Red Hat statement about RMS’s return to the Free Software Foundation board
redhat.com
redhat.com
He is accused of being transphobic despite asking everyone to "honor their preferences about their gender identity" with respect to pronouns: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26584613
After Stallman condemned the rape of a 17 year old girl in the Epstein case, Marvin Minksy had sex with the girl, unaware the girl was being coerced by Epstein. In accordance with the law of Canada and most U.S. states, it is legal to have sex with a 16 year old girl. Nonetheless, the open letter accused him of pedophilia.
The letter also claimed that for thirty years, had an unacceptable way of asking women out on dates. He can be taught a better way to ask women out. He has never been accused of groping or sexual assault.
The "sexual harassment for decades" Stallman did was asking out women in a creepy way. The original open letter's Appendix has two true claims (and one false claim I won't address here):
- In 1999, he had a mattress in his office which he slept on. This made some women avoid RMS because they considered it abnormal and creepy.
- In 1985, he told a woman he'd kill himself if he didn't date her.
[0]: Ctrl-F this for "rape": https://web.archive.org/web/20210325013942/https://stallman....
No, you can't claim that! It gets repeated everywhere but so far we only know that [0]:
> Virginia Giuffre testified in a 2015 deposition in her defamation lawsuit against Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell that Maxwell directed her to have sex with Minsky among others. There has been no allegation that sex between them took place nor a lawsuit against Minsky's estate. Minsky's widow, Gloria Rudisch, says that he could not have had sex with any of the women at Epstein's residences, as they were always together during all of the visits to Epstein's residences.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Minsky#Association_with...
MINSKY DIDN'T HAVE SEX WITH EPSTEIN'S GIRL.
She propositioned him, he turned her down. He was very close to his wife and they went everywhere together.
Translation: cave to the mob if you want our money.
You’ll end up with spineless yes people who don’t push back and also do nothing but do PR (virtue signal the latest fad).
Do they get to call for the management to get fired? Maybe their competitors get to call them out.
I mean the result of firings is measurably worse than being weirded out by an anti social guy.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/sheilacallaham/2020/09/20/eeoc-...
I disagree.
RMS is (much like Joseph Ratzinger, for a different religious movement) much better as a chief theologian, theorist of doctrine, and internal enforcer of and exhortationist to doctrinal purity within the Church than an ambassador or evangelist to those not already deeply committed.
Literally no person, anywhere, regardless of background, history, technical capability, history with free software, networking or speaking ability, is capable of acting as ambassador for the Free Software movment in the same capacity? Only RMS?
You realize he's a mortal human, right? Because if your premise is that no one else can ever be worthy to replace him, your conclusion must be that the movement will die with him.
Being the person who comes up with an idea doesn't have anything to do with being good at selling the idea to other people.
If he committed something, and this something was actually a crime and not just something that some people don't like, then it is up to the court to decide about it, not Twitter mob.
Yup. And if you haven’t noticed, that is exactly who is running almost every major institution in Western society currently.
The enlightenment has died not with a bang but with a whimper.
The political commentator Dave Smith has a great point where he views “wokism” as essentially a corporate plot. Post-2008 we had hordes of angry people occupying wall street, and however ignorant the footsoldiers may have been of basic economics they left a real mark. Fast forward ten years later and the corporations, big banks, and the CIA et al have all embraced woke identity politics and here we are arguing over the usage of the singular they and trying to decide if Aunt Jemima is racist or not. Viewed through that lens, wokism is the perfect performative ritual with which to placate the masses. And the beauty is it works on both sides. The left focuses on being woke instead of opposing the wars (both foreign and domestic) and the national “security” apparatus, and the right is busy fighting against the woke while they’re banned from going to church (COVID) and while their gun rights are gradually whittled away.
Reality is obviously not that simple but there’s a real kernel of truth there.
We have organizations openly advocating for discriminatory hiring based off race/sex/gender identity/sexuality. It’s a bit deeper than RMS not wanting to use the singular they or him asking the questions about pedophilia / consent that good neurotypical people know not to ask.
IDK, I get what you’re saying that they chose to reinstate him. But this feels more like a moral panic than a victory for ethics to me.
You might not be surprised to know that most people at my organization are very in favor of all this stuff so I recognize I’m in the minority here
And if it’s not clear, that’s a feature, not a bug.
Does Red Hat also do this when hiring its own employees?
And there still is no proof Marvin Minsky had a sex in Epistein's place. Nobody claimed that, even the victim women at that time.
Social Justice Warrior movement is gone extreme in RMS's case.
This move should be sufficient to get them to understand who their masters are, and to get back in line, though. RMS will be out by month's end, and all will be well again.
* His written defenses of "consensual" pedophilia and defenses of ownership of child pornography, as well as calls for parents of babies with disabilities to have abortions
* An email around the definition of "Rape" with regards to Marvin Minsky allegedly having sex with a 17 year old member of Epstein's harem
* A sign that was on the door of his MIT office decalring him to be the "Knight for Justic (also: Hot Women)"
* Allegations from several women that he would aggressively hit on them and not take no for an answer
After the controversy, the FSF took him off the board. The FSF has now flip flopped on this and put him back on the board.
Just to be clear: the parent commenter doesn't mean to say that RMS owns child pornography, but is instead referring to RMS commenting on other people's possession of it.
Just to be clear: (1) he was quoting a newspaper describing an actual study (that was quite shocking, but nevertheless it was a study) that has some strange conclusions, (2) he backed down later and apologized for his previous opinions.
* he never, ever defended paedophilia in any form.
* he defended the memory of Minsky who never had any sex with any member of the Epstein harem.
* the sign on his door was a prank and wasn't his doing anyway.
The only real thing is that as a neuro-divergent, he has an awkward way to propose, and often behaves inappropriately in public. Knowing that it's pretty rich that the same woke crowd accused him of "ableism".
This all reeks of corporate propaganda. It's incredibly similar to the way Assange has been smeared for years about things he didn't do. It's an agenda to de-fang the FSF, kill Free Software and make it all nice and Microsoft/IBM friendly.
Therefore, my opinion is that it's a plot against Free Software, the FSF and RMS. And I'll fight vehemently against that.
See http://techrights.org/2021/03/27/objective-look-at-phony-sca...
You'll even have a nice picture of some guy named Bill Gates with his good friend Epstein...
At this point one of the participants was appalled and asked RMS if he is aware that the contents of this internal list may leak to the press and if he knows what would happen. He answered[0]:
> The 's' in CSAIL stands for 'science'. The job of scientists is to evaluate evidence and seek truth. We have a social responsibility to do that as well. I hope that we scientists will never evade our social responsibility to seek and defend the truth out of fear that the press will misconstrue our search.
Then someone sent these discussions to the press saying that "Stallman is defending Epstein." Many media outlets published these pieces attributing to Stallman things he didn't say. Most importantly they claimed that his opinion was that the victims were "entirely willing." Nobody ever apologized to him for this and many people still believe this, even on HN.
Moreover, Minsky's wife later said nothing could have happened because they were always together when visiting Epstein's property. But nobody cares anymore, this false story was just used to drown Stallman as many people didn't like him for other things.
At this point, it is not going to ever stop until it happens to them.
Topics can be vanquished by a little libertarian clique here on HN, but it doesn't make them go away in the real world.
It is appalling how tone deaf this move by FSF has been in light of the circumstances that we live in today. Its genuinely disturbing to see this wellspring of the modern computing ecosystem become corrupted like this. They had an opportunity to change which they seemingly took in 2019 but I guess they didn't really mean it.
Mobs going around digging up whatever they can to bully people?
Vulnerable parts of our community coming forward with their experiences allowing us to understand the pain they experienced due to tone deaf comments and actions by those that were held in high esteem.
I would like the community to be welcoming to people of every background. Actions and comments that constitute harassment absolutely should not be tolerated, especially from those who are entrusted with power.
I don't think we should be obligated to read everybody's mind at all times. The only standards communication should be held to is honesty and good will.
Strawman argument. Nobody's arguing this.
The expectation is not perfection, but a certain minimum standard of respect and understanding from those who hold power.
Nobody is asking for him to be imprisoned over his comments. But his comments and actions have clearly shown that he lacks the skills required to be in a leadership position in the community.
If I can speak casually for a second I have no doubt that if they oust RMS they’d replace him with a diversity hire who simply is not singlemindedly focused on free software enough to actually fight like they need to. I think it’s really easy to underestimate the extent to which being absurdly logical to a fault and incredibly principled is critical for success in RMS’ position, and that’s what he offers warts and all. You don’t have to like the guy, you can think he’s a dick, but can we at least agree that he does mot have a track record of being malicious and at least half the controversial things he’s said aren’t even unreasonable they’re just the things you’re not supposed to say
Funny anecdote. Paul Steed (RIP) was notorious for conducting himself in a manner that was akin to RMS x20 in all manner of professional (let alone social) settings. Game developer conferences, company-adjacent deathmatches and lan parties, etc. His lewd comments and actions went far, far beyond any parody you could possibly think of for RMS's offer for "tender embraces".
Thing is, nobody complained - even posthumously. There is a fair argument to be made that this is due to the fact that he looked like Paul Steed.
Actions and comments don't constitute harassment in a vacuum. That is a judgement that is up to the recipient of said actions and comments.
I quote: "We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates."
Judging those with Asperger's specifically for a well-documented aspect of their condition is an interesting take. Be sure to tell any friends of yours who suffer from depression to "just cheer up" while you're at it.
Or he's willing to "go there" and discuss the matter the same way people discuss grisly murder in abstract, detached terms.
What he's not aware of are the social taboos around discussing these topics, especially in a way that casts child sexual predatory acts as "less bad" than other acts. In other words, he's unaware of others' visceral aversion.
Separately I find it hilarious that he’s called transphobic because he believes in non-binary identity but doesn’t believe in grammatical usage of the singular they (FWIW I naturally use the singular they and reject the idea that it’s invalid, but ironically I too fall afoul of it because I use the singular they as a genderless singular but now the trans community has made they its own pronoun meaning my usage of they as a sane default is itself considered transphobic...sigh...)
None of this excuses the weird statements and viewpoints and offense people have felt but we should ask RMS what he actually meant and have him describe before making the call. A lot of it is probably a misunderstanding and he will continue to offend people because that is the nature of his disability. It’s not intentional malice. He probably doesn’t harbor any ill will or desire to offend.
This is just something that happens when you are autistic. It can trigger a personal investigation process where one tries to figure out the social mistake, but they still slip up .
also,
“It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what." Stephen Fry
No
Hot of the presses: a pawn of IBM on the one hand and Microsoft on the other both oppose a free software advocacy group that fought against everything Microsoft/IBM stand for! Shocking, I tell you!
i think you should write your own OS
The crown goes to Debian, which wrote a pamphlet that could originate from a real ministry of propaganda.
So it is important to know who to support in the future, which would be an argument for leaving these submissions up.
He's a genius for sure, but the dude is just an awful public figure, there is a reason he's being memed to death and it's because he takes every chance to make a fool out of himself when is presenting something.
The stuff he said about pedophilia is frankly disgusting and the things about homo- and transphobia just shocking.
He is extremely intelligent, but only in this highly specific area. He is completely oblivious to everything else around him and just awful with people. Quite the important skill for somebody in a representative position.