What helped me understand this better was thinking about writing software as a subset of all types of writing. People do write for free because they enjoy doing so or because they feel like they can advance knowledge in a particular area. This is true for both prose and also for the software medium. In both software and prose, you can gain valuable contacts and social credit by sharing your writing with others even if you don't make as much direct income from it.
The publishing industry is much better than software at getting the money to flow towards the creator, but software jobs overall pay better than most writers because of the skill sets involved. Both publishing and software, however, do have multiple ways of going from amateur enthusiast to highly paid professional if you have the talent and connections. And open software, like contributing to small literary magazines, is one way that you can make that transition.
> What I don't understand, is this idea that firing people in response to media shit-storms is somehow something to be applauded.
1. RMS wasn't just some random guy in the foundation, he was supposed to be a leader which means he should be held to a higher standard. Firing someone who doesn't meet that standard means your organisation has integrity which is important and should be applauded.
2. The downsides for keeping him around, especially since RMS didn't seem to be all that apologetic, are also important. The goals of the FSF are not advanced by being pushed into this media storm.
If FSF didn't do something, they would have been forced to answer alot of questions in the media about how they actually feel about age of consent laws, whether they took any money from Epstein and/or Minsky, how they felt about Epstein and/or Minsky, etc., and would then have had to give a number of awkward statements about this mess. Then they would have also had to answer many of those same questions from their donors. And likely if the controversy gained traction, their largest donors may have then been forced to answer their own set of awkward questions from the media about this whole mess. Especially if those donors also had ties to MIT. At some point, many of them would have also reconsidered whether they wanted to donate money to FSF, which would also be bad for the organisation.
All of which is to say that it's not about free speech, it's about protecting the organisation.
Except it's not just about "free speech", it's about protecting the organisation's integrity which was already shot because of Epstein. Context matters, and in this case MIT couldn't afford to just let him off with a warning after already being hit for taking money from a sex trafficker. If RMS had thought about the big picture, he would have known better than to engage on the topic to begin with, especially in that forum.
The FSF is even worse because he's supposed to be in a position of leadership there and represents the organisation. And they shouldn't be put in a position where they have to decide whether to support some controversial statement about age of consent laws just because one of their leaders decided to stick up for one of his friends. It's just not worth it.
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.
Except your opinion is as an anonymous person on the Internet, while his was the director of the FSF and a trusted member of an academic community in a public forum. He has to be willing to think about the people and organisations he represents before he opens his mouth and makes them look bad. If he isn't willing to do that, then he should get sacked.
Now he no longer belong to MIT/FSF, he can enjoy his freedom of speech I guess. RMS is and always is consistent. He never bend his opinion and he throw out all the career if necessary for his freedom.
I think that it has next to nothing to do with technology. MIT was still reeling from the fall out with the Media Lab and Epstein. If it wasn't for that, they might have gotten by with a simple apology, but that wouldn't be enough at this point.
There is also a history of controversial stuff related to his time at the FSF which meant that probably wouldn't settle for a simple apology either (not that RMS seemed willing to give one).
As organisations change over time, what they need in leadership also changes. In this case, they didn't need an ideologue with a history of generating controversy, they needed someone who can keep the ship going forward so that the projects they are overseeing don't lose enough talent that they become irrelevant.
I think without heavy proponents for free software, we would be in a worse place, especially technologically. Never met a software developer that wasn't dependent on free software to learn about the fundamentals of programming and system design.
Calling him an ideologue in contrast to current pioneers in the software industry is a bit much, maybe he just had some hard principles.
> wouldn't settle for a simple apology
To whom? To those that endorsed questionable business relations that drew attention in the first place that still are in leading positions at the MIT?
> need in leadership also changes
Visionaries and thought leaders can probably have a positive influence. I doubt we will get a adequate replacement. There also is no strong leader/mentor that can make you magically smart. He would need to inspire you to learn yourself which I would argue Stallman did pretty well.
"Controversies" are seldom intellectually engaging and if you look at the core of his statements, the subject and reactions become quite ridiculous.
>Never met a software developer that wasn't dependent on free software to learn about the fundamentals of programming and system design.
You probably have been in a bubble all this time. I grew up in former Soviet Union without an internet connection with whatever software I was able to buy around the corner. It wasn't Linux and GCC, it was Windows 9x, Delphi, then MSVC, and so on.
I think the first time I've used (any) FOSS application was after 4 or 5 years of using computers. I had the fundamentals more or less covered by then.
> To whom? To those that endorsed questionable business relations that drew attention in the first place that still are in leading positions at the MIT?
Side note: Ito, at least, is out at MIT. Others may be as well.
As far as to whom, it would have been to "anyone who was harmed by his statements". This could include those at the FSF who he represented, the students and researchers at MIT, who also were associated with the statements, and to people victimised by Epstein and others like him.
It's not as hard to find someone to apologise too, as it would be for the guy to actually admit he's wrong in the first place.
He also sort of tried to apologize and ended up making it worse because he was obviously neither sorry nor interested in how to avoid doing the same thing in the future.
The "turn of events" in this case is losing his job because he made the organisations associated with him look bad. And I think it's completely fair for them to kick him to the curb in this case. No one person too important to lose if they turn into a liability. And in this case, I think RMS was well past that point.
I think your response is very self centered at best. Feeling of being "`raped` of your free agency" is not enough to make a law unjust. It certainly doesn't outweigh the actual exploitation that was what led to these laws to be written to begin with.
The bottom line is that your agency wasn't removed as a minor, you were just left with the same choice as many other minors, to obey the laws regarding drinking, smoking, pornography, etc. Or to break them in order to gain whatever you felt you were being denied. The laws were written to punish people who exploit minors, and the consequences of those crimes pretty much always fall on the adult in the situation (for good reason).
When I was 17, and unable to vote or see certain movies, or 20 and unable to legally buy alcohol, I definitely felt like my freedom was abridged, but it didn't make the laws behind those immoral, it just made them slightly unfair. And that was for some low stakes stuff compared to sex trafficking or adult exploitation of children.
1. I don’t want anyone to be ‘raped’ by ‘free agency. I was speaking of consent. Can someone be raped while being a minor? Of course. Age has nothing to do with whether one can be raped. One can be raped as a minor just as a 50 y/o ..dare I say..male can be raped. Age also has nothing to do with sexual desire or urges either. A 12 year old boy can be horny and a post menopausal woman can snap shut at the rumor of sex.
Rape should be about consent. Not age.
2. It is infantalization of young adults and taking away their instincts and consequently the ability to provide consent that is confounding to me. Biologically, sexual instinct begins way before puberty.
3. Creating ‘laws’ is a symptom of a society failing to manage itself. Shame and shunning used to work before. Every law automatically includes a legal loophole. Laws make society weaker, not stronger. It is the mass handover of power to the state..power we should have over ourselves as citizens and society.
Human beings may be holding super computers in the palms of our hands, but our instincts are still cave man instincts. The human instinct that seeks sexual pleasure also seeks justice and revenge and disgust.
How many rape victims have been screwed over by the ‘system’ that the law is supposed to uphold?
4. So something is wrong with the legal system that lets more people slip through the cracks by ‘failing’ them. I am not condoning rape.
I am just saying that it is wrong that minors should be deemed ‘mentally deficient’ to give consent.
5. When my body says that I am ready for sex and the law says no, I am being denied my right.
6. Jewish infants are circumcised without their consent. Is that sexual assault or rape? Young girls suffer genital mutilation in the same name of religion. Why doesn’t the law step in and make it illegal?
7. Voting or alcohol consumption are not biological imperatives. Children are..to an extent..property of parents until they can fend for themselves. To curtail freedom to consent by law is actually also curtailing freedom of ownership of their instincts. When did the courts and the state start taking over the role of parents?
8. Let’s take Greta Thurnberg. She is a child instructing adults. Some of us are ok with that. Others aren’t. The same girl if she had consented to have sex with a non-minor while she was a minor in the USA would have been considered ‘mentally deficient’ to give consent.
9. I am not..for even a second..condoning rape. I am just concerned that the advent of an biological instinct when it is earlier than the age of consent is a handicap to a young adult.
What are you thoughts and I hope I had clarified my position.
Laws are made to apply to everyone, not the exceptional person who is sexually mature well in advance of her peers.
Your argument might well be that the age of consent is too high. That's fine, it's arbitrary. But there does need to be one to prevent all sorts of horrible things from happening.
And no, the laws don't prevent everything but that's not an argument that they shouldn't exist at all.
There are no laws against minors having sex. There are laws against non minors having sex with minors.
I am not arguing that.
I am just saying that a minor not being able to consent due to their alleged ‘mental deficiency’ due to age(as suggested by another poster above) is dodgy.
Ok. Let’s take an example of an actual ‘mentally deficient’ person...even an adult. Don’t they have sexual urges and biological needs? Are they capable of consent? What does the law say about that?
Sexual urges are no different than hunger or thirst. I want to know why sex has a more special status than food or water?
I feel like your position would have more traction with me if we as a society were better about enforcing the existing laws regarding sexual assault and consent. Adults in that situation are willing to go on the record and state that the acts were not consensual and no one is willing to believe them. At least not enough to investigate and put their rapist away in a majority of cases. I can't imagine a child would have an easier time of this no matter how mature they seem, but at least with the consent laws, they wouldn't be forced into the same thing that seems to happen with a number of victims where a lawyer puts them on the stand and tries to make them look like they are lying about everything.
It's not just about free speech, it's about his position of leadership in those organisations. He needs to either moderate his public viewpoints in order to look out for the best interests of the people there, which is what a good leader would do, or he needs to resign because he clearly doesn't understand his job.
When you're the head of the FSF, or any other organisation really, you can't just be some kind of agitator, throw out a bunch of controversial nonsense, and then expect it to not look bad for the people you're supposed to represent. It's not an "assault on free speech" to get kicked to the curb for making your organisation look bad, it's cause and effect.
The site you're linking to is junk. Your comments about records ignores the fact that the hottest record setting days are not distributed randomly, but are in fact clustered around the turn of the 21st century. On top of that, the overall science is not solely based on temperature records, but on a number of different phenomena which you completely ignore.
TL;DR, the polar ice caps are melting, as predicted by scientists; the intensity of tropical storms is increasing, as predicted by scientists; the average mean temperature has been rising steadly, as also predicted. You fail to account for these things with any alternative theory that fits the facts, and your claim that it is all "scaremongering" is dubious at best. Especially since the world's largest companies are all petrochemical and have an invested interest in creating as much FUD about climate change as possible.
The publishing industry is much better than software at getting the money to flow towards the creator, but software jobs overall pay better than most writers because of the skill sets involved. Both publishing and software, however, do have multiple ways of going from amateur enthusiast to highly paid professional if you have the talent and connections. And open software, like contributing to small literary magazines, is one way that you can make that transition.