Richard Stallman Gets SJW'd

[Steven Schear]

These instances of being forced to step down from corporations due to
non-adjudicated claims need to be prevented in corporate bylaws which
cannot be amended or removed without re-incorporation.

This would provide needed backbone to board members.

On Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 8:40 AM Zenaan Harkness <zen at freedbms.net> wrote:

> Heated mega discussion ongoing at LWN at the moment.
>
> Here's a fundamental:
>
>
>   Richard Stallman and the GNU project
>   https://lwn.net/Articles/801933/
>   Posted Oct 10, 2019 7:34 UTC (Thu) by zenaan (subscriber, #3778)
>
>   "dkg":
>   >> Richard has persistently, willfully ignored the impact of his
>   >> sexist behavior (and dismissal of other contributors when they
>   >> disagree with him). Can you see why this is might be an
>   >> indicator that a leadership role isn't the right role for him if
>   >> we want a healthy, growing, vibrant community that will defend
>   >> everyone's Freedoms?
>
>   "frostsnow":
>   > His leadership role was created and earned by his dedication to
>   > the cause of Free Software. I am not convinced that any of these
>   > agitators are both able and willing to bear that burden.
>
>   OK "frostsnow" - I am fully on board with your position, and you
>   missed a fundamental - miss the fundamental and your "give me
>   convenience and bugger off with your freedom politics" opponents
>   WILL walk all over you!
>
>   NOTE: The ground was laid by your opponent with these words:
>   "Richard has persistently, willfully ignored the impact of his
>   sexist behavior"; these words epitomize the endemic disregard for
>   freedom of speech in the world today, and the widespread
>   "snowflake" demands to "consider the feelings of those who hear or
>   might hear your words, and don't speak if they might get upset".
>
>   This ground is absolutely abominable - on the surface it sounds
>   nice and fluffy "consider the emotions of others", but inherent is
>   the implicit DEMAND that the world cower to emotionally and/or
>   psychologically weak, damaged or ill people who need emotional
>   and/or psychological healing, counselling, etc, just to function in
>   society.
>
>   SUCH IS AN UNFAIR TACTIC - a tactic used by those who cannot
>   properly defend their own position otherwise, a low blow against
>   basic human rights - the right to freedom of communication, which
>   implies the right to say things which other's may find offensive.
>
>   Give up freedom for "safety or safe spaces", and you WILL
>   eventually lose both!
>
>   The strong (e.g. RMS) are asked to water down everything they say
>   that might be "sexist" "racist" or in any other way "emotionally
>   too challenging", so that "those who are weak and timid might find
>   the safe space to contribute to our community".
>
>   This demand, and the faux "consider the weak" so called
>   "principle", is the sledge hammer used to suppress free expression,
>   to suppress free speech, and to suppress views, positions and
>   arguments which "differ from mine, but I cannot defend without
>   unfair tactics".
>
>   THIS IS AN ENDEMIC PROBLEM we see all throughout the mainstream
>   media today.
>
>   The strong and the principled are pummeled into submission under
>   the excuse of "think of the weaklings" which is just the modern day
>   variant of "think of the children" - a pathetic attempt, usually
>   successful, to appeal to base or raw emotional instinctive
>   reactions thus bypassing the critical and reasoning faculties of
>   the human mind.
>
>   "Discrimination" used to be an admired thing. Now discrimination is
>   "evil" in the popular consciousness, and those who discriminate are
>   evil patriarchy.
>
>   And the true evil is that the vilification of "those who
>   discriminate" is effectively to justify evil - in this "RMS case",
>   the evil 'means' of "vilify RMS, humiliate him by causing his
>   resignation from the FSF which HE FOUNDED, and effectively destroy
>   his present career" is justified by the ends "we will finally have
>   our utopian 'community' where everyone is welcomed, even
>   emotionally crippled and psychologically ill humans - yay for
>   community!"
>
>   RMS implicitly asks all who cross his path to be robust enough to
>   hear contra views, contra positions, to be willing to be challenged
>   in their thinking, to be possibly offended in the hearing of
>   something they did not expect to hear - words, not sticks and
>   stones!
>
>   Those who cannot challenge RMS' "freedom politics" (really, his
>   principles so true, so fundamental that these principles cannot be
>   successfully challenged), have stooped to using snowflake
>   technology to belligerantly hammer Stallman and those like him into
>   the ground, whilst feeling powerful with the mob of much of the
>   main stream world behind them, heedless of the candles of truth and
>   righteousness they snuff out with their egotistical will to destroy
>   "freedom politics" in the name of "muh convenience and muh better
>   software."
>
>   If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything.
>
>   Create your world,
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Sep 29, 2019 at 05:38:16PM +1000, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
> > 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_the_departure_of_rms/
> >
> >   > 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_stallman_but_come_on/
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >  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]
> >
>
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