Comment by danudey | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danudey | Hacker News Reader

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While I suppose I can respect that Stallman has principles and sticks to them, he can afford to do so only because of his position, and he doesn't seem to realize the privilege that affords him.

He's also hugely hypocritical; for example, he refuses to own a cell phone, because they're all extremely proprietary, but he won't hesitate to ask to borrow yours when he needs to make a call.

Also, he's... extremely problematic, to say the least, in many other areas.[0][1][2]

And then, from the Wired article, he refuses to use Google Docs to read the deposition, so he asks someone else to use Google Docs to download it for him.

This isn't someone who refuses to have anything to do with proprietary software; it's just someone who refuses to touch it with his own hands. I can only assume that he's ensured all of his internet traffic travels through routers which run open-source, GPL'ed software, but if not then I'm not sure what the difference is.

In other words: Stallman was out of touch even before anyone cared that he seems to be pretty okay with sexual assault, sex with minors, objectifying women, and so on. Now that he is, he deserves to be excised from our discussions on anything but the history of emacs and free software, as well as the discussion of troublesome white men who abuse their power and get away with making other people feel shitty and unwelcome in tech.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/richard-stallman...

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/richard-stallman-and-the-fall-of...

[2] https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec2...

> Also, he's... extremely problematic, to say the least, in many other areas.[0][1][2]

Regarding that drama

https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web

https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/

https://twitter.com/thomas_lord/status/1174433654942007297

https://geoff.greer.fm/2019/09/30/in-defense-of-richard-stal...

https://medium.com/@whoisylvia/richard-stallman-has-been-vil...

And the inevitable HN meltdown. The first thread listed here got over 2000 comments.

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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21120806

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21113414

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21103133

RMS has always been insufferable to me. I had to be in his presence numerous times when I worked at VA Linux, and every, single, exchange was at best discomforting. More often it was like watching the future patron saint of obstinate incel paladins drone emphatically about whatever was in his head at that moment.........and then likely say or do something repugnant for a bonus.

ESR once explained to me that he simply didn't understand/value the "social overhead" needed in terms of conventional civility. I told ESR then he should expect unconventional outcomes/responses to his antics, including his profound failures at basic hygiene and not being a creepy GNU-hobo.

I respect his technical accomplishments, but he's always expressed himself as a torpid, obstinate, schmuck.

ESR has his own problems, unfortunately.

One of which is constantly spreading rumors about Stallman....

ESR basically wanted to take credit for RMS' work and co-opt the movement. It was some pretty nasty stuff.

>ESR basically wanted to take credit for RMS' work

That is not fair.

I read most of ESR's writings in the late 1990s after he started the Open Source Initiative and attended one of his talks, and I never heard or read anything from him that could be interpreted as trying to take credit for RMS's accomplishments.

Although ESR contradicted some of RMS's messaging, there would be much much less open-source software in the world if RMS had somehow been able to control all the messaging around the movement.

>While I suppose I can respect that Stallman has principles and sticks to them, he can afford to do so only because of his position, and he doesn't seem to realize the privilege that affords him.

He only has the position, what you call his privilege, because of his principles.

>he refuses to use Google Docs to read the deposition, so he asks someone else to use Google Docs to download it for him.

Sounds similar to tikotiparisuddha. Stallman seems very enlightened. He has pure principles regarding the four freedoms, but does not tyrannically demand you obey them. You are welcome to give up your freedom, even though he never will.

troublesome white men Replace "white" with any race or colour and it's racism. Why is this different?

> troublesome white men Replace "white" with any race or colour and it's racism. Why is this different?

The short answer is because they're different. The angry answer is that you may as well be asking why there isn't a "white history month" (I mean, if all we're doing is swapping colors, it should be good, right?).

The longer answer from scholars who study racism is that talking about race boundaries without talking about power structures is a con game. At best it's facile. The people who study it the most (historians and philosophers of race) define racism not just in terms of skin color prejudice but primarily in terms of power structures that protect the interests of the dominant group and discriminate against minorities. In those terms, while an individual can be prejudiced against white men, no political or economic power actively oppresses white men as a class.

Instead of thinking only about skin color prejudice, you can consider racism to be a condition in society in which a dominant racial group benefits from the oppression of others. Racist behavior is thus those behaviors that perpetuate, propagate, and preserve the oppression of racial minorities.

[I guess someone doesn't like my answer. Man, HN is really tiresome sometimes.]

The problem with such reasoning is that whites do not benefit equally or wholly. A key component to English-style racism is that it was intended to keep all poor people down by splitting them along racial lines. Poor whites had it slightly better by design to keep them from joining up with other poor peoples in part for fear of losing what they had. The systems we have in place today are descended from that system (and when you know how to look for it, other similar systems not having to do with race are obvious). When you use phrases that, however true of some whites, impugns all whites, you’re perpetuating that system. This is true regardless of how complicit those whites have been. Even from a pragmatic view, it certainly doesn’t win any allies. To then defend such slurs by pointing to systemic racism is both somewhat ironic and also unconvincing to anyone who already finds it distasteful.

This is extremely narrow minded world view, America is not the world. Id you really think so you should rethink your imperialistic world view and do better, if you don't then stop using the white skin color in your sentences and do some traveling.

What position of privilege might that be? Choosing a life with essentially no income or luxuries so he can do what he believes is right?

You try living rent free on the MIT campus for a few years. Travel the world at other people's expense while you're at it. Let me know whether you're successful, them we can talk about what privilege is.

You mean live in a small, dark, windowless room for a few years, with little privacy even if I want to go to the bathroom?

No thanks.

I did the "travel the world at other people's expense" thing for a bit too. My experience is that an international trip every 2 months is just about as much as I can handle before my mental health starts slipping. There's a huge difference between going to conferences 1-4 times per year (which is fun!), and living on airplanes.

Imagine. Being the nexus of a philosophical movement, having made an honest attempt to replace as many aspects as possible of the non-GPL'd world around you, but being considerate enough to be willing to accommodate other's use of those non-GPL'd tools is privilege, or a negative thing in general.

Having earned through great personal inconvenience, and social adversity, existing in a world whilst coping with a significant degree of neuroatypicality, you might actually find some level of refuge and respite amongst other similarly minded individuals.

Imagine the gall of the individual that would look at every scrap of adversity you took upon yourself for the sake of others instead of just going with the flow and letting the world be carved up between vested non-free software imterests, to call you unjustifiably privileged for the supporting shoulders you've received as a token thank you for at least living the ideal we all wish we could.

Honestly, at this point, I just think that people just despise seeing other people helped by other people, or otherwise succeeding in spite of their own adversity/weirdness/atypicality. It's quite hypocritical considering that this claim of privilege seems to come with the inherent demonstration that someone else would be better served by it. Controversial ideas or no, he's done more to keep software free and accessible than just about anyone else on the planet. He's not responsible for software being "unwelcoming" to outsiders either. Outsiders being unable or unwilling to understand subculture humor more than anything else is responsible for half of that; and the entire backbone of the Hacker ethos being that one is responsible for the banishment of one's own ignorance is the other half. No one is owed inclusion or admittance. No one is owed the context that makes one off color comment or another humorous to the author. Thus the treasure that is actually learning why it was the way it was.

No one gets a free pass. You make something cool, you learn, teach, or contribute something; you figure something out or generally offer something to the community that makes it a better place? Then you're in, you know it, and no one can ever take it away from you. Not that certain groups, mostly adherents of cancel culture won't try; and have found some success. Even those successes too will soon pass, as the community splinters along the new schism. The adherents of the old ways following the old ways, and the cancel culture people going on to form their own bubble.

> he seems to be pretty okay with sexual assault, sex with minors, objectifying women, and so on.

This is extremely uncharitable. If you would ask him if he is "pretty okay" with anything of what you accuse him, he would likely be shocked that you think that about him. And if I had access to every internet discussion you ever had or mail you ever sent, how much "problematic" stuff would I find?

Scanning Stallmans political notes page (which is going back decades) Stallman comes across as consistently anti-authoritarian, leftist, pacifist and, yes, feminist:

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-may-aug.html

RMS comes from a different libertarian and egalitarian world, which is sadly vanishing, the world of electronic bulletin board systems, usenet, the early internet culture, where you could discuss anything freely, sometimes playing advocatus diaboli to explore interesting discussions or line of reasoning. This online culture is changing (or already changed) sadly and political correct feelings are counting more now than logic and arguments.

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