13 ms·

The Minsky defense was not the primary, most important reason RMS can't serve as an effective, inclusive leader for free software, it was just the one that got

by Osmose 6y ago

The Minsky defense was not the primary, most important reason RMS can't serve as an effective, inclusive leader for free software, it was just the one that got the most attention. This does nothing to address the numerous complaints of harassment towards MIT students, the _other_ times he spoke out in implicit support of pedophilia, the public gaffes that are unacceptable as a public representative (e.g. the foot skin eating thing), and the fact that the FSF under Stallman kinda lost to open source anyway and hasn't really done anything besides virtue signal to others about how pure and ethical they are.

DiggyJohnson 6y ago
Sure, but does any of that keep you from empathizing with the content of this letter?
- imwillofficial 6y ago
  Yes
- Osmose 6y ago
  Yeah, it does. In context, this letter, especially given it's posted to the FSF site and not, say, his personal website, is meant to justify electing him to the board and address the backlash against it, and I don't really have much patience for a letter addressing only one of the many complaints people have against allowing him a leadership role. It's dismissive of them.
  - solosoyokaze 6y ago
    He even continues to defend Minsky in this letter. It's not even an apology, it's just more of the same.
    - Ancapistani 6y ago
      > He even continues to defend Minsky in this letter. Honest question - is there a way in which someone could not immediately condemn Minsky without defending him?
      - solosoyokaze 6y ago
        Say nothing. That's what a competent leader would do. No one wanted RMS's take on Minsky (or pedophilia in general, which he also offered up).
    - concordDance 6y ago
      I'm very unclear on what general priciple you think RMS is violating with the Minsky comments. Is it that you should never defend someone accused of Bad Thing if you are a public figure ij channels that may be related to your work?
      - solosoyokaze 6y ago
        > Is it that you should never defend someone accused of Bad Thing if you are a public figure ij channels that may be related to your work? That's a part of it (aside from general moral disgust). How does RMS defending an Epstein client help FOSS? It does not, and it detracts enormously.
- ncr100 6y ago
  Empathizing, no - through 4+ years of Donald Trump I am able to empathize quite well with abusers justifying their actions. I can imagine the sort of mental universe, of checks and balances, of personal expectations, which RMS's mind clearly does. The letter informs me more clearly of his aloofness and care-free attitude towards solving this dear problem. I'll tell you what it does keep me from, accepting him as a leader. The letter is evidence that the abuse will continue, amplified by the visibility and power of a leadership position. > "I've learned something from this about how to be kind to people who have been hurt." Implying that he will continue to hurt people. Of course all of us will ... however his kind of Hurt is the issue. He takes no responsibility for doing the hurting. He provides no reason to this behavior stopping here and now, in this letter. He admits to having difficulty with social interaction, and yet he provides no remedy, no, "Here is how I will fix this going forward." E.g. to solve this, he could use words which have first been edited by an assistant: he could only continue to talk publicly / talk with those whom he "leads" (which is a lot of people given his high-level role) through a filter. This is just an example, however it is unrealistic. It's his job as an adult to lay out a plan to remedy this. Linus had a turnaround moment, and wrote a convincing letter. Compare the two. His remedy seems to suggest that he might manage to grow his empathetic skills, while retaining his boss-level. That is irresponsible, IMO. This whole issue carries an insulting undertone, as the FSF Board deemed RMS worthy of being leader, when the (former!) supporters disagreed with that value-statement, given his insufficient skills.
NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
He has been treated unfairly many times and that is, completely independent of whether he's the best choice as leader for the FSF, wrong. You do it here: "the _other_times he spoke out in implicit support of pedophilia...". He wants to have a discussion about what makes sex between people of varying ages wrong. He applies normative principles to it and can't see why it's wrong (e.g., age of consent varies...why would what is okay in one place be abominable 100 meters away?). I'm sure professional philosophers have written on this at length, and without being punished for going down the exact same road he has. But more importantly he doesn't understand very well that the mere mention of this line of inquiry is borderline reputation suicide because of [blue-team elite coastal] public mores idiosyncratic to 2020 rich western countries. I'm also not sure why "inclusive" is a good criterion for FSF leader, it seems like just a hollow shibboleth buzzword at this point. People who harp on "inclusion" are usually the most interested in exclusion.
- solosoyokaze 6y ago
  > He wants to have a discussion about what makes sex between people of varying ages wrong. That alone makes him unfit to lead anything (among the many other things he's done). I do not want to hear his opinion on this subject.
  - NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
    No, it doesn't make him unfit. It makes him curious and open-minded. How are we as a society supposed to come to conclusions about ethical issues without examining them? If we adopted your stance, nothing would ever change. Conservatives like you would have had the exact same stance on homosexuality 100 years ago: "Zomg no, it's so terrible we won't even consider talking about it except to condemn, and we'll punish people who do try to have an honest conversation". I say this as a person who also is a conservative with respect to statutory rape laws.
    - solosoyokaze 6y ago
      Are you comparing the rape of a minor to homosexuality? I would not work with someone who conversed like this in a professional setting. I'm not alone. It's wildly inappropriate at the very least. It's not his field and he's personally involved with the accused.
MrRadar 6y ago
Not to mention how badly he mismanaged the paid staff of the FSF which prompted them to unionize: https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1377079987950395393 https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1377079987950395393 I think, if anything, this is the strongest argument for why he should not be in a leadership position at the FSF.
- NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
  "Did not treat employees well" is a great reason for someone to not be a boss, but unfortunately that's not why he's demonized.
- javagram 6y ago
  This appears to be about events that are at least 15 years old, if not older? Does sound like a pretty terrible manager. An unpaid volunteer position on the board doesn’t really seem like the position where these problems would happen again. And they weren’t the reason he got in hot water - that was all related to a media firestorm over Minsky/Epstein.
  - bigbillheck 6y ago
    > This appears to be about events that are at least 15 years old, if not older? What would you consider an appropriate statute of limitations here?
    - javagram 6y ago
      Statute of limitations is a concept of criminal law, since none of the described actions are criminal it wouldn’t apply directly. I do find it questionable to dig up decades old actions that were apparently dealt with at the time by appropriately unionizing and fixing the situation, and say that means a person should never have even a volunteer job again.
- atomicnumber3 6y ago
  RE: that twitter thread. Wow. That's absurdly bad. Especially given that I suspect any software person there could easily go get a much higher paying corporate job without much trouble. I feel like a problem that plagues software worse than other industries is that BigTechCo can pay multiple times more than what I'll call "greater good" kinds of places like: * government * education, especially in high school * software freedom / open source / communal / etc types of places The one that I mourn the most is high school computer teachers. How many startups were started by people with only a year or so of college? How important is high school in choosing your career? How often is curiosity suppressed in high school when students try to go off the standard curriculum into material the teacher isn't familiar with, and think of how easy it is to do that in programming? But I digress. I want to call out an example of this kind of "clearly, obviously for the common good" done right: Let's Encrypt. I think their software people make ~200k the last time I looked? Which is pretty dang good. I think the main thing it might lack is the kind of comp you get to via equity in a startup or public company. But given LE isn't that kind of company, I don't think you can fault them too much for that. So while I wish LE devs were paid like senior google devs, 200k gets you pretty damn far anywhere but NYC and San Francisco.
davexunit 6y ago
He's mistreated many FSF staff members, many LibrePlanet attendees, many GNU project contributors, etc. The fact that the public discourse is focused on the Epstein-related comments does RMS and the FSF a huge favor by pointing the spotlight away from the real issue which has been happening for decades.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  It makes painfully obvious the point they don't get it. They really, willingly or not, refuse to understand what the issues here are.
- craigsmansion 6y ago
  It's a bit rich that you accuse those who didn't take the initial smear campaign at face value of moving the goal posts. First it was the Epstein connection, which proved false. Then it was predatory behaviour at MIT with three quotes from over 3 decades, a sign on his door, and a mattress doused in implications. Then it was simply "making some people uncomfortable", which is sort of a given if you talk about free software to groups of people who are in the proprietary software industry, and says nothing at all. If you want the "real issues" addressed, stop drowning them in fabrications.
  - davexunit 6y ago
    Until you've been as close to rms as the people that have worked with/for him that have tried and failed for years and years to resolve issues privately, whatever silly argument you are trying to make doesn't have a leg to stand on.
    - craigsmansion 6y ago
      > people that have worked with/for him that have tried and failed for years and years to resolve issues privately Is this about Thomas Bushnell? Because I feel this is about Thomas Bushnell[1]. Bushnell is currently a friar in a religious order and works for google, and there is nothing wrong with that[2]. I can easily work with devout religious people and respect and accept them for their superior knowledge of the matter at hand (say, Don Knuth), but there's nothing wrong with politely declining their opinions when it comes to "issues" or how to become a "better" person. Again, no disrespect to Bushnell, who I'm sure did a fine job, but I'm not willing to take his assessment of the personality of an avouched atheist at face value. [1]https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-rms-18e6a835fd84 https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa... [2] well, working for Google can be debatable depending on what you do there.
linuxftw 6y ago
A bunch of companies joined together and announced they didn't like Stallman. Tellingly, the left out the list of grievances, so we can just endlessly debate which 'issue' is the 'real' issue. > FSF under Stallman kinda lost to open source anyway and hasn't really done anything besides virtue signal to others about how pure and ethical they are Then why do you care at all about the FSF in the first place? It sounds like you're here just to spread rumors and opinions in this case.
- MrRadar 6y ago
  > Then why do you care at all about the FSF in the first place? It sounds like you're here just to spread rumors and opinions in this case. I can't answer for the OP but it's clear that the FSF was a in a leadership position within the software world in the 1980s and 1990s. That position has slipped precipitously despite the increasing importance of the GNU software they developed in every aspect of modern computing. RMS, both in his behavior while representing the FSF at conferences and his (lack of) understanding of the modern computing environment[1], was/is very clearly part of the reason for that decline. I think the principles the FSF stands for are good and important, however without an organization to promote them they will continue to wither in the modern age and bringing back RMS will not help to reverse that trend. [1] How can a man who spent years refusing to use normal web browsers and insisting on having web pages e-mailed to him possibly be positioned to develop policies to promote the principles of Free Software within the framework of the modern web?
  - linuxftw 6y ago
    > I can't answer for the OP but it's clear that the FSF was a in a leadership position Who cares about 'leadership position' aren't people capable of deciding things for themselves? > FSF stands for are good and important, however without an organization to promote them they will continue to wither in the modern age and bringing back RMS will not help to reverse that trend. So, people can form something similar to the FSF then. Put out a better product, whatever it is the FSF does, and then people will care. Otherwise, your opinions don't matter.
rantwasp 6y ago
one thing that bothers me in the context of cancel culture is that it seems people put the equal sign between the work/art someone produces and their ideas outside of that area. Having wrong or plain stupid ideas does not mean you should die and all the [brilliant] work you are doing should go to waste. the bigger the target you attack, the better. right? what is your contribution to this world? they are not even close to the same thing. look, RMS is a weirdo - everyone understands this. But most people are not even close to his level. This exceptionality has it’s drawbacks and its cost. Do you really think the FSF wants to deal with all this? What is the thought process behind reinstating RMS?
- solosoyokaze 6y ago
  RMS made these comments on work communication channels. You don't need to separate his ideas from his work because he himself put his ideas into his work environment and is now, correctly, paying the price for that.
  - NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
    I don't think CSAIL mailing list qualifies as "work" for rms, if "work" is FSF. Maybe "professional", but it's a university, so that sort of inquiry is 100% appropriate and should be protected.
    - solosoyokaze 6y ago
      This is not his field of study. He's defending a friend of his who is credibly accused of raping a minor. It's not philosophy, it's personal interest and serves no value to the community or anyone other than RMS and Minsky.
      - NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
        Defffffinitely fair game at a university, then. I thought we were talking about the more abstract investigation of why it's wrong to have sex with minors. This sort of direct political stuff is regrettable but totally within the realm of acceptable.
Der_Einzige 6y ago
Foucault, along with most french leftist intellectuals go and write a public letter in support of pedophilia and not only are they not getting in trouble for it - many of them are the ideological forerunners to modern leftism. It's not just cus of RMS saying the age of consent is wrong... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_of_consent_laws https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_...
- WesolyKubeczek 6y ago
  Modern Americans seem to be very conflicted and in a need of a shrink. On one hand, they seem to have this quasi genetic memory of things being an abomination unto the Lord[1], while on the other hand, it's not hip to be openly religious, so they won't openly mention the Lord[1], all the while maintaining their puritanic shackles and even have outrage at the people who don't have those shackles. Just you wait until they realize what you wrote about Foucault and denounce any and all of his achievements ;-) It seems to be very trendy these days. [1] The ironic bit, of course, is that the Scripture doesn't state what the age of consent should even be.
- benrbray 6y ago
  This happened in 1977, and none of the people who signed it are public figures today, certainly not in the tech sphere. Academics who study philosophy and literature are well aware of the checkered past of the influential figures throughout history. The implication that leftist thought is rooted in pedophilia is, I'm sure, intentional flamebait. I will just point out that, whether or not people are right to vilify Stallman, no one here is suggesting that we abandon the free software movement because one of its most prominent figures said unsavory things. So there is no logical inconsistency.
  - odiroot 6y ago
    > This happened in 1977, and none of the people who signed it are public figures today, certainly not in the tech sphere. Aren't Foucault, Derrida and Lyotard still big names and influences in postmodern thought (and the whole "woke" movement)?
jMyles 6y ago
I did not even know about this stuff (but can now see what are perhaps the reasons why my comment elsewhere in the thread are being downvoted). Is there a place I can quickly catch up on these events? I also don't think that the foot skin eating thing is a non-starter. People are weird; I can live with that. But the other stuff is obviously troubling.
- teddyh 6y ago
  > Is there a place I can quickly catch up on these events? Summary: https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/ https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/
  - MrRadar 6y ago
    To the OP: that article is extremely biased in favor of RMS and focuses extremely narrowly on the Epstein/Minsky e-mails. Unfortunately I do not know of a good collection of his other failings (outside of the Minsky e-mails) to provide as a counter.
    - teddyh 6y ago
      > that article […] focuses extremely narrowly on the Epstein/Minsky e-mails No, only about the top third of the article is that. The rest covers the various subsequent attacks and goes through their claims at length.
908B64B197 6y ago
And yet all we have documenting those are a few (anonymous) blog posts.
bubblethink 6y ago
>and the fact that the FSF under Stallman kinda lost to open source anyway and hasn't really done anything What can the FSF do better, with or without RMS ? I honestly don't think there are too many good solutions. The parts that matter to FSF (i.e., free software at the hardware layer), are also the most challenging and for which there are no business incentives, political awareness, or will. Otherwise, garden variety free/open source software is already fine and flourishing depending on business interests.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Osmose 6y ago
  Some examples: https://twitter.com/luis_in_brief/status/1379813168638091271 https://twitter.com/luis_in_brief/status/1379813168638091271 > Otherwise, garden variety free/open source software is already fine and flourishing depending on business interests. Open source thriving is actually a loss for free software, in the view of the free software movement, because open source software can and does still restrict user freedoms.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> the _other_ times he spoke out in implicit support of pedophilia, His support for pedophilia was explicit (though in context it was actually support for “consensual” sex between adults and children, not support for mere pedophilia, which is an orientation, not an action.)

by Osmose 6y ago

DiggyJohnson 6y ago

Sure, but does any of that keep you from empathizing with the content of this letter?

imwillofficial 6y ago
Yes
Osmose 6y ago
Yeah, it does. In context, this letter, especially given it's posted to the FSF site and not, say, his personal website, is meant to justify electing him to the board and address the backlash against it, and I don't really have much patience for a letter addressing only one of the many complaints people have against allowing him a leadership role. It's dismissive of them.
- solosoyokaze 6y ago
  He even continues to defend Minsky in this letter. It's not even an apology, it's just more of the same.
  - Ancapistani 6y ago
    > He even continues to defend Minsky in this letter. Honest question - is there a way in which someone could not immediately condemn Minsky without defending him?
    - solosoyokaze 6y ago
      Say nothing. That's what a competent leader would do. No one wanted RMS's take on Minsky (or pedophilia in general, which he also offered up).
  - concordDance 6y ago
    I'm very unclear on what general priciple you think RMS is violating with the Minsky comments. Is it that you should never defend someone accused of Bad Thing if you are a public figure ij channels that may be related to your work?
    - solosoyokaze 6y ago
      > Is it that you should never defend someone accused of Bad Thing if you are a public figure ij channels that may be related to your work? That's a part of it (aside from general moral disgust). How does RMS defending an Epstein client help FOSS? It does not, and it detracts enormously.
ncr100 6y ago
Empathizing, no - through 4+ years of Donald Trump I am able to empathize quite well with abusers justifying their actions. I can imagine the sort of mental universe, of checks and balances, of personal expectations, which RMS's mind clearly does. The letter informs me more clearly of his aloofness and care-free attitude towards solving this dear problem. I'll tell you what it does keep me from, accepting him as a leader. The letter is evidence that the abuse will continue, amplified by the visibility and power of a leadership position. > "I've learned something from this about how to be kind to people who have been hurt." Implying that he will continue to hurt people. Of course all of us will ... however his kind of Hurt is the issue. He takes no responsibility for doing the hurting. He provides no reason to this behavior stopping here and now, in this letter. He admits to having difficulty with social interaction, and yet he provides no remedy, no, "Here is how I will fix this going forward." E.g. to solve this, he could use words which have first been edited by an assistant: he could only continue to talk publicly / talk with those whom he "leads" (which is a lot of people given his high-level role) through a filter. This is just an example, however it is unrealistic. It's his job as an adult to lay out a plan to remedy this. Linus had a turnaround moment, and wrote a convincing letter. Compare the two. His remedy seems to suggest that he might manage to grow his empathetic skills, while retaining his boss-level. That is irresponsible, IMO. This whole issue carries an insulting undertone, as the FSF Board deemed RMS worthy of being leader, when the (former!) supporters disagreed with that value-statement, given his insufficient skills.

NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago

He has been treated unfairly many times and that is, completely independent of whether he's the best choice as leader for the FSF, wrong. You do it here: "the _other_times he spoke out in implicit support of pedophilia...". He wants to have a discussion about what makes sex between people of varying ages wrong. He applies normative principles to it and can't see why it's wrong (e.g., age of consent varies...why would what is okay in one place be abominable 100 meters away?). I'm sure professional philosophers have written on this at length, and without being punished for going down the exact same road he has. But more importantly he doesn't understand very well that the mere mention of this line of inquiry is borderline reputation suicide because of [blue-team elite coastal] public mores idiosyncratic to 2020 rich western countries. I'm also not sure why "inclusive" is a good criterion for FSF leader, it seems like just a hollow shibboleth buzzword at this point. People who harp on "inclusion" are usually the most interested in exclusion.

solosoyokaze 6y ago
> He wants to have a discussion about what makes sex between people of varying ages wrong. That alone makes him unfit to lead anything (among the many other things he's done). I do not want to hear his opinion on this subject.
- NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
  No, it doesn't make him unfit. It makes him curious and open-minded. How are we as a society supposed to come to conclusions about ethical issues without examining them? If we adopted your stance, nothing would ever change. Conservatives like you would have had the exact same stance on homosexuality 100 years ago: "Zomg no, it's so terrible we won't even consider talking about it except to condemn, and we'll punish people who do try to have an honest conversation". I say this as a person who also is a conservative with respect to statutory rape laws.
  - solosoyokaze 6y ago
    Are you comparing the rape of a minor to homosexuality? I would not work with someone who conversed like this in a professional setting. I'm not alone. It's wildly inappropriate at the very least. It's not his field and he's personally involved with the accused.

MrRadar 6y ago

Not to mention how badly he mismanaged the paid staff of the FSF which prompted them to unionize: https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1377079987950395393 https://twitter.com/paulnivin/status/1377079987950395393 I think, if anything, this is the strongest argument for why he should not be in a leadership position at the FSF.

NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
"Did not treat employees well" is a great reason for someone to not be a boss, but unfortunately that's not why he's demonized.
javagram 6y ago
This appears to be about events that are at least 15 years old, if not older? Does sound like a pretty terrible manager. An unpaid volunteer position on the board doesn’t really seem like the position where these problems would happen again. And they weren’t the reason he got in hot water - that was all related to a media firestorm over Minsky/Epstein.
- bigbillheck 6y ago
  > This appears to be about events that are at least 15 years old, if not older? What would you consider an appropriate statute of limitations here?
  - javagram 6y ago
    Statute of limitations is a concept of criminal law, since none of the described actions are criminal it wouldn’t apply directly. I do find it questionable to dig up decades old actions that were apparently dealt with at the time by appropriately unionizing and fixing the situation, and say that means a person should never have even a volunteer job again.
atomicnumber3 6y ago
RE: that twitter thread. Wow. That's absurdly bad. Especially given that I suspect any software person there could easily go get a much higher paying corporate job without much trouble. I feel like a problem that plagues software worse than other industries is that BigTechCo can pay multiple times more than what I'll call "greater good" kinds of places like: * government * education, especially in high school * software freedom / open source / communal / etc types of places The one that I mourn the most is high school computer teachers. How many startups were started by people with only a year or so of college? How important is high school in choosing your career? How often is curiosity suppressed in high school when students try to go off the standard curriculum into material the teacher isn't familiar with, and think of how easy it is to do that in programming? But I digress. I want to call out an example of this kind of "clearly, obviously for the common good" done right: Let's Encrypt. I think their software people make ~200k the last time I looked? Which is pretty dang good. I think the main thing it might lack is the kind of comp you get to via equity in a startup or public company. But given LE isn't that kind of company, I don't think you can fault them too much for that. So while I wish LE devs were paid like senior google devs, 200k gets you pretty damn far anywhere but NYC and San Francisco.

davexunit 6y ago

He's mistreated many FSF staff members, many LibrePlanet attendees, many GNU project contributors, etc. The fact that the public discourse is focused on the Epstein-related comments does RMS and the FSF a huge favor by pointing the spotlight away from the real issue which has been happening for decades.

rbanffy 6y ago
It makes painfully obvious the point they don't get it. They really, willingly or not, refuse to understand what the issues here are.
craigsmansion 6y ago
It's a bit rich that you accuse those who didn't take the initial smear campaign at face value of moving the goal posts. First it was the Epstein connection, which proved false. Then it was predatory behaviour at MIT with three quotes from over 3 decades, a sign on his door, and a mattress doused in implications. Then it was simply "making some people uncomfortable", which is sort of a given if you talk about free software to groups of people who are in the proprietary software industry, and says nothing at all. If you want the "real issues" addressed, stop drowning them in fabrications.
- davexunit 6y ago
  Until you've been as close to rms as the people that have worked with/for him that have tried and failed for years and years to resolve issues privately, whatever silly argument you are trying to make doesn't have a leg to stand on.
  - craigsmansion 6y ago
    > people that have worked with/for him that have tried and failed for years and years to resolve issues privately Is this about Thomas Bushnell? Because I feel this is about Thomas Bushnell[1]. Bushnell is currently a friar in a religious order and works for google, and there is nothing wrong with that[2]. I can easily work with devout religious people and respect and accept them for their superior knowledge of the matter at hand (say, Don Knuth), but there's nothing wrong with politely declining their opinions when it comes to "issues" or how to become a "better" person. Again, no disrespect to Bushnell, who I'm sure did a fine job, but I'm not willing to take his assessment of the personality of an avouched atheist at face value. [1]https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-rms-18e6a835fd84 https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa... [2] well, working for Google can be debatable depending on what you do there.

linuxftw 6y ago

A bunch of companies joined together and announced they didn't like Stallman. Tellingly, the left out the list of grievances, so we can just endlessly debate which 'issue' is the 'real' issue. > FSF under Stallman kinda lost to open source anyway and hasn't really done anything besides virtue signal to others about how pure and ethical they are Then why do you care at all about the FSF in the first place? It sounds like you're here just to spread rumors and opinions in this case.

MrRadar 6y ago
> Then why do you care at all about the FSF in the first place? It sounds like you're here just to spread rumors and opinions in this case. I can't answer for the OP but it's clear that the FSF was a in a leadership position within the software world in the 1980s and 1990s. That position has slipped precipitously despite the increasing importance of the GNU software they developed in every aspect of modern computing. RMS, both in his behavior while representing the FSF at conferences and his (lack of) understanding of the modern computing environment[1], was/is very clearly part of the reason for that decline. I think the principles the FSF stands for are good and important, however without an organization to promote them they will continue to wither in the modern age and bringing back RMS will not help to reverse that trend. [1] How can a man who spent years refusing to use normal web browsers and insisting on having web pages e-mailed to him possibly be positioned to develop policies to promote the principles of Free Software within the framework of the modern web?
- linuxftw 6y ago
  > I can't answer for the OP but it's clear that the FSF was a in a leadership position Who cares about 'leadership position' aren't people capable of deciding things for themselves? > FSF stands for are good and important, however without an organization to promote them they will continue to wither in the modern age and bringing back RMS will not help to reverse that trend. So, people can form something similar to the FSF then. Put out a better product, whatever it is the FSF does, and then people will care. Otherwise, your opinions don't matter.

rantwasp 6y ago

one thing that bothers me in the context of cancel culture is that it seems people put the equal sign between the work/art someone produces and their ideas outside of that area. Having wrong or plain stupid ideas does not mean you should die and all the [brilliant] work you are doing should go to waste. the bigger the target you attack, the better. right? what is your contribution to this world? they are not even close to the same thing. look, RMS is a weirdo - everyone understands this. But most people are not even close to his level. This exceptionality has it’s drawbacks and its cost. Do you really think the FSF wants to deal with all this? What is the thought process behind reinstating RMS?

solosoyokaze 6y ago
RMS made these comments on work communication channels. You don't need to separate his ideas from his work because he himself put his ideas into his work environment and is now, correctly, paying the price for that.
- NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
  I don't think CSAIL mailing list qualifies as "work" for rms, if "work" is FSF. Maybe "professional", but it's a university, so that sort of inquiry is 100% appropriate and should be protected.
  - solosoyokaze 6y ago
    This is not his field of study. He's defending a friend of his who is credibly accused of raping a minor. It's not philosophy, it's personal interest and serves no value to the community or anyone other than RMS and Minsky.
    - NoImmatureAdHom 6y ago
      Defffffinitely fair game at a university, then. I thought we were talking about the more abstract investigation of why it's wrong to have sex with minors. This sort of direct political stuff is regrettable but totally within the realm of acceptable.

Der_Einzige 6y ago

Foucault, along with most french leftist intellectuals go and write a public letter in support of pedophilia and not only are they not getting in trouble for it - many of them are the ideological forerunners to modern leftism. It's not just cus of RMS saying the age of consent is wrong... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_of_consent_laws https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_...

WesolyKubeczek 6y ago
Modern Americans seem to be very conflicted and in a need of a shrink. On one hand, they seem to have this quasi genetic memory of things being an abomination unto the Lord[1], while on the other hand, it's not hip to be openly religious, so they won't openly mention the Lord[1], all the while maintaining their puritanic shackles and even have outrage at the people who don't have those shackles. Just you wait until they realize what you wrote about Foucault and denounce any and all of his achievements ;-) It seems to be very trendy these days. [1] The ironic bit, of course, is that the Scripture doesn't state what the age of consent should even be.
benrbray 6y ago
This happened in 1977, and none of the people who signed it are public figures today, certainly not in the tech sphere. Academics who study philosophy and literature are well aware of the checkered past of the influential figures throughout history. The implication that leftist thought is rooted in pedophilia is, I'm sure, intentional flamebait. I will just point out that, whether or not people are right to vilify Stallman, no one here is suggesting that we abandon the free software movement because one of its most prominent figures said unsavory things. So there is no logical inconsistency.
- odiroot 6y ago
  > This happened in 1977, and none of the people who signed it are public figures today, certainly not in the tech sphere. Aren't Foucault, Derrida and Lyotard still big names and influences in postmodern thought (and the whole "woke" movement)?

jMyles 6y ago

I did not even know about this stuff (but can now see what are perhaps the reasons why my comment elsewhere in the thread are being downvoted). Is there a place I can quickly catch up on these events? I also don't think that the foot skin eating thing is a non-starter. People are weird; I can live with that. But the other stuff is obviously troubling.

teddyh 6y ago
> Is there a place I can quickly catch up on these events? Summary: https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/ https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/
- MrRadar 6y ago
  To the OP: that article is extremely biased in favor of RMS and focuses extremely narrowly on the Epstein/Minsky e-mails. Unfortunately I do not know of a good collection of his other failings (outside of the Minsky e-mails) to provide as a counter.
  - teddyh 6y ago
    > that article […] focuses extremely narrowly on the Epstein/Minsky e-mails No, only about the top third of the article is that. The rest covers the various subsequent attacks and goes through their claims at length.

908B64B197 6y ago

And yet all we have documenting those are a few (anonymous) blog posts.

bubblethink 6y ago

>and the fact that the FSF under Stallman kinda lost to open source anyway and hasn't really done anything What can the FSF do better, with or without RMS ? I honestly don't think there are too many good solutions. The parts that matter to FSF (i.e., free software at the hardware layer), are also the most challenging and for which there are no business incentives, political awareness, or will. Otherwise, garden variety free/open source software is already fine and flourishing depending on business interests.

deleted 6y ago
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Osmose 6y ago
Some examples: https://twitter.com/luis_in_brief/status/1379813168638091271 https://twitter.com/luis_in_brief/status/1379813168638091271 > Otherwise, garden variety free/open source software is already fine and flourishing depending on business interests. Open source thriving is actually a loss for free software, in the view of the free software movement, because open source software can and does still restrict user freedoms.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> the _other_ times he spoke out in implicit support of pedophilia, His support for pedophilia was explicit (though in context it was actually support for “consensual” sex between adults and children, not support for mere pedophilia, which is an orientation, not an action.)