5 ms·

It wasn't just this incident. RMS alienated so many women from open source and free software over the last 30 years, and we've lost all of those potential contr

It wasn't just this incident. RMS alienated so many women from open source and free software over the last 30 years, and we've lost all of those potential contributions. He's been getting breaks for 30 years. That he has also done some very good things isn't a good argument for continuing to tolerate his harmful behaviour after he's been asked to fix it for literally decades, and hasn't.

sprafa 7y ago
Didn’t know about this. Where can I read more about his behaviour around women?
- ariabuckles 7y ago
  https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman and https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix-a-a7e41e784f88 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix... are good starting points; I also saw threads about it from women MIT alumns on twitter.
  - norcalli 7y ago
    It would be horrifying to have meticulously documented notes on every thing you ever said that may or may not be true, and may or may not have been a joke. If his career had been a comedian and not a FOSS advocate, then would he still be crucified for saying the same things or would he simply be an awful comedian? I would be dollars to doughnuts that the author of that site and the editors of that "wiki" have made or thought worse things at some point, but because they have not reached a certain level of celebrity, there's no dossier on them. It's truly ridiculous to me the amount of effort spent on trying to claw others down. I accept that inequality exists and perhaps RMS has some awful opinions, but if that's the case then just ignore him. If there are people who are choosing to make it incumbent upon themselves to take down these "problematic" individuals, then it must be because they think that all of the systems that have allowed a person to continue to exist despite those opinions must be unreliable in adequately judging them. If that's the case, then wouldn't it be more practical to fix the endemic problem rather than destroy a single person? I'm guessing that the latter is just easier to do and more profitable as well. You gain "credibility" by attacking someone else, so it's difficult to believe that they are doing it for altruistic means. All in all, I'm pretty sick of this nonsense. A world where everyone is constantly being watched by eachother and reported on is already too authoritarian for me to want to continue living in, not to mention the already authoritarian governments doing the same.
    - ariabuckles 7y ago
      Honestly, I think we let a lot of mean-spiritedness pass as "comedy", and I think sexist comedy causes a lot of real-world problems. > I would be dollars to doughnuts that the author of that site and the editors of that "wiki" have made or thought worse things at some point, but because they have not reached a certain level of celebrity, there's no dossier on them. It's truly ridiculous to me the amount of effort spent on trying to claw others down. "With great power, comes great responsibility." When operating in contexts where you have a lot of power, one has to be more careful with their words and actions. If he had voiced that opinion to a friend of his, no one would have complained. But voicing his opinion minimizing rape on a university mailing list has direct negative effects for a lot of people. Also, some people do listen, apologize, and put in the work to learn. > I accept that inequality exists and perhaps RMS has some awful opinions, but if that's the case then just ignore him. The problem is that other people don't just ignore him. By ignoring his harmful behaviour, we let his negative impact spread further as others repeat his misogynistic ideas. > A world where everyone is constantly being watched by eachother and reported on is already too authoritarian for me to want to continue living in I'm sorry and hope you find a way to continue living in this world. And I agree strongly about authoritarian governments. I don't really think calling out a post on a large mailing list counts as "everyone is constantly being watched by each other" though.
      - concordDance 7y ago
        > his misogynistic ideas. I can find nothing that meets this criteria in the above links. Do you have an unusual definition of "misogynistic", were you being rhetorical or do you have another source?
      - craigsmansion 7y ago
        > on a university mailing list has direct negative effects for a lot of people. That very mailing list was about to arbitrarily accuse a dead innocent man of a crime to help provide cover for actual criminals still walking the halls at MIT. This charade around Stallman is an injustice against Epstein's victims, the decent people at MIT, and Minsky.
  - donatj 7y ago
    > In 1993, he asked for birth announcements to be banned from emacs mailing list, unless they are announcements for seahorses, because then it would be the male that gives birth and therefore interesting. I feel like that is pretty sensationalized. The argument being made there is that regular birth is a common thing, and should be left off the list unless it is something out of the ordinary.
  - craigsmansion 7y ago
    Those are terrible starting points. For the actual background on the current chain of events at MIT: https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/index.html https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/index.html For earlier allegations, take the original sources including quotes and references: https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html (note: there are many more archives. This also gives you an idea of the effort it must have taken to find those few "damning" posts, and to skew those out of context)
  - lostjohnny 7y ago
    Selam G. builds weapons for US Department of Defense... That's not really feminist, isn't it? > • Co-Principle Investigator for a U.S. Department of Defense SBIR Phase II research contract, prototyping autonomous ground vehicle (AGV) with collection system. https://www.linkedin.com/in/selam-gano-089895ba https://www.linkedin.com/in/selam-gano-089895ba
zapzupnz 7y ago
It really does seem that he's being defended purely based on some cult of celebrity. HN would vilify any other group for doing the same thing for anybody else.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  Some people are sympathetic for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with some cult of celebrity, like being generally fed up with shitty, hypocritical puritanical BS out in the world generally. That would include me, which is why I'm speaking up: Your comment smears me, though I'm sure you didn't think you were talking about me. Otherwise, I wouldn't have said anything. I think rehashing this instead of actually discussing the ideas he wrote about is just more disrespectful BS and I hate seeing it.
  - zapzupnz 7y ago
    > Generally fed up with shitty, hypocritical puritanical BS out in the world generally > Your comment smears me, though I'm sure you didn't think you were talking about me So hang on, you're happy to say that you are leaping to his defence because you're sick of some abstract concept against which you rally instead of the facts of the matter, his past pattern of behaviour, and the complaints that have been made themselves? That's worth a laugh. He's innocent enough to warrant defending because you interpret that a lot of people in unrelated cases take things too far. Gotcha. That's not a defence; if anything, me thinking it was just based on a cult of celebrity was me being kind and giving a supposed unintended audience (you included, so you tell me) the benefit of the doubt which you've admitted to not deserving.
    - DoreenMichele 7y ago
      So hang on, you're happy to say that you are leaping to his defence because you're sick of some abstract concept against which you rally rather than the facts of the case himself? There is nothing whatsoever abstract about the things I'm tired of. This is neither the time nor place to rehash my criticisms. It wouldn't do any good anyway. My previous comment was For the record. I don't intend to hash it out with you further in this thread.
zaphirplane 7y ago
That just can’t be true, a lot , I’ll go as far as say absolute majority of paid and hobby OSS developers have no interaction with RMS Even projects under the gnu.org umbrella probably don’t interact that much with RMS, let alone have discouraging interaction. I have no dog in this fight but have a bias for factual discussions
- megous 7y ago
  Pretty much. I think I've seen one of his speeches this year for the first time, yet his ideas hugely changed my life forever, since I understood them. My exposure was just reading some texts onf fsf website in 2003, and jumping into learning GNU/Linux back then.
4bpp 7y ago
Do you believe he has alienated more women from FOSS than he has inspired people to contribute to it? Considering the frankly extremely low percentage of female contributors, it seems that he would have had to personally (considering that all of the creepy behaviours listed seem to be limited to his meatspace circles) alienate multiple women for every one woman who did wind up working on in free software, which seems unrealistic simply on the basis that most people in FOSS never met Stallman. (On the same basis, I would actually be inclined to believe that he has probably inspired more women specifically than he has alienated, too.) Note also that all of the anecdotes of actual bad behaviour that seem to come up are from about two decades ago, and we seem to be supposed to conclude that the pattern never stopped on the basis of that and a pathologically misquoted and misrepresented email he sent on the Epstein/Minsky case. Considering that the real email is at most slightly tone-deaf, the most likely model of reality to me seems to be that he has fixed that behaviour well over a decade ago, but a number of activists had resolved to never let it go until they found some way to completely destroy any status and reputation he has.
- mav3rick 7y ago
  You are okay forgiving people as long as their "net impact" is positive? Is it okay for someone to murder a person if they saved more than one life before ?
  - knolax 7y ago
    That's not a good analogy because murder are both one time actions. Punishing a murderer who saved before doesn't prevent more people from being saved. A more apt example would be granting clemency to a highly talented surgeon specialized in an operation nobody else can do.
  - 4bpp 7y ago
    In general, yes. Murder is a very peculiar case that is hardly suitable to be the benchmark for building our intuitions about trading off harm in general: human lives are not fungible, murder is not reversible, the victims do not generally get a meaningful way of influencing how the murder impacts them etc., all properties that do not apply in the case of being put off a pursuit like FOSS. (Even then, we're sometimes okay accepting murder to save more lives: e.g. the Allies' actions in WWII are considered a heroic even with nearly a century of historical distance) Arguably, the progressive argument for {affirmative action, inverted burden of proof in Title IX, ...} also amounts to "accept some harm if the net impact is positive"; few people claim that these policies will not result in some people being rejected from positions they deserve or punished for crimes they did not commit. Some countries are more explicit about this and actually constitutionally single out matters of life and death as being prohibited from being traded off against each other (e.g. Germany), i.e. the state is not allowed to play in trolley problems. The corollary is that the state, and most everyone, finds it okay to trade off other harms: you can for instance choose to build an airport that will drive down the value of some people's homes and expose them to considerable noise in order to give convenience and good business to a large number of people. I think discouraging some women from participating in FOSS is much closer in quality of harm to "your home is now worth half as much and you have to put up with the noise of planes flying overhead everyday" than "you die a painful and untimely death".
knocte 7y ago
I agree with you about all the past bad behaviour, but the e-mail about Minsky was a bad choice to be the "last straw". It was an email calling for accusation-inflation prevention, which the media portrayed as completely the opposite (and this way of manipulation information from the media should be criminal, in my opinion).
- hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago
  If we made deliberate or negligent defamation a criminal offence it might restore some sanity to society.
  - DarkWiiPlayer 7y ago
    That's similar to how "free speech"* works in Germany, and you have people like crowder saying in public that "Germany has no free speech". I agree in principle, but I think there's lots of good arguments against it as well. More importantly than the question of whether it's legal, I'm amazed that people can still see themselves as "the good ones" after all the things they do to their fellow humans. * In German, we use the word "Meinungsfreiheit", which literally translates to "Freedom of Opinion", not "Free Speech", so yes, technically speaking, we don't have free speech; only the right to express our opinions.
    - hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago
      Sounds non-insane. Opinions should indeedbe free. Facts should be free. Lies that harm should not be OK. A nice side effect of criminalizing defamation would be that the enforcment would be up to the state. When it is a civil affair only rich people can defend themselves.
luckydata 7y ago
Agreed, the message is worth spreading and fighting for, the man can go, he's too toxic.
trax 7y ago
> It wasn't just this incident. RMS alienated so many women from open source and free software over the last 30 years, and we've lost all of those potential contributions. [citation needed]
lostjohnny 7y ago
> RMS alienated so many women [citation needed]
cat_plus_plus 7y ago
What kind of women and does anyone else find it sexist to assume that men will always be the offenders and women the offendees? Programming involves deconstructing complex problems into basic steps while ignoring full real world nuances in order to derive a reasonable abstraction. Like... deconstructing allegations against Minsky into basic aspect (instructed to have sex vs actually had sex, aware of lack of consent or not, aware of age or not, 16 can consent in jurisdiction X year Y or not). Successful programmers trend not super socially aware and often on autism spectrum. So maybe women genuinely interesting in programming would be like Ada Lovelace, a compulsive gambler with messy love life who dreamed of building a computer to beat poker? How long would she last in 2019 MIT? And if you get alienated from a career path because of one bad professor, go and find something else that you want so badly that you are willing to tough it out. Otherwise you will always blame your professional success limits on people not supporting you enough, or cracking an off-color joke or two or microaggressions. Do you honestly expect to never have to deal with a problem boss/coworkers/customer in a super-competitive private sector job? Don't tell me nurses and schoolteachers never have to deal with someone like RMS or worse. And sure, some degree of bad behavior should have proportional consequences, but do we hear about how women get alienated from these professions en masse?

sprafa 7y ago

Didn’t know about this. Where can I read more about his behaviour around women?

ariabuckles 7y ago
https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman and https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix-a-a7e41e784f88 https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix... are good starting points; I also saw threads about it from women MIT alumns on twitter.
- norcalli 7y ago
  It would be horrifying to have meticulously documented notes on every thing you ever said that may or may not be true, and may or may not have been a joke. If his career had been a comedian and not a FOSS advocate, then would he still be crucified for saying the same things or would he simply be an awful comedian? I would be dollars to doughnuts that the author of that site and the editors of that "wiki" have made or thought worse things at some point, but because they have not reached a certain level of celebrity, there's no dossier on them. It's truly ridiculous to me the amount of effort spent on trying to claw others down. I accept that inequality exists and perhaps RMS has some awful opinions, but if that's the case then just ignore him. If there are people who are choosing to make it incumbent upon themselves to take down these "problematic" individuals, then it must be because they think that all of the systems that have allowed a person to continue to exist despite those opinions must be unreliable in adequately judging them. If that's the case, then wouldn't it be more practical to fix the endemic problem rather than destroy a single person? I'm guessing that the latter is just easier to do and more profitable as well. You gain "credibility" by attacking someone else, so it's difficult to believe that they are doing it for altruistic means. All in all, I'm pretty sick of this nonsense. A world where everyone is constantly being watched by eachother and reported on is already too authoritarian for me to want to continue living in, not to mention the already authoritarian governments doing the same.
  - ariabuckles 7y ago
    Honestly, I think we let a lot of mean-spiritedness pass as "comedy", and I think sexist comedy causes a lot of real-world problems. > I would be dollars to doughnuts that the author of that site and the editors of that "wiki" have made or thought worse things at some point, but because they have not reached a certain level of celebrity, there's no dossier on them. It's truly ridiculous to me the amount of effort spent on trying to claw others down. "With great power, comes great responsibility." When operating in contexts where you have a lot of power, one has to be more careful with their words and actions. If he had voiced that opinion to a friend of his, no one would have complained. But voicing his opinion minimizing rape on a university mailing list has direct negative effects for a lot of people. Also, some people do listen, apologize, and put in the work to learn. > I accept that inequality exists and perhaps RMS has some awful opinions, but if that's the case then just ignore him. The problem is that other people don't just ignore him. By ignoring his harmful behaviour, we let his negative impact spread further as others repeat his misogynistic ideas. > A world where everyone is constantly being watched by eachother and reported on is already too authoritarian for me to want to continue living in I'm sorry and hope you find a way to continue living in this world. And I agree strongly about authoritarian governments. I don't really think calling out a post on a large mailing list counts as "everyone is constantly being watched by each other" though.
    - concordDance 7y ago
      > his misogynistic ideas. I can find nothing that meets this criteria in the above links. Do you have an unusual definition of "misogynistic", were you being rhetorical or do you have another source?
    - craigsmansion 7y ago
      > on a university mailing list has direct negative effects for a lot of people. That very mailing list was about to arbitrarily accuse a dead innocent man of a crime to help provide cover for actual criminals still walking the halls at MIT. This charade around Stallman is an injustice against Epstein's victims, the decent people at MIT, and Minsky.
- donatj 7y ago
  > In 1993, he asked for birth announcements to be banned from emacs mailing list, unless they are announcements for seahorses, because then it would be the male that gives birth and therefore interesting. I feel like that is pretty sensationalized. The argument being made there is that regular birth is a common thing, and should be left off the list unless it is something out of the ordinary.
- craigsmansion 7y ago
  Those are terrible starting points. For the actual background on the current chain of events at MIT: https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/index.html https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/index.html For earlier allegations, take the original sources including quotes and references: https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html (note: there are many more archives. This also gives you an idea of the effort it must have taken to find those few "damning" posts, and to skew those out of context)
- lostjohnny 7y ago
  Selam G. builds weapons for US Department of Defense... That's not really feminist, isn't it? > • Co-Principle Investigator for a U.S. Department of Defense SBIR Phase II research contract, prototyping autonomous ground vehicle (AGV) with collection system. https://www.linkedin.com/in/selam-gano-089895ba https://www.linkedin.com/in/selam-gano-089895ba

zapzupnz 7y ago

It really does seem that he's being defended purely based on some cult of celebrity. HN would vilify any other group for doing the same thing for anybody else.

DoreenMichele 7y ago
Some people are sympathetic for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with some cult of celebrity, like being generally fed up with shitty, hypocritical puritanical BS out in the world generally. That would include me, which is why I'm speaking up: Your comment smears me, though I'm sure you didn't think you were talking about me. Otherwise, I wouldn't have said anything. I think rehashing this instead of actually discussing the ideas he wrote about is just more disrespectful BS and I hate seeing it.
- zapzupnz 7y ago
  > Generally fed up with shitty, hypocritical puritanical BS out in the world generally > Your comment smears me, though I'm sure you didn't think you were talking about me So hang on, you're happy to say that you are leaping to his defence because you're sick of some abstract concept against which you rally instead of the facts of the matter, his past pattern of behaviour, and the complaints that have been made themselves? That's worth a laugh. He's innocent enough to warrant defending because you interpret that a lot of people in unrelated cases take things too far. Gotcha. That's not a defence; if anything, me thinking it was just based on a cult of celebrity was me being kind and giving a supposed unintended audience (you included, so you tell me) the benefit of the doubt which you've admitted to not deserving.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    So hang on, you're happy to say that you are leaping to his defence because you're sick of some abstract concept against which you rally rather than the facts of the case himself? There is nothing whatsoever abstract about the things I'm tired of. This is neither the time nor place to rehash my criticisms. It wouldn't do any good anyway. My previous comment was For the record. I don't intend to hash it out with you further in this thread.

zaphirplane 7y ago

That just can’t be true, a lot , I’ll go as far as say absolute majority of paid and hobby OSS developers have no interaction with RMS Even projects under the gnu.org umbrella probably don’t interact that much with RMS, let alone have discouraging interaction. I have no dog in this fight but have a bias for factual discussions

megous 7y ago
Pretty much. I think I've seen one of his speeches this year for the first time, yet his ideas hugely changed my life forever, since I understood them. My exposure was just reading some texts onf fsf website in 2003, and jumping into learning GNU/Linux back then.

4bpp 7y ago

Do you believe he has alienated more women from FOSS than he has inspired people to contribute to it? Considering the frankly extremely low percentage of female contributors, it seems that he would have had to personally (considering that all of the creepy behaviours listed seem to be limited to his meatspace circles) alienate multiple women for every one woman who did wind up working on in free software, which seems unrealistic simply on the basis that most people in FOSS never met Stallman. (On the same basis, I would actually be inclined to believe that he has probably inspired more women specifically than he has alienated, too.) Note also that all of the anecdotes of actual bad behaviour that seem to come up are from about two decades ago, and we seem to be supposed to conclude that the pattern never stopped on the basis of that and a pathologically misquoted and misrepresented email he sent on the Epstein/Minsky case. Considering that the real email is at most slightly tone-deaf, the most likely model of reality to me seems to be that he has fixed that behaviour well over a decade ago, but a number of activists had resolved to never let it go until they found some way to completely destroy any status and reputation he has.

mav3rick 7y ago
You are okay forgiving people as long as their "net impact" is positive? Is it okay for someone to murder a person if they saved more than one life before ?
- knolax 7y ago
  That's not a good analogy because murder are both one time actions. Punishing a murderer who saved before doesn't prevent more people from being saved. A more apt example would be granting clemency to a highly talented surgeon specialized in an operation nobody else can do.
- 4bpp 7y ago
  In general, yes. Murder is a very peculiar case that is hardly suitable to be the benchmark for building our intuitions about trading off harm in general: human lives are not fungible, murder is not reversible, the victims do not generally get a meaningful way of influencing how the murder impacts them etc., all properties that do not apply in the case of being put off a pursuit like FOSS. (Even then, we're sometimes okay accepting murder to save more lives: e.g. the Allies' actions in WWII are considered a heroic even with nearly a century of historical distance) Arguably, the progressive argument for {affirmative action, inverted burden of proof in Title IX, ...} also amounts to "accept some harm if the net impact is positive"; few people claim that these policies will not result in some people being rejected from positions they deserve or punished for crimes they did not commit. Some countries are more explicit about this and actually constitutionally single out matters of life and death as being prohibited from being traded off against each other (e.g. Germany), i.e. the state is not allowed to play in trolley problems. The corollary is that the state, and most everyone, finds it okay to trade off other harms: you can for instance choose to build an airport that will drive down the value of some people's homes and expose them to considerable noise in order to give convenience and good business to a large number of people. I think discouraging some women from participating in FOSS is much closer in quality of harm to "your home is now worth half as much and you have to put up with the noise of planes flying overhead everyday" than "you die a painful and untimely death".

knocte 7y ago

I agree with you about all the past bad behaviour, but the e-mail about Minsky was a bad choice to be the "last straw". It was an email calling for accusation-inflation prevention, which the media portrayed as completely the opposite (and this way of manipulation information from the media should be criminal, in my opinion).

hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago
If we made deliberate or negligent defamation a criminal offence it might restore some sanity to society.
- DarkWiiPlayer 7y ago
  That's similar to how "free speech"* works in Germany, and you have people like crowder saying in public that "Germany has no free speech". I agree in principle, but I think there's lots of good arguments against it as well. More importantly than the question of whether it's legal, I'm amazed that people can still see themselves as "the good ones" after all the things they do to their fellow humans. * In German, we use the word "Meinungsfreiheit", which literally translates to "Freedom of Opinion", not "Free Speech", so yes, technically speaking, we don't have free speech; only the right to express our opinions.
  - hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago
    Sounds non-insane. Opinions should indeedbe free. Facts should be free. Lies that harm should not be OK. A nice side effect of criminalizing defamation would be that the enforcment would be up to the state. When it is a civil affair only rich people can defend themselves.

luckydata 7y ago

Agreed, the message is worth spreading and fighting for, the man can go, he's too toxic.

trax 7y ago

> It wasn't just this incident. RMS alienated so many women from open source and free software over the last 30 years, and we've lost all of those potential contributions. [citation needed]

lostjohnny 7y ago

> RMS alienated so many women [citation needed]

cat_plus_plus 7y ago

What kind of women and does anyone else find it sexist to assume that men will always be the offenders and women the offendees? Programming involves deconstructing complex problems into basic steps while ignoring full real world nuances in order to derive a reasonable abstraction. Like... deconstructing allegations against Minsky into basic aspect (instructed to have sex vs actually had sex, aware of lack of consent or not, aware of age or not, 16 can consent in jurisdiction X year Y or not). Successful programmers trend not super socially aware and often on autism spectrum. So maybe women genuinely interesting in programming would be like Ada Lovelace, a compulsive gambler with messy love life who dreamed of building a computer to beat poker? How long would she last in 2019 MIT? And if you get alienated from a career path because of one bad professor, go and find something else that you want so badly that you are willing to tough it out. Otherwise you will always blame your professional success limits on people not supporting you enough, or cracking an off-color joke or two or microaggressions. Do you honestly expect to never have to deal with a problem boss/coworkers/customer in a super-competitive private sector job? Don't tell me nurses and schoolteachers never have to deal with someone like RMS or worse. And sure, some degree of bad behavior should have proportional consequences, but do we hear about how women get alienated from these professions en masse?