this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
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https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20870050/richard-stallman-resigns-mit-free-software-foundation-epstein
Yes FSF has done good things for open source. No RMS isn't a good person. Cults of personality are more of a Reddit thing
He probably talked about age of consent in most of European countries. As mentioned by CrypticCoffee above even in UK it is 16.
He wasn't talking about people above the age of consent.
16 is underage. Also 16 is above age of consent in Europe.
It's not underage if it's above the age of consent. Europe isn't a country, it varies across Europe. And it's also 16 in most of the US.
Wasn't context about 17-yo or something like that
Unfortunately it doesn't seem like it. Between 2003 and 2013 he really used to believe that pedophilia doesn't harm children. But he really only mentioned it a few times and hadn't talked about it again until 2019 when it was brought up again. He said then that he had changed his mind since and that he was wrong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Controversies).
I don't think we should cancel people for believing something stupid 10 years ago, but his haters love to use this. Just like they like to misquote him or spread fake rumors about him (https://stallmansupport.org). They are probably too angry to think clearly or verify information, but sometimes I wonder if for some of them it's really only about his position on proprietary software (he wants to destroy it) and that's why they wanted him removed from the FSF.
Nope
That's not exactly what happened.
1. In 2019 he was misquoted by a blogger and then by the press:
Source: https://www.vice.com/en/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-described-epstein-victims-as-entirely-willing
What he really said was:
Source: https://stallmansupport.org/explaining-events-that-led-to-stallman-resignation-csail-emails.html
There is no "Epstein friendship" that I know of. He called him a "serial rapist" before that (source).
This is what he was criticized for at the time + unconfirmed rumors (some of them debunked now) of allegedly creepy behavior around women. You can read more on https://stallmansupport.org.
2. Some people dug up his old blog posts.
Between 2003 and 2013 a few times he expressed his views on pedophilia. It was literally a few times, but yes this is something he actually said and used to believe. He hadn't mentioned that topic again until it was brought up in 2019. That's when he said that he had changed his mind since then and that he was wrong. You can read about it on Wikipedia (can't find the link to the original quote at the moment): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Controversies
As far as I know that was the last time he mentioned this topic.
So now that we got the facts right, the question is if he should be punished for having a wrong/stupid opinion on something 10 years ago. I think no, but apparently some people disagree.
That could be true. It's a valid point.
It's certainly weird, but I think there is some chance that he didn't know.
I don't know much about that, but according to Wikipedia, it's usually not connected to violence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_rape. Statutory rape is a legal term, it's not actually the same thing as rape. See, this is another example of what Richard was talking about.
It would be better if he didn't have stupid or weird opinions, but he is a philosopher, so he thinks and talks about ethics and stuff like that all of his life. Especially on his blog - you can check stallman.org. He is even against using paid toilets. I don't know where he got the idea that a child could consent or that it wasn't harmful, but I've seen some pedo say online that there is some research, which allegedly proves that. So I assume they just cherry pick to find something that supports their claims, but then they of course ignore all of the overwhelming evidence against it. This often happens in pseudoscience. So maybe he read something stupid like that, I don't know.
But if he wasn't who he is, I don't know if he would have created the Free Software movement. Many people today still think that it's a radical idea that users should have rights, which nobody should be able to take away from them. I think we need people like him in our society. I also don't know anyone else who has been fighting for this for 40 years refusing to make compromises on people's freedom (unlike Linus Torvalds for example). To this day he still travels the world and gives talks about Free Software in multiple languages.
But Richard Stallman is not a pedo.
He was not friends with Epstein and never met him. He called him a serial rapist.
The FSF brought Stallman back and put him back on the board. He's on the board now.
The Software Freedom Conservancy, FSF Europe, and Bradley Kuhn are the good guys. FSF, Software Freedom Law Center, Stallman, and Moglen are the bad guys.
At least that's my thoughts. I've written a lot more about all this here.
I thought you didn't believe in bad people? Or was that just a convenient point that can change at the drop of a hat to help your arguments seem more legitimate?
And it's kind of funny that some inappropriately pedantic activist is constantly under fire even after saying Epstein isn't described harshly enough (pedantic again, but useful this time?), but much fewer people seem to care about the tech billionaires with real connections to him. If we should be demanding anyone be disgraced, it should be them.
EDIT: They've expressed no more interest in replying and they don't seem to be being disingenuous, so I'll not leave another reply, but note how that entire post was devoted to the usage of the words "good" and "bad" and addresses nothing about Stallman's actions.
Tl;dr his point was that coercion is coercion regardless of age, and of course sensationalist media spun that. Of course, the younger you get the more easily you are coerced, which is why there's a point where you can reasonably say a person could not have consented. But Stallman was not arguing against that. He was arguing that a year's difference doesn't change the morality of the situation.
And his take is that the situation was immoral ("she presented herself as entirely willing", and noting that she was coerced by Epstein to do that and that it was wrong). Of course people always overlook that part and cut his words short to make it seem like he's defending it.
EDIT 2: I just noticed that they have also said that after being accepted onto the FSF board after a change in opinions (not even back to his original role!), that means that the FSF endorses the opinions he no longer holds? Make it make sense.
Oh boy, I get to argue with you again.
This is way off topic for this thread (sorry to OP), but my take is that "good" (or, being more precise, perhaps something like "pro-social and self-caring" is a better way to put it) is the "natural" way for humans to be and for humans to do "bad" ("antisocial and/or self-destructive", perhaps?) things needs a reason or explanation in a way that people not doing "bad" things doesn't. (As opposed to an opposite view that people are evil and require something (authority, religion, whatever) to make them do good.)
My point in bringing it up in that other thread was that one didn't necessarily have to believe that "Stallman is bad" to believe he shouldn't have been accepted back into a position of authority at the FSF. Even if he's a "saint," giving him a position of authority in the FSF after everything he's said is very problematic. (Harms the Free Software movement's reputation, excludes people, sends an unfortunate message, etc.) It can absolutely be appropriate for an organization to exclude/remove/dethrone/etc people (or refuse to take them back) for bad behavior or for expressing reprehensible opinions especially if doing otherwise sends a message that the organization approves of the behavior or speech. (And I don't feel like Stallman later publicly changing his opinions is enough to make his return to the FSF not be seen as endorsement of his previously-stated opinions.)
In this thread, the person I'm responding to used the term "good person" and I went with it rather than going into something irrelevant to the current discussion. With my previous comment in this thread, I mean that if you're going to take sides, you shouldn't put Stallman and the FSF on opposite sides and that the opposite side that is (at least from everything that I know about things at the moment and don't expect anything to change) worth aligning yourself with is SFC, FSFE, and Bradley Kuhn. (And I'm sure there are plenty of others in the Free Software movement who are also worth aligning yourself with, but these are people and organizations that are leaders in the movement and (more) well known (than most, though that's not saying much -- there aren't many in the movement who are well known like Stallman, Moglen, and Kuhn.))
If I knew you were going to continue this argument in this thread, I would probably have put "good guy" and "bad guy" in quotes (like I did "saint" a couple of paragraphs back. Sometimes people use convenient shorthands.) But going into all of the above wasn't really relevant to this conversation. (Until your response, that is.)
At this point, I doubt there'd be benefit to continuing this conversation here in this thread. If you want to respond again, I guess knock yourself out, but I don't intend to respond here again.
Wait, what? If I remember correctly RMS was talking about his colleague from MIT, not about Epstein.
He was talking about both. The "entirely willing" misquote comes from the email where he's referring to how Epstein made his victims pretend to be willing, and how he believed his former professor was unaware (stupid take imo, but clearly not malicious).
Spamming your Babylonian whore warez!!
To me those are the bad guys. Any organization that wants to cancel someone based on unconfirmed or made up rumors is corrupt to me.
Software Freedom Conservancy has literally spread false information about Richard Stallman: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/sep/16/rms-does-not-speak-for-us. In that post they link to a medium blog post with unconfirmed rumors about him (some of them were later debunked - https://stallmansupport.org). That medium blog post is a second part. In the first one, the author has misquoted Stallman, which was later repeated by media. But this time she gives us stories, which are supposed to show Richard's alleged abusive behavior. Here is my favorite one:
Seriously? Who would believe this? The Software Freedom Conservancy apparently. This just sounds like the blogger got trolled by someone and that post is full of ridiculous stories like that. But I guess SFC will believe anything, even from an anonymous source if it's something that could hurt Richard Stallman.
More organizations participated in this hate campaign, including Mozilla and Tor Project (https://thetownreporter.com/mozilla-and-tor-join-calls-to-richard-stallman-software-foundation). I will never donate to them and I even considered quitting making Libre Software at the time. I couldn't believe that our community has so many people who will spread lies about someone just to destroy their reputation.
*Nervously looks at Lemmygrad and Hexbear*
What you said makes me think you don't fully understand the type of work they do. The Free Software movement has nothing to do with Open Source. Free Software is about user freedom. The goal of the Free Software movement is to give people control over their own devices and make sure nobody can take that away from them.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html