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GNU is Not Unix

GNU's Former Kernel Maintainer Shares 'A Reflection on the Departure of Richard Stallman' (medium.com) 435

Thomas Bushnell, BSG, founded GNU's official kernel project, GNU Hurd, and maintained it from 1990 through 2003. This week on Medium he posted "a reflection on the departure of RMS." There has been some bad reporting, and that's a problem. While I have not waded through the entire email thread Selam G. has posted, my reaction was that RMS did not defend Epstein, and did not say that the victim in this case was acting voluntarily. But it's not the most important problem. It's not remotely close to being the most important problem.

This was an own-goal for RMS. He has had plenty of opportunities to learn how to stfu when that's necessary. He's responsible for relying too much on people's careful reading of his note, but even that's not the problem.

He thought that Marvin Minsky was being unfairly accused. Minsky was his friend for many many years, and I think he carries a lot of affection and loyalty for his memory. But Minsky is also dead, and there's plenty of time to discuss at leisure whatever questions there may be about his culpability. RMS treated the problem as being "let's make sure we don't criticize Minsky unfairly", when the problem was actually, "how can we come to terms with a history of MIT's institutional neglect of its responsibilities toward women and its apparent complicity with Epstein's crimes". 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. And, I think, some of those focusing themselves on careful parsing of RMS's words are falling into the same pitfall as he....

Minsky was RMS's protector for a long long time. He created the AI Lab, where I think RMS found the only happy home he ever knew. He kept the rest of the Institute at bay and insulated RMS from attack (as did other faculty that also had befriended RMS). I was around for most of the 90s, and I can confirm the unfortunate reality that RMS's behavior was a concern at the time, and that this protection was itself part of the problem...

Bushnell also calls Stallman "a tragic figure. He is one of the most brilliant people I've met, who I have always thought desperately craved friendship and camaraderie, and seems to have less and less of it all the time. This is all his doing; nobody does it to him. But it's still very sad. As far as I can tell, he believes his entire life's work is a failure..."

But Bushnell concludes that "It is time for the free software community to leave adolescence and move to adulthood, and this requires leaving childish tantrums, abusive language, and toxic environments behind."
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GNU's Former Kernel Maintainer Shares 'A Reflection on the Departure of Richard Stallman'

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  • by blahplusplus ( 757119 ) on Saturday September 21, 2019 @10:51PM (#59222190)

    ... is selling. Richard stallman is one of the few people who care about the truth and not social graces despite his faults. We live in a lawless out of control oligarchy that gets whatever it wants from a deeply corrupt congress and MIT is little more then corporate bootlickers of the establishment these days. The reality is, the human species is deeply childish and corrupt, and is so concerned about appearances and hurt feelings when ANY real issues of substance are never really addressed.

    Our entire species lives half-asleep at the wheel.

    George carlin

    https://youtu.be/-14SllPPLxY?t... [youtu.be]

    • by Spazmania ( 174582 ) on Saturday September 21, 2019 @11:13PM (#59222220) Homepage

      I'm no fan of Stallman's. I think he's exactly the asshole described. BUT... in Computer Science, priority on peoples' sensibilities is the wrong priority. The computer doesn't care. It only knows true and false. For a good computer scientist, that basic world view is ingrained in their soul. Asking them to be something they're not is unreasonable.

      • "I have job XYZ which requires I be logical and black and white at work. Therefore, if I'm an inhuman asshole outside of work, it's all cool, bro, because I'm at XYZ at work! So, chill, and just accept me for who I am."
      • by rjh ( 40933 ) <rjh@sixdemonbag.org> on Sunday September 22, 2019 @12:55AM (#59222406)

        For a good computer scientist...

        Ah, the No True Scotsman fallacy.

        that basic world view is ingrained in their soul.

        No. Definitively, no.

        I was born in 1975. By 1979 I knew I was going to be a hacker. No kidding: I was sitting on Mrs. Walters' kitchen floor discovering recursion by drawing geometric shapes. I remember looking at this Easter egg I'd decorated in a recursive pattern and being in awe, and thinking I wanted to draw recursive patterns on eggs forever.

        I was there for Flag Day in 1983 when ARPANET became the Internet. I was eight years old and the local college computer science department viewed me as their mascot, I guess. I'm grateful to them for the time I got to spend on LISP Machines.

        Today I'm 44. I hold a Master's degree in computer science and am a thesis away from a Ph.D. I've worked for the United States government's official voting research group (the now-defunct ACCURATE) and private industry. I've spoken at Black Hat, DEF CON, CodeCon, OSCON, and more. I think that I meet your, or anyone's, definition of a good computer scientist with a long career.

        And I am telling you, brother, you are wrong.

        In the late '80s and early '90s there was a USENIX T-shirt given to attendees. "Networks Connect People, Not Computers." It was a neat shirt and I wore mine until it was shreds, not because I liked wearing a ratty T-shirt but because there are so many of us who need to learn this lesson.

        Logic is the tool we use to serve humanity. But if you let logic blind you to the fact other people are human beings with human feelings who need to be treated like human beings, then you just stopped being a hacker and you started becoming a tool.

        Hackers serve humanity. We don't rule it. And we're not excused from the rules of human behavior.

        I really wish RMS had learned this. It's too late for him. It's not too late for you.

        • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday September 22, 2019 @06:03AM (#59222968)
          Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          I really wish RMS had learned this. It's too late for him. It's not too late for you.

          And how exactly telling a blind person "I wish they learned to see" is "not being a tool"?
          Why are you assuming Stallman was able to learn that precise trait, while it's fairly obvious it was a fault in his human nature, just like yours is not seeing it.
          Connecting people means accepting other's fault, helping them when they need help and accepting their help when you need it, not blaming them after the fact.
          That's just being shitty humans.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Sunday September 22, 2019 @04:24AM (#59222764) Homepage Journal

        That's not what happened here at all. Please stop perpetuating this myth.

        Stallman said in his email that if Minsky had sex with that girl it should not be considered sexual assault because as far as Minsky knew she consented. The specific criticism of that, which RMS has not addressed so far, is that it's extremely hard to believe that Minsky didn't at least suspect something was amiss.

        In fact we have some people claiming that Minsky did actually turn her down, perhaps because he did realize what was happening.

        RMS has stuck to his position, which seems to be defending what amounts to wilful ignorance perpetuating sexual assault.

        The press has misreported this as defending Epstien, but let's at least not misreport it here and have a discussion of the facts. You can go read his email yourself if you want to confirm this is what he said.

        • by ilguido ( 1704434 ) on Sunday September 22, 2019 @05:21AM (#59222876)

          Stallman said in his email that if Minsky had sex with that girl it should not be considered sexual assault because as far as Minsky knew she consented.

          Not even that. Stallman said that "the most plausible scenario [was that the girl] presented herself as entirely willing". He never said that what happened should not be considered sexual assault, but that it is plausible that it should not considered sexual assault. He did not impose his view like this mob tries to do.

          • by ljw1004 ( 764174 ) on Sunday September 22, 2019 @09:26AM (#59223380)

            Not even that. Stallman said that "the most plausible scenario [was that the girl] presented herself as entirely willing". He never said that what happened should not be considered sexual assault, but that it is plausible that it should not considered sexual assault. He did not impose his view like this mob tries to do.

            RMS specifically said "the most plausible", not just "a plausible". Having read his email argument, I think it rests on this weak word "most" -- in my head I replaced "most plausible" with "possibly but not very likely", and re-read the email string. His conclusion would then read: "An injustice was done to Minskey by accusing him of assault; it's unjust because he had sex with someone who was coerced into it, and he probably knew this at the time but maybe didn't, and it's unjust to call it assault because of that 'maybe'".

            That would be a ridiculous post to make! His angle on it is justified solely by his assumption "most". RMS wrote in the same email thread that the "s" in CSAIL stands for "science", and the job of scientists is to evaluate evidence and seek truth. I think he was falling short. The only reason he provided to support his "most" is that he thinks Epstein "would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates."

            I think RMS' evaluation of the situation is way off. I think it's more likely that Epstein didn't work too hard to conceal it, and at the time it was enough part of the general culture and Minsky likely sort of guessed what the situation was but didn't care to question too deeply and saw everyone else doing it and was happy to put it out of his head. Like RMS, my take on the situation is self-consistent but lacks further evidence.

            • I think RMS' evaluation of the situation is way off.

              That's not a crime.

        • The specific criticism of that, which RMS has not addressed so far, is that it's extremely hard to believe that Minsky didn't at least suspect something was amiss.

          That's not a criticism; it's an appeal to personal incredulity which wouldn't change RMS' point even if it didn't happen to be a logical fallacy.

        • The specific criticism of that, which RMS has not addressed so far, is that it's extremely hard to believe that Minsky didn't at least suspect something was amiss.

          The sparsity of facts in the case is so great that none of us has any idea what happened.

      • by Cederic ( 9623 ) on Sunday September 22, 2019 @06:29AM (#59223028) Journal

        I'm no fan of Stallman's. I think he's exactly the asshole described.

        Too many people are getting hung up on distancing themselves from an arsehole and not stopping to consider whether - arsehole or not - he's actually right.

        It's virtue signally and it's idiotic.

        (I'm not saying that's what you're doing - you aren't in your post)

      • Watch out, there is a hole there. I already fell in. I don't want you to fall in too. I'm not telling you you're wrong - you're right as far as it goes, just warning you of a danger that already got me.

        I've been where you are. Things are either right or wrong. True or false. X is true *even if you don't like it*, right?

        You aren't wrong about that. The thing is, it -also- matters how he feels. The boss is going to talk to that co-worker before promoting you. I recently got fired from my dream job. I r

        • You aren't wrong about that. The thing is, it -also- matters how he feels.

          Yeah, that's true. One of the essential skills in this life is figuring out what hidden metric people use to judge.

          One weird one I found for programmers, if you type quickly people will judge you as a good programmer, if you type slowly, people will judge you as a bad programmer (especially bursts of quick key movement). I've seen even otherwise good programmers incorrectly judge people based on this programming metric. So I started typing quickly and it was like magic.

          I recently got fired from my dream job. I really enjoyed my job and made great money.

          You're highly skilled, you should h

    • by MrKaos ( 858439 ) on Sunday September 22, 2019 @12:58AM (#59222414) Journal

      ... is selling. Richard stallman is one of the few people who care about the truth and not social graces despite his faults.

      It seems to me that there are a whole lot of co-dependency issues going on at MIT, which to some extents isn't that surprising when you consider how much creativity come out of the misery of mental illness.

      We live in a lawless out of control oligarchy that gets whatever it wants from a deeply corrupt congress and MIT is little more then corporate bootlickers of the establishment these days.

      It seems to be that way.

      The reality is, the human species is deeply childish and corrupt, and is so concerned about appearances and hurt feelings when ANY real issues of substance are never really addressed.

      We are also a species that is carrying the trauma from war fragmented throughout generations that keeps us in that state. I think that trauma is being magnified by the constant state of emotional outrage generated by social media which keeps us all on edge preventing us from looking at just how widespread the effects of mental illness is in our communities. With that perspective in mind it may be easier to give ourselves enough empathy to heal the mental illness that is undermining our society in this self-perpetuating cycle.

      Mental illness has no gender. If an individual hasn't dealt with their emotional issues then those emotional issues control them.

      Our entire species lives half-asleep at the wheel.

      George carlin

      https://youtu.be/-14SllPPLxY?t... [youtu.be]

      ...because we've been deceived into having our own brains generate the neuro-peptides that shut down our capacity for higher reasoning by the very media that we consume so we consume.

  • Worrying... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Adam Colley ( 3026155 ) <mog@nospAM.kupo.be> on Saturday September 21, 2019 @10:55PM (#59222200)

    He's another victim of the SJW culture war and we're the worse for it.

    I grow tired of good people being taken down by these witch hunts, they even gave it a good go with Neil DeGrasse Tyson a while ago.

    Anyone remember McCarthyism? We're heading down a very dangerous road here.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cachimaster ( 127194 )

      Anyone remember McCarthyism? We're heading down a very dangerous road here.

      I think we are up-to-the-neck in the road already. I don't think there's a day whitout I hearing some sexual/assault/behavior accusation of powerful men.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I think we are up-to-the-neck in the road already. I don't think there's a day whitout I hearing some sexual/assault/behavior accusation of powerful men.

        Unfortunately a lot of those accusations are completely legitimate. Like racism it is a pervasive undercurrent which is not at all rare, and because so many people have experienced it first hand they don't blink an eye or bother to critically consider or wait for the facts when someone new is accused.

        So our problem becomes how to separate the long overdue and necessary comeuppance of the Weinstein and Epstein (and of course Trump, who let's face it a lot of this is a proxy battle about) powerful shitbags of

      • Such accusations long predate the #metoo movement. I can remember accussations about John Kennedy and Marily Monroe during his presidency. Modern media have merely expanded the ease of publishing such events around the world.

      • Re:Worrying... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ras ( 84108 ) <russell+slashdot.orgNO@SPAMstuart.id.au> on Sunday September 22, 2019 @05:23AM (#59222878) Homepage

        I don't think there's a day whitout I hearing some sexual/assault/behavior accusation of powerful men.

        Most of the accusation's are spot on. I am very glad the behavior of Epstein and Weinstein was exposed. I wish it happened more often. I am somewhat perplexed US president gets away with the same behavior, but I guess being one of most powerful man on the planet who is effectively above the normal laws the rest of you are bound by does confer some privileges.

        This is nothing like that. Richard Stallman is not a powerful man. Erika Christakis is not a powerful women. Unlike those powerful men they did nothing wrong in the eyes of the law. In fact by all reports from people who spent time with them they are the antithesis of those powerful man - fair, generous, with a strong moral and ethical compass and unfailingly kind (in Stallman's case apparently even to beggars in the street). All they did was express an opinion that some disagreed with so vehemently they formed an internet lynch mob. Had such a lynch mob dared attack a real powerful man to the extent he cared, they would have been crushed by a law suite.

        But so far *shrug* - who cares if a a mob of internet SJW have worked themselves up into a rage? There was a time I paid attention because they sometimes make to compelling arguments, but it gradually it dawned this was just extroverts do doing what their nature compels them to do - clamoring for attention, and using well constructed diatribes on the internet to get it. Like others here I'm completely over it - yawn and move on.

        Except that's not what happened. Both Richard and Erika lost their jobs. I'm utterly flummoxed by this. Since when do Universities bow down to a lynch mob? Universities are supposed to be places where opinions can be expressed frankly and fearlessly. Something has gone seriously wrong.

      • "I think we are up-to-the-neck in the road already. I don't think there's a day whitout I hearing some sexual/assault/behavior accusation of powerful men."

        What do you imagine that proves?

        If you feel fear because abusers are getting their come-uppance, what does that say about you?

        It's long been well-known that a substantial number of powerful men abuse their position of power by using it to enable them to abuse women. Now some of them, a small portion really, are being held accountable. And those who enable

      • I don't think there's a day whitout I hearing some sexual/assault/behavior accusation of powerful men.

        Yep and I'm completely surprised that powerful men typically showing narcissistic tendencies are accused of not being decent. If you could see my completely emotionless face right now, trust me, this is my surprised face.

        This has nothing to do with the angry Stallman witchhunt. The vast majority of accusations against powerful men are backed up and corroborated with multiple accounts pointing to a continued pattern of anti-social (... overly social?) behavior. That's not McCarthyism.

    • His mistake was opening his mouth. He'd still be there now had he just kept quiet. To sum it up from everyone's favorite xkcd comic https://xkcd.com/651/ [xkcd.com]

    • I don't think he's a victim of SJW's - he's a victim of himself.

      My favorite personal Stallman story: I work at a university and he came to visit to talk to computer science students. One of the students on the group that invited him was recording his speech on video - this was in a room of maybe 70+ people. At the start of the lecture he went on a rant tearing the poor cameraman down on how his camera used proprietary codecs and the video better not end up on youtube - it took like 10 minutes. This was long

  • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Saturday September 21, 2019 @11:09PM (#59222214)

    This isn't a matter of "bad reporting" but rather a case of "injecting oneself into an emotionally charged situation and blithely commenting". It doesn't matter how you feel about RMS because he made comments in which he failed to consider the ramifications thereof. You can blame anyone you want for this but the fact of the matter is he was under no obligation to comment on the matter and when he did, his comments upset people due to the nature of the situation. This is a classic case of a self-inflicted injury and honestly, he should have known better.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      RMS doesn't do self-censorship. It used to be acceptable to make mistakes or be outright wrong. Now there are topics in which you cannot make a mistake or be insensitive to a non-specific degree.

      > This is a classic case of a self-inflicted injury and honestly, he should have known better.

      I feel like that's a commentary on the modern world, not RMS.

      • by drnb ( 2434720 ) on Saturday September 21, 2019 @11:45PM (#59222276)

        RMS doesn't do self-censorship.

        Neither do the mentally ill, those suffering from degenerative brain diseases, etc. Its a useful and often necessary skill to acquire. If RMS were not sheltered and protected for so long perhaps he would have learned this. If he had such soft skills maybe he would have been more successful advocating (selling) his philosophies to the mainstream.

        The GP is absolutely correct. Its self inflicted injury. It is the arrogance of a person brilliant in one area erroneously thinking they are qualified to speak in other areas. He should have been confronted about some of his comments in the 90s, told to keep his personal beliefs away from MIT and GNU, and that a leadership position at either required self censoring certain general comments on the internet as well since his leadership position *will* cause such comments to reflect back upon MIT or GNU.

        • "Neither do the mentally ill, those suffering from degenerative brain diseases, etc"

          From all I've heard RMS has some moderate to serious mental illness to go with his genius. At what point do we admit that just because he's famous doesn't mean he's not fucked in the head, and cut him some slack for things he can't help.

          And if someone claims he's not mentally ill, well then I'm Santa the magic space donkey delivering hee-haws to asteroid farmers.

    • by truedfx ( 802492 ) on Sunday September 22, 2019 @02:33AM (#59222568)
      It's both. His comments have been widely misreported. If they had been accurately reported, people would still have been upset, and understandably so, but perhaps not to the same extent.
    • Sure, upsetting people is now the ultimate crime. And while these days we seem inclined or even obliged to accept all mental issues or quirky personalities, and accommodate their every whim, for some reason the socially awkward Stallman doesn't meet the secret criteria.

      RMS treated the problem as being "let's make sure we don't criticize Minsky unfairly", when the problem was actually, "how can we come to terms with a history of MIT's institutional neglect of its responsibilities toward women and its apparent complicity with Epstein's crimes". While it is true we should not treat Minsky unfairly, it was not -- and is not -- a pressing concern

      A telling quote about today's "toxic environment". Fighting the crime is now more important than determining guilt or innocence, according to Bushnell. And getting that priority wrong is in itself a thoughtcrime...

  • Anyone else concerned about the writing quality?

  • If someone wants you gone, they just make an accusation. They yell it from the rooftops. Facts do not matter. Context does not matter. It is all about getting rid of you.
    Gone are the days of subtle undermining, building a case against you. That requires too much thought. Takes too long.
    Gone also are the days where anyone will stand up against this.

    • by Anrego ( 830717 )

      I view this as a phase that society is going through. There are definitely legitimate social issues that need to be rectified, but things have long gone off the rails.

      That said, I don't think it's forever. This has happened before in society, and usually it runs its course and things return back to normal. People equate this with McCarthyism and its actually a pretty good analogy from that stand point. Lots are playing along because everyone is afraid of being accused, but a significant portion of the popul

  • Holy shit (Score:3, Insightful)

    by WTFEEver ( 6257604 ) on Saturday September 21, 2019 @11:31PM (#59222248)
    Shut the living fuck up. According to this dipshittery, RMS's huge problem is that he wasn't careful enough to make sure loser fucksticks didn't get wrongly offended by a perfectly reasonable comment he made. What a problem. Who cares that he's a irreplaceable genius, stupid people who spend all their free time actively looking to be offended found another heretic to mob rush. Every day is more and more like a wretched combination of 1984 and Idiocracy. According to these worthless cock shells, "growing up" apparently means "spending much of your productive time policing everything you or anybody else says or does to make sure nobody is offended. Which, as every sane human has long since realized, is a fool's errand because the moddycoddled wackcase professional victim community is constantly changing language and definition to make sure they always have something to cry about and martyr themselves, thus raising their status among their fellow worthless lunatics. And if you say anything these demented, wretched subhuman filth don't like, they go through your comment history and downvote every single thing you ever said. Yes, they're actually that petty.
    • Re:Holy shit (Score:4, Interesting)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Sunday September 22, 2019 @07:08AM (#59223150) Homepage Journal

      No, kid. What he said was neither reasonable nor correct. It's not correct because it was Minsky's responsibility to establish informed consent, and because anyone familiar with Epstein who took his word that a beautiful young girl was 1) of age and 2) interested in fucking old men... Well, they're at best a spectacular dumbass, and no reasonable person would take Epstein at his word.

      Defending unreasonable actions is an unreasonable action.

      Also, i know this is an unpopular thing to say around here, but check this out: PEOPLE'S FEELINGS MATTER. If they didn't, it would be perfectly okay to rape people, so long as you didn't do undue tissue damage. But thankfully, that's not the world we live in. Yeah, there's a big difference between defending rape (however confusing the situation) and raping someone, that's not the argument I'm making at all - just that RMS did in fact have a responsibility to consider the impact of his statements on other people.

      Regardless, RMS was plain and simply wrong, and the way in which he was wrong revealed things about his thought processes around consent that made it clear that he does not belong in a position of authority. He is confused about how consent works. That's not a good look, and it was especially stupid to stand up and be counted as a dumbass who doesn't understand his responsibilities regarding women during a period of house cleaning. It makes it look like the only reason RMS hasn't had his own incident is that the opportunity never arose. I guess there's an up side to eating your toenails.

  • by drnb ( 2434720 ) on Saturday September 21, 2019 @11:34PM (#59222256)

    ... he believes his entire life's work is a failure ...

    Mostly because we keep calling it "Linux" rather than "GNU/Linux". Its all our fault, we should recognize our privilege, recognize using "Linux" as a microagression against RMS and recognize our failure to protect RMS' feeling.

    FFS he contributed to one of the most successful projects on the planet. So he didn't get his way on various things, he still made a positive contribution to Linux userland.

    • RMS' greatest contribution is not his fostering of the GNU utilities. It's the GPL. And i think i see where he's coming from if he thinks his life is a failure. The users still overwhelmingly don't understand the difference between open source and free software, and how one of them is meaningless, thanks to the OSI deliberately conflating the two. They are not the same, but the OSI has repeatedly confused the issue, trying to convince us that open source is what we need. But free software protects the inter

  • He talked about Epstein, and thanks to him we're all now talking about Epstein. MIT and the billionaires who used Epstein's services would like it very much if we'd all just shut up about it and let the news cycle and whatever crazy thing the president did this week make us forget that there was a billionaire child sex trafficking ring being run in plain site.

    RMS' sin wasn't defending Epstein, it was _talking_about_ Epstein at all.
  • "He is one of the most brilliant people I've met, who I have always thought desperately craved friendship and camaraderie, and seems to have less and less of it all the time. This is all his doing; nobody does it to him."

    I've never met or corresponded with rms and take no position on whether this is accurate.

    For someone else, someone I worked with for years, that could have been said truthfully.

    "If you're the smartest man in the room, you're in the wrong room". My former colleague spent his life in wrong ro

    • So I'll share my own rms story, which (I think) is closely linked to the success or otherwise of OSS and such... I would think other people must have such stories, too?

      At least this is the time I remember most clearly. I had an email exchange with rms, probably around 2005. Basically I made it clear that I felt (and still feel) that better financial models are needed to support free (in the non-monetary sense) software. (See my sig for more details?) On the one hand, rms made it pretty clear that he doesn't

  • by enigma32 ( 128601 ) on Sunday September 22, 2019 @12:24AM (#59222372)

    I didn't read the entire novel about the situation, but for the actual quotes I've seen from the original discussion, in context, I haven't seen anything RMS said that was wrong.

    Furthermore, why is it that everyone must communicate in the way the SJW crowd dictates? It makes me physically ill to deal with the kind of interpersonal BS that is a common communication style where I live these days. (Yes, it's regional.) What is to say that playing soft with feelings is any more "right" than being direct and matter-of-fact about things? Why should their "feelings" take precedence over mine? Why should RMS speak in a way that the SJW crowd prefers when saying things that shouldn't actually be objectionable to say?

    *There's nothing wrong with trying to make sure his friend isn't unfairly accused by the lynch mob. It would be pretty difficult to undo that damage to Minsky's reputation once done, whether it's true or not.*

    • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

      I haven't seen anything RMS said that was wrong.

      Then you haven't looked very well [stallman.org]:

      "'prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia" ... All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness."

  • by jamonterrell ( 517500 ) on Sunday September 22, 2019 @12:33AM (#59222388)
    "this requires leaving childish tantrums, abusive language, and toxic environments behind."

    "this is more important than the coddling of a whiny child who has never reached the emotional maturity to treat people decently."

    These two statements from the author seem at odds with each other.
    • And this -

      I was around for most of the 90s, and I can confirm the unfortunate reality that RMS’s behavior was a concern at the time, and that this protection was itself part of the problem. He was never held to account; he was himself coddled in his own lower-grade misbehavior and mistreatment of women. He made the place uncomfortable for a lot of people, and especially women. To my shame I didn’t recognize the dynamic myself when I was around it.

      That infers to me that nobody had a problem with it then and it only became a problem 20 years later with "enlightened thinking" (aka re-education centers)

  • by peppepz ( 1311345 ) on Sunday September 22, 2019 @01:27AM (#59222450)
    RMS was defending a friend who he believed he was falsely accused and could not defend himself (and I say this to the crowd that moral superiority: accusing a dead person and thirty years after the facts, when he is no longer able to collect evidence in support of his innocence, is not "problematic", "toxic" or "childish", it is vile).
    He did this without causing harm to anybody: he didn't offend anyone and he used appropriate language (unlike the persons who now accuse him of less-than-elegant behaviour - by throwing childish and vulgar insults at him).
    His words were criminally misrepresented by professional journalists in order to make he look like he said despicable things that he didn't say (are there laws against libel in the USA? Because if there aren't, this seems a case for there to be).
    He was forced to leave his position without being given a chance for consultation.
    According to the author of the article, all of this was fair and lawful, and people who see problems in it are wrong, because they fail to see that the real and only problem is... that RMS didn't know how to shut the fuck up (I'm sorry for the vulgar words, but here I'm quoting verbatim the guy who preaches appropriateness of language).

    Oh, and of couse, as is usual in those environments, the accuser proceeds with character assassination by revealing private information about the feelings and the intimate weaknesses of the defendant. Because this is totally progressive, respectful, non-toxic, non-problematic.

    • by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Sunday September 22, 2019 @03:32AM (#59222672) Journal

      So wait dead people get a free pass on arbitrarily bad behavior because they're dead? Bollocks to that mate.

      While I age that RMSs words were badly misrepresented, his actual words were bad enough. Basically decided now was the perfect time to get into a semantic argument over whether it was technically assault. Thing is if you're that day in the semantics you're not really defending someone anymore, because outside of a court of law where time been accused of assault, "not technically assault" doesn't equate worth "ok".

      He's also completely wrong about the semantic definition too. Which actually matters given the senior administrative position he's in. He effectively publicly announced that he's not really qualified for his job.

  • RMS a failure? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by johannesg ( 664142 ) on Sunday September 22, 2019 @01:56AM (#59222512)

    Try imagining for a second a world without RMS. There's no gcc. There's no GPL. How different things would have been...

    Around two decades ago my employer, who was not at that time enamoured of hippy freeware compilers, bought an acc-license for around 7000 euro. That was the normal price for a professional compiler, back in the day. Today, the normal price for a compiler is... nothing. Even Visual Studio, a product that must be costing a lot of money to produce, is available for free. Thank you, RMS.

    Because compilers cost nothing, lots of people get into programming, further enriching our industry with incredibly useful tools and libraries that are also spread around for free. That includes numerous other popular languages. Would we have had Perl or Python, if their respective authors had needed to pay 7K for a compiler license? Or would our language choices have been limited to a handful of "professional" languages created by companies like IBM and Microsoft? Again, thank you, RMS.

    Many of those people then volunteer their skills and make incredibly useful things for the rest of humanity. They don't hoard these things, but open them up for further enhancement by other people, inspired by a license that was created by RMS.

    And let's not forget Linux. Without gcc and GPL there would have been no Linux. Without Linux, Windows could have cost ten times what it would have cost today. And yes, that's just speculation of course, but it is quite probable that computers would have been much more expensive without a free alternative pushing the price down. That would have shrunk the computer industry to a tiny fraction of what it is today.

    So no, I would not call RMS a failure. He democratized the computing landscape, making it available to everyone. His believe in sharing is burning brightly in the minds of many of us, and the world is a much richer place for it. If that's failure, I'd like to fail as well, please.

    • In 2019 Richard Stallman is vilified and Bill Gates is our hero. That's how out-of-whack and messed up the world has become. All you need is enough money and a good enough PR firm and you can manipulate the news. Should be no big surprise seeing the kind of crud most news organizations are pumping out

      Big surprise, RMS is not (and was not) very socially adept. It doesn't mean he is a bad person or that he was a failure. I don't agree with this controversy and personally don't care. Tech news outlets can cont
  • by captbollocks ( 779475 ) on Sunday September 22, 2019 @02:19AM (#59222546)

    "But it's still very sad. As far as I can tell, he believes his entire life's work is a failure..."

    This is from a guy who spent 13 years working on GNU/Hurd :)

  • by Harvey Manfrenjenson ( 1610637 ) on Sunday September 22, 2019 @11:17AM (#59223742)

    RMS treated the problem as being "let's make sure we don't criticize Minsky unfairly" [...] 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.

    So, to summarize: The question of an individual's innocence or guilt is "not a pressing concern", since it is more important for us to correct historical patterns of unfairness than it is for us to treat an accused individual fairly.

    I'll say this for the author: he is crystal clear in expressing his beliefs. The only problem is that his beliefs are horrifying.

  • Blame the victim (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Vlijmen Fileer ( 120268 ) on Sunday September 22, 2019 @03:55PM (#59224614)

    In other words: he "dared" to act normally, which is not accepted any more by a small but growing group of intolerant screechers. He was then attacked over it by said goons, and because he "should have foreseen it", it's actually his own fault.

    I'm speechless.

    That is basically actively advocating for the downfall of society into some sort of dystopian hell hole.

One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they never have to stop and answer the phone.

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