On Thu, Sep 26, 2019 at 11:26:23AM -0400, Ric Moore wrote:
On 9/17/19 9:56 PM, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
RMS, founder and originator of the Free Software Foundation, did not have sufficient support for his simple and straightforward words about words used to conflate or mislead readers (or listeners) about Epstein or anyone else for that matter, and RMS has now resigned from the FSF.
Would you trust RMS to babysit your 8 year old daughter? I bet not. His biggest problem is that he has spouted off for way too many years without being hauled to task for what comes forth from his mouth. He's an idiot, plain and simple, for ignoring "convention" and separating himself from "polite society". No need for me to go into detail, it's all just a google away. Ric
Actually yes and without hesitation - I hosted RMS in Sydney some 20 years ago (spent a few days with him in total), and despite him being a little "conversationally confronting", including to me personally, he was principled, precise, and caring of other humans, all to a fault. He gets taken the wrong way sometimes and I get that - haven't we all? So I did a google for "rms stallman egregious" and came up with the below -- all I can see is talk of "precise", email, discussion, and -implications- therein. And some people got upset or felt confronted and ultimately hold that RMS "should be taken down" and that "it's good RMS lost his job at the FSF, who gives a rat's arse if he founded it". Neither robust, nor permitting of robust conversations, nor "intellectually honest", as far as I can tell! I believe it is NOT appropriate that we lynch anyone merely for differing points of view! This is freedom of speech at its absolute most basic. Either we hold to the principle, or we are sluts to safe spaces, cowering pathetically to the snowflakes of the world. No, thank you, but no. Really, no! That is not me. Here's to the right of not only RMS, but you, I and everyone else, to say and argue for and against, whatetever they bloody well choose to. This is the world -I- want to live in. https://www.reddit.com/r/StallmanWasRight/comments/d7v1kf/a_reflection_on_th...
While it is true we should not treat Minsky unfairly, it was not — and is not — a pressing concern, and by making it his concern, RMS signaled clearly that it was much more important to him than the question of the institution’s patterns of problematic coddling of bad behavior.
RMS did merely take part in a mailing list discussion, it's the media that blew it up. It's not like he stepped on a pedestal, creating big signals. It's about as public as talking to people in a coffee shop with a journalist eaves dropping in the background. It's a shame really, we can only have those slick politician like lizard tongue PR people in leading positions. The most important quality today is being dishonest and persuasive at the same time, getting away with it. That's how we got the corporate landscape today, that late stage capitalism where politics, media and industry are all alike, all keeping each other in position rather than in check, all infected with the disease of our times. It's disgusting, one ticket to the moon please... [And the 3rd comment, most poignant indeed:] I don't understand why society has accepted this concept of "you said a thing I don't like so you don't get to have a job anymore". Like what does one's personal opinions have to do with their job, as long as they're doing their job why does it matter. [And perhaps most telling - the "ba da bing, ba da BOOM":] Per Wikipedia, this guy [A KEY RECENT COMPLAINTANT ABOUT RMS] was fired by Stallman in 2001 for failing to perform any work or respond to emails. Did he last speak to Stallman 18 years ago? If not, when? I'd take this account with a huge grain of very salty salt! https://www.reddit.com/r/badlinguistics/comments/cr2en6/i_generally_support_... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21055756 That's what makes me so furious at the morons who deplatformed RMS over some silly devil's advocate defense of Minsky on an internal mailing list. The guy has an important idea that he put most of his life into developing. In the process, he made programming much more inclusive than anyone could dream about in the days of proprietary operating system with compilers that sold for thousands of dollars. So even if having to deal with a difficult old man makes you feel a little less inclusive, it's not too crazy to give him some breaks. The kids who ran him out of town only know how to destroy, not how to create anything comparable to what he did. ... It wasn't just this incident. RMS alienated so many women from open source and free software over the last 30 years, and we've lost all of those potential contributions. He's been getting breaks for 30 years. That he has also done some very good things isn't a good argument for continuing to tolerate his harmful behaviour after he's been asked to fix it for literally decades, and hasn't. ...
Which things specifically, and in what way?
Saying that we shouldn't call sexual assault "sexual assault", and implying that there's any way a rich, famous, 73-year-old man can "have sex with" (rape) a 17-year-old girl, whom he has extraordinary power over, and who, in in this case was his friend's trafficking victim. The idea that Minsky's "honour" is in any way more important than harm in what happened to Giuffre perpetuates rape culture. It perpetuates the idea that women are worth less than men, and that it's okay for famous men in CS to rape girls. That emboldens other rapists and makes CS very unwelcoming for rape victims. Minsky should have known. Implying there's any way what he did was okay creates an unwelcoming environment for women, especially young women and girls at MIT. (Background and links from https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21... ) ...
implying that there's any way a rich, famous, 73-year-old man can "have sex with" (rape) a 17-year-old girl, whom he has extraordinary power over, and who, in in this case was his friend's trafficking victim.
...what are the scare quotes for? Is "have sex with" not a definitional superset of "rape"? As far as I can tell, Stallman does not assert that Giuffre was not raped, only that Minsky would probably not have known. (As far as he knew, she could equally have been one year older and legally, voluntarily engaged in prostitution...?) You could argue that (and I think that if Minsky did indeed have sex with her, you would have a very good case) that Minsky was extremely naive and/or irresponsible to not suspect anything amiss in the setting, but sexual (or any other) assault, in the view of many people, requires intent to harm someone against their will. Here, it seems that the intent, and hence the primary guilt for the assault, most likely was squarely with Epstein and his associates: if a gun salesman takes you to his shooting range and tells you to fire a weapon at a target that he actually secretly tied a person to the back of, and you shoot that person dead, you are not on the hook for murder even if you should really have known that something is off and recall hearing muffled screams from somewhere at one point in hindsight.
The idea that Minsky's "honour" is in any way more important than harm in what happened to Giuffre
Where did Stallman claim that? [NEVER GOT ANSWERED]