Richard Stallman Gets SJW'd

Zenaan Harkness zen at freedbms.net
Sun Sep 29 00:38:16 PDT 2019


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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