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Can anyone in his position truly be so innocent? By all accounts -- even his own -- he's pretty socially clueless. That seems to be a root cause of why he's s
by DoreenMichele 6y ago
Can anyone in his position truly be so innocent?
By all accounts -- even his own -- he's pretty socially clueless.
That seems to be a root cause of why he's so controversial. No one seems able to imagine he acquired his stature due to technical expertise alone.
Everyone seems to imagine you have to also be smooth, diplomatic, well-mannered, etc to be at the top of anything. Merely being a technical genius and pioneer couldn't possibly be the explanation, no.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y agoOr maybe not clueless, but persistently and pedantically trying to get to the bottom of every possible issue.
- DoreenMichele 6y agoIt's his personal site. It says so in big, bold letters across the top of the site: Richard Stallman's Personal Site. Maybe the tech world could stop being so enamoured of gossip and cult of personality that techies often like to imagine they are immune to. Maybe people could just let him pedantically examine his belly button in public to his heart's content and not bother him about it. I have no idea why people are reacting so negatively to this piece. It's extremely mild and reasonable and compares his firsthand experience with what he's heard about practices on two continents. If you don't care what the hell he thinks about every random social topic, stop reading every random thing he writes about random social stuff. He has gotten plenty of real world push back on genuinely harmful and problematic statements he has made. He's owned up to "Yeah, that wasn't great. I'm not great at social nuance. I learned something there." And people are continuing to have a cow about a post like this?! That's not his fault. That's other people being ridiculous.