5 ms·
Can someone fill me in on the RMS drama/politics? Is this because he was cancelled due to (supposedly) defending Epstein and he's now trying to uncancel himself
by umvi 6y ago
Can someone fill me in on the RMS drama/politics? Is this because he was cancelled due to (supposedly) defending Epstein and he's now trying to uncancel himself?
- whatever_dude 6y agoAccording to some, he's been an out-of-touch, controversial, abusive voice for FSF for a while. The MIT/Epstein stuff is what gets talked about, and might have been what brought this to a more general public attention, but it's not specifically what the calls for resignation are about.
- zamalek 6y agoHe continues to do intolerant stuff: https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix
- visarga 6y agois this the "we don't tolerate intolerance" logic?
- tryonenow 6y agoThe only intolerance here is on behalf of a viciously ableist movement which does not allow for purely rational opinions from someone clearly on the autistic spectrum. Making women "uncomfortable" without making or implying advances is purely intolerant of those who fall slightly outside of social norms; I haven't seen any evidence that he actually did or said anything predatory or sexual. It's the same implicit social shaming that socially awkward "nerds" and "geeks" receive in highschool, except turned up to 11 because of a vicious social movement which explicitly targets outliers. The open source community was far more tolerant when it was merit based and race/gender blind, before it was infested with ideologues and the social contagion that is the social [in]justice movement. Frankly, normies are ruining programming communities by demanding that the culture change to be inclusive of their norms, to the detriment of the very people who founded the movement. It's painfully ironic, and the people leading this charge are simply grabbing at power justified by self righteousness.
- toomim 6y agoYou sound very intolerant of said "intolerance".
- krastanov 6y agoI am not certain whether you are making a very erudite joke or trolling, but either way, the "Paradox of Intolerance" might an interesting read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance Being "intolerant to intolerance" is a fairly well accepted idea in societies that value personal freedoms.
- hglp 6y agoPopper would have been disgusted by the treatment of RMS and cancel culture in general. He'd also have been disgusted by being used in a propagandistic manner.
- blp100 6y agoPopper is abused by the woke. No one who actually read philosophy believes that Popper is in any way an apologist for the woke movement.
- toomim 6y agoI'm aware of the paradox, and it's a wonderful idea! It still looks to me that in this case, it's the people calling RMS intolerant that are the intolerant ones. On the contrary, I think RMS actually tolerates a whole lot. He clearly has different views than others on a variety of topics, yet he doesn't let it affect his technical decisions. He's been attacked viciously in the media, but he's tolerated it and is coming back to the FSF. An intolerant person would disappear. Consider all the people on the board of the FSF with opposite political views than his, that he tolerates on a day-to-day basis. An "intolerant homophobe/transphobe" would not tolerate having homosexuals/transexuals on the board, for instance.
- krastanov 6y agoAh, yes, I am mostly on board with the specifics of what you said in this message, even if I disagree with some of the generalizations. The original one lacked too much context for me to understand it.
- gerhardhaering 6y agoI fail to see how any of this is intolerant, or transphobic. You might not like these opinions. Or disagree that there is good reasoning behind some of this. This does not make the one you are disagreeing with intolerant.
- zajio1am 6y ago> I fail to see how any of this is intolerant, or transphobic. Yes. RMS argued for gender-neutral pronouns since more than twenty years ago. Just because it is a different set of neutral pronouns than is popular today, some people mark him transphobic. That is absurd.
- fsf4lyfe 6y agoIndeed, and it's no surprise that this attempted cancellation of RMS is being pushed by the pronoun enthusiast crowd. These tend to be the type of people who simply can't stand any dissenting opinions to their dogma. Unfortunately, the more tolerant attitude of just agreeing to disagree seems to have gone out of fashion. Now the preferred option is to destroy a person's entire career and slander their reputation with deliberate misinterpretations of what they've said and done.
- solosoyokaze 6y agoIt’s not slander if it’s true, and you can be disgusted with RMS without bringing politics into it. He’s bad for the free software movement. It’s as simple as that.
- zamalek 6y agoIf there wasn't a wide spectrum of opinions on this then you'd be objectively correct. As it stands, the zeitgeist is undecided.
- refenestrator 6y agoIt's really funny that these people are incorporating pro-life arguments now. Cultural horseshoe theory.
- Pfhreak 6y agoHere's the letter that details the concerns about RMS: https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix It's significantly more detailed and complex than "allegedly defending Epstein". Here's the letter supporting RMS: https://rms-support-letter.github.io/ https://rms-support-letter.github.io/
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- zackees 6y agoThat open letter against RMS is so cringe. The people who are attempting to purge him sound like intolerant, wanna-be dictators.
- enriquto 6y agowelcome to the age of CoCs
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y agoWhen studying history, I sometimes wonder - how certain things could have happened? Some of these seem ridiculous or unbelievable when you look back. Now I know how it happens. Some people do something strange, then their number increases, they are very vocal, they're 100% sure what they do is right, they're very emotional about it, and at a certain point it seems like they are the majority. They do certain things like revolutions, usually with a bad result, and you can't do anything, you can just watch it powerlessly and hope it doesn't end badly this time.
- VectorLock 6y agoRegardless of how abhorrent you might think RMS' actual views are, that letter really unfairly characterizes a lot of things they're claiming RMS said. I appreciate them throughly citing sources for their claims, so its easy to compare what the letter accuses him of saying and what the literal words he used are. Individual interpretation of the amount of twisting they do is left up to the reader.
- turbinerneiter 6y agoHe isn't perfect, he said something insensitive in the Epstein causa, now all kinds of ridiculous allegations and warranted criticism gets mixed into a toxic cocktail, which doesn't allow anyone to move forward productively. If RMS accepts his cancellation, he basically caves to wrongful accusations. If he stays, we can't move forward and get work done because of the drama and all the viable reasons why he shouldn't be a central, public FSF spokesperson anymore. Plus, everyone really just wants to see the FSF fail anyway, for some reason.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- solosoyokaze 6y agoThere were no “wrongful accusations”. RMS did all of the stuff people are upset about. It’s not fabricated.
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y agoThe Epstein stuff was more of a last straw. RMS has had terrible reputation for decades, you just don't hear about it unless you talk to people at MIT. The me too movement has shifted the window in such a way that it's finally coming out in a public way. The FSF sadly functions as a cult of personality for RMS at this point. I do not believe either of them are doing anything to help the cause of FOSS at this point.
- captaincurrie 6y agoAlot of babies saw an oppurtunity to gain power and took it.