Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation has resigned and he's also left his position in CSAIL at MIT.
Why is this significant? Stallman and the FSF were responsible for the creation of the GNU Project, widely used GNU licenses like the GPL, the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and more that were used in the creation of Linux.
Posted on the FSF website last night was this notice:
On September 16, 2019, Richard M. Stallman, founder and president of the Free Software Foundation, resigned as president and from its board of directors. The board will be conducting a search for a new president, beginning immediately. Further details of the search will be published on fsf.org.
Stallman also noted on stallman.org how he's stepped away from MIT as well, with the below statement:
I am resigning effective immediately from my position in CSAIL at MIT. I am doing this due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations.
The question is—why? Well, an article on Vice picked up on comments Stallman made around convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Unsurprisingly, this caused quite a lot of outrage inside and outside the Linux community.
Not long after Neil McGovern, the GNOME Executive Director, made a blog post about it where they said they asked the FSF to cancel their membership. McGovern also noted that other people who they "greatly respect are doing the same" and that GNOME would sever their "historical ties between GNOME, GNU and the FSF" if Stallman did not step down.
McGovern of GNOME wasn't the only one to speak out about it, as the Software Freedom Conservancy also put out a post calling for Stallman to step down and no doubt there's others I'm not aware of.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: EikeRead again. A cursory search didn't turn up RMS's actual post, but my understanding of the quoted line is a little different than what you make it to be.Quoting: spayder26Actually he was not defending Epstein (he called him rapist), but declaring his opinion against laws against consented paedophilia, which is somewhat much more controversial.You seem to have information differing from mine.
I read that he found the "most plausible scenario" that the girls have been "entirely willing".
QuoteWe can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.But even that lacks the context of the whole, without the original source, so take it with a grain of salt.
Personally, I really wonder though how people can hang Stallman for his words, while nobody so much raises an eyebrow at the way Epstein's case was handled by the legal system. Makes me think priorities aren't what they ought to be these days.
Quoting: PatolaQED. This is a hallmark of cancel culture, there is no discussion, simply personal attacks, sometimes quite vicious ones. Some subjects cannot be discussed. Some opinions cannot be uttered. This is the new, more radical form of making something taboo. It has grave personal consequences.
You proved the opposite. You did "utter" what you wanted to. And there wasn't any personal consequence whatsoever.
The following is not targeted at you, because I cannot judge the usage of "cancel culture", but it is important in general:
https://xkcd.com/1357/
Schattenspiegel Sep 17, 2019
Why do I always have to wonder if the hunters really feel themselves morally driven to burn people at the stake or if they just use this tool of public assassination to further their own immoral agendas?
There does not seem to be much evolution in that department from the earliest stages of recorded history. does there?
Anyway,
I would like to express some sincere gratitude to Dr. Stallman for the work he has done and wish him the best for the future.
Quoting: SchattenspiegelYay another witch hunt!
Why do I always have to wonder if the hunters really feel themselves morally driven to burn people at the stake or if they just use this tool of public assassination to further their own immoral agendas?
There does not seem to be much evolution in that department from the earliest stages of recorded history. does there?
Well, one obvious difference is that nobody has been actually set on fire and died.
I also wonder which "immoral agendas" you're talking about.
Quoting: EikeQuoting: SchattenspiegelYay another witch hunt!
Why do I always have to wonder if the hunters really feel themselves morally driven to burn people at the stake or if they just use this tool of public assassination to further their own immoral agendas?
There does not seem to be much evolution in that department from the earliest stages of recorded history. does there?
Well, one obvious difference is that nobody has been actually set on fire and died.
Of course he is exactly that.
Given the MIT's involvement with Epstein (taking blood money, give investment possibilities,...) I wouldn't have thought that I would ever do that but I think we can easily quote Trump: "Drain the swamp"
Are some things so offensive as to make it necessary to remove someone from the public sphere, sometimes permanently? (banning, firing, refusing to associate with, maybe even being fined or arrested depending on where you live, etc.)
I don't know where the boundary on offense should be because I can't predict the future, times change, laws and policies also change in a waxing and waning of liberal to conservative and back again (in a general sense, no political parties implied). If this kind of de-personing is going to be the default, we're isolating a lot of people. There's a dark path to be gone down when we start thinking people are permanently irredeemable, even if they sincerely apologize. Or even if they are accepted again, can we say they're sincerely accepted, or is there a permanent, invisible "scarlet letter" of sorts that will hang over their heads indefinitely?
It feels good to be a part of a group that's "better" than the "bad" one(s), it's a rush that's probably chemically addictive. That's why I can't see "cancel culture" stopping anytime soon, it just feels too good to be more "right" than the person or group being accused.
If there's no road to forgiveness, can any of us honestly say that we're above reproach when it comes to our words or actions? Whether or not we think what Stallman's done or said is acceptable doesn't matter, but what we do with people judged to be offensive does matter, because we'd want a chance at forgiveness if we were in Stallman's shoes.
EDIT: some clarification on the last sentence.
Last edited by namiko on 23 September 2019 at 3:55 pm UTC
Quoting: Eikehttps://xkcd.com/1357/(to paraphrase Bob Dylan):
How many doors must someone go through
until they are let back inside?
Quoting: linuxcityboy do i have an opinion on this,this dude is sick...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kezsNA9t348&feature=youtu.be
Are you serious?
Couldn't watch any further, tbh.
Quote"He is quilty of something. he is definitely guilty of something. You don't just resign from somewhere, there must have something going on."
It's because of this malign and twisted argumentation why innocent people sometimes get burned for the rest of their life.
Last edited by sub on 17 September 2019 at 11:45 am UTC
Quoting: subQuoting: EikeQuoting: SchattenspiegelYay another witch hunt!
Why do I always have to wonder if the hunters really feel themselves morally driven to burn people at the stake or if they just use this tool of public assassination to further their own immoral agendas?
There does not seem to be much evolution in that department from the earliest stages of recorded history. does there?
Well, one obvious difference is that nobody has been actually set on fire and died.
Of course he is exactly that.
Why are you writing obvious nonsense?
You are aware of the difference of life and death, right?
Last edited by Eike on 17 September 2019 at 11:51 am UTC
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