Comment by ipnon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ipnon | Hacker News Reader

I believe there is a significant chilling effect in regards to speaking out in the defense of Richard Stallman, a man who has never been convicted of a crime, and who in response to the allegations in the open letter has said things such as:

"We know that Giuffre was being coerced into sex – by Epstein. She was being harmed,"

"Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm her psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that,"

and

"Nothing could be further from the truth. I've called [Jeffrey Epstein] a 'serial rapist,' and said he deserved to be imprisoned. But many people now believe I defended him—and other inaccurate claims—and feel a real hurt because of what they believe I said. I'm sorry for that hurt. I wish I could have prevented the misunderstanding."

[0] https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=has%20richard%20stallm...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Personal_life

What about all the women who have come forward, talking about what a massive creep he is?

This isn't about some technicality about what he said, but a culmination of 30 years of horrible behavior.

It takes trivial research (check Twitter) for the many personal accounts from women who will never get close to him, and have been driven from the industry by both him and the people who have protected him.

I recommend that you try with a swimming test first. Strip, bind and throw him in the water and if he stays afloat he is guilty, if he sinks to the bottom, you can still try the fire test next.

We can try to build a wooden bridge made from him. If we succeeded it would be a proof he is a wood, therefore he floats, so basically he is a witch.

What are the criteria for being a "massive creep"? Future board members, start taking notes!

I dunno, but he definitely passed:

https://mobile.twitter.com/bella_velo/status/117252486419394...

A vanity business card from 1988 that uses the phrase "tender embraces," which was intended to be self-deprecating as he has never been "conventionally attractive," is very, very, very weak evidence that predicates he's a "serial harasser" of women.

He’s a massive creep. I saw him speak in Copenhagen once, and he was eating his toenails during the talk.

Later he couch bummed on the professors couch instead of staying at a hotel and the horrible experience of having him as a “guest” is still the key story at every Christmas party.

I don’t want to defend him. I think he’s an idiot, but I also don’t think he’s pro-pedo. I mean, you have to be an absolute fool to write what he did, but his point was clearly just to say “maybe mr scumbag didn’t know the 17 year old hooker was forced”. As autistic and unnecessary as that is, it’s not exactly being a pro-pedo.

>I believe there is a significant chilling effect in regards to speaking out in the defense of Richard Stallman

Sorry? What chilling effect?

People are coming out of the woodwork to defend him. Most of the comments on most threads on Hacker News defend him. I can't think of anyone more vigorously and vociferously defended by the tech community except maybe Aaron Swartz.

If there's any chilling effect at all, it's in the other direction. It's impossible to disagree with the countrvailing narrative that Stallman Did Nothing Wrong without being called a bigot who hates neurdivergent people, a witch-hunting SJW and a traitor to free software. No one is even willing to concede the possibility of disagreeing with Stallman or his positions in good faith.

Meanwhile, only thing anyone suffers from defending Stallman is surplus karma.

Edit - yep.

Defend him against what? Not sure what he need defending from, really.

It's possible being critical both ways, without seeking harm.

They're seeking to "oust" him, so if you think he doesn't deserve it, then he needs to be defended.

Edit: I don’t want to comment

OK, but we're talking about Free Software culture and whether there's a chilling effect for defending Richard Stallman versus criticizing him. That specifically is the subject of the comment I replied to.

The poster you're replying to is making the point tge Stallman hysteria is just another symptom of a general trend; likely characterized by extreme levels of tribalism leading to frequent and destructive No-True-Scotsman-like behavior that freezes out any attempts at any positive inclusivity.

You're looking at the football stadium, he's commenting on the sports riot in progress.

Show me a good faith disagreement with Stallman, and I'll show you something so minor as to not justify ousting a man from his job, let alone an entire Board. In fact, in most cases I'll show you one side that doesn't try to actively foist their viewpoint on others, but instead invites the other side to come to their own conclusion.

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader as to which is which.

I support RMS and have been an FSF member for north of a decade.

A substantial disagreement I have with him over the GPL is whether we can call propeietary licenses "immoral".

Taking the libertarian view, I would offer that two people sharing a proprietary licensing agreement is as much my business as them consensually sharing bodily fluids.

The FSF tends toward intolerance as it gazes out from its "monastic" abode.

These sudden "woke" attacks on RMS are not part of a broader anti-freedom assault, are they? Sure would be a shame if there was a pattern of silencing in play.

RMS may be an abrasive, challenging personality, but all of those cheering for his ouster had better hope not to wind up in a Martin Niemöller[1] situation.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...

> proprietary licensing agreements + a broader anti-freedom assault

sure lets go full tinfoil hat ^^

I agree with your ideal of the freedom of contract in principle, but that only exists between equals. Wage slaves sign away exclusive rights to megacorporations and those do not negotiate licensing contracts with individual human consumers either. The contracts on both ends of the value chain are dictated by the corporation. Take it or leave it. Between the workers and the consumers a "right to reverse engineer" or a "right to repair" could be agreeable, but business is not going to let that happen. It will instead pressure any workers union to sign away all intellectual property rights the law allows and agree with denying the consumers every right that can be denied, arguing only then slave wages can match bread prices and every bit of idealism is going to take away from that.

So this is big tech trying to get rid of all the counter-culture ideologues so the FOSS communities can be ruled by docile councils of pushovers that offer no resistance against turning FOSS into feature incomplete community editions packed with telemetry and designed to harvest free work from young people eager to raise the value of their curriculum vitae. And even better all those undergrad engineers learn to keep their mouth shut, fall in line and never dare to argue against the social contract. Perfect mindset to get into negotiations for a wage slave position with corporate. Their ideal "community edition community" is not lead by radical free thinkers and it is not inclusive but instead managed by people who studied social science and are willing to sell out for scraps, the power to shush others and an idiotic believe that they in some way are helping to improve humanity by furthering the gleichschaltung of all aspects of culture and community into one big gamified social scoring system, when in truth all they do is crack the whip on the galley of totalitarian surveillance capitalism.

But enough about "Social Credit" systems...

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