooooo, your entire analysis is based on legends circulating since the 90s about a weird man who was even told to be scared by plants? For reference, Thomas Lord, creator of GNU arch (think about Git before Git), who worked for FSF for a long time said One remarkable thing about the FSF at that time, when we worked out of dinky spare offices on the campus of MIT, was the degree of participation by women. In the tiny society that was then the FSF, women were more prominent than I had seen in Silicon Valley, or acadamia prior. p.s.: In the closet-sized "office" Bushnell, McGrath, and I shared for a time we did have some spider plants as part of a running silly joke. They did not actually scare RMS away **OF COURSE** and he usually had helpful criticism and advice of our efforts, from my point of view. > -Posting up signs in his workplace along the lines of "Knight for Justice (Also: Hot Ladies)". Can you tell an inside joke when you see one? p.s. all of us have being young and done some innocent stupid shit, the kinds young people do, like having stupid signs on the door. It doesn't make any of us a criminal.

ariabuckles 7y ago

That's an interesting way of framing it—I expect that no, he hasn't directly dissuaded more people than he's encouraged. But I expect that the second- and third-degree network effects have. MIT has had a huge influence on open source software. Keeping the number of women who contribute to FOSS lower has a snowball effect of discouraging other women from contributing—there are fewer leaders to look up to, and day-to-day misogyny in FOSS spaces goes unchecked more often. As another commenter pointed out, I also don't think net impact is the bar. But besides that, it's very hard to measure, so I prefer to focus on having positive impacts and limiting/fixing negative impacts. I think the things he said on the CSAIL mailing list continue to contribute to a negative environment for women at MIT.

4bpp 7y ago
> But I expect that the second- and third-degree network effects have. MIT has had a huge influence on open source software. Keeping the number of women who contribute to FOSS lower has a snowball effect of discouraging other women from contributing—there are fewer leaders to look up to, and day-to-day misogyny in FOSS spaces goes unchecked more often. Surely second- and third-degree network effects occur on the encouragement side of the equation, too. Why would we expect any putative discouragement of women by Stallman to travel further in the social graph than his encouragement of both men and women? > I think the things he said on the CSAIL mailing list continue to contribute to a negative environment for women at MIT. Which things specifically, and in what way?
- ariabuckles 7y ago
  I think the negative effects spread further because they skew the field more. I think women are more likely to avoid FOSS because there are few women, even without knowing who RMS is, than men are likely to go into FOSS because of RMS or someone who was inspired by RMS. That's an assumption on my part, but I think making tech more equitable for all people is a worthy goal in itself, even if that doesn't increase the total number of contributors. > Which things specifically, and in what way? Saying that we shouldn't call sexual assault "sexual assault", and implying that there's any way a rich, famous, 73-year-old man can "have sex with" (rape) a 17-year-old girl, whom he has extraordinary power over, and who, in in this case was his friend's trafficking victim. The idea that Minsky's "honour" is in any way more important than harm in what happened to Giuffre perpetuates rape culture. It perpetuates the idea that women are worth less than men, and that it's okay for famous men in CS to rape girls. That emboldens other rapists and makes CS very unwelcoming for rape victims. Minsky should have known. Implying there's any way what he did was okay creates an unwelcoming environment for women, especially young women and girls at MIT. (Background and links from https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec210794 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21... )

dspillett 7y ago

> Do you believe he has alienated more women from FOSS than he has inspired people to contribute to it? Almost certainly not, but at this stage it is not unlikely that he'll put off more than he'll encourage going forward. So by the same "net effect" argument you make for accepting his behaviour up to a point in the recent past, he should go. Live by the sword, get asked to resign because of the sword. > Considering the frankly extremely low percentage of female contributors That low number of female contributors is at least in part due to the impression people have of working in these areas. Allowing him to continue to alienate people works against efforts to rectify that impression (and where it is true rather than just an impression, work to fix the behaviours that are causing the problem). > all of the anecdotes of actual bad behaviour that seem to come up are from about two decades ago Perhaps most, but not all. I've definitely seen some more recent claims, and they were mentioned before this particular episode. They weren't as egregious as the earlier behaviour so he was at least controlling/curbing/changing the creepy behaviour for which I suppose there should be some credit, and there is definitely some curious timing wrt MIT and the Epstein contributions so there is presumably a bit of "throw him under the bus as a distraction" going on, meaning this is a case with significant grey areas, but I think painting him as an entirely innocent victim is a step too far. Let's be fair handed: if we wouldn't accept it from a politician or other celebrity, we shouldn't accept it from someone whose other ideas we agree with either.

TulliusCicero 7y ago

> Do you believe he has alienated more women from FOSS than he has inspired people to contribute to it? If I save a hundred lives as a doctor and then murder one person, does the calculus go in my favor?

ralfd 7y ago
> If I save a hundred lives as a doctor and then murder one person, does the calculus go in my favor? It can be. A sharpshooter killing a terrorist and saving 100 lives would be lauded as a hero.
- shagie 7y ago
  Except now he’s being investigated for kicking a handcuffed prisoner over a cliff.
- flatb 7y ago
  Do you mean to say that your analogy is relevant to the claims against RMS being partly or completely dismissed as a "necessary evil" comparable to shooting a person who's on a killing spree, when weighted against his contributions? I'm just asking. I got that feeling reading your comment. I get that feeling reading a lot of comments here. I could be wrong. As a reminder, he has been accused, by several independent parties, of, among other things: -Asking female coworkers to lay down topless on a mattress in his office. -Threatening a colleague to kill himself if he/she didn't go on a date with him. -Posting up signs in his workplace along the lines of "Knight for Justice (Also: Hot Ladies)".
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  Don't be obtuse, I said murder, not kill. Of course there are some justified instances of killing. Again, if you save a bunch of lives, but then murder someone in cold blood, does the fact that you saved way more than you murdered mean that society ought to look past the murder? After all, your net contribution is very positive!
GoblinSlayer 7y ago
Mortality from smallpox vaccine was small, but not zero.