RMS was defending Minsky, awkwardly. As someone who has a history of social awkwardness, he should be forgiven for this. He's been a good steward of the FSF, which has doing important work in the service of free (read: non-backdoored) hardware lately. I know there are good people still at the FSF, but I can only hope they are as incorruptible and dogged as RMS.
The way this attack came suddenly out of the depths makes me suspect something coordinated. It's too similar to how Tor was seized, and how Linus was almost dethroned. There's something nasty afoot, and I don't like it one bit.
Yeah all he really wanted was a platform to disseminate his ideas. The open source community has been a great place for that to happen, and I hope the legacy of his ideas related to freedom of information, etc. get the honored legacy that they deserve.
But now that he has an audience there's nothing stopping him creating an independent non-profit to tackle these issues philosophically. There's no need anymore to be the gatekeepers of the actual code. It should be free, after all.
So that's where I'm putting my money: Stallman announces a new organization to philosophize freely, not involved directly with code, and the FSF becomes more elastic on certain topics (integrating with other toolchains, etc.).
"Accountability" for an awkward statement? You'll have to excuse me if I don't think someone deserves a public flogging for poor phrasing and awful timing.
When you're talking about organizations that are CRITICAL to software freedom, I'd much rather have an incorruptible but thoroughly awkward ideologue in charge than an unknown quantity. Who comes next? Will they compromise on things that shouldn't be compromised? It's another thing to worry about.
> https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/994010501460865025
Someone who make unsourced claims of having refused to contribute to anything with an open license because of RMS poor taste jokes on mailing list. I wonder if this kind of openmindedness is good to prove a point on how RMS is bad, maybe someone who does not want to contribute to software improving the world but unrelated to RMS on the sole basis that the licensing allows other freedom is not a good basis to support RMS having to be removed.
> https://twitter.com/starsandrobots/status/994267277460619265
A reply to the previous tweet from someone who was told an unsourced myth about plants in an office and making up a story about it. She said she's been shown one office with a lot of plants, told that there are many other such offices, that the reason for the plants is to ward off RMS.
This piece of lore has been removed from wikipedia for lack of source[1]
>https://mobile.twitter.com/quince/status/1172290839369773057
also citing the same original medium publication misrepresenting RMS words and calling for his removal on this basis, admitting she actually never met RMS but tells how the same piece of myth was transmitted to her in form of a joke and despite not knowing tries to provide context for trying to ward off RMS: interacting with him is awkward and make them uneasy.
I sincerely doubt that RMS being socially awkward is news or supporting the call for his removal in any way.
I got a reply to my post, now deleted, asking for more named sources. I don't see how you can dismiss the first two tweets as "unsourced" when they are first-hand statements.
@quince's comment is not first-hand about RMS personally but the damage done to the institution that makes excuses for powerful people. This is not about him being just awkward, it's that MIT will never confront him about threatening behavior or stand up for his victims.
Edit: so in other comments you've mentioned that blog post claims "this isn't about Stallman" but you're still defending specific points about Stallman. This isn't about Stallman, this is about MIT. Stallman might be "awkward" but MIT doesn't confront him or even pull him to the side to tell him he's been rude. They don't stand up for the people he's hurt, they don't protect the people he's scared off. They don't ask for independent investigations into more serious allegations. This isn't about Stallman - it's not exactly about Epstein, Minsky, Negroponte, etc either. It's about the institution, the power structure, that protects people in certain positions at the expense of everyone else.
I consider Sarah Mei an untrustworthy source. Last year she said the term Domain Driven Development is exclusionary to women because 'DDD' is a bra size in America and therefore the name must be a pornographic reference[0]. Furthermore, in the linked tweet she doesn't actually say anything concrete about Stallman, it's just her feelings about him. She's just stirring the pot.
> Obsolete, already been updated in other comments
Ah, so three days ago he stated that he's changed his mind and having sex with children is actually wrong. Well, glad we got that cleared up! No need to read anything he wrote about that before, it's obsolete now.
Sometimes yes. Leaders are always accountable, but not always responsible for outcomes, RMS was responsible for his actions, now he must be held accountable.
Why not leave that to the justice system instead of an angry mob? Why should people be held accountable by a mob? That's a horrible state that I had thought civilization had finally climbed out of, but it's back again with internet mobs and people being fired as punishment for failing to correctly adhere to the mob's arbitrary preferences. If you really think he did something wrong, then try to get the law changed so future people won't repeat the same offense.
He didn't break the law, nor did he do something worthy of judicial punishment, but that does not mean that he can not or should not be held to account. RMS lost a leadership position, that's all.
And Let's be clear, that is lawful is not necessarily moral, that which is moral is not necessarily lawful.
If it was just a one-off thing isolated from other recent events, you might be correct. But due to Epstein's association with MIT and his other history of controversial statements and actions with FSF, they couldn't just let him make an apology and hide out for awhile.
The fact that this is a more friendly forum than the general public, and yet the majority of people who are sticking up for him here seem to be anonymous conspiracy theorists and people who want to advocate lowering the age of consent, seems to be pretty damning in itself for his prospects.
A history of bad behavior isn’t a reason to excuse bad behavior: it is a reason not to excuse bad behavior because the person has had many chances to change that behavior and decided not to.
And he didn't "Have his wang cut" - He sincerely apologized, he chose to step away from the kernel for a period to work on.. well not being such an asshole.. and now he's back being a good community steward. Which seems like a fine outcome?
The pendulum has swung from "we give powerful, highly skilled, or accomplished people a carte blanche license to be total assholes" to a mentality where we're willing to ostracize people for certain types of assholery.
Has it swung too far? Perhaps. I have a rule: "society always over-corrects."
Should it swing back? No. Some moderation might be in order, but I'm not interested in going back to the time of "but Michael Jackson was so talented!"
(I'm not comparing Stallman to Michael Jackson, just using the latter as an example of a mentality.)
I don't personally have a dog in this fight, but I do get the sense that perhaps this was not an isolated incident but more of the straw that broke the camel's back.
Sure there is. How about: "the deposition never actually accuses Minsky of having sex with anyone in the first place"? Or how about, "Greg Benford says (https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/339725/) he was personally present at the incident and witnessed there was no sex"? Wow, who knew it was so easy to defend 'a child molester' for whom there's 'no way to defend' them.
1. The deposition that's been made public doesn't allege sex with anyone as it was in a lawsuit against Maxwell for trafficking activities. That's outside its scope.
2. I don't find Benford credible.
3. Minsky kept taking Epstein's money and holding conferences on Epstein's island for over a full decade after the events Giuffre and Benford describe took place. Is there any benign explanation for that?
The benign explanation is that he didn't know Epstein was a monster (few outside the DA's office did until 2018) and that he accepted funding for AI research.
Literally any Google search of the man's name would show that he's a fucking monster. It was never a secret, much less after he was convicted of trafficking an underage prostitute in 2008. Nobody can plead ignorance of his crimes. Everyone who took money from him, traveled with him (and his young 'friends'), is absolutely guilty by association of his continued crimes.
Excuse me? There is precisely zero evidence suggesting that MM did anything whatsoever wrong, or, in fact, had sex with an underage woman. There is an accusation by a different woman who calls the woman claiming to have had sex with MM a 'liar' in court testimony.
I tend to trust her as well. Assuming everything she says is true to the best of her understanding, has she claimed to have had sex with Minsky? I've only seen her claims that she was asked by Epstein to do so. I find this an important distinction.
Your original reply to mine was flagged, so I'll reply here.
I was not trying to defend Minsky with my question, I was honestly curious. If someone had instead committed burglary and you said "robbery" I would have made a similar comment; either way it's a thief, but those two crimes do describe different actions, and it's possible I misunderstood what was going on from my merely cursory reading of the news articles in question.
The way this attack came suddenly out of the depths makes me suspect something coordinated. It's too similar to how Tor was seized, and how Linus was almost dethroned. There's something nasty afoot, and I don't like it one bit.