That he has also done some very good things isn't a good argument for continuing to tolerate his harmful behaviour after he's been asked to fix it for literally decades, and hasn't.
I would be dollars to doughnuts that the author of that site and the editors of that "wiki" have made or thought worse things at some point, but because they have not reached a certain level of celebrity, there's no dossier on them. It's truly ridiculous to me the amount of effort spent on trying to claw others down.
I accept that inequality exists and perhaps RMS has some awful opinions, but if that's the case then just ignore him.
If there are people who are choosing to make it incumbent upon themselves to take down these "problematic" individuals, then it must be because they think that all of the systems that have allowed a person to continue to exist despite those opinions must be unreliable in adequately judging them. If that's the case, then wouldn't it be more practical to fix the endemic problem rather than destroy a single person? I'm guessing that the latter is just easier to do and more profitable as well. You gain "credibility" by attacking someone else, so it's difficult to believe that they are doing it for altruistic means.
All in all, I'm pretty sick of this nonsense. A world where everyone is constantly being watched by eachother and reported on is already too authoritarian for me to want to continue living in, not to mention the already authoritarian governments doing the same.
> I would be dollars to doughnuts that the author of that site and the editors of that "wiki" have made or thought worse things at some point, but because they have not reached a certain level of celebrity, there's no dossier on them. It's truly ridiculous to me the amount of effort spent on trying to claw others down.
"With great power, comes great responsibility." When operating in contexts where you have a lot of power, one has to be more careful with their words and actions. If he had voiced that opinion to a friend of his, no one would have complained. But voicing his opinion minimizing rape on a university mailing list has direct negative effects for a lot of people.
Also, some people do listen, apologize, and put in the work to learn.
> I accept that inequality exists and perhaps RMS has some awful opinions, but if that's the case then just ignore him.
The problem is that other people don't just ignore him. By ignoring his harmful behaviour, we let his negative impact spread further as others repeat his misogynistic ideas.
> A world where everyone is constantly being watched by eachother and reported on is already too authoritarian for me to want to continue living in
I'm sorry and hope you find a way to continue living in this world. And I agree strongly about authoritarian governments.
I don't really think calling out a post on a large mailing list counts as "everyone is constantly being watched by each other" though.
I can find nothing that meets this criteria in the above links. Do you have an unusual definition of "misogynistic", were you being rhetorical or do you have another source?
That very mailing list was about to arbitrarily accuse a dead innocent man of a crime to help provide cover for actual criminals still walking the halls at MIT.
This charade around Stallman is an injustice against Epstein's victims, the decent people at MIT, and Minsky.
I feel like that is pretty sensationalized. The argument being made there is that regular birth is a common thing, and should be left off the list unless it is something out of the ordinary.
For the actual background on the current chain of events at MIT:
https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/index.html
For earlier allegations, take the original sources including quotes and references:
https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html
(note: there are many more archives. This also gives you an idea of the effort it must have taken to find those few "damning" posts, and to skew those out of context)
That's not really feminist, isn't it?
> • Co-Principle Investigator for a U.S. Department of Defense SBIR Phase II research contract, prototyping autonomous ground vehicle (AGV) with collection system.
Even projects under the gnu.org umbrella probably don’t interact that much with RMS, let alone have discouraging interaction.
I have no dog in this fight but have a bias for factual discussions
Note also that all of the anecdotes of actual bad behaviour that seem to come up are from about two decades ago, and we seem to be supposed to conclude that the pattern never stopped on the basis of that and a pathologically misquoted and misrepresented email he sent on the Epstein/Minsky case. Considering that the real email is at most slightly tone-deaf, the most likely model of reality to me seems to be that he has fixed that behaviour well over a decade ago, but a number of activists had resolved to never let it go until they found some way to completely destroy any status and reputation he has.
Some countries are more explicit about this and actually constitutionally single out matters of life and death as being prohibited from being traded off against each other (e.g. Germany), i.e. the state is not allowed to play in trolley problems. The corollary is that the state, and most everyone, finds it okay to trade off other harms: you can for instance choose to build an airport that will drive down the value of some people's homes and expose them to considerable noise in order to give convenience and good business to a large number of people. I think discouraging some women from participating in FOSS is much closer in quality of harm to "your home is now worth half as much and you have to put up with the noise of planes flying overhead everyday" than "you die a painful and untimely death".
("Wow, I've seen everything on HN to attack RMS. (...)")
this never happened though.
According not to me, but to Thomas Lord (if you don't know who he is, go and check)
> One remarkable thing about the FSF at that time, when we worked out of dinky spare offices on the campus of MIT, was the degree of participation by women. In the tiny society that was then the FSF, women were more prominent than I had seen in Silicon Valley, or acadamia prior.
And it says a lot about the amount of fabrication going around.
Quote one person in this thread who said that it wouldn't be ok if it affected men instead. Or just one person implying that.
You're assuming a lot here. If anything, I think it's likely less people would care if a bunch of men were alienated, since there's already so many of them in the field in the first palce.
I think anyone who was ever in favor of any war would agree that sometimes a death is justified when it saves many more?
That is a yes or no question. That is literally a binary choice. Yes or no - is murder OK if that murder saves more than one person.
That is literally the Trolley Problem.
The question is, is it acceptable to tolerate someones bad deeds because the benefits of doing so is greater than the harm.
It just isn't the same thing.
Armies don't have much issue with that ethical question.
Murder is a crime.
Where is the crime here?
It is ok to let go a "fuck you" if that persons did good before.
He has been accused, by several independent parties, of, among other things:
-Asking female coworkers to lay down topless on a mattress in his office.
-Threatening a colleague to kill himself if he/she didn't go on a date with him.
-Posting up signs in his workplace along the lines of "Knight for Justice (Also: Hot Ladies)".
Who, exactly?
> -Asking female coworkers to lay down topless on a mattress in his office. > -Threatening a colleague to kill himself if he/she didn't go on a date with him.
Sooooo, your entire analysis is based on legends circulating since the 90s about a weird man who was even told to be scared by plants?
For reference, Thomas Lord, creator of GNU arch (think about Git before Git), who worked for FSF for a long time said
One remarkable thing about the FSF at that time, when we worked out of dinky spare offices on the campus of MIT, was the degree of participation by women. In the tiny society that was then the FSF, women were more prominent than I had seen in Silicon Valley, or acadamia prior.
p.s.: In the closet-sized "office" Bushnell, McGrath, and I shared for a time we did have some spider plants as part of a running silly joke. They did not actually scare RMS away **OF COURSE** and he usually had helpful criticism and advice of our efforts, from my point of view.
> -Posting up signs in his workplace along the lines of "Knight for Justice (Also: Hot Ladies)".Can you tell an inside joke when you see one?
p.s. all of us have being young and done some innocent stupid shit, the kinds young people do, like having stupid signs on the door. It doesn't make any of us a criminal.
But I expect that the second- and third-degree network effects have. MIT has had a huge influence on open source software. Keeping the number of women who contribute to FOSS lower has a snowball effect of discouraging other women from contributing—there are fewer leaders to look up to, and day-to-day misogyny in FOSS spaces goes unchecked more often.
As another commenter pointed out, I also don't think net impact is the bar. But besides that, it's very hard to measure, so I prefer to focus on having positive impacts and limiting/fixing negative impacts. I think the things he said on the CSAIL mailing list continue to contribute to a negative environment for women at MIT.
Surely second- and third-degree network effects occur on the encouragement side of the equation, too. Why would we expect any putative discouragement of women by Stallman to travel further in the social graph than his encouragement of both men and women?
> I think the things he said on the CSAIL mailing list continue to contribute to a negative environment for women at MIT.
Which things specifically, and in what way?
> Which things specifically, and in what way?
Saying that we shouldn't call sexual assault "sexual assault", and implying that there's any way a rich, famous, 73-year-old man can "have sex with" (rape) a 17-year-old girl, whom he has extraordinary power over, and who, in in this case was his friend's trafficking victim.
The idea that Minsky's "honour" is in any way more important than harm in what happened to Giuffre perpetuates rape culture. It perpetuates the idea that women are worth less than men, and that it's okay for famous men in CS to rape girls. That emboldens other rapists and makes CS very unwelcoming for rape victims.
Minsky should have known. Implying there's any way what he did was okay creates an unwelcoming environment for women, especially young women and girls at MIT.
(Background and links from https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21... )
...what are the scare quotes for? Is "have sex with" not a definitional superset of "rape"? As far as I can tell, Stallman does not assert that Giuffre was not raped, only that Minsky would probably not have known. (As far as he knew, she could equally have been one year older and legally, voluntarily engaged in prostitution...?) You could argue that (and I think that if Minsky did indeed have sex with her, you would have a very good case) that Minsky was extremely naive and/or irresponsible to not suspect anything amiss in the setting, but sexual (or any other) assault, in the view of many people, requires intent to harm someone against their will.
Here, it seems that the intent, and hence the primary guilt for the assault, most likely was squarely with Epstein and his associates: if a gun salesman takes you to his shooting range and tells you to fire a weapon at a target that he actually secretly tied a person to the back of, and you shoot that person dead, you are not on the hook for murder even if you should really have known that something is off and recall hearing muffled screams from somewhere at one point in hindsight.
> The idea that Minsky's "honour" is in any way more important than harm in what happened to Giuffre
Where did Stallman claim that?
How would Minsky have known? It was 2001 or early 2002, before Epstein's trafficking came to light. From Minsky's point of view, a girl who worked at Epstein's retreat as a masseuse and was above the age of consent [1] offered to have sex with him. (Which, according to Gregory Benford, who was there, Minsky declined).
[1] 16. It wasn't until later that the US Virgin Islands raised it to the current 18.
> In 2012, the Jeffrey Epstein Foundation issued a press release touting another conference organized by Minsky on the island in December 2011.
The press release is at https://www.pr.com/press-release/383199
Almost certainly not, but at this stage it is not unlikely that he'll put off more than he'll encourage going forward. So by the same "net effect" argument you make for accepting his behaviour up to a point in the recent past, he should go. Live by the sword, get asked to resign because of the sword.
> Considering the frankly extremely low percentage of female contributors
That low number of female contributors is at least in part due to the impression people have of working in these areas. Allowing him to continue to alienate people works against efforts to rectify that impression (and where it is true rather than just an impression, work to fix the behaviours that are causing the problem).
> all of the anecdotes of actual bad behaviour that seem to come up are from about two decades ago
Perhaps most, but not all. I've definitely seen some more recent claims, and they were mentioned before this particular episode. They weren't as egregious as the earlier behaviour so he was at least controlling/curbing/changing the creepy behaviour for which I suppose there should be some credit, and there is definitely some curious timing wrt MIT and the Epstein contributions so there is presumably a bit of "throw him under the bus as a distraction" going on, meaning this is a case with significant grey areas, but I think painting him as an entirely innocent victim is a step too far.
Let's be fair handed: if we wouldn't accept it from a politician or other celebrity, we shouldn't accept it from someone whose other ideas we agree with either.
If I save a hundred lives as a doctor and then murder one person, does the calculus go in my favor?
It can be. A sharpshooter killing a terrorist and saving 100 lives would be lauded as a hero.
I'm just asking. I got that feeling reading your comment. I get that feeling reading a lot of comments here. I could be wrong.
As a reminder, he has been accused, by several independent parties, of, among other things:
-Asking female coworkers to lay down topless on a mattress in his office.
-Threatening a colleague to kill himself if he/she didn't go on a date with him.
-Posting up signs in his workplace along the lines of "Knight for Justice (Also: Hot Ladies)".
Again, if you save a bunch of lives, but then murder someone in cold blood, does the fact that you saved way more than you murdered mean that society ought to look past the murder? After all, your net contribution is very positive!
I agree in principle, but I think there's lots of good arguments against it as well.
More importantly than the question of whether it's legal, I'm amazed that people can still see themselves as "the good ones" after all the things they do to their fellow humans.
* In German, we use the word "Meinungsfreiheit", which literally translates to "Freedom of Opinion", not "Free Speech", so yes, technically speaking, we don't have free speech; only the right to express our opinions.
A nice side effect of criminalizing defamation would be that the enforcment would be up to the state. When it is a civil affair only rich people can defend themselves.
[citation needed]
And if you get alienated from a career path because of one bad professor, go and find something else that you want so badly that you are willing to tough it out. Otherwise you will always blame your professional success limits on people not supporting you enough, or cracking an off-color joke or two or microaggressions. Do you honestly expect to never have to deal with a problem boss/coworkers/customer in a super-competitive private sector job? Don't tell me nurses and schoolteachers never have to deal with someone like RMS or worse. And sure, some degree of bad behavior should have proportional consequences, but do we hear about how women get alienated from these professions en masse?
That may be a good thing. FSF isn't about Richard Stallman.
And some of the "kids" that ran him out of town know to keep plants at their desks because it turns out he's kind of a creep around young women, and also afraid of plants. None of that information has anything to do with mailing lists. There is always some reason that gets people to deal with a problem and that reason is often objectively kinda shitty. People overlook it because the problem is finally being addressed.
One of the things that's going on in the current political climate is that it's no longer enough to be a great developer but a horrible human being. Development in the 90's was punctuated by some truly titanic man-children that everyone had to 'put up with' because they were just so good at the rest of their job.
Gates seems to have grown up (I'm curious what Ballmer has been up to). Jobs, god bless him, died of his own stubbornness. They keep Ellison out of the spotlight, as they seem to have done with Stallman. Until he retires that leaves Torvalds (who I hope outlasts Ellison).
I am sure there were points in my life where I could be painted with that brush, and I can say with a bit of authority that we don't need that kind of behavior. And if behavior is tolerated at the top then it's effectively tolerated everywhere.
The problem is that that reason is the one people think is the reason the problem got dealt with.
It has a nasty chilling effect.
from someone who actually worked with him:
"p.s.: In the closet-sized "office" Bushnell, McGrath, and I shared for a time we did have some spider plants as part of a running silly joke. They did not actually scare RMS away OF COURSE"
Yes he had great ideas. They were so great that they exist beyond the man who created them and now benefit from him not being involved.
The chilling effect of such a policy essentially means that all advocacy groups must be led by slick marketing politicians, always on-point and on-brand, even if off camera.
Was this an unrelated private message board? I was under the impression it was on a mailing list at MIT.
That's a big "if"
Stallman was reviled not for things he didn't do, but for thoughts he didn't think.
-Asking female coworkers to lay down topless on a mattress in his office.
-Threatening a colleague to kill himself if he/she didn't go on a date with him.
-Posting up signs in his workplace along the lines of "Knight for Justice (Also: Hot Ladies)".
Even the initial accusation doesn't try to push the story that far:
"He literally used to have a mattress on the floor of his office. [..] (the mattress was also known to have shirtless people lounging on it…)"
Person has sleeping accommodation in place where he lives (odd thought it may be). Sometimes people use it as chair. No mentions of requests or toplessness.
> -Threatening a colleague to kill himself if he/she didn't go on a date with him.
Unsubstantiated: saying something like "I can't imagine life without you" can be interpreted just like that depending on a variety of circumstances. That was also decades ago.
> Posting up signs in his workplace along the lines of "Knight for Justice (Also: Hot Ladies)".
Really now? Incidentally also the only one of your accusations of which there is evidence instead of hearsay or urban legends. Furthermore, "a sign" not "signs".
> He kept the door to his office open, to proudly showcase that mattress and all the implications that went with it. Many female students avoided the corridor with his office for that reason
Now go ahead and tell me it's a coincidence you kept that part out, and it was probably not a big deal, and they were all exaggerating in some inexplicable coordinated effort to be disturbed.
So your arguments basically consist on half-quotes, "it happened long ago, so it isn't true", "unsubstantiated; since there's no recordings of it, he probably just said something nice and was misinterpreted yet again" and "maybe that happened, but since I, a man, who'd never be targeted by his sexual advances, think it's ok, it's ok", completely disregarding the fact that all these accusations have been corroborated by witnesses, ranging from people interviewed on several media and dozens of reports and online comments from people who claim to have worked with him over the years, let alone the several unrelated victims of his "urban legends", and most of all, the fact that people repeatedly let him know about his attitude and he didn't give a damn.
In short, yet another big, somehow coordinated witch hunt by overly sensitive SJWs.
"He kept the door open to proudly showcase" could have easily been "He kept to door shut to hide his actions", that is: both cases would be equally damning from the writer's perspective, and hinges only on their "implications that went with it" which are their invention alone.
Facts remaining, he had a mattress in his office. He left his door open. Sometimes people were sitting on the bed.
> "it happened long ago, so it isn't true"
No. It happened a long time ago. People, over time, remember the emotional impact of something on them, but no longer the precise wording. She remembers the gist of someone talking about suicide, because that's what she thought he meant. Without the exact wording and cirumstances, it can be very difficult to figure out what transpired. So it's not "it isn't true" or "she must be lying", but the account is unsubstantiated, likely irretrievably so, because "it happened a long time ago."
> completely disregarding the fact
I don't disregard them, I check them one by one, and so far I found them lacking.
Why are you angry at me for reading what other people said before believing them at face value?
> that all these accusations have been corroborated by witnesses, ranging from people interviewed on several media and dozens of reports and online comments from people who claim to have worked with him over the years, let alone the several unrelated victims of his "urban legends", and most of all, the fact that people repeatedly let him know about his attitude and he didn't give a damn.
Please provide links outside of twitter. So far most accusations lead back to the initial article on medium by Salem G.
> In short, yet another big, somehow coordinated witch hunt by overly sensitive SJWs.
I don't know, and frankly, I don't care. I read the allegations, try to find the various sources, and try to put them into a logical context. I guess I'm simply a Knight for Justice (also: old weirdos)
Btw, you seem to be citing something. Could you share it here?
Here's a link to one I've most recently run into from someone who worked at MIT. Yes, it's a Reddit comment, but if you check out his profile you'll see the user's been on the site for 11 years, has close to 140k karma, and has many posts in the past that refer to his professional career.
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/d59r46/richard...
>A lot of people are acting like this is just about the Epstein comments. The MIT community was up in arms not just over that but at the mountain of shit Stallman has gotten away with over the last few decades, including crap like telling female researchers he'd kill himself unless they dated him, keeping a mattress in his office and inviting people to lay topless on it, defending pedophilia and child rape. He's been making women at MIT uncomfortable for years
>I wish there were more to tell but it's exactly what it sounds like. He had a mattress in the corner of his office and he'd leave the door open and if you were a woman who happened to walk by or heaven forbid need to talk to him for academic reasons he would find an excuse to invite you to use it
You'll also find other similar stories on that thread.
RMS was simply saying that bullshit was being perpetrated in that CSAIL mailing list, about his dead friend and colleague. If Minsky had been alive, no doubt he'd now be suing.
RMS has been traduced by Selam Jie Gano, Vice and TechCrunch, and goodness knows how many others (the bullshit and distortions seem to be everywhere). I regret that FSF have accepted his resignation; I am now resigning my membership of the FSFE.
Be specific about what he said that you find abhorrent
This topic is uncomfortable and a lot of people stay out of it or strongly self censor. he didn’t.
This is my point. As the president of an organization it’s not your job to make people uncomfortable about things that have nothing to do with that organization’s goals. Debating what is and is not statutory rape is not a discussion that should take place in any professional or technical environment.
This instance is actually even worse than just debating something in the inappropriate context. Epstein is a huge scandal. He raped dozens if not hundreds of girls. He loaned them out to other powerful people. It is within this context that RMS’ statements are most damning. He’s wading in some very murky ethical waters and it should be no surprise he caught a backlash.
Did anyone claim it was his job?
> Debating what is and is not statutory rape is not a discussion that should take place in any professional or technical environment.
Why?
> This instance is actually even worse than just debating something in the inappropriate context. Epstein is a huge scandal. He raped dozens if not hundreds of girls. He loaned them out to other powerful people. It is within this context that RMS’ statements are most damning.
Why is that? Does the fact that someone commits a crime make it inappropriate to defend people associated with them against incorrect accusations? How do you square that with the rule of law?
> He’s wading in some very murky ethical waters and it should be no surprise he caught a backlash.
He also should not be surprised that he gets a lot of opposition for promoting free software ... so, supposedly, he should not promote free software either?
I can’t comment on the rest of your point because again you talk about the horror of the crime and it’s not clear what of what he said or did you find abhorrent
If you can't know these things with sufficient certainty, definitely pick your license. Then only change it deliberately for your own purposes with your own goals and ideals driving it.
Devils advocate: maybe gpl will never have a later version you could possibly disagree with as it's too important to too many people just like you.
That's certainly what companies which made their fortunes out of taking software out of the commons and turning it into products want people to think. Enough programmers don't want to be turned into unpaid employees that copyleft licenses have substantial uptake.
Also:
> OSS predates Stallman, and will outlast him.
... refusing to see a distinction between OSS and Free Software? Neat rhetorical trick.
Open source (inclusive of both) never really had any traction outside a few limited domains until the GNU project.
Invented by Christine Peterson in the 90s, yes (though it was 1998); to distinguish from GPL-style, no. The Open Source Initiative immediately listed the GPL as an Open Source license, and the FSF had already described permissive licensing as free software (as distinct from copyleft licensing).
https://web.archive.org/web/19980119061702/http://www.fsf.or...
> The X Window System illustrates this. The X Consortium releases X11 with distribution terms that make it non-copylefted free software. If you wish, you can get a copy which has those distribution terms and is free. However, there are non-free versions as well, and there are popular workstations and PC graphics boards for which non-free versions are the only ones that work. If you are using this hardware, X11 is not free software for you.
https://web.archive.org/web/19981201223102/http://www.openso...
> GIMP
> Gnome
> Linux
> Open Source is a marketing program for free software. It's a pitch for `free software' on solid pragmatic grounds rather than ideological tub-thumping. The winning substance has not changed, the losing attitude and symbolism have.
If you are talking about the term OSS, then you are completely wrong. It came long after "Free Software" was coined and was named differently to mark a different movement.