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Comment by codethief | Hacker News Reader

> RMS ousted from the FSF

Wtf. Looks like I must have been living under a rock! What happened?

He was politically outspoken, like he has always been. But being outspoken is not acceptable in modern times.

He said it was likely that some women of Epstein's presented as entirely willing to Marvin Minsky. This was twisted by the press into him saying they were entirely willing.

For this he was ousted.

Is that insane to be ousted for stating an probably true idea?

Or am I just missing something?

Yeah I think it wasn't just that. He's said a lot of crazy things over the years so nobody could really defend him by saying "he didn't exactly say that" because the response was always "ok fine but what about all these other creepy things he's definitely said?". Basically the final straw.

These were all things he SAID and they weren't hateful or prejudiced?

They were just weird?

He never actually did anything and he never actually said anything hateful?

I don't know it seems like a case of talent getting beat out by politics.

I could be wrong I don't know much about it but that's what it seems like on the surface.

also for the bit on the CSAIL email discussion where he objected to the use of the term "sexual assault" when referring to statutory rape, the other bit on the CSAIL email discussion where he was questioning whether statutory rape actually counts as rape, and mostly for the new publicity that everything else objectionable he's been doing and saying for the last several decades received (e.g. his stated views that laws against child pornography are censorship, that pedophilia, necrophilia, incest are actually fine (IIRC he revised his view on pedophilia a few days prior to resigning), his MIT office sign reading "knight for justice and hot ladies").

Statutory rape is not the same thing as rape, that's the whole point of having a separate term for it.

If you look outside the Anglo bubble, you'll discover that sexual relations between teenagers of various ages are not uncommon at all.

right. It blows my mind that anyone who considers themselves intelligent would argue that statutory rape is rape.

Statutory rape LITERALLY means "consensual sex with someone below the age of consent". Because if the sex was non-consensual, it's called rape regardless of age.

RMS's biggest problem is that he was technically correct, but surrounded by a society of idiots.

Your idea of statutory rape not being rape fails at the definition you specified for the former term. Someone below the age of consent has been deemed by the law to be unable to make an informed decision about their body - which is true in all cases; in cases where that may not necessarily be true, the child would be smart enough to realize the act they're engaging in is unhealthy if not for their development then for their partner. Sexual relations with someone who cannot consent is rape. This doesn't include the fact that a large age discrepancy between two parties engaging in sexual relations will generally lead to an inequality in power, and sexual relations between two inequal parties in that way may not be rape but certainly isn't "good sex".

Many states have "Romeo and Juliet" laws, which decriminalize sexual relations between people under the age of consent as long as they're similarly aged, solving the biggest issue most people have with the idea of statutory rape ("what if children rape each other?").

I use the term "sexual relations" because the act of sex necessitates consent. And although sexual relations with children may be uncommon outside of the "Anglo bubble", they still harm the child whether via physical or mental trauma.

Lets be clear here. When you say child you're referring to teenagers, not prepubescent children.

The question is whether or not a 15 or 16 year old can consent to non-harmful sex, and the answer is obviously yes. At that point they are sexual creatures with their own urges. two 16 year olds having sex is not harmful in any meaningful way, many many people start having sex at 16 (or younger) and go on to be just fine.

At this point, as far as I'm concerned, it's been clearly established that young people under the age of consent _CAN_ actually consent to sex.

Statutory Rape is not about consent, it's about manipulation. Due to the differences in life experience between a 16 year old and a 20 year old, the 20 year old can manipulate the 16 year old to give that consent. This does not imply that the sex between them is implicitly harmful to the 16 year old, just that it's immoral for a 20 year old to do this sort of manipulation.

It's also clear that a 20 year old can rape a 16 year old. Actually rape. And they'll be charged with rape, regardless of the age of consent. This is because, by definition, with statutory rape the 16 year old DID consent.

And one last piece of evidence to show clearly that you are wrong here.

It's possible for 2 25 year olds to have sex and statutory rape charges be brought. How? Because one of them is mentally handicapped.

Because Statutory Rape is not specifically about the age of consent, or giving consent. It's about the coercion of someone who is not considered mentally capable of protecting themselves from said coercion. It's about the morality, not about any sort of inherent harm of the sex itself.

And to head off one argument that I KNOW is coming. The age of consent in Japan is 13, pointing out that the age of consent is 16 in many places in western civilization is not meaningful or useful here. It doesn't change the ideas that I've presented in this post.

Statutory rape is only semantically different from rape; legally, they are the same thing and they should be because having sex with children is gross and weird and I need a shower after seeing this thread.

> he objected to the use of the term "sexual assault" when referring to statutory rape

As someone who has ever been a teenager at any point in my life, I second this objection. There's plenty of overlap, but those aren't the same thing.

Basically, he made some poor decisions on various things. Not only sexual harassment, but also defending others who are accused of some not very nice things and has a history of misogynistic comments and behaviors. Here's an article giving more detail on a few of the issues surrounding the resignation so you can draw your own conclusions:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/richard-m-stallman-resigns-fro...

Once someone has been condemned by the crowd (in this case, Minsky), you must cry with the pack (even in private or semi-public conversations) or share their fate. You have absolutely no right to ponder, ask for more evidence or whatever. Obey the Party Line or be sentenced.

Then they basically admit in the article that truth or justice carry no weight whatsoever, but that "good PR" and social media trends are what count.

Revolting. It's disgusting beyond any measure.

RMS has been doing things that people in the open source community disagreed with for a long time. His latest offence also had the effect of bringing all/many_of those previous slights to the attention of the "crowd" (because social media) and that amplified the message of criticism against him.

I think that his "latest offences" were of a particularly laden political tone (or could be painted as such), while eating stuff from his toenails publicly and other eccentricities passed as innocuous, though actually annoying the hell out of corporate types and other people interested in power, money, shiny PR and other matters that RMS always more or less considered with relative contempt.

It's significant that you talk of "the open source community". I'm not of "the open source community" (less than ever, in fact), I'm firmly in the "Free software community" and an FSF member for 20 years. I don't remember ever having a disagreement with RMS on any important matter.

I'm afraid your opinion of RMS is not universally shared, as evidenced by FSF's latest membership drive.

Despite his numerous and off-putting shortcomings, many people (incl. myself) still believe RMS to be the best person for leading the free software community. His unyielding stance on how software should be used and shared is exactly what the FSF needs in its leadership. All the issues you and others list to justify RMS' dismissal are orthogonal to this task. Yes, this also includes the toe thing.

I have personally stopped supporting the FSF because of this incident after about a decade of support, and I no longer include the "or-later" clause in my GPL software.

> All the issues you and others list to justify RMS' dismissal are orthogonal to this task.

Where did you get the impression that wazoox considered RMS's dismissal in any way justified or justifiable? The comment you're responding to literally says:

> > I don't remember ever having a disagreement with RMS on any important matter.

Also:

> and I no longer include the "or-later" clause in my GPL software.

I'm embarrassed to admit that this problem didn't occur to me until you pointed it out; thank you; I need to go fix that for my own software.

Doing things? Do you have any examples? My impression at the time that he resigned was that it was because the crowd didn't like the things he was saying, not that he'd actually done anything himself.

I intentionally left examples out because writing something that would be fair towards RMS is hard (and I don't want to spend the time to do it). It's also been some time since I read about this and I haven't saved the location of those sources.

He was forced to resign for expressing his opinions and not for anything he did himself.

That's not true, it was more of a "straw breaking the camel's back" situation, and he has in the past personally acted in inappropriate ways for many many years.

https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-appendi...

All these are just allegations. If his alleged misbehavior is as frequent as it is being famed, then it should be relatively easy to provide some evidence. The man was filmed eating stuff off his toes ffs!

I saw some tweets from some women AI researchers at MIT shortly after RMS was ousted. They all had vivid tellings of instances where RMS would make lewd comments about their bodies or look at them weird, and how a lot of the women researchers would actively avoid him.

Tbh I think some of the memes about him and his sexuality might be valid. If that's the case, then frankly he should have been cut loose a long time ago.

I'd say it was all stand-in charges under the pressurized internet of today.

This whole thing smells like a power game to me. I don't know exactly who or what the real power behind this stuff is, but I sure get the feeling that if you present a threat to their worldview, they'll destroy you by trying to associate you with any bad stuff and painting anything you ever said in the worst possible light. Toe the line, and your every misdeed will be ignored.

I'm not entirely a fan of how far RMS goes on some tech issues, but this all just feels dirty and wrong.

That article you linked is garbage. The article title says "RMS resigns... after defending Jeffrey Epstein behavior", which is an outright lie since RMS never -- not even once -- defended Epstein. You're free to dislike the man, but please stop posting slanderous nonsense. If you want a facts-only take of things, see this: https://itsfoss.com/richard-stallman-controversy/

Or better, this: https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/

He has been accused of sexual harassment by someone. In the usual "cancel culture" fashion, you're deemed guilty until irrevocably proved innocent, therefore RMS has been ousted from the FSF and the MIT.

A proof if you needed one that the "SJW" or "baizuo" culture isn't at all progressive, but a dangerous intolerant bunch more akin to the Khmer Rouge than anything else.

Sorry, but there's a lot more to it that a simple one-off sexual harassment accusation.

There is more to it but it is also a "cancel culture" moment if there ever was one. I think history will look back on his ousting as part of a mass hysteria, but I don't agree with OP about likening it to the Khmer Rouge (messed up, that)

Can you elaborate? At least the ZDNet article you posted doesn't exactly corroborate your statement. (Not taking a stance for/against RMS here – I still don't really understand what happened.)

See the daring fireball link up thread.

There were some Tweets by some women AI researchers at MIT about RMS's lewd behavior towards them. The kind of behavior that would have gotten a lesser man burned at the stake (metaphorically, of course).

The groupthink in current mainstream media wouldn't allow it so they launched a smear campaign to get him kicked out and the board that controls FSF probably convinced him to move on. It's not okay speak against the radical left these days, if you do you're a nazi gun toting alt right person. Whereas I'm actually none of the above and a moderate democrat.

Character assassination happened: https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/

https://daringfireball.net/2019/09/richard_stallmans_disgrac...

John Gruber just rubs me so completely the wrong way now. I'm not really sure why but he seems incredibly petty and nit-picky in the past several years and I actively avoid reading things he's writing. It's a stark change from someone whom I used to read religiously and strongly considered his every word, especially on Apple-related topics.

In part of this[1] he's nit-picking RMS for choosing to spend time laying out his personal preferences in a rider for speeches, and, none of them are really outlandish beyond what you expect for a privacy-focused free-speech-free-software person. I don't chose to live my life as RMS does, but, I won't begrudge him his choices.

The worst thing he could pick on is "I don't want breakfast, please don't ask."

He just comes across to me as petty and sanctimonious, in this, and in general recently. I'm not sure which one of us has changed.

Also some of his choices are quite humble and heartening and make me like RMS quite a bit more. "I don't like hotels, I would prefer to stay in someone's home, even if I'm sleeping on a couch, so I can socialize with them." He seems like a nice enough guy.

[1] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/10/26/rms

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24383640.

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