Correction: Regarding an Erroneous Allegation in ‘Richard Stallman’s Disgrace’ | Hacker News Reader

Correction: Regarding an Erroneous Allegation in ‘Richard Stallman’s Disgrace’

daringfireball.net

36 pointstjr6 comments

I had no idea about this behavior until after he had stepped down from his various positions. I had only known RMS from youtube and his writing. I agree with his views on free software and respected him for presenting well thought out arguments. That was the extent of my interest in him.

I think making people feel objectified and uncomfortable is one of the worst thing you can do in a personal or professional setting. I have not witnessed this type of behavior in my life so far, or at least I have not recognized it.

I'm left with the following questions:

Why do people behave like this? How can we better identify and report this type of behavior? Is there any hope in rehabilitation?

Uh? This is a correction by someone who publicly reproduced an email accusing Stallman of being a sexual harasser, and generally a smelly and disgusting person, only to realize two weeks later that the accuser had in fact confused him with someone else. The fact of having already published something completely wrong and libelous doesn't prevent him from naming that other person, either. I guess it's normal nowadays.

True enough. I probably should have prefaced my comment with "off-topic". I just felt like commenting on the general situation Stallman is currently in.

It's not just Stallman, though, it seems to me that a lot more of these types of situations have been coming to light recently. I'm not really sure what the catalyst for that would be perhaps it's the #metoo tag on twitter or perhaps that's the result of a changing socio-political climate.

Which behavior? Sounds like you are not up to date. Pretty much everyone who accused rms of some bad behavior was lying, a bunch of lies were caught with real proofs.

You had no idea about Eric Raymond's alleged behavior until Richard Stallman stepped down? Interesting.

Times are changing, and power is starting to be distributed more equitable. For white/heterosexual/christian/male as a group, this necessarily a loss in relative power.

Some people are apparently scared by this and start to defensively strengthen their identification with that group, which is followed by all the usual problems with in-group/out-group behaviour.

What's actually surprising is that a rather large group of people seem immune to this effect. I can totally see how the above behaviour can be beneficial in some game theory setting. Yet emotionally, I feel absolutely nothing like fear of these changes.

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