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Comment by mkeedlinger | Hacker News Reader

There are so many judgements on both sides, both in these comments and in the articles on the subject that have been submitted, but very little quoting of what he said in context.

Where can I find what he said? Why is everyone talking about what he meant without quoting what he said so I can decide what makes sense for myself?

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I have now read the whole email thread available on Vice (thanks those who linked it).

First, I admit little knowledge past what I just read. I do, however, see why people don't like what Stallman wrote.

That said, I think this went too far, and that many have misconstrued both what Stallman said and meant. I hope that's ok to say.

This situation stinks.

Here's a link to the redacted document so you don't have to click into Vice or Medium:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-091320191420...

Vice has the full transcript and it's long, which is part of why people aren't quoting snippets. Quoting snippets is not better in this case than talking about what you think he meant.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-sci...

Thank you for the links.

BTW: I am not sure why this question is down voted. At least here in Europe this was not real news so it was an honest questions. The FSF site did not explain the why.

It's politically sensitive. The lack of explanation was no doubt entirely intentional, so asking can be interpreted as a social faux pas.

From stallman.org:

    16 September 2019 (Resignation)

    To the MIT community,

    I am resigning effective immediately from my position in CSAIL at MIT. I am doing this due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations.

    Richard Stallman

I agree it's very confusing and to me sudden. Here are a couple of links to get you started anyway:

vice article summary: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-sci...

which has a link to this blog post (which is somehow central): https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21...

Doesn't anyone sleep on anything any more?

The pressure against him has been going for at least ten years, and his most recent comment was made last week. So yep, apparently they sleep on things for at least ten years.

So you're saying there's been pressure for him to resign for years? And that this incident is just one example of a long list of unacceptable behavior? Do you have any sources for that?

Yes. The first time I remember was the 2009 speech where he advocated that men go off and deflower emacs virgins: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.datamation.com/amp/osrc/art... However, incidents apparently go back to at least 1981: https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix...

He may be talking about the blog post on Medium by Selam G.? The one where she launched a personal attack at him, publicly, because she was "too angry to work right now".

I’ve been around long enough to remember these things happening in real time: I didn’t show up to free software today and start opining based on what I read on Reddit.

Everyone involved in open source knew about Stallman. Whether or not we think his bad behavior outweighs his personal contributions depends largely on if our name is “Richard Stallman”.

> I didn’t show up to free software today and start opining based on what I read on Reddit.

Erm... I didn't suggest that you did? I suggested that the parent comment about sleeping on things may have been directed at the blog writer.

> Everyone involved in open source knew about Stallman. Whether or not we think his bad behavior outweighs his personal contributions depends largely on if our name is “Richard Stallman”.

This here, it reads as though you are asserting that pretty much only Richard Stallman himself thinks his personal contributions outweigh his behaviour, and pretty much everyone else in open source feels the opposite. Are you really making this bold of an assertion?

https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21...

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