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Comment by AndrewKemendo | Hacker News Reader

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AndrewKemendo·

100% that is exactly what happened and in public

Just invoking Richard Stallman will prove it because the smear campaign on him was so thorough.

Linus seems to be the only one that made it out.

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And barely so.

No doubt

It would be nice if the top people in open source land weren't disheveled and looking like sterotypes. It's pretty easy to paint him as a predator.

How is not just straight up bigotry? You’re unambiguously saying that his appearance is the relevant factor in his ideas

You’re doing literally what I described

There's a popular video on YouTube of him eating skin peeled from his foot during a lecture at a college. Not AI, very old, repellant to normal people.

I was in the room and personally witnessed that. It definitely changed my opinion of him and not in a good way.

I'm a bit awestruck. Was there any discussion about it among your peers? We might be a generation or two apart, I saw that video when I was not yet an adult and it might have been literally part of my introduction to the person that is Richard Stallman. It definitely wasn't a good first impression.

Yeah, being unaffected by social pressure when philosophizing about what is moral and liberating is strongly related to being unaffected by social pressure regarding personal hygiene and social norms, unfortunately. Still I'd rather have the weirdos, especially this one particular weirdo, than not! Stallman has blazed the trail for us slightly-more-socially-aware types to follow, while we look/act just a little more reasonable.

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