5 ms·

He's also been the victim of some pretty vile smear campaigns and is still going on. I know if I was the target of the crap he got, I wouldn't want to continue

He's also been the victim of some pretty vile smear campaigns and is still going on. I know if I was the target of the crap he got, I wouldn't want to continue doing anything anymore.

op00to 3y ago
[flagged]
- oblio 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - jonahbenton 3y ago
    Knew him a long time ago. It's a very different thing not understanding what other people are, compared to bearing them ill will. Definitely interactively incompetent, but doesn't carry ill will.
  - tokai 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - oblio 3y ago
      > Like clockwork. Doesn't make me wrong, even if you personally want to look the other way. Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37702077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37702077
    - joenot443 3y ago
      It's exhausting, isn't it? Moralizers will come for anyone and everything. Tearing down the world, one individual at a time, until finally, after enough characters have been destroyed and enough personalities beaten down, we'll all happily exist in a world where no one's behavior will ever offend. We can all rest easy knowing that we won, that the _____ists of the world have been banished, and finally egalitarianism will prevail. For those in this thread chomping at the bit to attack a dying 70yo's character, did I do your cause justice?
    - mustacheemperor 3y ago
      Like clockwork, women in tech continue to beg for our community to hold a reasonable standard for how half the humans on earth should be treated when they choose to work in this industry. Woohoo RS and thank you for your contributions. But one of those contributions is being a living example of how brilliant and highly valuable people in this field can still need to learn the basics on how to treat other people with respect. For the women he's mistreated, it's very unfortunate they had to play a role in that collective lesson. The least we can do is not ignore it or rationalize it away. On that note, I just don't appreciate or frankly understand the repeated insistence from some people that this is some kind of scheme, there is some kind of conspiracy to complain about successful contributors for mistreating the people around them. This take especially makes no sense to me when the mistreatment is well known and documented. Like, some of us don't want to be treated like shit! So we bring it up when the community lauds praise around someone who does! I don't think this is related to some personality complex held by RS' inferiors with a compulsion to tear down his achievements. Most of the time when I see these criticisms voiced, they are actually wrapped in a highly-polite package that includes heaps of praise besides.
  - op00to 3y ago
    I posted elsewhere in the thread he came to my university for a talk, and spent the time staring at women's chests.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - d_tr 3y ago
      Yeah you 're petty, we get it.
      - oblio 3y ago
        > Yeah you 're petty, we get it. Really? Should OP just bask in Stallman's glory and not notice things that were bad etiquette even in the Victorian era? Stallman's done some amazing somethings, some average things and some repugnant things (including the field of software engineering/Free Software; see the Emacs and GCC forks, his maintanership of Emacs in the latter part of his time as main maintainer, etc).
        d_tr 3y ago
        > Should OP just bask in Stallman's glory and not notice things that were bad etiquette even in the Victorian era? No. But I 'm not sure whether you 've read OP's other comments in this topic (about Stallman's cancer), some of which are hidden due to downvotes.
  - jraph 3y ago
    I think there are two different things: - the MIT mailing list discussion of a few years ago where he got a lot of flakes for what I indeed believe was a lot of misunderstanding. He seemed reasonable to me, but you really need subtle and careful reading to notice this. It was easy to misread and understand the contrary of was he thinks. I think he should have refrained from participating in this discussion though. While I don't know if it was intentionally driven by opponents, I do think he was defamed a lot, regardless one's opinion on this story. - his inappropriate behavior with women, who mostly had to (find tricks to) avoid him, from was I read there and there. I don't think he is misogynistic (many examples on stallman.org supports the opposite) but I believe there's no excuse for this inappropriate behavior if true. He should have shown more respect and learned to avoid making people and women in particular uncomfortable. He is incredibly clever, I can't imagine he would be unable to learn what patterns to avoid, he should have bothered more. I know it's difficult in particular for some autistic people (which he might be) to take hints, but I also know some who became incredibly good at it after learning (better than non-autistic people even, precisely because it was a conscious process - not saying it's easy; it is exhausting for some people). And it does not require being able to take subtle hints to avoid obvious sexist behavior. I was thinking of this and the many times he was mean to someone when I mentioned "unacceptable" in my first comment.
    - op00to 3y ago
      When I hear stuff like "you need really subtle and careful reading"... it's just an excuse to discount the actual content of the message and invent the meaning you wanted all along. Like, how could I be so stupid to not pick up on this totally opposite point from what RMS was saying?
      - jraph 3y ago
        This point was discussed at length over the years. You have your opinion on it. Likely different from mine. At this point I don't think any of us can change their mind, we both have been forming our respective opinion for a long time now. Let me precise my phrasing: you might have read this thing with "really subtle and careful reading" and reached a different opinion from mine. I believe it. It's fine. But I do maintain that, in any case, you need really subtle and careful reading to avoid jumping to widely wrong conclusions. I think it was easy to understand horrible things from his wording by skipping a word or two or thinking too fast. The thing with Stallman in particular is that he is particularly very careful with his wording, and I think this whole MIT discussion was no counterexample to this. It's up to us to understand the right thing and it is clear that strongly different interpretations emerged this time, for some reason. And what's worse is that his clarifications might have strengthened both interpretations. Anyway, that's why I said "Regardless on one's opinion" on the matter. It's easy to find inappropriate comments on RMS that defame him.
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    > And I've seen very little that can disclaim that. Is that how we operate now? You have to see evidence that a claim isn't true?
  - Aspie96 3y ago
    > From what I gather the big thing is that he's basically very misogynistic. > And I've seen very little that can disclaim that. Hang on, no. It's those that claim that someone is misogynistic (let alone very misogynistic) that has the burden of showing that the accused has hatred or prejudice against women, not on others to disclaim it. If, to that, we add the absolute vilification against anyone trying to defend the accuse, then the allegations can't be evaluated properly in such an environment and deserve nothing but dismissal.
acjohnson55 3y ago
I know someone personally that he behaved unprofessionally and inappropriately towards. This was before allegations of his MIT went public. So I was not shocked when that happened.
jongjong 3y ago
He comes across as someone who is highly genuine. I guess that's why fake, phony, status-oriented people can't stop themselves criticizing him for all his superficial shortcomings. It's as if his genuineness is a trigger for them and they need to attack him to feel better about how phony they are in comparison.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

He's also been the victim of some pretty vile smear campaigns and is still going on. I know if I was the target of the crap he got, I wouldn't want to continue doing anything anymore.

op00to 3y ago

[flagged]

oblio 3y ago
[flagged]
- jonahbenton 3y ago
  Knew him a long time ago. It's a very different thing not understanding what other people are, compared to bearing them ill will. Definitely interactively incompetent, but doesn't carry ill will.
- tokai 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - oblio 3y ago
    > Like clockwork. Doesn't make me wrong, even if you personally want to look the other way. Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37702077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37702077
  - joenot443 3y ago
    It's exhausting, isn't it? Moralizers will come for anyone and everything. Tearing down the world, one individual at a time, until finally, after enough characters have been destroyed and enough personalities beaten down, we'll all happily exist in a world where no one's behavior will ever offend. We can all rest easy knowing that we won, that the _____ists of the world have been banished, and finally egalitarianism will prevail. For those in this thread chomping at the bit to attack a dying 70yo's character, did I do your cause justice?
  - mustacheemperor 3y ago
    Like clockwork, women in tech continue to beg for our community to hold a reasonable standard for how half the humans on earth should be treated when they choose to work in this industry. Woohoo RS and thank you for your contributions. But one of those contributions is being a living example of how brilliant and highly valuable people in this field can still need to learn the basics on how to treat other people with respect. For the women he's mistreated, it's very unfortunate they had to play a role in that collective lesson. The least we can do is not ignore it or rationalize it away. On that note, I just don't appreciate or frankly understand the repeated insistence from some people that this is some kind of scheme, there is some kind of conspiracy to complain about successful contributors for mistreating the people around them. This take especially makes no sense to me when the mistreatment is well known and documented. Like, some of us don't want to be treated like shit! So we bring it up when the community lauds praise around someone who does! I don't think this is related to some personality complex held by RS' inferiors with a compulsion to tear down his achievements. Most of the time when I see these criticisms voiced, they are actually wrapped in a highly-polite package that includes heaps of praise besides.
- op00to 3y ago
  I posted elsewhere in the thread he came to my university for a talk, and spent the time staring at women's chests.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - d_tr 3y ago
    Yeah you 're petty, we get it.
    - oblio 3y ago
      > Yeah you 're petty, we get it. Really? Should OP just bask in Stallman's glory and not notice things that were bad etiquette even in the Victorian era? Stallman's done some amazing somethings, some average things and some repugnant things (including the field of software engineering/Free Software; see the Emacs and GCC forks, his maintanership of Emacs in the latter part of his time as main maintainer, etc).
      - d_tr 3y ago
        > Should OP just bask in Stallman's glory and not notice things that were bad etiquette even in the Victorian era? No. But I 'm not sure whether you 've read OP's other comments in this topic (about Stallman's cancer), some of which are hidden due to downvotes.
- jraph 3y ago
  I think there are two different things: - the MIT mailing list discussion of a few years ago where he got a lot of flakes for what I indeed believe was a lot of misunderstanding. He seemed reasonable to me, but you really need subtle and careful reading to notice this. It was easy to misread and understand the contrary of was he thinks. I think he should have refrained from participating in this discussion though. While I don't know if it was intentionally driven by opponents, I do think he was defamed a lot, regardless one's opinion on this story. - his inappropriate behavior with women, who mostly had to (find tricks to) avoid him, from was I read there and there. I don't think he is misogynistic (many examples on stallman.org supports the opposite) but I believe there's no excuse for this inappropriate behavior if true. He should have shown more respect and learned to avoid making people and women in particular uncomfortable. He is incredibly clever, I can't imagine he would be unable to learn what patterns to avoid, he should have bothered more. I know it's difficult in particular for some autistic people (which he might be) to take hints, but I also know some who became incredibly good at it after learning (better than non-autistic people even, precisely because it was a conscious process - not saying it's easy; it is exhausting for some people). And it does not require being able to take subtle hints to avoid obvious sexist behavior. I was thinking of this and the many times he was mean to someone when I mentioned "unacceptable" in my first comment.
  - op00to 3y ago
    When I hear stuff like "you need really subtle and careful reading"... it's just an excuse to discount the actual content of the message and invent the meaning you wanted all along. Like, how could I be so stupid to not pick up on this totally opposite point from what RMS was saying?
    - jraph 3y ago
      This point was discussed at length over the years. You have your opinion on it. Likely different from mine. At this point I don't think any of us can change their mind, we both have been forming our respective opinion for a long time now. Let me precise my phrasing: you might have read this thing with "really subtle and careful reading" and reached a different opinion from mine. I believe it. It's fine. But I do maintain that, in any case, you need really subtle and careful reading to avoid jumping to widely wrong conclusions. I think it was easy to understand horrible things from his wording by skipping a word or two or thinking too fast. The thing with Stallman in particular is that he is particularly very careful with his wording, and I think this whole MIT discussion was no counterexample to this. It's up to us to understand the right thing and it is clear that strongly different interpretations emerged this time, for some reason. And what's worse is that his clarifications might have strengthened both interpretations. Anyway, that's why I said "Regardless on one's opinion" on the matter. It's easy to find inappropriate comments on RMS that defame him.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  > And I've seen very little that can disclaim that. Is that how we operate now? You have to see evidence that a claim isn't true?
- Aspie96 3y ago
  > From what I gather the big thing is that he's basically very misogynistic. > And I've seen very little that can disclaim that. Hang on, no. It's those that claim that someone is misogynistic (let alone very misogynistic) that has the burden of showing that the accused has hatred or prejudice against women, not on others to disclaim it. If, to that, we add the absolute vilification against anyone trying to defend the accuse, then the allegations can't be evaluated properly in such an environment and deserve nothing but dismissal.

acjohnson55 3y ago

I know someone personally that he behaved unprofessionally and inappropriately towards. This was before allegations of his MIT went public. So I was not shocked when that happened.

jongjong 3y ago

He comes across as someone who is highly genuine. I guess that's why fake, phony, status-oriented people can't stop themselves criticizing him for all his superficial shortcomings. It's as if his genuineness is a trigger for them and they need to attack him to feel better about how phony they are in comparison.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]