6 ms·

Citation needed. What do you mean by "extreme liberal viewpoints"? The only thing I've witnessed is that the Guix maintainers took a clear stand in support of

Citation needed. What do you mean by "extreme liberal viewpoints"? The only thing I've witnessed is that the Guix maintainers took a clear stand in support of holding RMS accountable when that was ongoing a year back. As it stands, my guess would be that it's rather that you feel inhibited in expressing your own hateful ideology?

gypsyharlot 6y ago
No, it wasn't Guix maintainers. It was one guy saying "A bunch of us have had enough", "we've just about had it" and basically pretending that the community was against RMS. And there wasn't anything hateful about what RMS said, neither was he expressing pro-pedo sentiments, which was implied by Wingo. I am upset that someone tried to ruin RMS' character with false rumors. Expressing my own "hateful ideology" is a little far fetched, given that I don't approve of trying to tarnish RMS' reputation for something he didn't do, and I don't see what's hateful about that. How would you like it if an important figure in the community falsely accused you of being a pedophile? This childish hateful propaganda doesn't belong on a programming language message board. Read "Jean Louis" response to the gross accusations against RMS if you haven't.
- Fice 6y ago
  Wingo: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2019-10/msg00005.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2019-10/msg00... Jean Louis: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2019-10/msg00015.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2019-10/msg00...
  - wwright 6y ago
    That response seems to mostly consist of name calling and the assertion that GNU Guile and "politics" are completely unrelated topics that should never be mixed. He alludes to a Reddit comment which seems to have been deleted. At best, that seems to boil down to an argument over whether an organization can thrive while being agnostic about child sex trafficking. (That may sound sensationalist, but I mean… that's his entire argument against the allegations as presented.)
    - gypsyharlot 6y ago
      Oh my. One of our maintainers wrote the following on his personal blog: "It sounds horrible: "UN peacekeepers accused of child rape in South Sudan." But the article makes it pretty clear that the "children" involved were not children. They were teenagers. What about "rape"? Was this really rape? Or did they have sex willingly, and prudes want to call it "rape" to make it sound like an injustice? We can't tell from the article which one it is. Rape means coercing someone to have sex. Precisely because that is a grave and clear wrong, using the same name for something much less grave is a distortion." He's clearly a pedophile! How could the project be agnostic about something like this? Clearly he both endorses and encourages rape of children! (Even though there were no children involved in the story in the first place)
      - nerdponx 6y ago
        This was Stallman's argument as well. It is also part of why he was canceled. In the USA and many other places we, society generally holds that, below a certain age, people are still mentally "children" and unable to evaluate certain life decisions. Therefore, if someone above that age convinces someone below that age to enter into an act that the younger party is not able to understand, then the younger party was effectively coerced, even if from their perspective the activity was consensual. There are a few activities that fall into this category: purchasing drugs and alcohol, driving motor vehicles, enlisting in the military, and sex. So yes, having "consensual" sex with a minor is rightly considered coercion and therefore rape, unless you disagree with the line of reasoning stated above. Yes, it's not violent like some rape, but it is still definitionally rape. And it absolutely can and does have negative effects on the victim, see here (https://psychology.stackexchange.com/a/21989 https://psychology.stackexchange.com/a/21989) for a pretty thorough dive into the subject and a huge pile of academic sources. And that's not all. In at least one instance, Stallman specifically hypothesized that the girls who Minsky had a sexual encounter with on Epstein's island "presented themselves as entirely willing". We don't know what exactly happened between Minksy and Virginia Giuffre, and it is indeed likely that Epstein's sex slaves were instructed to present themselves as willing. But with his poor word choice and prior history of publicly not understanding the concept of statutory rape, it was a bad look for him, and all it took was one Vice journalist taking him out of context to bring the shitstorm down on his head.
- kstrauser 6y ago
  Let me state up front that I'm an RMS fanboy. I love the guy and think he's dead-on prophetic about 95% of the time. That said, RMS seems to demonstrate a poor understanding of how his messages will be received. Time after time, he's said things that are perfectly reasonable and defensible when you actually think them through, but on the surface sound awful and turn people away. A big component of communication is tailoring your message so that it will be heard, and I just don't think he's very good at that. In political terms, he's great at speaking to his base but not so hot at converting non-believers. Let me invent a purely fictional example of something he did not say. Suppose you open an article with "Hitler wasn't completely bad." That's defensible! By all accounts he loved his pets, and it seems like he was nice to his officers' kids. But really, that doesn't matter: that opening sentence has lost an enormous part of the audience, even if the rest of the article built a case that would make sense to people who read the whole thing. Most ordinary people would see that and say "that's crap and I have no desire to hear what else this person has to say", and that's perfectly understandable because most authors who open that way are going to end up saying something absolutely despicable. Well, when RMS wants to say things implying that maybe pedophilia isn't always bad and perhaps it gets a bad rap because some parents aren't OK with their kids growing up, he needs to be exceedingly careful how he phrases every word of it because he's commenting on an extremely charged subject. And yet, he doesn't. It doesn't matter whether you have a good point to raise if your wording makes most people shut down and reject your idea immediately. Again, I dig RMS. He's an incredibly smart guy who has some brilliant ideas. But wow, I sure wouldn't want him defending me in front of a jury. I don't think he's a pedophile, but I absolutely see how easy he made it for some people to claim that.
  - Fice 6y ago
    RMS probably has an autism spectrum disorder.
    - kstrauser 6y ago
      That seems very likely to me, and would explain this seeming blind spot in his otherwise brilliant career.
- nsajko 6y ago
  > No, it wasn't Guix maintainers. It was one guy ... I'm sympathetic towards Stallman because he was subject to a witch hunt and thrown under a bus without a good reason (or at least a good and publicly known reason), but I'm pretty sure you're wrong. Four people from Guix (among other GNU hackers) signed this "Joint statement on the GNU Project": https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-project/ https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-pr... Also, the tensions precede 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18275156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18275156
- davexunit 6y ago
  For those that read the above comment, I believe by "Jean Paul" they mean "Jean Louis", who spammed Guix, Guile, and other GNU mailing lists for weeks with lengthy, rambling essays saying essentially the same thing over and over. They maintain a web page smearing one of the Guix maintainers. Among other details on this page that I can only describe as a screed, are a collection of cherry picked comments from sources like 4chan that agree with their point of view. Unsurprisingly, these comments include slurs (homophobic, ableist, and more) and other offensive language. So take that into consideration when deciding who is spreading hateful propaganda.
- throwaway098712 6y ago
  Thanks for reminding me. Giving anything Wingo et al is involved with a wide, wide berth.
pensiveharsh 6y ago
Well Andy Wingo and others ganged up on RMS. I think it was very unfair.

gypsyharlot 6y ago

No, it wasn't Guix maintainers. It was one guy saying "A bunch of us have had enough", "we've just about had it" and basically pretending that the community was against RMS. And there wasn't anything hateful about what RMS said, neither was he expressing pro-pedo sentiments, which was implied by Wingo. I am upset that someone tried to ruin RMS' character with false rumors. Expressing my own "hateful ideology" is a little far fetched, given that I don't approve of trying to tarnish RMS' reputation for something he didn't do, and I don't see what's hateful about that. How would you like it if an important figure in the community falsely accused you of being a pedophile? This childish hateful propaganda doesn't belong on a programming language message board. Read "Jean Louis" response to the gross accusations against RMS if you haven't.

Fice 6y ago
Wingo: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2019-10/msg00005.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2019-10/msg00... Jean Louis: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2019-10/msg00015.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2019-10/msg00...
- wwright 6y ago
  That response seems to mostly consist of name calling and the assertion that GNU Guile and "politics" are completely unrelated topics that should never be mixed. He alludes to a Reddit comment which seems to have been deleted. At best, that seems to boil down to an argument over whether an organization can thrive while being agnostic about child sex trafficking. (That may sound sensationalist, but I mean… that's his entire argument against the allegations as presented.)
  - gypsyharlot 6y ago
    Oh my. One of our maintainers wrote the following on his personal blog: "It sounds horrible: "UN peacekeepers accused of child rape in South Sudan." But the article makes it pretty clear that the "children" involved were not children. They were teenagers. What about "rape"? Was this really rape? Or did they have sex willingly, and prudes want to call it "rape" to make it sound like an injustice? We can't tell from the article which one it is. Rape means coercing someone to have sex. Precisely because that is a grave and clear wrong, using the same name for something much less grave is a distortion." He's clearly a pedophile! How could the project be agnostic about something like this? Clearly he both endorses and encourages rape of children! (Even though there were no children involved in the story in the first place)
    - nerdponx 6y ago
      This was Stallman's argument as well. It is also part of why he was canceled. In the USA and many other places we, society generally holds that, below a certain age, people are still mentally "children" and unable to evaluate certain life decisions. Therefore, if someone above that age convinces someone below that age to enter into an act that the younger party is not able to understand, then the younger party was effectively coerced, even if from their perspective the activity was consensual. There are a few activities that fall into this category: purchasing drugs and alcohol, driving motor vehicles, enlisting in the military, and sex. So yes, having "consensual" sex with a minor is rightly considered coercion and therefore rape, unless you disagree with the line of reasoning stated above. Yes, it's not violent like some rape, but it is still definitionally rape. And it absolutely can and does have negative effects on the victim, see here (https://psychology.stackexchange.com/a/21989 https://psychology.stackexchange.com/a/21989) for a pretty thorough dive into the subject and a huge pile of academic sources. And that's not all. In at least one instance, Stallman specifically hypothesized that the girls who Minsky had a sexual encounter with on Epstein's island "presented themselves as entirely willing". We don't know what exactly happened between Minksy and Virginia Giuffre, and it is indeed likely that Epstein's sex slaves were instructed to present themselves as willing. But with his poor word choice and prior history of publicly not understanding the concept of statutory rape, it was a bad look for him, and all it took was one Vice journalist taking him out of context to bring the shitstorm down on his head.
kstrauser 6y ago
Let me state up front that I'm an RMS fanboy. I love the guy and think he's dead-on prophetic about 95% of the time. That said, RMS seems to demonstrate a poor understanding of how his messages will be received. Time after time, he's said things that are perfectly reasonable and defensible when you actually think them through, but on the surface sound awful and turn people away. A big component of communication is tailoring your message so that it will be heard, and I just don't think he's very good at that. In political terms, he's great at speaking to his base but not so hot at converting non-believers. Let me invent a purely fictional example of something he did not say. Suppose you open an article with "Hitler wasn't completely bad." That's defensible! By all accounts he loved his pets, and it seems like he was nice to his officers' kids. But really, that doesn't matter: that opening sentence has lost an enormous part of the audience, even if the rest of the article built a case that would make sense to people who read the whole thing. Most ordinary people would see that and say "that's crap and I have no desire to hear what else this person has to say", and that's perfectly understandable because most authors who open that way are going to end up saying something absolutely despicable. Well, when RMS wants to say things implying that maybe pedophilia isn't always bad and perhaps it gets a bad rap because some parents aren't OK with their kids growing up, he needs to be exceedingly careful how he phrases every word of it because he's commenting on an extremely charged subject. And yet, he doesn't. It doesn't matter whether you have a good point to raise if your wording makes most people shut down and reject your idea immediately. Again, I dig RMS. He's an incredibly smart guy who has some brilliant ideas. But wow, I sure wouldn't want him defending me in front of a jury. I don't think he's a pedophile, but I absolutely see how easy he made it for some people to claim that.
- Fice 6y ago
  RMS probably has an autism spectrum disorder.
  - kstrauser 6y ago
    That seems very likely to me, and would explain this seeming blind spot in his otherwise brilliant career.
nsajko 6y ago
> No, it wasn't Guix maintainers. It was one guy ... I'm sympathetic towards Stallman because he was subject to a witch hunt and thrown under a bus without a good reason (or at least a good and publicly known reason), but I'm pretty sure you're wrong. Four people from Guix (among other GNU hackers) signed this "Joint statement on the GNU Project": https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-project/ https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-pr... Also, the tensions precede 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18275156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18275156
davexunit 6y ago
For those that read the above comment, I believe by "Jean Paul" they mean "Jean Louis", who spammed Guix, Guile, and other GNU mailing lists for weeks with lengthy, rambling essays saying essentially the same thing over and over. They maintain a web page smearing one of the Guix maintainers. Among other details on this page that I can only describe as a screed, are a collection of cherry picked comments from sources like 4chan that agree with their point of view. Unsurprisingly, these comments include slurs (homophobic, ableist, and more) and other offensive language. So take that into consideration when deciding who is spreading hateful propaganda.
throwaway098712 6y ago
Thanks for reminding me. Giving anything Wingo et al is involved with a wide, wide berth.

pensiveharsh 6y ago

Well Andy Wingo and others ganged up on RMS. I think it was very unfair.