that whole thread is a pretty gross social lynch mob, if I do say so myself.
not condoning RMS, but I don't feel too great about any get-together where the topic at hand is , quite literally, let's speak ill of someone.
Sure, but that's not what's going on in that thread.
It's basically just a pissing contest, with participants across the internet, about 'ridiculous' stories involving RMS.
A link to the famous rms-foot meme is by no means a warning to future hospitable folks.
It's not some neighborhood watch newsletter to warn about a predator, it's just a bunch of people who have been given the social go-ahead to share stories that they wouldn't otherwise have -- while simultaneously vying for social credit from others with regards to how hospitable they say they were.
In other words, i'm not buying the supposed good intentions 'we must warn others' perspective here.
If anything, it seems like group therapy for those that feel scorned by RMS to get together and share war-stories. That's fine -- but let's not paint it like they're adamantly trying to prevent RMS from victimizing someone.
Back in my day it was called 'gossiping', and it was usually poor form.
> that whole thread is a pretty gross social lynch mob
This is relevant information for anyone who might consider giving you a job, having a relationship with you, or renting you a place to stay, so it's totally appropriate to air your dirty laundry in a entirely public forum and associate it to your real identity. Thank you.
The guy is an old man who's already been stripped of all positions of influence. Why do you want to make him sleep on the street too? At what point will you believe justice has been served? Attacking the defenseless and powerless is cruelty itself.
The whole point of my request was to show the absurdity of justifying spreading rumors about someone simply because their bad behavior is known.
Besides which, you're dodging my point.
Yea, I agree you don't need anyones permission to post this kind of stuff, it is free speech, afterall. I just object to you justifying it as somehow being moral, just because it's relevant information to someone who might interact with him in the future.
This is a public forum, and posting this kind of stuff here is being an asshole. That's my only point.
I suppose for fairness we should count only being over age 18, so, I once hit my best friend with a car because I was picking them up from the airport, they were loading luggage, and I took my foot off the brake without realizing it was in reverse instead of park. (They were not injured.)
Do you regularly associate with people for whom having Stallman-level worst behaviors is common?
Also, it's generally common to apologize after doing something bad, to acknowledge that the behavior was mistaken, as a step to forgiveness. I did not apologize to the girl (it seems more harmful than not at this point to reconnect) but I did apologize to the friend immediately. Did Stallman apologize to de Icaza for his behavior?
I don't claim that this is near either extreme of the spectrum, but it seems closer to the latter end, in my brief interpretation.
Oh, I don't know, that thread read more like relatively mild commiseration between people with first-hand experiences hosting RMS - which all sounded rather chagrined/amused more than anything, at least in retrospect.
(Admittedly such talk is better in person over drinks, but it's hardly the "cancel culture" type mob you see nowadays.)
Many people seem to have rms bad behaviour stories, but a quick glance shows that there there is no shortage of people to respond antagonistically to any bad word spoken.
I have only met rms once in the 90's, he made quite a poor impression. While it was nothing to condemn, it was enough to keep a skeptical eye on the cult of personality that surrounds him. Over the years that followed I encountered enough people who have stories that they were not prepared to share publicly because it would be more detrimental to themselves than rms.
In my opinion I am much less concerned about the hypotheticals shared in emails that precipitated the current situation. The issues that worry me are the stories of inconsiderate, manipulative, or outright bullying behaviour.
I have no accusations to make of my own, but I support those who feel like they now have an opportunity to be heard.
People saying RMS shouldn't be leading open source projects are now stuck.
If they don't give details of all the times RMS has behaved unacceptably someone will say "but what has he actually done?", and if they do give details of poor behaviour someone will say "the social lynch mob is unpleasant".
Also, I am sure that there are many people who would offer him somewhere to live, he has quite a few fans.
Why? That's an impressive amount of benefit of the doubt to give anybody, but so much more so if you're also willing to personally host that person. It's almost unbelievable. Do you in fact mean to say not that you don't care about his opinions, but that you simply have read about them and don't find them particularly condemnable?
I would be willing to host him just for the conversations, and because I feel like it's the least I can do for a man who shaped much of the software that I use everyday.
If they really do, only then it makes sense to remove him from a position of power.
then maybe he should be a little more humble about what he expects? that's my point.
I generally agree with what little I understand of the principles behind his work. But "selling out" for money (and locking up code to facilitate that) was the trend he was defying and it's a vastly easier path than the one he chose.
Not trying to argue with you. I just honestly don't understand it to work exactly like that, but some of your phrasing seems ambiguous and I'm wondering if I even understood you.
IBM bought Redhat at a valuation of $34 billion.
In 1990 Stallman received a MacArthur grant, which comes with $500,000. During the late 1990s, many of the founding fathers of free software were granted stock during IPOs. Here for example is documentation that Eric Raymond got stock that ended up being worth $36 million (for a couple of years until the bust in 2001): https://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/12/10/ipo_makes_va_linux_...
Now Eric Raymond got that stock for accepting a position on the Dot Com's board of directors, and I can well imagine Stallman refusing all such directorships on principle, but OTOH I would be surprised if none of the founders of successful Dot Coms during that period donated generously to Stallman directly or via the FSF.
In general, almost everybody with as much fame and public reputation for moral rectitude ("prestige"?) as Stallman has for as long as Stallman has had it is worth at least a million or 2 dollars (unless they're, you know, chronically mentally ill or some such). Fame and prestige for example get you much higher speaking fees, and public speaking has long been Stallman's favorite thing to do.
So it took him seven years to get that money. Meanwhile, he was intermittently homeless and only succeeded in registering to vote while homeless due to his fame for his work. He submitted his voter application and listed himself as a "squatter" at his work address. The registrar of voters refused to accept this and changed their mind when an article about him came out in a national publication and said the same thing.
Meanwhile, I routinely hear that software engineers at FANG companies can make upwards of a quarter million annually in salary and he lives in Boston, not known for its low cost of living.
That should be common knowledge for the HN crowd, so I'm not going to try to back that up with a source.
I always thought the "squatter" description referred to his spending much of his time at MIT and keeping things at MIT without being employed by MIT. (Stallman quit his MIT job when he started GNU out of a worry that if he kept it then MIT might claim ownership of GNU; the legal ramification of the GPL weren't understood as well back then as they are today.) I don't think his use of the word implies that he had nowhere else to live.
I searched the page you linked for "home", "squatter", "vote" and "register" without finding any text the supports anything in your comment. I hope I don't come across as antagonistic to you; I am sincerely curious whether Stallman was ever homeless (i.e., ever lacked reliable access to private indoor space with a door that could be locked).
A quick search of the web also gives me nothing and I don't plan to spend a lot of time trying to prove this. Perhaps this will suffice as a source to satisfy your curiosity:
ADDED. "Until around 1998, my office at MIT was also my residence. I was even registered to vote from there. Nowadays I have a separate residence in Cambridge not far from MIT." https://stallman.org/rms-lifestyle.html
yeah, that’s a no from me, dog.
.. ok :)
Some of the most significant human advances have been made by people obsessing over their passionate interests to the neglect of everything else.