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Comment by 5trokerac3 | Hacker News Reader

> I resisted Steve Jobs's snow job in 1989 or 1990; I am no easy mark for those who want me to change my views.

Why do people still prop this insufferable person up? Interacting with everyone like an angsty teen is no way for anyone who considers themself a professional to publicly talk.

IMO FOSS is where it is today more despite Stallman than because of him. Being an asshole isn't necessarily a sign of being a savant. Sometimes people are just assholes.

Edit: Just a reminder that, only a week ago, this man was fired for using a technology forum to defend a 74 year old man having sex with a 17 year old prostitute on pedophile island.

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> Edit: Just a reminder that, only a week ago, this man was fired for using a technology forum to defend a 74 year old man having sex with a 17 year old prostitute on pedophile island.

You're spreading lies, whether or not you're aware of it.

The man has resigned (most likely being forced out) for being pedantic about an accusation about a 74 year old man, that allegedly - and in fact not at all, if the actual witness testimony is to be believed - had sex with a 17 year old prostitute. And that was in response to another e-mail that used that same technology forum to spread aforementioned accusation.

Regardless of what you think of RMS, and whether or not he got what he deserved considering the history of his past behavior, please do not spread misinformation.

If the witnesses are not to be believed, then he is not spreading lies.

Why are we blindly trusting witnesses who were on a billionaire's private island known (now and then) to be used as a sex club?

It's just as likely that the witnesses are lying as telling the truth.

Wow, you are completely wrong on that. RMS was so blatantly wrong that even he had to back track on his views.

It's not about views, it's about reading the source material and applying basic reading comprehension.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Most unreasonable people are useless though. There's only a small subset who drive progress.

And RMS much definitely is part of this smaller subset.

My old boss at MIT worked with RMS and he said that everyone hates him. Never helping anyone, always getting into stupid autistic arguments with people. He said that RMS rarely did any real work and that everyone hated him and tried to avoid him as much as possible. My boss said that RMS once started yelling at him because he said “bless you” after RMS sneezed. Of course this is all anecdotal, but RMS strikes me as a profoundly annoying and useless person.

Moreover, I don’t even like the idea of the GPL. Other licenses are better, but still suboptimal in regards to freedom. Real freedom is the public domain. In fact, all of my open source software is released under the public domain.

Sure, but arguably he was one. I don't know whether that has been true for a long time, and I am not personally a believer in Free Software writ large.

That phrase could be used to describe how every genocidal maniac in history viewed themselves. Most of the steady progress that has been made in this world has been due to the efforts of diplomatic individuals who cast a wide, friendly net for their supposed adversaries.

Yes like the French Revolution and the wide, friendly... democracy nets. Come on.

> Yes like the French Revolution and the wide, friendly... democracy nets. Come on.

The French Revolution was most violent event of its time with many fractions fighting against each other and was followed by dictatorships.

Do you know there's a reason they call the tail end of the French Revolution "the Reign of Terror"?

Rather than progress, I'd state that change, both good and bad,is driven by unreasonable men.

He IS an insufferable prick. He's a loon. He's always been a loon and said loony things. Yes, many many many years ago he contributed a lot of things that are important to the Free Software movement, but just because he did that doesn't mean he's immune from being criticized for being a shitty person.

People can still admire what he did back in the day, but you don't have to defend his views or his bullshit. Like Bobby Fischer, you can absolutely admire and study his past chess games, but he was a reprehensible human being.

> considers themself a professional to publicly talk.

Because he is genuinely a very smart person compared to most people decrying character flaws as something relevant to distance yourself from. In strict professional circles, this statement alone would have disqualified you already.

This just seems like a strange thing to take issue with, and I suspect it has more to do with your general dislike of him than any problems with the way he's chosen to communicate himself.

As opposed to Jobs?

It's a whole different league than with Jobs. Take a look at the glossary page on his blog.

https://stallman.org/glossary.html

He should probably add himself under “troll.” Like this kind of shit is something I would have written when I was 12. RMS is like 65..

Its telling when people respond to the personality stronger than they do the actual ideas.

SO MUCH THIS.

Yeah, utterly unsurprised that I'm downvoted at HN for agreeing with that sentiment. I

The whole phenomenon of rms worship on forums like these depresses me about the future of our industry

Glory to the software industry!

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