Richard Stallman Reportedly Steps Down As Head Of The GNU Project

[azdaha]

It's not hypocritical. You have free speech and so do people who disagree with you. Free speech does not mean free of consequences. It only means the government can't arrest you for speech. Apparently the people who actually worked with Stallman at MIT, at FSF and in the GNU Project told him they didn't want him around anymore. That's on no one's head but his own. Are you suggesting that they lose their own right, that of free association? Is Stallman supposed to be guaranteed a job or a leadership position for life, even when those he leads have lost confidence in him or his personal statements or activities shine a negative light on the organizations he associates with?

Why is there an element who make the guilty the victim? Stallman has a decades-long history of making people uncomfortable, and yes norms have changed - we've gotten better as a culture. There are things we don't tolerate anymore and Stallman has shown he can't or won't change his behavior. It's all caught up with him. As The Register noted, for a man with a long list demanding how others use certain words around him, he failed repeatedly to apply any scrutiny or forethought to his own communications with others. It should come as no surprise that people would be outraged at the things he wrote, but he did it anyway and now the consequences have come. It's a shame he's just now learning his lesson so late in life. I honestly hope he lands on his feet and I feel sorry that the cult that surrounds him have apparently left him in such a financially vulnerable position. Someone told me years ago that he'd been moved out of his office and into a house of his own, but now it seems that may not be the case or the FSF was paying for it. He doesn't seem capable of holding down an actual programming job and despite a great MIT degree and thesis he doesn't seem to have done any meaningful academic work since either. I can't imagine he has has a 401K or retirement savings. Maybe people should stop throwing rose petals at the feet of the Free Software Buddha and start making sure he has a reliable roof, source of income, health care and savings account. He's not a savior; he's a man with a psychological obsession that has consumed his life and otherwise mentally healthy people that surround him have encouraged him in that endeavor to the expense of his own material circumstances. Let's stop worrying about people who find his speech offensive and all agree to worry together about why the man doesn't have a home of his own at age 66 and who's going to look after him, especially in another ten years. Stop worrying about The Great Cause and start worrying about the man behind it. There's got to be some sort of intervention or wellness check on Richard Stallman before he ends up living on the street.

So, if there is a cult around him, what makes you think that some of those people wouldn't step up and personally look after him or otherwise provide for his well-being. I'm still waiting to see the terrible things he's said or done; see my previous comments about the referenced items thus far here. Granted, as far as I have seen, RMS does come across as arrogant or lacking empathy at times. I can imagine that it can prove to be difficult to work with him. However, based on his extensive experience in Computer Science and in leadership roles of different organizations; his academic background and qualifications; his personal and professional views and theories that have been proven (again, Snowden documents and ubiquity of "connected" devices, etc.); are you suggesting that none of that came with benefits or compensation? Furthermore, in the greater scheme of things, his apparent lack of interpersonal skills has not hindered him from contributing to our society or from benefiting, financially and otherwise, from his technical knowledge.

Arguably, his notoriety is greater due to attacking corporate interests and even social norms that erode the health of our culture, our collective freedoms, and, ironically, even our public discourse. Therefore, for better or worse, he is given more leeway when it comes to those shortcomings in interpersonal skills. Then, as soon as he stumbles, there's a gleeful sect of people that pounce on it; case and point, the thing with parrots or even his personal right or privilege to demand that he stay off the dragnet and not to be treated as a product through corporate monetization that can be/ is being exploited. I never met the guy. I rarely hear about/from him. However, the majority of stuff that's out there shows him to be a staunch supporter of personal freedoms and egalitarian values. His work has shaped a world where his adversaries are abdicating their thrones of greed, even as they continue to ridicule his ideas as idealistic or plain crazy.

[azdaha]

Yet another exhibit of why people have gotten tired of trying to work with/put up with him. I'm surprised there was no mention of parrots.

So, despite of all the stuff that Snowden released, people don't care and actually make fun of those who try to avoid being caught up in the dragnet.

[teresaejunior]

[deleted]

[fsfhfc2018]

Yet another exhibit of why people have gotten tired of trying to work with/put up with him. I'm surprised there was no mention of parrots.

Note that he found a place that suits his purposes within about a week or less.

He also spends a great deal of his life traveling around the world, which makes "home" more of a formality than it is for most people.

When did the Linux community start adopting Alex Jones-level conspiracy theories?

Maybe around the time Microsoft bought GitHub, IBM bought Red Hat, and the new "init" core of the GNU/Linux operating system is now developed and hosted on joint IBM/Microsoft-controlled infrastructure, despite this not being the 1980s.

I predicted the purchase of Red Hat immediately after the GitHub purchase, incidentally.

[alcalde]

This really gives new context to Free Speech, which many western societies seem to take pride in. Oh sure, you can speak whatever you want, but be prepared to be dragged through the mud and have you career ruined for anything you say that does not conform to our sacred social norms. It's quite hypocritical.

It's not hypocritical. You have free speech and so do people who disagree with you. Free speech does not mean free of consequences. It only means the government can't arrest you for speech. Apparently the people who actually worked with Stallman at MIT, at FSF and in the GNU Project told him they didn't want him around anymore. That's on no one's head but his own. Are you suggesting that they lose their own right, that of free association? Is Stallman supposed to be guaranteed a job or a leadership position for life, even when those he leads have lost confidence in him or his personal statements or activities shine a negative light on the organizations he associates with?

Why is there an element who make the guilty the victim? Stallman has a decades-long history of making people uncomfortable, and yes norms have changed - we've gotten better as a culture. There are things we don't tolerate anymore and Stallman has shown he can't or won't change his behavior. It's all caught up with him. As The Register noted, for a man with a long list demanding how others use certain words around him, he failed repeatedly to apply any scrutiny or forethought to his own communications with others. It should come as no surprise that people would be outraged at the things he wrote, but he did it anyway and now the consequences have come. It's a shame he's just now learning his lesson so late in life. I honestly hope he lands on his feet and I feel sorry that the cult that surrounds him have apparently left him in such a financially vulnerable position. Someone told me years ago that he'd been moved out of his office and into a house of his own, but now it seems that may not be the case or the FSF was paying for it. He doesn't seem capable of holding down an actual programming job and despite a great MIT degree and thesis he doesn't seem to have done any meaningful academic work since either. I can't imagine he has has a 401K or retirement savings. Maybe people should stop throwing rose petals at the feet of the Free Software Buddha and start making sure he has a reliable roof, source of income, health care and savings account. He's not a savior; he's a man with a psychological obsession that has consumed his life and otherwise mentally healthy people that surround him have encouraged him in that endeavor to the expense of his own material circumstances. Let's stop worrying about people who find his speech offensive and all agree to worry together about why the man doesn't have a home of his own at age 66 and who's going to look after him, especially in another ten years. Stop worrying about The Great Cause and start worrying about the man behind it. There's got to be some sort of intervention or wellness check on Richard Stallman before he ends up living on the street.

[alcalde]

Well, you could say Linux has now become mainstream, and witch hunts are mainstream too. But this doesn't seem like a "community" thing, but rather a corporate takedown of RMS. techrights.org has been connecting it to the Department of Defense and IBM, which I can't confirm, but wouldn't be a little bit surprised about.

When did the Linux community start adopting Alex Jones-level conspiracy theories? And that website has a big picture of Stallman in its banner and videos of Stallman's speeches... and really nothing else. It also makes MySpace look like a modern website. "The site was best known for Boycott Novell until 2010." Oh, that crazy position that believed that Novell (previously involved in epic legal struggles with Microsoft) had teamed up to destroy Linux from within or something? Not really the best source of reliable open source information.

[alcalde]

I am looking for a room in a shared house or apartment as an interim place where I could stay for at least two months. Ideally I would have the option of staying for up to six months, but I could do without that.

I'd like it to be located within 15 minutes walk of a subway line (not counting the Green Line beyond Kenmore), or a high frequency bus line such as #1 or #77, or #71, #73 or #66. The point is it should not be so hard to get to Cambridge or Downtown Boston that it dissuades me from going.

There should not be a cat (unless hypoallergenic), or a dog that jumps up excitedly on people (unless quite small), or a digital listening device such as Echo, Siri or "Hello Google", or a card lock that records who opens the door. I will ask about cameras.

I'd like there to be a large supermarket in walking distance or close to a nearby subway station.

If you know of an opening, please email me at rms on the site gnu org with "Interim housing" as the subject.

Yet another exhibit of why people have gotten tired of trying to work with/put up with him. I'm surprised there was no mention of parrots.

[alcalde]

https://stallman.org/archives/2019-j...9_(GNU_Project)

He's also looking for a place to live:

https://stallman.org/seeking-housing.html

Someone once told me that people had made sure he'd moved out of his MIT office and even gotten a house. Is this suggesting that was wrong and he'd still been living in his MIT office all along after all?

[blackiwid]

He is a cause as well as a product of the cynical views regarding feminism (which has been around for decades) and affirmative action (in the sense of protecting and uplifting minorities of all kinds). I am not trying to attribute anything to you personally, other than to point out the flaws in your logic as far as I can see.

I don't care if Trump is a good person or not or a good president, but at some point you have to make a line in the sand, else they come for everybody that don't conforms with their bullshit and everybody that has even the slightest right wing or just not identitarien view or is not 100% PC get's fired and get replaced by toxic people. And it becomes fucking dangerous, this people (probably including you from what you write) are against a state of law, they want to get rid of assumption of innocence, and equal rights, the words of a women count more than from a man and stuff like that, getting rid of free speech with "hate speech" laws whatever that term means.

Will voting for trump solve that? Will Stallman be happy if people do that? Would even I do that? Probably no, but if it comes down to a 2 party system decision (I don't vote tactical so I would vote 3rd party in the US) then yes such cases will push people to vote for Trump, and if it's vs Biden as example that is the same corrupt racist asshole, I can't blame them.

People don't only vote because of logic and programs, they also make a statement the 2016 election of trump as example was to stop this slow "the lesser of 2 evils" game where the left moves each time more to the right and then the reps have to move also to the right to be different Obama said he is (or would be) a moderate Republican in the 80s or 90s, that is horrible. And Hillary was right from Obama so... that's the problem.

Trump at least stopped some of this feminist extremism with some policies towards colleges. But it's not only about RMS and similar cases often false rape accusations and stuff that happend recently with Linus where they got to his daughter, gosh I would shoot me or my daughter if I had such a daughter one or the other... it's about the nonstop lies, the whole impeachment process is based on a doctored wrong site where they just removed 1000 words between 2 half sentences and pretended that it was 1 sentence.

We had 2 years about Russian collusion which imploded into nothing... and yes that old man said that there is no proof that he is innocent, just another case of reversing the burden of proof. No everybody a left winger says is evil or criminal has to proof that he is not... and till they can do that, which often is literally impossible, they are guilty...

McCartyism was no joke:

Estimating the number of victims of McCarthy is difficult. The number imprisoned is in the hundreds, and some ten or twelve thousand lost their jobs.^[62] In many cases, simply being subpoenaed by HUAC or one of the other committees was sufficient cause to be fired.^[63] Many of those who were imprisoned, lost their jobs, or were questioned by committees did, in fact, have a past or present connection of some kind with the Communist Party.

And the same people that got targeted Communists and LGBTQ people now do the same to well not even the other side to just everybody that is not a communist or a member of the LGBTQ community or a man or white... a funny pattern like with Israel that was also victim of another state now does similar things to the country they invaded.

It would be tragic or funny if the consequences would not be as horrible. So I don't advocate (maybe in a angry moment) to vote for Trump but the same is true for most democrats therefor that says not much. I would vote for the greens in the US maybe 2016 I would have done that. If nothing else then because they are believable with their anti-war program and willing to work with the russians, which in some way might be true for Tulsi Gabbard but A she has no chance to win the nomination and B she did some horrible things like the Anti-bds bill. but that get's now into to much detail.

Trump is no good politician but people like you frame him always as this exception Bush was worse and he was like hitler a mass murderer and torturer, and Trump often can't hide the truth, which is also a good thing. Again he has big problems but Hillary would be at least similary horrible. All American presidents at least the last 30-50 years were monsters. So if you say Trump is horrible that says not much. He just is worse at hiding his moral crimes and bad positions that is all Obama was a wolf in the sheepskin.... he was also a mass murderer drone executioner he made this cages for immigrants, he was the deporter in chief. So yes Trump is horrible but that is the norm for american presidents... that's the hole point of the lesser of 2 evils both are horrible evil candidates. So don't get so triggered just because somebody said something about voting for him. Only a small % of the people that voted for him love him it's what happens in a corrupt country with a 2 party blackmail voting system. (you have to vote for X because Y is 1% worse, you get forced to vote for horrible people)

[fuzz]

So your outrage is reserved for people who don't want to work with Richard Stallman anymore, and not Richard Stallman? This reminds me of when Brendan Eich was funneling money to groups who wanted to overturn same-sex marriages that had taken place in California and the outrage was at gay employees who didn't want to work for him rather than at Eich for trying to dissolve his employees' legal marriages.

I don't know why it would remind you of that, as the two situations are not at all the same.

I guess you don't know what a witch hunt is. Nor intellectual discussions.