7 ms·

A Reflection on the Departure of RMS

83 points by rwolf 7y ago

geofft 7y ago
For some context, Thomas Bushnell was the chief architect of the HURD from its founding in 1990 until 2003. He understands the FSF and Richard Stallman as well as anyone does.
- speedplane 7y ago
  > Thomas Bushnell was the chief architect of the HURD from its founding in 1990 until 2003. He understands the FSF and Richard Stallman as well as anyone does. I invited Stallman to speak at my law school, along with other high ranking FSF members. I may have worshiped him at the time, but many of the tight-laced budding lawyers in attendance thought he was weird, mildly anti-social, and did not understand his relevance. Developers "got it", but most law students didn't connect. The traits that endeared him to the software community cut against him when trying to reach a broader audience. Even though "open source" is everywhere right now, the GPL and true sharing of code is not. The Apache license, which allows you to do what you want and not share any changes, rules the day. I wonder if a more mainstream leader, who was just as committed to copyleft software would have been more effective.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
zozbot234 7y ago
I'm quite willing to entertain the notion that RMS was a problem in some sense (though, if he has been 'coddled' for decades, one has to wonder if that problem was due to any fault of his own that he ought to have been cognizant of!) But pay attention to what this post is actually saying. It's inappropriate to defend Minsky in the wake of the Epstein scandal? (And there are people, considered reliable by others, who have said that when sex was inappropriately offered to Minsky, he turned the offer down! Of course RMS did not say that, and what he did say was rather tone deaf to say the least. But still...) RMS must go because he is fat and ugly, and thus makes women uncomfortable (the horror!) even when he's simply trying to joke around and be charming? Come on.
- NateEag 7y ago
  I suggest you read the articles linked in the posted link, and also this story by Steven Levy: https://www.wired.com/story/richard-stallman-and-the-fall-of-the-clueless-nerd/ https://www.wired.com/story/richard-stallman-and-the-fall-of... Threatening to kill yourself if someone won't go out with you is terrible behavior at a bunch of levels: https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix-a-a7e41e784f88 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix... (search for "When I was a teen freshman"). It's clear that Stallman was not just "trying to joke around and be charming". Even if that were his actual intent, acceptable intent does not justify bad behavior.
  - faissaloo 7y ago
    Whenever something like this happens some sort of accusation around this sort of behaviour always seems to emerge, I really have to question the validity of such claims
    - jzb 7y ago
      I guess it wouldn't occur to you that the claims are valid, hence the reason they keep cropping up...
      - faissaloo 7y ago
        I considered that and dismissed it because it's frequently been proven that these accusations have had no merit.
  - jeegsy 7y ago
    "The fall of the clueless nerd" indeed. The headline in the wired story linked triggers the hell out of me. I suppose we have come full circle, Nerds suck, then they were cool and now they have been consigned back to uncool again. For the life of me, based on the snippets i've seen regarding his interactions with women, the only advice I can give him and ppl like him if they could have a do-over is stay away from women period. Which causes other problems but I will gladly have those problems than have an icon of an industry/space that I love be exiled in such an ignominious fashion.
scohesc 7y ago
I'm pretty sure RMS exhibits most of all of the symptoms of Asperger's and would immediately get the diagnosis if he walked into a psychiatrists' office. It's a bit ignorant for Bushnell to be degrading RMS by calling him a "a whiny child who has never reached the emotional maturity to treat people decently" when the man 99.9% likely cannot cognitively do so. It's really unfortunate that people with Asperger's (potentially like RMS) are at a massive disadvantage when holding positions of any kind of power in a public setting.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  It's far more than 'ignorant', Bushnell knows better than that. He's demonstrating a severe lack of empathy - and let's just say, he's not the only person who has shown tell-tale signs of this trait so far (and leave it at that). What I have to wonder is whether the radical activist politics that's becoming all-too-common in academia and elsewhere is making people less empathetic, or simply selecting for the least empathetic of us. (As an aside, the notion that Aspergers sufferers "cannot cognitively" reach "the emotional maturity to treat people decently" is a deeply, deeply unfair stereotype that reflects a severe misconception as to Aspergers behavior. Autism and Aspergers has nothing, zip, zilch to do with sociopathy! The way sufferers might treat people may be less-than-satisfactory to us, perhaps even socially-impaired in some sense; but to say or to even imply that they they lack decency is simply outrageous. Sorry for the admittedly-pedantic nitpicking.)
  - bbanyc 7y ago
    From what I can tell, it's Stallman who lacks empathy here. If he had ever thought about the impact of his behavior on the people around him, maybe he wouldn't have driven them all away.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      Lacking empathy isn't exclusive; it's possible for multiple parties to the same issue to do that.
    - 7y ago

83 points by rwolf 7y ago

For some context, Thomas Bushnell was the chief architect of the HURD from its founding in 1990 until 2003. He understands the FSF and Richard Stallman as well as anyone does.

speedplane 7y ago
> Thomas Bushnell was the chief architect of the HURD from its founding in 1990 until 2003. He understands the FSF and Richard Stallman as well as anyone does. I invited Stallman to speak at my law school, along with other high ranking FSF members. I may have worshiped him at the time, but many of the tight-laced budding lawyers in attendance thought he was weird, mildly anti-social, and did not understand his relevance. Developers "got it", but most law students didn't connect. The traits that endeared him to the software community cut against him when trying to reach a broader audience. Even though "open source" is everywhere right now, the GPL and true sharing of code is not. The Apache license, which allows you to do what you want and not share any changes, rules the day. I wonder if a more mainstream leader, who was just as committed to copyleft software would have been more effective.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

zozbot234 7y ago

I'm quite willing to entertain the notion that RMS was a problem in some sense (though, if he has been 'coddled' for decades, one has to wonder if that problem was due to any fault of his own that he ought to have been cognizant of!) But pay attention to what this post is actually saying. It's inappropriate to defend Minsky in the wake of the Epstein scandal? (And there are people, considered reliable by others, who have said that when sex was inappropriately offered to Minsky, he turned the offer down! Of course RMS did not say that, and what he did say was rather tone deaf to say the least. But still...) RMS must go because he is fat and ugly, and thus makes women uncomfortable (the horror!) even when he's simply trying to joke around and be charming? Come on.

NateEag 7y ago
I suggest you read the articles linked in the posted link, and also this story by Steven Levy: https://www.wired.com/story/richard-stallman-and-the-fall-of-the-clueless-nerd/ https://www.wired.com/story/richard-stallman-and-the-fall-of... Threatening to kill yourself if someone won't go out with you is terrible behavior at a bunch of levels: https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix-a-a7e41e784f88 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix... (search for "When I was a teen freshman"). It's clear that Stallman was not just "trying to joke around and be charming". Even if that were his actual intent, acceptable intent does not justify bad behavior.
- faissaloo 7y ago
  Whenever something like this happens some sort of accusation around this sort of behaviour always seems to emerge, I really have to question the validity of such claims
  - jzb 7y ago
    I guess it wouldn't occur to you that the claims are valid, hence the reason they keep cropping up...
    - faissaloo 7y ago
      I considered that and dismissed it because it's frequently been proven that these accusations have had no merit.
- jeegsy 7y ago
  "The fall of the clueless nerd" indeed. The headline in the wired story linked triggers the hell out of me. I suppose we have come full circle, Nerds suck, then they were cool and now they have been consigned back to uncool again. For the life of me, based on the snippets i've seen regarding his interactions with women, the only advice I can give him and ppl like him if they could have a do-over is stay away from women period. Which causes other problems but I will gladly have those problems than have an icon of an industry/space that I love be exiled in such an ignominious fashion.

scohesc 7y ago

I'm pretty sure RMS exhibits most of all of the symptoms of Asperger's and would immediately get the diagnosis if he walked into a psychiatrists' office. It's a bit ignorant for Bushnell to be degrading RMS by calling him a "a whiny child who has never reached the emotional maturity to treat people decently" when the man 99.9% likely cannot cognitively do so. It's really unfortunate that people with Asperger's (potentially like RMS) are at a massive disadvantage when holding positions of any kind of power in a public setting.

zozbot234 7y ago
It's far more than 'ignorant', Bushnell knows better than that. He's demonstrating a severe lack of empathy - and let's just say, he's not the only person who has shown tell-tale signs of this trait so far (and leave it at that). What I have to wonder is whether the radical activist politics that's becoming all-too-common in academia and elsewhere is making people less empathetic, or simply selecting for the least empathetic of us. (As an aside, the notion that Aspergers sufferers "cannot cognitively" reach "the emotional maturity to treat people decently" is a deeply, deeply unfair stereotype that reflects a severe misconception as to Aspergers behavior. Autism and Aspergers has nothing, zip, zilch to do with sociopathy! The way sufferers might treat people may be less-than-satisfactory to us, perhaps even socially-impaired in some sense; but to say or to even imply that they they lack decency is simply outrageous. Sorry for the admittedly-pedantic nitpicking.)
- bbanyc 7y ago
  From what I can tell, it's Stallman who lacks empathy here. If he had ever thought about the impact of his behavior on the people around him, maybe he wouldn't have driven them all away.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    Lacking empathy isn't exclusive; it's possible for multiple parties to the same issue to do that.
  - 7y ago