3 ms·

The FSF looks even more like a sect if you do mental gymnastics like that for your former guru. RMS publicly defended child rape. Someone like that should not

The FSF looks even more like a sect if you do mental gymnastics like that for your former guru. RMS publicly defended child rape. Someone like that should not get to define what freedom means. RMS has all the right not to get attacked about his awkward behavior, but he has to feel the consequences on his ideological thought.

echelon 6y ago
> should not get to define what freedom means. This little bit right here sounds fascist. I'm not going to defend RMS' words or actions (I don't even know what the entire case against him is, and the more extreme this gets the less I want to pry into his personal life). I do think people are losing their minds to assassinate the guy. RMS has given us our entire industry and careers. Without free software, you wouldn't have a job. I wouldn't either. Take a moment and let the gravity of that sink in. (take a moment) He apologized and spent several years away from the organization he founded. Why does it have to be the rest of his natural life? We're murdering him and taking his baby. Why do people nowadays believe in permanent assassination of character? Unending punishment? People have redemption arcs. The stupid movies, books, and tv shows that everyone in this thread watches have forgiveness and grace in them. Why do we deny them to our fellow humans? I'm an atheist, but Jesus preached against this kind of thing, and I think we could learn from some of his teachings. Throwing stones and forgiveness. ========================================================= I got cut off by the Hacker News negative karma filter for the downvotes I got, but I typed out a comment I was pretty happy with. (It was to this comment [2]) I'll include it here instead: > There ought to be a place for RMS in our discourse. Just not this one. I'm trying to think of the limit of humanity here, when we're all living in the metaverse and aren't tied to physical bodies anymore. Complete freedom, and the ability to disassociate ourselves from our corporeal bodies. Assume new identities at will. In the future, you'd ban the "RMS account" for misbehavior, but he'd be free to join again under a new one, free from the judgments and baggage of the old account. He'd just lack all of the accolades and gear he'd built up. What you're doing now is calling for RMS permadeath in meatspace. He can't restart. It's game over. Since there is no ability to restart IRL lives, why don't we have forgiveness as a feature? The US penal system has a notion of when punishments have been meted out. He's stepped down for several years. Was it not long enough of a punishment? Are we saying that some people may never forgive RMS? And that we're restricting his access indefinitely to satisfy the people who hold grudges eternally? What sort of bug in humanity is that? Maybe certain people think we should stop letting people out of jail. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26708215 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26708215
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > He apologized and spent several years away from the organization he founded. September 2019 — March 2021 isn’t “several years”. Many of the othern elements of your description are similarly creative interpretations of the facts.
  - echelon 6y ago
    Oh come on! That's the substantive part of my comment you're going to criticize? That's 16 to 18 months, not far from 24. This is such a nitpick. Why don't you address the rest of my comment?
aortega 6y ago
>he has to feel the consequences on his ideological thought. Well, dispatch the ideological police then.
anonymousiam 6y ago
To be clear, I am not defending what RMS said, but "defending child rape" is oversimplifying and over exaggerating his position. His remark related to the age of consent being different in different places (states/countries).
- legulere 6y ago
  Please read his email again and think about if what you said is really true. It’s quoted in this article: https://thenextweb.com/dd/2019/09/13/free-software-icon-richard-stallman-has-some-moronic-thoughts-about-pedophilia/ https://thenextweb.com/dd/2019/09/13/free-software-icon-rich...
  - anonymousiam 6y ago
    https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/richard-stallman https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/richard-stallman... After one person wrote that "Giuffre was 17 at the time; this makes it rape in the Virgin Islands," Stallman responded, "I think it is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17." Minsky (and Minsky's wife) disputed the claims that he had sex with Giuffre. Stallman was not supporting child rape, he was objectively looking at how a local government can criminalize behavior that is not illegal in many other jurisdictions. To be clear, Stallman was not supporting Epstein, and I am not supporting any of them, but Perens' point about Stallman being shunned because he was insensitive is spot on.
    - legulere 6y ago
      You cannot take one sentence by Stallman and ignore all the rest, Stallman has a year long history of trivializing child rape. This is not about one sentence discussing the age of consent (which in my opinion has little place in a discussion about a child rape and trafficking ring, but that’s debatable)
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > To be clear, I am not defending what RMS said, but "defending child rape" is oversimplifying and over exaggerating his position. He explicitly supported a political campaign that aimed to immediately reduce the age of consent to 12 and ultimately eliminate it, on the basis that sex acts that were “consensual pedophilia” was not only not an oxymoron, but also something that wasn’t harmful. (He also raised questions about rhe factual guilt of someone accused of nonconsensually sexually exploiting an Epstein-trafficked young woman, but that wasn’t where he defended child rape.)

echelon 6y ago

> should not get to define what freedom means. This little bit right here sounds fascist. I'm not going to defend RMS' words or actions (I don't even know what the entire case against him is, and the more extreme this gets the less I want to pry into his personal life). I do think people are losing their minds to assassinate the guy. RMS has given us our entire industry and careers. Without free software, you wouldn't have a job. I wouldn't either. Take a moment and let the gravity of that sink in. (take a moment) He apologized and spent several years away from the organization he founded. Why does it have to be the rest of his natural life? We're murdering him and taking his baby. Why do people nowadays believe in permanent assassination of character? Unending punishment? People have redemption arcs. The stupid movies, books, and tv shows that everyone in this thread watches have forgiveness and grace in them. Why do we deny them to our fellow humans? I'm an atheist, but Jesus preached against this kind of thing, and I think we could learn from some of his teachings. Throwing stones and forgiveness. ========================================================= I got cut off by the Hacker News negative karma filter for the downvotes I got, but I typed out a comment I was pretty happy with. (It was to this comment [2]) I'll include it here instead: > There ought to be a place for RMS in our discourse. Just not this one. I'm trying to think of the limit of humanity here, when we're all living in the metaverse and aren't tied to physical bodies anymore. Complete freedom, and the ability to disassociate ourselves from our corporeal bodies. Assume new identities at will. In the future, you'd ban the "RMS account" for misbehavior, but he'd be free to join again under a new one, free from the judgments and baggage of the old account. He'd just lack all of the accolades and gear he'd built up. What you're doing now is calling for RMS permadeath in meatspace. He can't restart. It's game over. Since there is no ability to restart IRL lives, why don't we have forgiveness as a feature? The US penal system has a notion of when punishments have been meted out. He's stepped down for several years. Was it not long enough of a punishment? Are we saying that some people may never forgive RMS? And that we're restricting his access indefinitely to satisfy the people who hold grudges eternally? What sort of bug in humanity is that? Maybe certain people think we should stop letting people out of jail. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26708215 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26708215

dragonwriter 6y ago
> He apologized and spent several years away from the organization he founded. September 2019 — March 2021 isn’t “several years”. Many of the othern elements of your description are similarly creative interpretations of the facts.
- echelon 6y ago
  Oh come on! That's the substantive part of my comment you're going to criticize? That's 16 to 18 months, not far from 24. This is such a nitpick. Why don't you address the rest of my comment?

aortega 6y ago

>he has to feel the consequences on his ideological thought. Well, dispatch the ideological police then.

anonymousiam 6y ago

To be clear, I am not defending what RMS said, but "defending child rape" is oversimplifying and over exaggerating his position. His remark related to the age of consent being different in different places (states/countries).

legulere 6y ago
Please read his email again and think about if what you said is really true. It’s quoted in this article: https://thenextweb.com/dd/2019/09/13/free-software-icon-richard-stallman-has-some-moronic-thoughts-about-pedophilia/ https://thenextweb.com/dd/2019/09/13/free-software-icon-rich...
- anonymousiam 6y ago
  https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/richard-stallman https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/richard-stallman... After one person wrote that "Giuffre was 17 at the time; this makes it rape in the Virgin Islands," Stallman responded, "I think it is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17." Minsky (and Minsky's wife) disputed the claims that he had sex with Giuffre. Stallman was not supporting child rape, he was objectively looking at how a local government can criminalize behavior that is not illegal in many other jurisdictions. To be clear, Stallman was not supporting Epstein, and I am not supporting any of them, but Perens' point about Stallman being shunned because he was insensitive is spot on.
  - legulere 6y ago
    You cannot take one sentence by Stallman and ignore all the rest, Stallman has a year long history of trivializing child rape. This is not about one sentence discussing the age of consent (which in my opinion has little place in a discussion about a child rape and trafficking ring, but that’s debatable)
dragonwriter 6y ago
> To be clear, I am not defending what RMS said, but "defending child rape" is oversimplifying and over exaggerating his position. He explicitly supported a political campaign that aimed to immediately reduce the age of consent to 12 and ultimately eliminate it, on the basis that sex acts that were “consensual pedophilia” was not only not an oxymoron, but also something that wasn’t harmful. (He also raised questions about rhe factual guilt of someone accused of nonconsensually sexually exploiting an Epstein-trafficked young woman, but that wasn’t where he defended child rape.)