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> let's move on and talk about effective leadership for the movement instead. Let's move on and welcome Stallman back, because we need him more than those that

> let's move on and talk about effective leadership for the movement instead. Let's move on and welcome Stallman back, because we need him more than those that slandered him. Let's also talk about what should change so it won't happen again, to anybody else. Not everyone is a gentle giant like Stallman is. Do you remember what happened to poor Aaron Swarz when he was falsely accused and prosecuted for things he hadn't done? I, speaking for myself, don't want an FSF were people can get thrown out by an internet mob. I want an FSF that defends its members and judge facts, not opinions. I think Stallman is one of those persons, but I very much welcome other candidates.

KronisLV 6y ago
This does seem like a slightly emotionally charged response, but overall i agree with you. Stallman said things that would get most people "cancelled" nowadays, while his intent might have been to debate the language used, how it was dishonest and how jumping to conclusions might be a disingenuous way to go about things. His words, from another post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26535974 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26535974 The announcement of the Friday event does an injustice to Marvin Minsky: “deceased AI ‘pioneer’ Marvin Minsky (who is accused of assaulting one of Epstein’s victims [2])” The injustice is in the word “assaulting”. The term “sexual assault” is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation: taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y, which is much worse than X... The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing... We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates… It seems like an appalling situation, because one can understand why he came across in a way that would make people proceed to label him as someone who's advocating for what Minsky did, or claiming that it's okay. Whereas i get the feeling that RMS might not be entirely neurotypical, which the rest of the linked article seems to hint at - him picking arguments about the seemingly most mundane of things and not really having much of a "filter".
- africanboy 6y ago
  It's funny that we are both being downvoted by the same people that think they could do better than Stallman, but are usually younger (sometimes much younger) than the FSF itself. I was merely 10 years old when it was started, so basically FSF is as old as the self conscious me, did only good, never betrayed their ideals, never harmed anyone, but Stallman seems to deserve hatred and disrespect only because he exists and don't care about other people opinions enough to be scared by them or by their mob behaviour. In the past 35 years the best I could do is convincing less than a hundred people in total to switch to using Linux as their default Operating System at work (of course 99% of them still use proprietary systems at home), Stallman started a visionary movement that changed the way we look at software to its very foundation. I don't think he gets the credit he deserves for what he did. Meanwhile you can see people jumping on the BC, NFT, Apple and other bandwagons, praising them, describing them as "the future" despite the pervasive damage to society and environment they are (allegedly or not) producing, only because they own something of that brand. If only Stallman thought of creating a fashion brand to scam people... how silly of him!

KronisLV 6y ago

This does seem like a slightly emotionally charged response, but overall i agree with you. Stallman said things that would get most people "cancelled" nowadays, while his intent might have been to debate the language used, how it was dishonest and how jumping to conclusions might be a disingenuous way to go about things. His words, from another post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26535974 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26535974 The announcement of the Friday event does an injustice to Marvin Minsky: “deceased AI ‘pioneer’ Marvin Minsky (who is accused of assaulting one of Epstein’s victims [2])” The injustice is in the word “assaulting”. The term “sexual assault” is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation: taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y, which is much worse than X... The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing... We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates… It seems like an appalling situation, because one can understand why he came across in a way that would make people proceed to label him as someone who's advocating for what Minsky did, or claiming that it's okay. Whereas i get the feeling that RMS might not be entirely neurotypical, which the rest of the linked article seems to hint at - him picking arguments about the seemingly most mundane of things and not really having much of a "filter".

africanboy 6y ago
It's funny that we are both being downvoted by the same people that think they could do better than Stallman, but are usually younger (sometimes much younger) than the FSF itself. I was merely 10 years old when it was started, so basically FSF is as old as the self conscious me, did only good, never betrayed their ideals, never harmed anyone, but Stallman seems to deserve hatred and disrespect only because he exists and don't care about other people opinions enough to be scared by them or by their mob behaviour. In the past 35 years the best I could do is convincing less than a hundred people in total to switch to using Linux as their default Operating System at work (of course 99% of them still use proprietary systems at home), Stallman started a visionary movement that changed the way we look at software to its very foundation. I don't think he gets the credit he deserves for what he did. Meanwhile you can see people jumping on the BC, NFT, Apple and other bandwagons, praising them, describing them as "the future" despite the pervasive damage to society and environment they are (allegedly or not) producing, only because they own something of that brand. If only Stallman thought of creating a fashion brand to scam people... how silly of him!