Richard Stallman Resigns as FSF President | Hacker News Reader

Richard Stallman Resigns as FSF President

stallman.org

40 pointsBoulth28 comments

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990583

While some will think this is about a single recent event, Stallman has consistently said and done inapprotiate things for years. Most people I know who have spent extensive time with him say it has put them off working with the FSF, and he is the reason many people have resigned.

While he did start a great movement, at this point he hurts the FSF much more then he helps it.

(I'm on my phone, so won't put a huge list of references here, but such things aren't hard to find. For example, see https://mobile.twitter.com/mjg59 for a major open source contributor who has been discussing the problems with Stallman for years)

This is a decades-long story; actually the whole "Open Source" name appeared because some people believed that Stallman and "Free Software" puts other off. But in the end you can satisfy everybody and there will always be people put off by someone or something.

I'm baffled it took a twitter critical mass of people for this to happen. Stallman has been detrimental to the image of the FSF for years.

Someone you have to explain the concept of coercive consent to (in recent "entirely willing" comments, and whenever he argues for pedophilia) should not be in a position of power. Then again it seems like nobody managed to do so even now.

I just read an interview with him in which he renounced his belief that adult-child sexual relationships aren’t necessarily harmful. As for the concept of coercive consent, his point was that if you have sex with someone who’s being coerced, but you aren’t aware of the coercion, you haven’t committed sexual assault. The blame rests entirely on the person doing the coercion. Of course, if you suspect that a potential sexual partner is being coerced into having sex with you, you should refuse (and, ideally, try to help them). But if they don’t seem to be in any distress, you can’t be blamed if it turns out that they were actually being coerced.

It took a mass of people who just ignored the "presented herself as" part, and don't want to listen to an explanation.

Was bound to happen sooner or later, he was never much of a political correctness guy.

Intent matters. What do you think was the intent behind these comments?

The intent was that before we collectively declare the dead man a rapist and pedophile, let us at least make a minimal effort to find out what really happened.

Making the one hypothetical you express the most favourable for the accused is not a neutral action.

If I consider one of the options the most probable, should I be afraid to express it because someone will judge me just like you did and I will lose my job? Yes, I think it's not only a neutral action, but a positive one, because you value seeking the truth more than social conformity.

By the way, the sad joke here is that Minsky was not even accused of anything. What we know by now is that Epstein asked the girl and a witness says he refused:

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/339725/

Good source, definitely not one of the most biased things you could be pulling out.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Pajamas_Media

He didn't need to have the concept of "coercive consent" explained. It's the other party than needs some basics explained. Many people would refuse sex with a prostitute, and even more if they suspected the person was a forced sex worker. Therefore it's not unreasonable to think Epstein required his slaves to pretend willful behavior and fake consent. How efficient it was? We will never know as the alleged "rapist" is dead. The problem here is that you can't even consider his innocence as you will get punished by a collective hysteria.

Is it possible he thought the girl was genuinely interested in the famous professor? Maybe. But even considering this possibility is now deemed a crime by Twitter activists and you will be punished for articulating it by losing your job.

Stallman was right though.

I have no opinion on Stallman, he could very well be that awful person.

The twitter discussion[0] seemed to me to be very polarized and targeting rage with all the common traits of typical fake news/mass hysteria communication. Maybe it is just the way these things naturally come to daylight.

[0] https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/1172283772428906496

Introspection may be a strong point of lisp, but it has never been a strong point of Stallman's

I am having trouble finding this news - all I see is this:

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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

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Is this somehow connected to his role as FSF president?

(edit: formatting)

https://www.fsf.org/news/richard-m-stallman-resigns

https://itsfoss.com/richard-stallman-controversy/

Dumb. Why would anybody in their right mind try to frame intellectual or academic argument around the word assault?

Assault does not imply force as the argument suggests. Assault is literally a physical violation upon a person. Statutory rape is sexual assault even if the victim(s) are completely willing participants who claim no offense or provocation.

I think the lesson here is, if you are a scientist or engineer (i.e typically not a people person), then never say anything publicly about anything non-technical... ever.

Which is sad.

And if you really have to, express yourself in the less ambiguous way possible because nowadays the public feels first, and understands later.

That makes me sad.

— deleted —

It's about a comment he made on the Minsky case.

It's about a long string of behavior like the comment he made on the Minsky case over the course of like 15 years. If this was the first time he had done something that he'd be called out for "being inappropriate" for I doubt it would have led to his resignation.

It's not as obvious to people who haven't been in/around FSF/GNU circles for a while I don't think, and the sort of semantic picking he's doing here is honestly kind of his whole thing.

I have my doubts as to whether he really gets what people are pissed about, but this same sort of thing has happened enough from him for people to have had enough.

If the other “incidents” are like this one, then the problem isn’t him, it’s the community’s puritanical streak.

Thanks.

This is a travesty.

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