Hacker News Reader

Comment by bringen | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com