I used to make so much fun of RMS in the late 90s. Then I met him and my entire view on that man changed. He absolutely is doing the world a favor and it would benefit everyone to think long and hard what a world would be like without GNU today
He's also an interesting study in having principles - a purist approach is rare, honestly confusing to most people and actually rather effective in a Cassandra-style way if watched closely. Quite effective in terms of outcomes too, it's really deceptive how much of an impact he managed to have because the part of the brain that judges success and failure seems to key off charisma and social proof rather than doing a technically outcomes-vs-intent comparison.
A few years ago there were some "personalities" that very much agitated against Stallman. Without generalizing too much it is these people you probably should keep a very, very large distance to. Toxic is likely an understatement.
Oh, please. This sort of anonymous, hopelessly vague character assassination does not belong on HN.
You have of course given no idea of which people you're objecting to. But the people I know who were upset at Stallman a few years ago had clear, specific concerns, and some of them were directly harmed by Stallman.
If you would like to rebut their complaints, feel free to give it a go. Or you could also claim that the harm caused was justified or excusable given the positive things he's done. But you have to actually make the case, rather than just smearing them like this.
I do think this belongs on HN as a topic. This isn't a character assassination since I didn't name anyone. Quite the contrary, the character assassination was directed against Stallman and it was based on toxic slender and rumors and it even lead to consequences. If someone does feel addressed by my comment, I welcome that of course and perhaps it will lead to some self-reflection because I want to underline that it is strong criticism.
The problem comes when his principals turn out to have blind spots.
I feel like the refusal to close the network hole in the GPLv3 is a significant blind spot of his, and is a decision that has aged incredibly poorly in the age of cloud services.
> I admired this dude but those words are, kinda, punchable offense.
I think that's pretty spot on. Saying stuff like that means that there shouldn't be celebration of the person or reverence towards them.
You can support the FSF views on free software and any good those do in the world, but it's not possible to ignore all of the other stuff a person has said.
One can guess whether he's not neurotypical to such a degree that he doesn't take a humane enough perspective (arguing about topics that perhaps shouldn't be argued about), but that doesn't really change anything.
When you want to talk about free software, probably talk about FSF not RMS.
"<some stupid shit you later changed your mind about>"
-- you, probably
Also, if you're not sceptical about it, you should be able to explain to someone like Stallman (as someone apparently later did) why it's still bad for children. If you can't then you're just as "stupid", the only difference is you happen to conform to the current accepted belief on this particular matter.
Opinions like this give rise to fascism.
You can not talk about how we want to protect children and where the boundaries are because some lunatics immediately accuse anybody of harming THE CHILDREN.
If someone is romantically into kids this is not socially accepted in most cultures, but someone merely being attracted without following up with actions does not harm any kids.
It means he thinks kids can "want it" and if a kid "wants it" it's ok. It's unfortunately a common view among some, most apparent with Sartre and that "philosopher" crew. It's disgusting of course.
Having terrible opinions in one area doesn’t discount what you do in another.
I’d say Stallman has overall had a positive impact on the technology landscape even though he clearly has messed up views when it comes to “sexual ethics”
RMS was trying to defend Marvin Minsky, but because RMS is on the spectrum he did it in a way that didn't do anything for his long-term friend but made things horrible for himself.
Marvin Minsky and Noam Chomsky were both involved with Epstein.
It didn't ruin RMS at all. He was momentarily cancelled then welcomed back to the FSF. He was blogging passionately about his pro-pedophilia views for years. His supporters literally couldn't have cared less, and rather swore a blood oath of vengeance against the people who called him out.
I'm actually struggling to think of anyone who has suffered negative consequences over Epstein, besides Epstein himself. Even Ghislane is being treated like royalty in prison. Trump seems untouchable. Prince Andrew lost a purely decorative title and was banished to a slightly smaller mansion.
He's blogged for years, writing a number of short 1 or 2 sentence notes daily, on a very wide range of topics, taking positions on each of them from a lefty and analytical point of view, generally covering various political/environmental/economic/legal topics.
And, for what it's worth, he recanted the statement he made that was posted above.
>taking positions on each of them from a lefty and analytical point of view, generally covering various political/environmental/economic/legal topics.
He didn't take a lofty and analytical view on sex with children. Read his other posts, he was upset that there were societal norms and laws against it. He cared about this.
>And, for what it's worth, he recanted the statement he made that was posted above.
As far as I'm aware only once, almost as an afterthought, in a brief statement when the Minsky stuff was blowing up, likely under duress from someone at MIT desperate for him to put out the fire his at best awkward comments on Minsky set alight. He's probably put more effort into ordering a meal than he did recanting his views on pedophilia. Which again he held for years, in public view, without consequence.
So he didn't even need to go that far because none of it even touched him.
Of course I'm not arguing in favor of pedophilia JFC.
Yes I'm pointing out that RMS was, judging from his own words, an advocate. He advocated for adults to have sexual relationships with children. It's gross. It's gross that he's still the face of free software.
I don't think you even need to go as far as his interpersonal skills. IMHO The fact that the GPLv3 (not the AGPLv3) didn't close the network hole should've been proof enough.
If you care about user freedom, the fact that the GPL isn't viral across the network is such an obvious gaping hole at its center, one that was well known by the late 2000's. Yet through myopia or appeasement, he decided to leave it to the AGPL to solve, and the GPLv3 ended up as a license that still ticked off enough people for them to not upgrade, yet with a gigantic backdoor built-in that allows trivial circumvention of user freedoms.
