The Stallman Report | Hacker News Reader

The Stallman Report

stallman-report.org

201 pointspkilgore184 comments

Interesting to note that the A record for stallman-report.org was, up until a few days ago, the same as the A record for drewdevault.com:

https://i.ibb.co/RNBGcTJ/securitytrails-drewdevault.png

https://i.ibb.co/NYtTQnh/securitytrails-stallmanreport.png

So even though the report is anonymous, we can be almost certain that Drew is behind it, as he was for the previous hit piece.

Furthermore, while that same IP address (46.23.81.157) no longer hosts the stallman-report.org website, responding with "404 Site not found" if requested, it still has a certificate for stallman-report.org, which can be observed if a matching SNI record is sent during the TLS handshake:

https://i.ibb.co/S0fPvW3/ddv-sr-cert.png

Thank you. Sometimes I find myself in awe of the ability of random internet threads to dig out the background material needed to make sense of a a flame war.

This connection to Drew, combined with this comment from him here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41838124

and this link also posted here (the commented is downvoted to [dead]):

https://kiwifarms.net/threads/drew-chadwick-devault-ddevault...

puts some much needed light on the source of all this heat.

Your second link is worth reading again, seems it has had some rather concerning updates in the past day or two.

A post from that thread, linked below, is currently highlighted on that site's front page with the title "An open letter libeling Richard Stallman as a pedophile was probably written by Drew DeVault, a progressive open-source developer who has 10 years of history posting lolicon on reddit":

https://kiwifarms.net/threads/drew-chadwick-devault-ddevault...

It describes various of Drew's online habits over the years, including sharing artwork of prepubescent children in swimsuits. Perhaps there is a perfectly reasonable non-pedophilic reason for this, and I do hope Drew will return to the comments here once more to explain.

Either way, with this in mind, it places this section of Drew's report in a rather different context:

https://stallman-report.org/#support-for-the-possession-of-c...

Additional evidence has been uncovered linking Drew to this report, from Certificate Transparency data.

A search for all subdomains of drewdevault.com reveals rms-draft-84eb252.drewdevault.com, which had certificates issued on 29th September 2024, a few days before stallman-report.org was registered:

https://crt.sh/?q=rms-draft-84eb252.drewdevault.com

Helpfully, the Internet Archive monitors the Certificate Transparency logs and crawls all hostnames it finds. Which was done very soon after the certificate for rms-draft-84eb252.drewdevault.com was logged:

https://web.archive.org/web/*/rms-draft-84eb252.drewdevault....

From this, we can see that it is an earlier copy of the document that currently exists on stallman-report.org:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240929110752/https://rms-draft...

https://archive.today/dPAb6

Drew popped up on this thread yesterday saying that he'd "read most of the report".

We can now ascertain that this was a lie and an attempt to mislead, because it's clear from the accumulation of evidence that he authored it. While writing and editing this document he would have read every word, not just "most of" it.

He is also keen to congratulate himself by not-so-humbly announcing that "the depth of this report is astonishing".

Knowing that the author has engaged in such deceptive sockpuppetry casts significant doubt on the document itself. How much of it has been written to mislead the reader and misrepresent the facts?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41838124

> I've read most of the report and it's got a lot more than "last time". Speaking as someone who has done a lot of my own research on Stallman's bullshit, the depth of this report is astonishing. The allegations it makes regarding the conduct of the rest of the FSF is particularly alarming.

> I think you should at least skim it before you comment.

Alright, that's hilarious.

"Wow guys this is such a well-written piece. I wonder who could've put this together..."

I used to enjoy reading Drew's writings, but he's become such a complete goober lately (or I've just noticed it more).

I don't know what RMS's opinions have to do with running a free software organization, nor why they necessitate his cancelling, but apparently some people are incapable of compartmentalizing. I hate how common this has become.

> but apparently some people are incapable of compartmentalizing

You hit the nail on the head

> I hate how common this has become

That's to be expected when we widen the number of people participating in the technical community. Compartmentalization is an outlier behavior.

There was a time when some folks wouldn't have batted an eye that Reiser killed his wife if his filesystem was good. The median tech community member uses a different standard these days.

Or perhaps they aren't truly upset about anything RMS said or did but see it as a tool to wrestle control away from him for their own purposes.

> Knowing that the author has engaged in such deceptive sockpuppetry casts significant doubt on the document itself

Does it though? If we're expected to separate the message from the messenger for Stallman but not for Drew, isn't that a double standard?

Who cares where the information came from if the information is accurate?

The focus here isn't on DeVault's software, but on his hit piece aimed at ousting Stallman and the FSF board to install his own people. He attempted to distance himself from the article to mislead the public and maybe even shield himself from a libel lawsuit.

>Who cares where the information came from if the information is accurate?

It isn't. The article opens up by claiming that Stallman has a political agenda regarding the normalization of child sexual abuse which is a blatant lie. He never had an agenda regarding this, just a blog where he posted his terrible and tone-deaf opinions.

He deliberately framed his quotes in such a way to lead readers into a conclusion that fits his own political agenda.

It’s not a double standard to take the context of a writer’s desires in with their work, especially when they are actively trying to depose someone as important as RMS, and especially when the information is not accurate. What is a double standard though, based off of accurate in-context information, is that Drew DeVault is accusing RMS of pedophilia while he has a history of looking at and collecting drawings of bikini-clad prepubescent girls[0] and having VERY suspicious opinions disregarding minor female body autonomy[1].

[0] = https://web.archive.org/web/20131007121950/http://www.reddit... (specifically “Kaname [Madoka] in her swimsuit”. I assume the rules regarding linking to what is legally considered drawn CSAM is rather harsh, so for those who need proof of said claims Pixiv utilizes an ID string on every URL, and the “Sauce” hyperlink will direct you to it.

[1] “I'm of the opinion that 14 year old girls should be required to have an IUD installed. Ten years of contraception that requires a visit to the doctor to remove prematurely.” - https://web.archive.org/web/20130523180641/http://www.reddit...

Regardless of the merits of the claims in this “report”, normalizing this kind of deep archive stalking to build up dossiers on people is a really bad outcome and I hope the author realizes this now.

On the one hand, the case seems too little. Some weird opinions (but are you in the free country with free speech to express even weird opinions?), then an interaction back in the 80's(!!!), exactly one weird comment on stage, suggestive behaviour...

On the other hand, it's not a criminal charge. It's about who and how leads an institution.

I've seen post-USSR academic institutions led by old directors for decades, with good scientific achievements in the background, but at the time just being there for the old merits, doing ceremonial stuff and signing the necessary minimum of papers. At the time, academia was centrally financed, so they negotiated the money with the upper ranks of the same age and background.

Their behaviour was weird to many people around: comments about ages & sex (like "women's business is the kitchen"), broad judgements, "don't be stupid kid, turn your brain on" kind of comments, making people unease. Quite likely bitter about the USSR collapse. My female friends said they were told after studying or working in academia that they should go have kind rather than try getting PhD. There was no other institution of the same kind in the city. And after all, why should YOU quit as soon as you get unprofessional treatment?

Recalling this, I can understand the discontent with Stallman and the board.

That's pretty insightful comment for someone of post-USSR background as well. The important difference here is that all the institutions in question were founded by Stallman himself. And there are plenty of open-source communities that don't involve Stallman at all, and the barrier to create new ones is low as well - as soon as people are willing to follow you.

And, indeed, I can't speak for everyone but his continued involvement with FSF has put it off the list of organizations I'm interested in working with at all.

Thus demonstrating an effective filter against the type of pitchfork wielders and keyboard warriors who want to destroy and punish, rather than create and flourish.

If there was criminal conduct, someone should file a criminal complaint and have it adjudicated in a court of law with evidence, a jury and witness testimony and once convicted the accused should be appropriately punished.

Otherwise, how is anyone going to determine the truth of the allegations?

If the behavior was non-criminal then the decision should be made through normal non-profit governance mechanisms. We have due process of law for a reason which is that people are innocent until proven guilty and there are the proper protections to make sure a fair trial occurs.

Another well known non-profit in the biotech space received a 20 million donation and right after that a group of people kicked out the founder citing perceived sexual innuendo in old emails that did not risen to the level of a criminal offense. The donor wanted their money back, because they had given it to support the founder and his mission, but it was too late.

Having read this, I don't think there is any accusation of criminal behavior in this report.

The accusation is that he made people uncomfortable, didn't do enough to change that when it was raised, and defended criminal behavior by insisting on distinctions that the authors of the report consider immaterial or harmful.

I worked for RMS/FSF briefly and I think there is something about his radical refusal to compromise on anything conceptual (to avoid conflict or misunderstanding, e.g.) that is fundamentally incompatible with running an organization. This is on display here.

So I think it's probably right for FSF and RMS to part ways, but I also think it's positive for the world for him to keep on insisting on moral clarity in his terms.

At the same time, everybody should read the whole report and decide whether they think RMS's insistence on the distinctions rejected by the authors is helpful or unhelpful. I think some of RMS's distinctions could be helpful to the cause of reducing the incidence of sexual abuse.

And this is kind of key to the whole argument. It's not just about his behavior and questionable views on consent and age (though those are the disqualifying issues). Beyond that... The movement is stagnating because its leadership can't compromise and the computing world is moving beyond the era of personal computers and one-org mainframes that Stallman concocted the Four Freedoms in.

How do the Four Freedoms apply when it's not your computer, but a cloud service instead? FSF has struggled to find an answer because it's a philosophically different arrangement than the simpler "I should be able to control my own hardware" argument. Their dominant advice is "Don't use cloud," which is so out-of-touch it's laughable. You might as well tell people in the late 1800s to not use lightbulbs because it gives the electric company too much power over their lives.

> The movement is stagnating because its leadership can't compromise

If you want compromises, join the so-called "open-source" community, full of proprietary blobs. Thanks to Stallman, we have an example of true freedom and a compass showing where to move for it.

Copyleft is a compromise, and one of the most clever, honestly: ideally, the law should compel everyone to have the ability to change the devices they own and directly tell the authors of software that if they try to interfere with that, they can pound sand; their intellectual property rights don't extend to telling other people what to do.

It does not. But it does allow for the author to set the terms of the protection of their intellectual property.

That's the kind of compromise I'm talking about. And the FS movement hasn't figured out how to recapture that lightning in a bottle for the new Cloud era. Cloud is somewhat incompatible with the hardware-ownership-based philosophy of the Four Freedoms; something new and more fundamental is needed and the calcified, old movement can't seem to find it.

And they certainly don't seem to be trying, keeping the old leadership at the cost of turning away new members (with the implication that they value historical accomplishment more than new people). I've seen multiple people suggest that the right solution is to just abandon the FS movement qua the people running it and embrace new approaches; I think there's meat on those bones. It's a longer, harder fight if the old guard is left behind, but if they won't change they can't help.

Why do you think AGPLv3 isn't good enough for that? I've never seen Google and Co using it, while small companies do.

I think your statement answers itself.

No, it's a win for users that large corporations avoid this license.

Most users use those large corporations. I'm afraid I don't follow your thinking on this topic.

Nothing actually prevents those corporations from using AGPLv3. The are only afraid that they can't create a walled garden with it. So users are protected from that, as designed.

Users are protected from interacting with the big corporations they exclusively interact with?

This particular way of creating a walled garden, which relies on free work of free software volunteers, doesn't work thanks to AGPLv3. Whenever this license is involved, it works.

It unfortunately does nothing to prevent creation of a walled garden via creation of proprietary content in a proprietary network fabric on proprietary infrastructure, which... Seems to be all you need, given the popularity of Facebook, X, YouTube, and the multiple cloud service providers supporting something like (depending on who's crunching the numbers) 74% of enterprises.

If the goal was to change behavior... Behavior refuses to change.

Whoever wants, can use Mastodon and others just fine. AGPLv3 works flawlessly here.

What’s your point, exactly? How does the “open source” approach solve this? Surely you’re not putting down the AGPLv3 without also recognizing that “open source” software only strengthens proprietary *wares?

On the contrary, I think open source strengthens everything. Where copyleft leaves users of other people's software looking over their shoulder to confirm they haven't broken the license, with open source licenses I can release some work and not worry about how it's used, and I can use somebody's work without fear that they will come after me later.

It does strengthen proprietary software. It also strengthens everyone else's software. It's the rising tide that floats all boats.

What you're referring to is actually permissive licensing (or as I like to call it... /s). It's a scam.

It works fine for trivial pieces of code that no one cares about. But for bigger pieces of software, you're donating your time to Amazon, Microsoft and Palantir. You're volunteering for them. Why would you do that? If they want you to work for them they should pay you. If not for your wallet's sake then for the sake of hurting bad companies.

Copyleft is easy to comply with. Being scared of copyleft is like being scared of servers (which most programmers are according to DHH!).

> But for bigger pieces of software, you're donating your time to Amazon, Microsoft and Palantir. You're volunteering for them. Why would you do that?

Because "everyone" means everyone. Ask the OpenSSL developers why they do what they do.

> Being scared of copyleft is like being scared of servers (which most programmers are according to DHH!).

... Yep, you got it.

> there is something about his radical refusal to compromise on anything conceptual (to avoid conflict or misunderstanding, e.g.) that is fundamentally incompatible with running an organization.

But its fundamentally compatible with keeping free software free. That is what is important - an unwavering adherance to the core mission.

I read it all the way through once, but may have a missed something. Am I to understand that because he has (extremely) objectionable private views that he should be booted out of the organization he started? It seems like there is no evidence of untoward behavior, just a bunch of gross opinions?

If that’s the case, I’m completely against ejecting him simply because he publishes nasty thoughts. I say this as a guy who lived through many kinds of abuse as a child. My opinions and almost everything are the exact opposite of his. I don’t like most of his opinions, I don’t like his humor, I disagree with most of his politics, and dealing with him in person is exceptionally unpleasant.

But the FSF is an American organization, and in America we have something close to free speech. If he’s being kicked out for expressing sick thoughts on his personal website, but not in his capacity as a member of the foundation, I believe they are making a grave and immoral mistake. They have every right to do it, but I don’t agree with taking such action.

> It seems like there is no evidence of untoward behavior, just a bunch of gross opinions?

I don't think you actually read it then, because a significant portion of it is about his untoward behavior (as a boss, to random women at conferences, as a Voting Member, etc.)

> But the FSF is an American organization, and in America we have something close to free speech.

Free speech has absolutely nothing to do with this (as you note, the foundation has every right to get rid of him because of his abhorrent views). You don't generally want advocates for child sex abuse representing your foundation, regardless of what sort of foundation it is.

I did in fact miss the Credible allegations of sexual misconduct section at https://stallman-report.org/#credible-allegations-of-sexual-.... Thanks for correcting me.

Giving a card to a woman asking her out is sexual misconduct?

I’m thinking more this:

> We have several uncorroborated testimonies of women, including minors, being overtly sexualized during this routine, some without consent. In the course of our research we discovered that one of these routines was recorded, in which Stallman brings a 13 year-old girl on stage and makes sexually suggestive remarks about her in front of a crowd at FKFT 2008 in Barcelona.

> uncorroborated testimonies

> some without consent

> In the course of our research we discovered that one of these routines was recorded

Far out if they reach any harder they'll need a ladder and a safety harness!

Exactly! For $300 and a few hours of time, I could easily find a handful of people willing to feed this kind of narrative to any journalist looking for a hit piece. The fact that most people don't instinctively question the veracity of these claims just shows how staggeringly uncritical and poorly educated we've become as a society. Unless you're bound by specific legal obligations, there's no rule demanding that you tell the truth. Journalists are barely held to any standard of factual reporting because the bar is proving "actual malice".

And before anyone jumps to cry "fraud," let's be clear: fraud is obviously illegal, but the legal definition is specific and detailed.

Update: I somehow missed a damning section at Credible allegations of sexual misconduct section at https://stallman-report.org/#credible-allegations-of-sexual-.... Thanks to /u/deepl_derber for accusing me of not reading the report and sending me back to the source.

"Sexual misconduct" is quite a reach.

Character assassination by anonymous cowards.

The Free Software movement has been completely routed. MS owns GitHub. The farmers fighting for the "right to repair" their tractors are the "front" of the "battle" for user empowerment. But sure let's beat the shit out of the dead horse that's actually a real live old man with cancer who wrote fucking Emacs, see if that helps?

More charitably, perhaps people are looking at the movement foundering and asking if the reason is that its leader has too much baggage to talk to the people with political power to move free software forward?

I am being charitable.

The uncharitable take is that the people who wrote this incredibly uncharitable and obsessive character assassination of an old dying guy are working for Microsoft et. al.

Since Stallman (and basically the whole FSF) doesn't have anything to say about cloud computing other than "don't use it" and his movement hasn't come up with a better alternative, Microsoft doesn't even think about Stallman anymore.

Yes, that's the obvious argument against this being a false flag operation: why would they bother, they already won. Is Bill Gates that petty?

So that means that it's more likely that this is just backbiting on an old, sick man. E.g.: The People's Front of Judea vs. Judean People's Front

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4

Let the old nerd die in peace with his friends.

(I'm done with this thread and this subject. Have a better one.)

It's a bit hard to do that for the people who still care about the movement when the "old nerd" is still on the board of directors.

You make an interesting point though: perhaps the FSF has made its bed and the best solution is to give up on it and rally behind another organization with similar goals. Maybe the 'net interprets Stallman as damage and routes around him.

I mean, yes, that would be an obvious alternative to bullying Stallman into resigning from the organisation that he himself created around his own ideas - why didn't it come to anyone's mind before?

But the real organization still exists and continues to behave in a decent manner, so it would foil their wicked goals.

Probably for similar reasons people would rather change leadership at, say, Mozilla than fork Firefox. Again. To create another fork nobody cares about. Again.

Politics is, often, about centralization and coordination of power. It's a lot more effective to change leadership at an organization with good ideas but questionable people than to split power and focus by forming a competing organization. The two resulting organizations may end up politically weaker than one organization (especially if they can't coordinate their efforts because the membership of one of them expects their org to boycott the other org for the reasons they split in the first place).

Jill Stein may, for example, have ideological purity over the Democrats but she'll never be President.

In any case, I hear the FSFE decided to split from working with the FSF when the FSF re-instated Stallman. I'd prefer to have an org with more direct influence over US law and policy, but I'll happily support FSFE since it's the closest thing I have to supporting free software as a concept without supporting continued discussion of age of consent on the side.

The alternative is to dare to connect a server to the internet: https://world.hey.com/dhh/dare-to-connect-a-server-to-the-in...

Even if you have to rent one from a hosting company. There are a whole lot more "server rental" companies than "native cloud" companies - there's good competition in that space without lock-in. You still have 80% of the benefits even if the server isn't in your physical building.

I think it was DHH who said it's completely incredible that these cloud companies managed to make PROGRAMMERS scared of COMPUTERS.

I don't think that was cloud companies; it was attackers and statistics like "The average time from connecting an unsecured computer to a public IP address to that machine being compromised is 20 minutes."

People who just want to write apps or services look at a list like this (https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/you-connect-new-comput...) and would gladly hand some or all of that off to a third-party.

They're not scared of computers.

They're scared of building their house on someone else's land.

Specifically an “anonymous” coward named Drew DeVault who enjoys “NSFW” drawings of prepubescent girls[0] and has creepy opinions on female teen body autonomy[1], amongst other things.

Those Reddit comments send shivers down the spine. What a disgraceful human being.

> Character assassination by anonymous cowards.

Character assassination involves lies. The majority of this is just "here's a collection of absolutely indefensible shit RMS said, in his own words".

Yes but it is framed incredibly disingenuously and exaggerates a lot of old, well known things.

There is nothing new in this report.

Ethical Source are attempting a hostile takeover of the FSF and now is the perfect time to release this as there is an FSF board vote happening soon.

its by this dude https://dmpwn.info/

GNU kind communication guidelines the report purports to be transphobic:

"Please think about how to treat other participants with respect, especially when you disagree with them. For instance, call them by the names they use, and refer to them using words whose meanings (as you understand them) cover those participants' stated gender identities. Please also show tolerance and respect for people who do that using different words from the words you use."

Also strongly disagree with stopping support FSF, in particular from an anonymous group.

Recommendations are quite of, despite the generally accurate and reasonable report.

> refer to them using words whose meanings (as you understand them) cover those participants' stated gender identities

If I were trans, that portion of the guideline would be enough to nope me out of participating in GNU projects. The "as you understand them" parenthetical gives cover for transphobes to intentionally misgender trans people, since they can hide behind saying that they feel it's only appropriate to use these terms for the appropriate biological sex.

More like it might discourage participation from people who very much resent the fact that they can't exert control over the speech or thoughts of others. And also people who like to make mountains of molehills.

Presumably this refers to his peculiar set of neologisms (“per” and “pers”) as a gender-neutral pronouns.[1]

Stallman is an extremely stubborn language hyper-pedantic with some fairly unconventional views and usages on any issue, not just this one. And he has 20 years of documented support for trans people. So with that context in mind, I think it makes sense to take it in good faith.

To say I find his position on this peculiar would be an understatement. But I find that on many of Stallman's positions on similar topics wrt. language. Either way, I'm reasonably confident it's not intended as a cover for transphobic bullying or the like, even though it may appear like that at a glance.

[1]: https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html

I'm trans and the GNU Communication Guidelines feel way more empathetic to me than CoC-like documents.

> gives cover for transphobes to intentionally misgender trans people

It also gives cover to people who prefer to always use gender neutral pronouns. If a transphobe is acting on their views on gender to bully people, I'd rather deal with them on a case-by-base basis, while being empathetic to everyone else who might have meant to harm.

BTW, I've met RMS in person a few years ago, and exchange emails with him every once in a while. I've found him to be very fun, and not hard to deal with if you're used to hanging out with neurodivergent people.

I've also seen attempts at using someones mistake with misgendering someone on accident be used to start what amounts to a witchhunt in various private communities. So I really don't like it when a CoC assumed maliciousness by default, which a lot of them are.

I am no longer part of most of those communities, for both related and unrelated reasons.

ITYM "meant _no_ harm"

you're correct, my bad. :)

The "Kind Communication Guidelines" give too much wiggle room for misgendering.

It is hate speech, and a form of psychological abuse, to misgender trans people when you should know better. Depending on jurisdiction, it may incur civil or criminal penalties as well.

Again, there is a reason why the Contributor Covenant, itself written by a trans woman, is the gold standard for open source codes of conduct.

If people didn’t make their identity their personality and just wrote code then it wouldn’t be a problem.

Usernames don't have genders

This is really great work getting all of the evidence into one place. Really helpful, thanks. I really like the focus on the victims.

I am a previous PhD student who worked under Marvin Minsky, and I do believe that there is no evidence that Minsky was present for any sexual misconduct, and some of the quotes about Minksy do not mention that there is no evidence of Minsky's sexual misconduct. I believe the quotes about Minsky unfairly harm Minsky's reputation.

Again, this is great work, and I'm mostly nitpicking from my very particular perspective as someone who has worked directly under Minsky.

We reviewed our references to Minsky throughout the report and felt that we could indeed improve the presentation of the quotes which mention him, and we have done so.

However, I will state just for the record here that our researchers have looked into the allegations regarding Minsky and do not feel comfortable exonerating him or standing up to defend his reputation, as it were -- we find the evidence plausible, but not conclusive. But our report is about Stallman, not Minsky, so we have not made a point of it in the report.

Richard Stallman is the giant whose shoulders we all stand on. Without him, would Linux have been such a success?

Your hit piece is dishonest, disingenuous and is a clear attempt at a hostile takeover of the FSF. You should feel shame for what you are doing here.

If it were an honest report you would all attach your names to it but instead you operate in the dark.

have any references about this guy ? https://dmpwn.info/

You didn't need to make a throwaway account, Drew DeVault.

We know you wrote it. We have the smoking gun. Gig's up.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41859793

Someone's reputation was tarnished beyond recovery by this act of attempted character assassination. It wasn't RMS.

> This is really great work getting all of the evidence into one place.

It's not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41840891

I think it is good that people put in a lot of effort to collect this in one place. The report opens with a very strong perspective:

>The case against Stallman is clear, and yet the free software community has failed to act, in particular at the level of institutions and leadership but also in the form of grassroots support for Stallman. Many defenses of Stallman rely on a comfortable ignorance: ignorance of the scope and depth of Stallman’s political campaign against women and victims of sexual violence, or a comfortable belief that Stallman ceased his problematic behavior following his 2021 re-instatement in the Free Software Foundation. Some believe that Stallman’s speech has not caused material harm, or that his fringe views are not taken seriously; we provide evidence to dismiss all of these arguments in this report.

One thing I have consistently encountered when discussing contentious topics with people is that intentional ignorance is a tactic. One cannot be held responsible for acting one way or another on an issue if they do not know anything about it. Women I know in industry report this as by far the most common reaction of male coworkers to one of their colleagues facing allegations of sexual harassment. They don't know anything about it, it seems complicated, they haven't followed it closely, they don't want to get involved, etc. It is very frustrating and I am glad the report has identified this phenomenon and is pointing out this has been going on for long enough that it cannot be reasonably deployed by anybody.

Here is a web site that defends Stallman:

https://stallmansupport.org/richard-stallman-honors-and-awar...

I take no position.

It's a good awards list, but I'm not sure industry and ecosystem awards are the right way to judge something like this. Compare and contrast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Weinstein#Awards_and_ho...

I'll be extremely charitable and assume you meant to link to the site in general as a rebuttal, and not specifically to the webpage that just lists his awards, because saying that someone's misdeeds don't matter because they also did great things is a rather gross viewpoint and a continuing insult to the people who are victims both of the "Great Men" and the wannabe-"Great Men" who feel safe doing such acts in the belief that future greatness will similarly exonerate them.

The page that's most responsive to what's brought up is here: https://stallmansupport.org/debunking-false-accusations-agai.... However, I feel that it doesn't really debunk the core accusations here, which is essentially that Stallman's views on what constitutes consent just aren't acceptable in today's world.

I was just trying to find something that took the other side. As I said, I take no position on these accusations. I simply don't know enough.

You repeated an already existing link from comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41838335, and changed it to look less credible.

I didn't repeat it or change it. I hadn't seen it.

Given that some of the "evidence" is decades old do we know if his views on consent remain the same to this day?

The man has weird views on non tech issues. Some are thought provoking, some are plain bad hills to die on. But I don't see how this is something I should be getting up in arms over.

The FSF has largely failed to garner political/public influence to prevent the enshittification of the digital world. What is there to be gained from a putsch like this? If these people truly cared about the mission RMS set out to achieve they would realize that further dividing the minuscule libre software community (which is already co-opted by corporate interests to a large degree) will only get us further away from making a difference in the areas that actually matter.

Like damn, we only narrowly avoided a future where I can't even browse the internet without a TPM attested bootchain deemed "trustworthy" by corporations, and somehow a 71 year old cancer patient is the hottest issue in the tech world right now? Get a fucking grip.

This all just seems like a toxic power grab by people who are blinded by their narcissistic self righteousness.

What is there to be gained you ask? Well, there is currently a creep in a position of power at FSF who is actively making women and other people feel unwelcome, effectively pushing them out of the community. By removing him from this position, making it clear that such behavior is unacceptable and will not be tolerated, a much broader participation could be achieved. And then these "much bigger" issues you seem to care about have a better chance of being solved.

Unless of course your whole point was using whataboutism to defend your hero, because you think that past achievements always outweigh any harm he may be doing.

>Unless of course your whole point was using whataboutism to defend your hero,

No. My point is that replacing him with people who prioritize political grandstanding over fighting for the cause at hand are just as worse if not more.

The people who gave their signature on the previous failed deplatforming attempt were numerous enough to easily fund their own FSF that is not encumbered by the influence by rms. But they didn't. They didn't because that takes actual work unlike spewing vitriol like they do here. They can only destroy but not create.

If you look at the history of the NAACP trying to fight legal discrimination, one of the things they were quite focused on was ensuring that the cases involved people who are as clean as possible. The messenger matters as much as the message does; the more imperfect the messenger it is, the more it allows those against the message to turn the conversation from the message to the messenger.

Stallman, even without the stuff mentioned here, was already a pretty poor choice for messenger. His tendency to focus on semantic nitpicking gave his arguments a kind of tedious quality to them (GNU/Linux, anyone?). The outspoken political views can turn off people who are not politically aligned. And he's always given off this sort of skeevy vibe to me personally--and that sentiment has seemed to be shared by lots of other people. Long before any of the stuff being complained about here happened!

The negative influence of Stallman isn't purely theoretical anymore. We now have a couple of stories of people saying that he made them personally uncomfortable with unwanted seemingly sexual advances. Apparently, these have continued after being explicitly told by several people to knock it off. Several organizations have suspended their funding and involvement with the FSF over his reinstatement. Whatever you think of the accuracy of the accusations against him, the general perception of him is clearly negative, and to be frank, it doesn't seem like he brings any positive qualities that would make letting him go be a tough call (consider Elon Musk, who is obviously a pretty effective salesman for the future and props up Tesla's share price even as his outspoken political views are causing real problems for his companies).

> Whatever you think of the accuracy of the accusations against him, the general perception of him is clearly negative

Which is why we should support him even more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22299156

What is the goal: to promote free software or to stand for people's rights to have sexual relations with fourteen-year-olds?

If the former, having the movement spearheaded by someone who has pretty controversial views on the latter isn't really doing the movement any good. If FSF clings stubbornly to a thought-leader who people can't take seriously, they're canceling themselves.

I've seen the accusation leveraged in this topic that this anonymous piece could be FUD by Microsoft or a similar big-name software giant. I'd actually suggest the opposite: if I wanted to throw sand in the gears of free software, keeping Stallman in the leadership chair so that his opponents can point to him and say "You really want to listen to the guy who wants to sleep with your teenage daughter?" is the way I'd discredit the movement.

> or to stand for people's rights to have sexual relations with fourteen-year-olds?

Who are you talking about? This is completely misleading and not what Stallman was saying.

""" The law [UK sexual offences bill] would also prohibit encouraging a (so-called) child to take part in sexual activity. I think that everyone age 14 or above ought to take part in sex, though not indiscriminately. (Some people are ready earlier.) It is unnatural for humans to abstain from sex past puberty, and while I wouldn't try to pressure anyone to participate, I certainly encourage everyone to do so. """

There are more charitable interpretations, but "Stallman wants to sleep with your teenage daughter" is the less-charitable one that political opponents can continue to levy against the entire movement because the FSF won't let him go.

It doesn't mean that discussing it must result in a cancellation of a person though.

Without knowing more context, I interpret the quote to mean that 14-year-olds should be open to having sex with their peers (other 14-year-olds, give or take one year). Which seems like a position that is not bad enough to punish. It's a very weird thing for him to say, given that everyone knows him for being the president of the Free Software Foundation and not the Sexual Openness Foundation. He should stop commenting on this topic and focus on Free Software instead.

It is absolutely what he was saying.

Puberty was considered the adulthood age for mellinia, that is suitable for marriage (and is still considered so in several places).

Why is this a very controversial topic?

Taboos are often controversial.

And if he were a sociologist or anthropologist, published in the field with any reputation at all in it, who could speak on that complex dynamic over history and the interplay between environment, tradition, human biology, and social context, he might have a prayer of using reason to move the needle on the taboos in his own culture. But he's not. He's a professor in another field speaking way out on the deep end of a field he doesn't have the credentials to be taken seriously in.

We all have freedom of speech, but academic professors are expected to uphold a level of rigor that most people are not, and his writings on this topic harm his credibility and therefore, indirectly, his ability to advocate for free software.

But does he have a right for his personal opinion in a free country?

Of course.

But he's using that right to say very public things that are very objectionable, in a space he understands poorly, and everyone else can use their same rights to call him on his nonsense. And when one is an academic, one's word carries weight outside one's area of expertise.

For all the good he did for science education, a common criticism of Carl Sagan is he was an astrophysicist (damn good one) who dabbled in neurobiology, which was well outside his area of expertise---his oft-repeated "reptile brain" theory basically doesn't match to a contemporary understanding of neuro-anatomy and didn't when he wrote Cosmos either. But because he shared it from his platform and wrote a book on the topic, "humans are a fish brain wrapped in a lizard brain wrapped in a monkey brain" is an oft-repeated untruth.

We hold those whose reputations and positions are built on knowledge more accountable to be right when they speak than we hold others. Stallman chooses to exercise his freedom of speech, and we choose to hold him accountable for his position on topics that have real consequences for people who aren't him.

> and we choose to hold him accountable

Is this your euphemism for "cancelling"? Go to the court if there's a crime.

Canceling is not about criminal behavior. It's about the gap between the regulation of behavior the law puts on us all and individual's decisions about what they will tolerate.

Freedom of association lives right next to freedom of speech in the Constitution. His right to say what he wants does not impinge on my right to think that every time he opens his mouth these days he sets the movement back.

... Besides, nobody in this story (including, I surmise, you) is actually against cancelling. Avoiding closed-source software because it doesn't align with the Four Freedoms is just cancelling. Cancelling is front-and-center in Free Software's toolbox.

Cancelling is punishing of an individual by the crowd without a fair process. It should not exist. Choosing your software is not cancelling.

If you can slide a conceptual wedge between the free choice to use GNU over Microsoft because you believe in the Four Freedoms and the free choice to not work with FSF until they oust Stallman because you believe he's a creep, go for it.

It's the same thing: personal choice intended to influence the shape of the world.

> and the free choice to not work with FSF

This is your right, just like choosing the software. However, trying to force everybody to stop supporting FSF or to cancel Stallman without a fair process is very different and wrong.

Who's being forced? Collective action isn't forcing; it's voluntary choice.

Because children can begin puberty super early [1] Because puberty begin on average at 10-12 [2]

The fact that some countries/cultures are okay with child marriage doesn't mean that it's not absolutely disgusting.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precocious_puberty [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puberty

It doesn't mean that discussing it must result in a cancellation of a person though.

I agree, which is why it's fortunate that no one is or has suggested "cancelling" anyone for "discussing" things.

The report's author(s) are advocating for removing RMS from positions of influence and authority from the free software community because he's advocating for child sex abuse and bestiality, harasses women, and is a shitty human being.

Pretending that anyone ever has been jettisoned from their position or public life for "discussing" something - or that that's what's happening here - is insanely disingenuous.

> because he's advocating for child sex abuse and bestiality

He isn't. All your other accusations are baseless too.

Why are you lying?

Because the arbitrary age we picked, by which almost nobody is yet fully physically nor mentally developed, is definitely the correct one.

Non-sarcastically: Overton Window

For once doesn't seem like a hit piece, the arguments are pretty solid and well documented.

Very thorough job and if RMS was smart he would gracefully step down.

The only argument I find here against it is the question of whether someone's personal opinions should be a reason to be removed from a leadership position.

Edit: Oh wow just read the recommendations. Can't agree to most of it, sorry.

What is the issue with the recommendations?

> For once doesn't seem like a hit piece

What?!? It must be the outcome of a meticulous reading on what must be millions of words from Stallman, tolling for anything that reflects one just aspect of his outlook on life. Based on that alone one outlook it recommends he be banned from everything. There must be at least man months of work in it.

I guess there has to be, as it's a weak case. It's based on thought crimes, not actions. The difference between the two is obvious - just look at the real damage the dispute between Automattic and WPEngine has on bystanders. They are actively trying to inflict harm on each other and succeeding. Never mind the collateral damage.

No mention of the more positive aspects of his personality - like him buying coffee for the homeless he met in the street. Very little acknowledgement of the positive changes social he's wrought through man years of labor and giving the results away for free. We all have bad points. If you evaluate any of us just based on them, the scales are always going to point one way.

To me, it's an exemplar of a hit piece by someone with an single minded obsession. To make matters worse, it's an anonymous someone.

I am concerned about the fact that we don't know the identities of any of the authors of this web page.

There are people who find it very enjoyable to destroy someone's reputation (for basically the same reason that there are people for whom murder is such a turn-on that they cannot stop themselves from doing it till they get caught).

Also, there might be ways to profit or personally benefit from a campaign like this. E.g., one of the authors of this web page might covet one of the titles or jobs Stallman currently holds -- for themselves or for a friend. E.g., Stallman or one of his supporters might be approached in the coming days with an offer: I can make this web page disappear from public view, but it will cost you. Basically any rival has an incentive to try to get you fired and to destroy your reputation.

I suspect that we as a society should adopt the general rule that anonymous attacks on the reputation of a person should be ignored. In the absence of such a rule, anyone can keep on waging campaigns of reputation destruction (in pursuit of getting ahead somehow or of a twisted kind of enjoyment) with little to no cost or risk to themselves. The attack can include lies, and even if the lies are discovered, again there is no cost or consequence to the attacker.

It seems that you are worried about cases but there are no witness/proof that is where the truthfulness of accusations is in doubt. No such thing here, they are basically quoting him and putting related quotes together. Almost like someone writing a book review of a philosopher or something.

You could say "what about out of context quoting!?" but he seems quite consistent in his ideas and it would be quite a coincidence that so many excerpts expressing the same idea are taken out of context.

The Epstein quote is taken out of context and his controversial opinion about age of consent (which isn't even that different from the opinions held by esteemed philosophers like Michel Foucault and Simone de Beauvoir) was retracted publicly by him years ago.

Well if you have read the document he only retracted his opinion on children children and childhood seems to stop for him at 14 and after that you are a teenager and you are fair game.

I have a lot of sympathy for teenager leading their own sex lives with each other. I have a lot less sympathy for adults that bring up the fact that teenager are entitled to a sexuality when the implication is that adults shouldn't be frowned upon for courting teenagers. Even less so for someone who had to retract his previous positions that children of all age...

EDIT: You haven't read the document clearly because it does not rely on the epstein quote and clearly marks what has been retracted

> you are fair game

I am pretty confident that when Stallman writes about large age gaps, he wasn't condoning predatory behaviour, but wanted to emphasize the fact that some people can be fully capable of making their own decisions even if they are in their teens. (I would go a little further to add that some people in their twenties or later can be equally vulnerable to predatory behaviour as regular sheltered teens, and it's mostly up to the upbringing they recieved) Maybe I'm too charitable in my interpretation, but "teens being fair game" is not what I understood for sure.

Yes but there has to be a limit. Legislators western countries have agreed that this was around 14/18 with some caveats regarding age gaps. It seems most countries are ok with teenagers having sex lives between themselves but try to avoid relationships where an older man has a position of authority over the teenager. It seems sensible enough.

But I notice that he hasn't written at length about how teenagers should be able to vote before they are 18 that I know of. The fact that he is weirdly fixated over this issue reminds us of Gabriel Matzneff and others who were basically men who wanted to be able to have sex with teenagers because they enjoy it and had no issue with having power over their younger partner.

Teenagers are already allowed to have a rich sex life, what they need is more protection from older men not less.

I mean it is enough to read the report and the quotes to understand that that man is a militant and wants better acess to teenagers for sexual purposes. The report also does a good job of explaining what's wrong with it if you care about those issues.

> I suspect that we as a society should adopt the general rule that anonymous attacks on the reputation of a person should be ignored.

That policy would have allowed Richard Nixon to keep the office he stole.

We do know the authors now, and it's not too surprising.

Anything more to these allegations than there was last time?

Or is this yet another chapter of someone's envy resorting to character assassination instead of finding contentment in their own work?

If these people succeeded in their apparent goal of making RMS less popular, do they think the world will love them for it? Why aint they signing their name?

I've read most of the report and it's got a lot more than "last time". Speaking as someone who has done a lot of my own research on Stallman's bullshit, the depth of this report is astonishing. The allegations it makes regarding the conduct of the rest of the FSF is particularly alarming.

I think you should at least skim it before you comment.

I assumed this was you again, actually.

Of course you've "read most of" it. You wrote it after all- or did you ask ChatGPT to write you an anti-free software screed and only read part of it before you posted it?

> I've read most of the report

One would hope you'd read the entire thing, since you appear to have been behind it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41859793

Drew please. What is your ultimate purpose in creating this smear piece?

He needs to do as much damage to Stallman while he still can. Stallman's recent health scares (as noted in the "stallman report") have most likely prompted this as Drew knows once RMS passes away he wont be able to get his revenge on the guy or have him removed from what has been his life's work.

There are screenshots from Drews live streams which show his browser history/bookmarks which show links to 4ch board for cartoon drawings of lewd/nude children which make this all the more sickening. No wonder Drew loves his "research" so much.

What’s even more horrifying is he believes in forcing IUD surgeries onto teen girls. Why is a man this old so invested into sexual art of and opinions relating to the sex life of young teens? It’s genuinely disgusting to think about.

“I'm of the opinion that 14 year old girls should be required to have an IUD installed. Ten years of contraception that requires a visit to the doctor to remove prematurely.” - https://web.archive.org/web/20130523180641/http://www.reddit...

Well you see this quite often, you have these men who protest very loudly online about CSA end up being found guilty of assault or in ownership of assault media themselves.

One can only hope Drews local law enforcement find a reason to seize all his computer equipment and do a forensic investigation.

Here is an interesting find from a comment 12 years ago made by Drew on reddit (https://undelete.pullpush.io/r/todayilearned/comments/udlwf/...): "What an ass, you don't have to call him out in the middle of a (mostly) unrelated post. I pity pedophiles - you can't control what turns you on, and they happen to be turned on by something illegal. It's a dick move to try and bring it up and shame him publicly."

Definitely needs his hard drives searching by authorities.

Will you please explain why you attempted to conceal your involvement in this article? Furthermore, why did you do that so poorly? Domain blunder aside, I'm sure I'm not alone in having immediately recognized the thesis, specific political lexicon, and structural outline from your earlier blog post.

Do you see yourself as a viable leader of this community?

> If these people succeeded in their apparent goal of making RMS less popular, do they think the world will love them for it?

Sometimes one does the right thing not because the world will love you, but because it is the right thing.

Bullying an old man with cancer over off-colored jokes made half a century ago and opinions that he publicly retracted is "the right thing"? That's absurd.

Does the old man still carry authority and a leadership position in a globally influential movement?

Leaders are held accountable.

Which globally influential movement?

Stallman's credit for the creation of the GNU operating system was stolen by Linus Torvalds, and most of the community even claims that GNU isn't an operating system, essentially deleting his biggest achievement and denying him any and all recognition.

He created and championed Free Software, but that movement was replaced by the Open Source ideology, which is diametrically opposed to what he believed in. The FSF struggles to get new members and funding, while the Linux Foundation and open source projects flourish with billions of dollars from volunteers and corporations alike.

GCC and Emacs are largely irrelevant today. Stallman himself gets no respect; he's mocked and harassed by open source advocates and corporations alike.

He has expressed the isolation he is in during an interview: "I am the last survivor of a dead culture. And I don’t really belong in the world anymore. And in some ways, I feel like I ought to be dead."

What Drew DeVault did with this hit piece is despicable. He wanted to shame and bully the FSF board into removing Stallman and resigning so his people can take over and push for his deranged idea of 'free software.'

"Influential" doesn't mean "in control." See: the media deciding the definition of "hacker" over years of protests from people in the tech community.

Stallman, his writing, and his org moved the needle on the way software was done; that doesn't imply they get to dictate how software is done. But nowadays, I question their capacity to move the needle.

I'm convinced this is a COINTELPRO subversion campaign

I don't think rms should have returned to the FSF board and I do believe his continued presence there does more harm than good, not because of hit pieces against him damaging his reputation, but because of his own behavior. I'm also aware that some of the vocal voices defending Stallman are nothing but channeled bigotry of their owners (oftentimes much worse than anything Stallman has ever been alleged of) and all I can say about those is how disgusted I am by them.

That said, I read this page in its entirety and I can't help but notice how manipulative this report is. I can't tell whether this was intentional malice, a sign of subconscious bias or maybe just careless use of words, but constructs like "we can conclude that [statement that doesn't follow from what was said before]", placing whole paragraphs that are hard to disagree with but aren't related to quoted positions and are clearly meant to inflict negative emotional response to induce implicit misrepresentation (such as the one that starts with "The actors involved in pornographic films...") and stating things like "absolves the perpetrator of wrongdoing" or "consistently defends [something]" despite of that not being present in the quoted source material nor able to be inferred from it without making possibly wrong assumptions on intentions behind the words written make me doubt whether this was authored in good faith, even when the report makes some points about Stallman that I ultimately agree with.

The anonymous authors of this website have instructed people on other websites to come here and downvote any and all comments that speak in favor of RMS:https://mastodon.social/@report_press/113305688857205037

This is telling. They don't want discourse, they want to silence and bully everyone who disagrees with them so only they are allowed to speak.

All they have is anonymous accusations with zero proof, an off-context quote regarding an MIT professor, off-color jokes made 50 years ago and a couple of (retracted) opinions that are no worse than the things being said by prominent philosophers like Michel Foucault and Simone de Beauvoir.

The link provided doesn't mention that.

They did in another post ask for people to "Don't necessarily upvote it -- just "vouch" for it if you think it's on-topic."

By the way the report is pretty solid.

https://mastodon.social/@report_press/113306313558293261

For the sake of correctness, it should be noted it did not say that when first posted, only "Enable showdead in your profile, find the post on /newest, and click [vouch] whenever it's flagged.". It was later changed into "Don't upvote it -- just "vouch" for it if you think it belongs.", and immediately after "Don't necessarily upvote it -- just "vouch" for it if you think it's on-topic.". The revision history is available on Mastodon by pressing the "Last Edited" hypertext.

Same thing happened on reddit.

Instant 100+ upvotes out of nowhere. A bunch of new accounts posting supportive messages that after checking about 20 of them had posted on the sub before and just magically appeared. Downvotes to anything asking questions.

There is one infamous mastodon troll "developer" that can't get enough of themselves and I would put money on them being involved in this, if you know you know.

>The anonymous authors

Not anonymous anymore. And who they are is not too surprising.

Back when RMS was writing the GNU utilities, if you weren't willing to have an occasional chance encounter with him in the same building, you were limiting your options for a productive computer science career.

I'm half serious when I say he's the reason so many women at MIT went to biotech instead, and so we can thank him for mRNA vaccines.

But that is no longer the case. Refusing to be in the same room as him will in no way retard your progress in computer science nowadays. If anything, it enhances your prospects.

So I don't see a problem with having a space marked "Beware the RMS," where he can keep on with his work and the people who can put up with him, do. I don't see a problem with that space being marked "FSF" either. Namespace is a large space.

Nice try Drew Deflop, we know its you.

this guy ? https://dmpwn.info/

seems like a rehash of the same hit piece they tried to pull off back in 2021

And just like last time, the authors are trying to convince their supporters to manipulate the discussion on HN.

https://mastodon.social/@report_press/113306313558293261

We can already see the influence of this in the comments on this post.

Given that much of the tone of the discussion here is not only dismissive of the report but the link has been actively suppressed via flagging, I don't think it's credible to argue there is some kind of organized anti-RMS "manipulation" happening here.

(I don't think there's some kind of organized pro-RMS manipulation happening, either. I think there's a fairly large segment of HN readers who minimize credible reports of RMS's reprehensible behavior because of his past accomplishments and his importance to the free software movement.)

Turn on "showdead" and look how many comments critical of the report have been flagged. That strongly indicates an organized suppression of dissenting views.

Many are of no substance, or worse. One of them is an unhinged conspiratorial rant about COINTELPRO. Another starts with an insult against the author of this page. There's a transphobic rant. etc.

I went through all of them; there is only one that I would "vouch worthy" and should not be flagged (the one that links to stallmansupport.org), so I vouched that one. All the others I've seen should be flagged, not because they're "critical of the report", but because they're garbage.

Whether you find the people who want RMS to resign obnoxious or not, this is a very well documented and clear-headed collection of what they think (and convinced me) is wrong with the man

It isn't. It intentionally gives quotes retracted or out of context.

Care to elaborate and put them in the proper context?

...and as far as I understood, that comment was not completely retracted, but amended to change the "age bar" to 14?

This: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41847507

Leaving the mental, emotional and physiological damage of being treated as a "matured adult" the moment you start your 14th year (or puberty) as a human on this planet aside, not because it's small, but it's the contrary.

On the other hand, the freedom of speech does only guarantees that you can tell what you believe openly, but never ever protects you from the consequences of your actions.

Just because some communities believe that entering puberty is enough for these things, it doesn't make it right or harmless. I can find many examples of wrong things which range from funny to atrocious but harmful at the same time.

I'm a big believer of GNU and GPL, and use the four freedoms as the blueprint of what I develop or participate in, however being right and wise in these subjects doesn't make one free from consequences of other actions one may take.

So as a result, linking to a comment telling that being 14 is enough for these things doesn't put the words into context or vindicate the person saying these things.

I may equally say that these words should be punished with a mouth pear (which I do not support in any way, honestly), but we decided that people should be punished in more honorable, better and ethical ways as a planet.

Then, just because some communities prefer mouth pear to this day, it doesn't make the device a legitimate and correct way to punish people.

So, your link to a comment doesn't provide anything in context. Just adds another person who believes in things which are heavily damaging the person who receives this treatment.

Since when is it a crime to be wrong?

The alternative opinion: https://stallmansupport.org

Don’t forget <https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/>.

As sourced on kiwifarms, drew himself has posted lolicon on reddit.

How curious to see that the authors of this character assassination are anonymous. I wonder if it's a cabal of closed-source proprietary software authors behind this.

If this was being released 10-20 years ago, I'd suspect the involvement of Microsoft and their allies. These days, who knows. The Free Software movement has been attacked from many angles over the years, from those who want to destroy it completely to those who want to control and usurp it. There certainly are a long list of suspects for who may have authored this screed.

It would be interesting to see if a stylometric analysis could unmask those responsible. Perhaps we'd find dark skeletons in their closets, as is so often the case for those who point accusatory fingers at others using spurious evidence.

You haven't read it and you should, maybe it would cut down the paranoia. This is not an attack on the free software movement and this is clearly from people who do care about the free software movement values.

I've skimmed through it and see nothing much to actually be concerned about. We all know Stallman is a rather strange, socially awkward man with some oddball views that go against the grain.

A document berating him for being a weirdo, while shrilly exaggerating all the "evidence" in an effort to destroy him and everything he's built over his lifetime, is not particularly useful or necessary.

The purpose of this is clear, and it's very telling that it's being fired at Stallman from the shadows by the unknown and unaccountable.

Given the subject matter, anonymity is used to protect sources. It's pretty well-understood how people who allege sexual misconduct get disproportionately destroyed by the adversarial process we used to try and find truth in society.

Strange, socially awkward people who make other people uncomfortable to the point of triggering their threat responses tend not to keep their jobs for long in the real world. We even have a name for them: creeps.

There's a reason why codes of conduct, especially the Contributor Covenant, are de rigueur in the open source world. They help keep the creeps and the fash out, and make the work environment more harmonious.

RMS is a creep who's been grandfathered in because he came from a time when creeps were much more tolerated. Times have changed, and so have values. We are far less tolerant of creeps, no matter how talented they may otherwise be because they disrupt the working environment unacceptably. It's time for that grandfather clause to end.

Codes of conducts are political weapons to be used against those disfavored by the powers that be and ignored when the elect violate them.

Drupal and Larry Garfield years ago, and most recently Python and Tim Peters.

It would be great if we could get rid of all the neurodivergent people in tech, they’ve been far too comfortable in digital spaces.

Neurodivergent people can be taught appropriate standards of conduct and basic human respect. Sometimes you gotta spell it out for 'em, that's what the CoC is for. But you don't just give people a pass for making others uncomfortable or afraid "because muh neurodivergence". Especially in a position of leadership. Leading is a skill. If your disability really prevents you from exercising that skill, you don't get that position. Sorry.

You're right in that the type of people hammering RMS with this crap are definitely the same sort that spend their days trying to enforce worthless, harmful and intolerant CoC nonsense. This is all the more reason to ignore them.

As a measure of how trivial the charges against RMS really are, over on Mastodon the post for this report is being replied to by people getting working up about "enbyphobia", of all the who-gives-a-fuck complaints. And being boosted by the account that published this report. No-one should be taking their crap seriously. It's absurd.

At this point it's nothing more than crowdsourced bullying of an old, cancer-stricken man who doesn't deserve any of this. Shame on everyone participating in this mob.

It seems to me that the purpose of this report is not to say "look, that guy is a weirdo". But rather, to point out in excruciating detail how he is enabling vile behaviours (like normalizing possession of CSAM, pretending like making out with 14 year olds is not sexual abuse, etc) in the FOSS community, by being a very visible figure head that some people look up to.

But he isn't enabling any of that. You're spinning a narrative that is fundamentally untrue.

Please read this[1] while keeping in mind that a 14 year old does not fit into Stallman's definition of "child":

> I don't think it is wrong to distribute "child porn" images, even when they [depict] children rather than adolescents. However, making them is wrong if it involves real sex with a child. For the sake of opposing sexual abuse of real children, I suggest that you boycott the images that involve real children. Imaginary children can't be hurt by drawing them.

In other words: pornography involving 14, 15, 16 year olds is all good according to Stallman. He is enabling all of the above by changing the definition of what child pornography is, responding to someone who emailed him asking for advice, and then posting about it publicly.

[1]https://www.stallman.org/articles/witch-hunt.html

That's not what it says at all. In that quote Stallman makes a distinction between pornography that depicts real children and drawings, which he claims hurt no one.

This distinction is also made by the law in the USA, so this quote merely reflects USA law.

You can disagree with this quote and even find it gross, but to claim this quote aims to normalize CSAM is a blatant lie.

Honestly, it looks like a personal RMS hate page written by an autistic (or someone in a manic state) man. I can't say that someone who goes through years of mailing lists looking for evidence of RMS saying controversial things is sane. Besides that, the fact of expressing a controversial opinion is not a crime, and shouldn't (and can't) be punished. What is really important, is that the modern cancel culture (and this page as part of it) is destroying the freedom of speech, and it may really be the end of our society as we know it. Societal norms tend to change, and usually you change them by discussing them. It reminds me of lynching - someone can be cancelled just for saying something wrong (like "God does not exist"), or because of a false accusation (that someone is a witch). Do you want to live in a world, where your life can be destroyed because you said something that isn't now socially acceptable 10 years ago? Anyone can become the next one, and you are no exception, no matter how much do you support modern social movements.

this guy ? https://dmpwn.info/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com