3 ms·

My point is that I find it strange to give RMS rights he would not give others if he had the power to stop them from making those decisions.

ng12 7y ago
That is absolutely a false equivalency. I don't think you'll find any evidence that RMS believes people shouldn't be able to _discuss_ selling propriety software, or disagree with free software, or anything else.
- JaimeThompson 7y ago
  He thinks people should be punished for selling proprietary software correct? He also isn't sure than "voluntary pedophilia" is harmful / that people before puberty should be able to pick their sex partners despite not even being a teenager. Limiting this to being just a discussion on what can be "discussed" isn't valid. He appears to support actions that harm others by some of his statements.
  - ng12 7y ago
    > He thinks people should be punished for selling proprietary software correct? No? I'm not really sure what you mean by "punish" here. He advocates for Free Software -- to my knowledge he's never advocated for punishing anybody. > He appears to support actions that harm others by some of his statement. How? Where's the harm? What's harmful about questioning the age of consent being 18 (which, may I remind you, varies from 12-19 worldwide). Why are some aspects of US law declared beyond the scope of acceptable discourse? You can disagree with him (I certainly do) but I don't see why we should shame him for even broaching the subject.
    - DanBC 7y ago
      > Why are some aspects of US law declared beyond the scope of acceptable discourse? They're not, it's fine to talk about these things, and there are plenty of places where people discuss all aspects of law around sexual offending. The wrong time and place to talk about them is when your organisation is discussing potential problems because a high profile person linked to your organisation has been accused of raping a coerced child. People in that thread needed a useful way to deal with "MIT has links to Epstein, and Minsky is accused of raping a child". RMS's diversions into "is it rape?" and "is it assault?" were not helpful to that thread. Either RMS was oblivious to the distress and distraction his comments would cause, or he knew and didn't care. Neither is good.
      - ng12 7y ago
        > Either RMS was oblivious to the distress and distraction his comments would cause First, the conversation was internal, it was leaked to the public. Second, it's nothing new. He's been documenting his opinions for decades. Third, it was a relevant discussion because he was talking about the characterization of the events by the media. If you just have a bone to pick with RMS I'm not sure what there is left to discuss.
      - meruru 7y ago
        Wouldn't it better for MIT's reputation if people weren't jumping to the conclusion that one of their professors would willingly rape people? Did anyone actually believe Marvin Minsky of all people would do that? I wonder what he will have to say about this when he gets unfrozen.
    - JaimeThompson 7y ago
      "I'm all in favour of the principle that it's good to reward people who do things that contribute to society and it's good to punish people, one way or another, if they do things that harm society. This means that people who develop Free Software that's useful deserve a reward, and people who develop proprietary software that's attractive deserve a punishment." That is from this interview https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/transcripts/rms-fs-2006-03-09.en.html https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/transcripts/rms-fs-2006-03-09.... We aren't talking about the age of consent. RMS explicitly said children before they hit puberty / sexual maturity which is a bit different than a 17 year old to most people.

ng12 7y ago

That is absolutely a false equivalency. I don't think you'll find any evidence that RMS believes people shouldn't be able to _discuss_ selling propriety software, or disagree with free software, or anything else.

JaimeThompson 7y ago
He thinks people should be punished for selling proprietary software correct? He also isn't sure than "voluntary pedophilia" is harmful / that people before puberty should be able to pick their sex partners despite not even being a teenager. Limiting this to being just a discussion on what can be "discussed" isn't valid. He appears to support actions that harm others by some of his statements.
- ng12 7y ago
  > He thinks people should be punished for selling proprietary software correct? No? I'm not really sure what you mean by "punish" here. He advocates for Free Software -- to my knowledge he's never advocated for punishing anybody. > He appears to support actions that harm others by some of his statement. How? Where's the harm? What's harmful about questioning the age of consent being 18 (which, may I remind you, varies from 12-19 worldwide). Why are some aspects of US law declared beyond the scope of acceptable discourse? You can disagree with him (I certainly do) but I don't see why we should shame him for even broaching the subject.
  - DanBC 7y ago
    > Why are some aspects of US law declared beyond the scope of acceptable discourse? They're not, it's fine to talk about these things, and there are plenty of places where people discuss all aspects of law around sexual offending. The wrong time and place to talk about them is when your organisation is discussing potential problems because a high profile person linked to your organisation has been accused of raping a coerced child. People in that thread needed a useful way to deal with "MIT has links to Epstein, and Minsky is accused of raping a child". RMS's diversions into "is it rape?" and "is it assault?" were not helpful to that thread. Either RMS was oblivious to the distress and distraction his comments would cause, or he knew and didn't care. Neither is good.
    - ng12 7y ago
      > Either RMS was oblivious to the distress and distraction his comments would cause First, the conversation was internal, it was leaked to the public. Second, it's nothing new. He's been documenting his opinions for decades. Third, it was a relevant discussion because he was talking about the characterization of the events by the media. If you just have a bone to pick with RMS I'm not sure what there is left to discuss.
    - meruru 7y ago
      Wouldn't it better for MIT's reputation if people weren't jumping to the conclusion that one of their professors would willingly rape people? Did anyone actually believe Marvin Minsky of all people would do that? I wonder what he will have to say about this when he gets unfrozen.
  - JaimeThompson 7y ago
    "I'm all in favour of the principle that it's good to reward people who do things that contribute to society and it's good to punish people, one way or another, if they do things that harm society. This means that people who develop Free Software that's useful deserve a reward, and people who develop proprietary software that's attractive deserve a punishment." That is from this interview https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/transcripts/rms-fs-2006-03-09.en.html https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/transcripts/rms-fs-2006-03-09.... We aren't talking about the age of consent. RMS explicitly said children before they hit puberty / sexual maturity which is a bit different than a 17 year old to most people.