Hacker News Reader

Comment by belval | Hacker News Reader

So what did RMS do exactly? I haven't been keeping track and the man is basically a living legend.

I assume it goes back to the Minsky incident. From what I understand, a trafficked woman/girl at Epstein's island was instructed to sleep with Minsky. Whether or not this was actually carried out is unclear. RMS said to give him the benefit of the doubt, that he likely wouldn't have known that she was being trafficked.

Just another RMS hot take. It was stupid, like a lot of his statements. Not worth canning him IMO.

Can you elaborate what is stupid about it? Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

He went there after Epstein's first conviction. If you're flying to a billionaire sex-offender's private island and get offered a young girl, I'm pretty sure it would raise some red flags.

I don't think the part about giving him the benefit of the doubt is stupid, especially because it's never been clarified whether he did have sex with her, or if Epstein just suggested it to her. I just find his explanation unconvincing.

Considering the amount of downvotes under my comment I don't want to pile in too much, but I expected more. The email talks about racism and I just don't see how that ties in with Minsky.

There is also his position on paedophilia and on "censorship" of child porn.

Source? I had no clue.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21287006

I've posted these before, but these are the best two links I've found that put all the accusations into context:

https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/

https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web

I think good starting points are https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html and http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html (note, particularly, the several links in the sentence starting "In fact," - each word is its own link). Both of those posts are from former FSF board members who have basically spent their entire professional careers working to advance free software.

I think people who actually wrote free software have advanced it.

Why do Foundations have so much imaginary power?

Largely because RMS gave them that power?

Like I'm not sure what your argument is. Are you saying one should not take board members of the FSF seriously, and one should ignore people whose contribution to the free software movement is more political than technical? Then you've already made the argument against RMS having a role on the GCC steering committee.

The only real power is in the "or any later version" part of the GPL, which IMO is a mistake. I'd delete it like Linus when using the GPL.

Yes, I think foundation members' influence is overrated. The Kuhn story looks like any plain vanilla internal power struggle. Why hasn't he spoken up 10 years ago? It is hypocritical to do so when everyone else is piling on.

The same applies to old guard RedHat and SuSE people. They have known RMS for decades and suddenly he needs to be removed.

Foundations in OSS in general attract the wrong kind of people. RMS, for all his flaws, did pretty well overall compared to others.

The mailing list post this thread is about is that the people who, for the last 20 years are actually writing free software want rid of RMS, because he hasn't done anything useful, and has done a lot of harm, in those 20 years.

RMS did indeed start a lot of great projects, but that doesn't give him the right to continue to rule over them now, after thousands of other people have contributed more lines of codes than him in the last 20 years.

He's fat, unattractive (not to say ugly), asocial and most likely borderline autistic.

Don't get me wrong, I've attempted to book him for a conference, and experienced the two-page long list of "requests" to be fulfilled, but he's basically being cancelled for having a dissenting opinion from the current culture war going on.

edit: to the downvoters, plenty of slim handsome socially-skillful celebrities have done worth than RMS and got away with a slap on their wrist.

Yeah, that's the long and the short of it. RMS has had fantastic ideas, and I think he generally cares quite a bit about humanity, but the guy is weird, and people don't seem to be willing to put up with that brand of weird.

(You can be plenty of other sorts of weird and not be cancelled, of course, making the whole thing quite arbitrary....)

> (You can be plenty of other sorts of weird and not be cancelled, of course, making the whole thing quite arbitrary....)

... and you just summarized everything wrong with the current bs going on. You've got to be the right kind of weird to fit in their narrative, everybody else is gonna be cancelled. "The pot calling the kettle black" they used to say... Today's puritans are no better than yesterday's.

You just hand-waived sexual harassment away as not “the right kind of weird” and speaking out against a serial perpetrator of it as “Puritanism”

The "weird" in question is perpetual harassment of women. As in, doing harm to individuals in our community. Granted, He has had fantastic ideas... but has he been contributing fantastic ideas to the GCC steering committee in the last decade? What's he actually bringing to the table that offsets the harm that he causes?

And FWIW, I think he's cute and I've never been on a second date with a guy who wasn't socially awkward.

This is not about his poor hygiene or his rudeness. This is about his misogyny, him not recognizing other people's work, him making women uncomfortable in person, his earlier normalization of paedophilia, his half-hearted apologies and whatever shady maneuvers made in the FSF for him to be reelected. It's clear he's not willing to acknowledge his errors and, at this point, he actively damages the reputation of the FSF and the Free Software movement he helped found.

He should know better.

I am bad with social cues. I put myself in awkward situations. But I know better. And, more important, if someone tells me I need to change, I'll work on that.

He has opinions, having opinions shouldn't lead to your cancellation. Arguing 13 years old (which is the legal age of consent in Japan, btw) are old enough to consent for sex is akin to arguing that a 6 year old can consent for sex reassignment surgery, yet, one is acceptable, not the other one. Go figure out why...

Btw, this is the same as Chomsky having been cancelled in France in the early 80's. Just because Chomsky made an argument against historical truth being set by law doesn't make him a supporter of Robert Faurisson's theories.

Stallman said pedophilia means before puberty. He wasn't talking about 13 year olds.

I've never seen anyone advocate genital surgery at 6. The standard of care for 6 year olds is just treating them like the gender they say they are.

The FA has an extensive list.

The left-wing cultural puritans that have been taking hold in the OSS community don't like his opinions, largely those around sex,and are attempting to push him out.

Admittedly his ideas around sex are out there, but no more so than many of the type of people trying to ostracize him.

That letter is just racist and discriminatory. In fact, the basis is; because someone is white, use that to fire someone you don't like? That's illegal. No point trying to attach political content to such drivel.

So yeah, that "positive move towards more inclusivity and diversity, is not in a court of law, but could be if implemented due to that letter.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com