Red Hat Pulls Free Software Foundation Funding Over Richard Stallman's Return (theregister.com) 459
nickwinlund77 shares a report from The Register: The chorus of disapproval over Richard M Stallman, founder and former president of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), rejoining the organization has intensified as Linux giant Red Hat confirmed it was pulling funding. Stallman announced he had returned to the FSF's Board of Directors last weekend -- news that has not gone down well with all in the community and Red Hat is the latest to register its dismay.
CTO Chris Wright tweeted overnight: "I am really outraged by FSF's decision to reinstate RMS. At a moment in time where diversity and inclusion awareness is growing, this is a step backwards." Describing itself as "appalled" at the return of Stallman to the FSF board of directors "considering the circumstances of Richard Stallman's original resignation in 2019," Red Hat said it decided to act. "We are immediately suspending all Red Hat funding of the FSF and any FSF-hosted events. In addition, many Red Hat contributors have told us they no longer plan to participate in FSF-led or backed events, and we stand behind them," said Red Hat.
CTO Chris Wright tweeted overnight: "I am really outraged by FSF's decision to reinstate RMS. At a moment in time where diversity and inclusion awareness is growing, this is a step backwards." Describing itself as "appalled" at the return of Stallman to the FSF board of directors "considering the circumstances of Richard Stallman's original resignation in 2019," Red Hat said it decided to act. "We are immediately suspending all Red Hat funding of the FSF and any FSF-hosted events. In addition, many Red Hat contributors have told us they no longer plan to participate in FSF-led or backed events, and we stand behind them," said Red Hat.
What is this really about? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can someone give a summary of what this is really about?
Not the cover story about his statement about Minsky, that isn't enough to justify the bullying he is getting from a large section of the community now under the guise of inclusiveness (which seems kind of ironic). There must be something else that is going unsaid here to get this much pushback.
Re:What is this really about? (Score:5, Insightful)
Purity test. Once extremism takes hold, there is no limit to how far it will go, until the entire community implodes.
Re:What is this really about? (Score:5, Insightful)
Purity test. Once extremism takes hold, there is no limit to how far it will go, until the entire community implodes.
There's already a limit. Notice that while RH is withholding funding to the FSF, they're not dropping any of the software RMS developed...
Re: What is this really about? (Score:2)
... because it's not what you're claiming it is.
FSF takes money from Red Hat? (Score:3)
That is the shocker in this article. I thought the point of Free software and especially GNU was freedom from companies like IBM.
Re: What is this really about? (Score:5, Insightful)
The various GNU utilities that are steadily being replaced by RH's various systemd-whateverd.
RH wants to take over the linux ecosystem (and sadly, they are relatively successful, with systemd, wayland, freedesktop). They would probably be glad to see the fsf go away and take their place.
I hope the FSF won't back down. What is absolutely needed is for the FSF to make an official statement about RMS and calling out how people have absolutely lied about what he said.
As far as I know, the FSF still hasn't made any official declaration about it. RMS is being attacked from everywhere by big institutions and groups outright lying about what he said, but none have come to his defense to set the record straight beside a few individuals with no weight whatsoever.
The FSF must step up. There must be an official announcement setting the record straight, with the full quote of what rms said, with bold and blinking emphasis on the "she presented herself as" part of needed.
Re:What is this really about? (Score:5, Insightful)
Purity test. Once extremism takes hold, there is no limit to how far it will go, until the entire community implodes.
I guess to be fair we have to acknowledge that it’s just humans being humans. A cursory look through history reveals this to be the norm. Satanic Daycares, communists, atheists, witches, racists, transphobes, Catholics, Protestants ... clearly, and I do mean crystal clearly ... this is what humans do. At least a large number of us. We moral panic to help cement our place in our respective social groups, and we have an almost obsessive need to have a group of “others” with whom to blame society’s problems on.
It’s incredibly consistent and repeated.
What’s fascinating is that each generation convinces themselves that they have progressed past this most human trait, and they insist that this time, and only this time, their bigotry is noble and exists to serve a greater social good.
“All the other bigotries of the majority were wrong, but this time, we got it right! Bigotry will finally cure bigotry! Just watch, you’ll see!”
Of course, it never does, and when the dust settles, most moral panickers feel some embarrassment and try to distance themselves from their past behavior. They were addicted to the dopamine release it gave them to be in the group with power, not to mention, with so many other people to shame, they didn’t have to recognize any of their own flaws. After all, at least they aren’t an “other”.
Central to the moral panic is the black/white thinking that perpetuates it. You’re eith all-good or all-bad. There is no grey area. If Person A holds opinion X, it matters not what else they do. They are evil.
It’s a type of mass hysteria, and examples in the past number in the hundreds if not thousands. Unfortunately, it’s part of the human mass behavior.
What HAS changed, is that such behavior used to be more heavily practiced by the very religious. This time, the powers that be shifted from exploiting fear, to exploiting narcissism, and now we have the most educated of society under control.
That’s disappointing as we have no resistant cognitive class left, as so many of them are all rushing forward in full-blown virtue signal mode.
What eventually happens is that, as more and more people are revealed to be hypocrites, and all moral panickers are, albiet to varying degrees, the cost of maintaining the the identity becomes too inconvenient, and the inevitable backlash takes its place. Then the excuses start ... ‘well I never really believed that they were evil, and it wasn’t me that did the virtue signaling ...”
Then, we’ll get new boogeymen and the whole thing will start over again.
What you are witnessing is the human condition doing what it does, and yes, far from being these noble sentient beings, us humans actually are shitty little self-obsessed creatures.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me put it another way. Do you want the leader of your volunteer organization to:
1. Publicly promote child porn 2. Publicly promote underage sex 3. Be publicly dismissive of rape laws
That's not some bleeding heart liberal overexageration. Those were his positions. I actually looked up his quotes. Maybe, just maybe, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and acknow
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You kind of failed to list the actual occurrences. Promote is generally not considered to be one mis-statement, it is meant to represent a continual action. You are claiming Stallman promoted it continuously. So how long, how many times, what were the huge list of occurrences.
I do not count one misstatement as promotion, a one off, that should be corrected and as far as I know was, a rather pointless defence of a mentor driven by emotion and not logic.
Clearly this is a push by closed source proprietary ty
Re:What is this really about? (Score:5, Informative)
That's not some bleeding heart liberal overexageration. Those were his positions. I actually looked up his quotes. Maybe, just maybe, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and acknowledge that he might not personally be a pedophile. If that's the case, he's so uncompromising on the idea of "freedom" that he's willing to apply it to literally anything with absolutely no sense of boundaries.
You are either a liar, or you fell prey to the lies spread by others.
You said you look up his quotes. No you didn't. You looked up his specific quotes that other people directed you to, like that one https://stallman.org/archives/... [stallman.org]
You did not look that one up, or you're willfully ignoring it: https://stallman.org/archives/... [stallman.org]
Do you want the leader of your volunteer organization
Yes RMS was wrong (but far from as wrong as you try to make him. Prove me wrong if you can, show the quotes in questions), but he had the intellectual honesty to change his mind when presented with evidence, and the honesty to not try to wipe his internet history clean after. The quotes are still on his own website.
That's more than can be said for you, and yes, that kind of intelligent and honest man is the kind of leader I want.
But that doesn't give him the constitutional god-given right to lead an organization. That's EARNED
Right. And he was elected back to the board. He EARNED his position back, as you want.
Re: What is this really about? (Score:5, Informative)
Baloney. Everyone knew what he was about since the 70s. They tolerated it because the technical leadership was valuable and the personal failings were none of anyone else's business.
Re: What is this really about? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: What is this really about? (Score:3)
Regardless of what were the norms in the 70s, your definition of sexism and racism is too broad today.
Re: What is this really about? (Score:3)
You worked racism and sexism into your take re: RMS re: his take re: pedo island. Your definitions of racism and sexism are too broad.
Re: What is this really about? (Score:3)
I can see the thread with my own eyes. You can too if you want to reread it.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
There must be something else that is going unsaid here to get this much pushback.
Most people find rms obnoxious, and they were likely glad he was "gone", but now they're particularly pissed because he's back, so anyone that enables that to happen is now the enemy of SJWs.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm guessing it's really about his hard left-libertarian politics (besides software). There's a push to make being a principled free speech supporter just not acceptable anymore, you can see how dramatically sites like reddit or even 4chan have backed away from it.
Our version of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Score:4, Insightful)
Can someone give a summary of what this is really about?
Read up on the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1960s/70s. Our version is in its infancy.
There is also his pronouns controversy (Score:2, Insightful)
Can someone give a summary of what this is really about?
Not the cover story about his statement about Minsky, that isn't enough to justify the bullying he is getting from a large section of the community now under the guise of inclusiveness (which seems kind of ironic). There must be something else that is going unsaid here to get this much pushback.
Well there is also his pronouns controversy. Seriously, not making this sh*t up.
Re: (Score:3)
I followed the link [archive.org] on one "report" that brought that up as one of his past problematic views, and it appears the problem is that he was defending peoples' personal choice of pronouns before it became fashionable?
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It sounds like he was making a purely grammatical argument.
Re: (Score:3)
It sounds like he was making a purely grammatical argument.
Which is the foundation of his misunderstanding the situation and so terribly bungling things. Hostile environment, harassment, etc involves a bit of how things are received. So does speaking to an audience as a spokesperson.This path you are heading down basically exposes how bad an idea it is for him to be a spokesperson.
Re:There is also his pronouns controversy (Score:4, Informative)
Well there is also his pronouns controversy. Seriously, not making this sh*t up.
The "controversy" being that even though Stallman promoted the use of gender-neutral pronouns, he objected to the pronoun "they" being used to refer to a single individual.
He was immediately labelled a transphobe, and #cancelstallman ensued.
Re:There is also his pronouns controversy (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, he was telling a trans person they were wrong about their feeling.
No, he was telling people they were wrong about the nature of the word "they", which in his opinion is a pronoun used to refer to a group of two or more persons. That's an opinion held by a lot of people, not just bigoted transphobes.
I only know two trans people, both trans women. Both prefer she, her, hers, etc. - not "they". So I don't think your implication that all trans persons insist on being referred to as "they" or "them", or feel insulted or offended by "she" or "her" (for trans women).
That they were a singularity, not a duality, feeling physically one way and emotionally a different way.
Here [stallman.org] is what Stallman said.
Stallman then goes on to propose the gender neutral pronouns promoted by Marge Piercy, [wikipedia.org] a far left activist, feminist, environmentalist, and marxist. He proposes a slight variation of Piercy's terminology, inventing the pronoun "perse".
I read nothing in Stallman's piece that denies or derides anything about the trans experience. He simply thinks using the pronoun "they" to refer to a single individual can lead to confusion, and he proposes a compromise of sorts to avoid miscommunication. In a nutshell, it's "don't use an existing pronoun and change its meaning, use this pronoun instead".
Have you not had your re-education classes yet?
I've been to over half a dozen classes directly covering the "new and approved" way of using pronouns. I still see nothing transphobic about Stallman's position. Maybe my re-education didn't take. Or maybe Stallman wrote or said something I'm not aware of. If you can provide a direct quote from him that you think qualifies as transphobic, maybe I'll change my opinion. Can you? Thanks in advance!
Re: (Score:3)
People all the time use "they" in the singular when the gender of the person is not know. Everyone. All the way back to Shakespeare.
People also say "irregardless" and "supposably" in conversation, but that doesn't make them right. Oh well, to each his own.
Re:There is also his pronouns controversy (Score:4, Interesting)
People also say "irregardless" and "supposably" in conversation, but that doesn't make them right. Oh well, to each his own.
People have been saying it since the 1300s (that's not even late middle English never mind early modern), only about 100 years less than the word has been in the language in any form. It's been in use for the entirety of the span of time for which modern English has existed. It *is* part of the language. It's not even a neologism or error. It has ALWAYS existed in the language you would recognise as English.
Now here's some examples from the wikipedia page.
"Somebody left their umbrella in the office. Could you please let them know where they can get it?"
"The patient should be told at the outset how much they will be required to pay."
"But a journalist should not be forced to reveal their sources."
Singular "they" has always been a part of English (middle English is barely intelligible to a modern English speaker, it is not the same language, and old English, which did not have singular they is essentially unintelligible), and is commonly used with an ungendered antecedent.
It always has been.
Now stop inventing your own contra-reality facts abut English in order to "prove" Stallman right.
Re: (Score:3)
"Singular "they" has always been a part of English"
Strictly speaking, no it hasn't. "They" entered English just vaguely sometime in the 1100's or early 1200's from Norse (it's cognate with "that"). The original English pronouns began with "h" and a vowel or two, and started to become indistinguishable due to normal and historical vowel changes. "They" tended to solve the confusions of the original pronouns. Norse is the reason we have doublets like "shirt" and "skirt", both original male clothing items.
Othe
Re: (Score:3)
Strictly speaking, no it hasn't.
Seriously? You snipped the part directly after what you quoted which covered that I was referring to modern English.
So no strictly, pedantically you are wrong and can only be "right" by clipping out enough parts of what I wrote to make you look right.
Here's what I said: (middle English is barely intelligible to a modern English speaker, it is not the same language, and old English, which did not have singular they is essentially unintelligible). And this: It has ALWAYS existe
Re:There is also his pronouns controversy (Score:4, Interesting)
Pronouns ARE a controversy. They are an attempt to make a subjective assessment based on arbitrary metrics to force people to utilise an objective framework of their choosing.
I'm sorry, it doesn't work that way, outside of religion that is.
If someone wants to call themself whatever they choose, I'm 100% fine with that. I have no problem whatsoever. If someone wants to FORCE me to acquiesce to their demand to be called something of their choosing, that's not ok. That is then placing their subjective assessment above mine, and above any objective metric that is available. This is quite frankly tyranny.
Now, if someone quietly said "Oh, I'm not sure who I feel about sexuality, can you just think of me as neutral and undecided and use 'they"', I'll likely, of my own volition, choose to say "Sure, though I may not always get it right, because my own personal frame of reference results in this being a cognitive dissonance for me, so does add stressors."
Now, if someone came up to me and accused me of not using the correct pronoun, and became all outraged over it, my pronoun for them would likely be "Tyrant".
Re:What is this really about? (Score:4, Interesting)
It used to go:
Person A: I believe in X
Person B: You're wrong, here's why
<critical discussion>
Person A or B: OK, I'm wrong, you're right, and everybody who listened is now more educated on this topic.
It now goes:
Person A: I believe in X
Person B: Canceled!
Nobody learns anything
How it started.... How it's going... (Score:2)
The 2020/2021 version of "Hot it started/How it's going".
Re:What is this really about? (Score:4, Insightful)
It didn't "use to go" that way. 80 years ago people got cancelled all the time. It's how the world has always worked. The tools to do it the mediums we communicate, and the people getting cancelled may change, but don't fool yourself into thinking rational discussion or reactionary outrage haven't frequent dance partners since the dawn of communication. In previous centuries or decades, think church, think communism, think homosexuality - people can get ostracized right quick for saying the wrong thing. It's *always* been that way.
Re: (Score:2)
It's no conspiracy. Lots of people don't agree with his statements and here we are. We all know how many conservatives flock to the free software movement.
Here is what I found. (Score:5, Informative)
I am assuming that the open letter [github.io] is an honest statement of the motivation behind this. It includes this link [github.io] to a specific list of the things RMS has done that have them pissed off. So, as far as I can tell, these are the reasons.
They accuse him of being a misogynist, ableist, and transphobic.
They support their "ableist" accusation with quotes from Stallman saying that babies with Down's syndrome should be aborted.
They support their "transphobic" claim by saying that stallman has campaigned against the use of correct pronouns. Though the only evidence they offer is references to the "GNU Kind Communication Guidelines" in which Stallman states that "They" is plural and advises the use of other singular gender-neutral pronouns. They state that this guidance is transphobic.
They support their mysognist accusations by claiming that he has a "history of mistreating women and making them feel uncomfortable, unsafe, and unwelcome." They offer a link to another site that gives many anecdotes from women who have had such an experience with Stallman.
And they spend a lot of time writing about the Minsky ordeal, in which they accurately quote him and simply state that it is a terrible thing to say. They go on to talk about RMS saying that it shouldn't be called "sexual assault" if no violence is involved, and that sex with minors shouldn't be illegal if the minors are willing. They consider these opinions to be evil and inappropriate for someone in a position of leadership.
Re:Here is what I found. (Score:5, Informative)
I've decided to go ahead and give my own opinions, though it will probably piss somebody off.
I think that RMS statements about babies with Down's Syndrome are pretty bad. Advocating for abortion in such a case is pretty evil. I am inclined to agree that Stallman screwed up and should have kept his mouth shut.
I think that their statements about transphobia are overblown. They have no evidence of Stallman saying anything bad about transsexual people, only about his guidance for how to use English. I think that a discussion/argument about semantics and what proper English should/shouldn't be is an entirely different discussion than one about a person's right to gender identity selection, and that these two separate issues have been conflated. So I don't think that an opinion on what constitutes proper English is, in-and-of-itself, the same thing as transphobia. If they present other evidence of Stallman disparaging transsexual people then I will agree that this is terrible and he was wrong. But this evidence of language-use alone is, in my opinion, a reach.
I think that the Minsky issue was a "straw that broke the camel's back," and really what has them upset is how that might relate to his other statements about sexual assault and whether or not sex with a minor should be legal. I think, however, that this is muddy water, since such discussions must happen every time any country considers changing the definition of when someone qualifies as a minor. I want to draw a very sharp distinction between a discussion about obviously evil things (like sexual abuse of a child), and the terminology used to describe them (like when a person qualifies as a child and when a person qualifies as an adult, which is something that varies from place to place and we should be able to freely discuss it). I think that some of their accusations conflate these two separate issues, and accuse him of advocating for evil when really he is advocating for a change in language.
Though, I am making an assumption about his intent behind statements of sex with willing minors. If the context was an adjustment of age of consent laws to match up with some biological reality, then maybe having that discussion is not evil. But if he was straight-up saying it is ok to sexually assault a child if the child is willing, then I will agree that he is a monster for saying that, and should be removed from his position.
Re: (Score:3)
Oh and I forgot to mention, if the anecdotes about his mistreatment of women are true, then those are pretty bad too and are a good reason to demand his removal.
Re: (Score:3)
I think that RMS statements about babies with Down's Syndrome are pretty bad. Advocating for abortion in such a case is pretty evil. I am inclined to agree that Stallman screwed up and should have kept his mouth shut.
No, he shouldn't have. Though, one could certainly argue that this sort of thing is why we have pseudonymity. The assertion that you can't work with or even be led by people who believe certain things is pretty much always trash, though. There's nothing about these opinions that has any bearing with his competence as a leader of the free software movement. That this was and no longer is a community that could accept that kind of radical collaboration shows that this cause is in the process of being colonize
Re: (Score:3)
The FSF is not purely a technical organisation, it is also highly political. However it is political with a narrow focus, and focuses solely on software freedom. Anything else is irrelevant to the cause.
You support a particular football team, you go to a game and you sit in the stadium with thousands of other supporters of that team. Aside from your agreement on which football team to support, you and the other fans probably have many other political differences.
But it doesn't matter, because the subject at
Re:Here is what I found. (Score:5, Insightful)
"[...] babies with Down's Syndrome are pretty bad. Advocating for abortion in such a case is pretty evil.[...]"
You mean doing what 95%ish of parents do when they find out?
Re:What is this really about? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is basically a corporate takeover using a lot of useful idiots of the JSW-variant. Stallman was quite clearly on the hit-list of RedHat and others for a long time, because he does not compromise on software freedom. Now they have found something they can misrepresent and blow all out of proportion and they are using it for all it is worth to "cancel" him.
My only take-away here is to never, ever trust anybody on the side of the "cancelers" here. Not that I have ever trusted RedHat...
Re:What is this really about? (Score:4, Interesting)
"Cancellers" (a.k.a. witch-hunters, "the Inquisition", etc.) are very much a thing. You are correct that these defectives are and were always present in any reasonably sized assembly of human beings. That is not my point. The point were it starts to slide into a catastrophe is when they are not decisively opposed and freedom of expression is not defended anymore. In that situation, things go into authoritarianism and full-blown fascism eventually.
Hence everybody decent has a moral obligation to oppose attempts at "cancelling" somebody, or they become complicit in what happens. The problem is, of course, that you cannot cancel the cancellers, or you become as bad as they are. What is needed is clearly showing them that what they are trying to do is not ok, and pushing back, but without ever trying to destroy them personally. And that is the constant fight to preserve freedom in a nutshell and nicely explains why it is so difficult.
Re:What is this really about? (Score:5, Insightful)
Big Tech wants Stallman out of the FSF, and ultimately the GPL watered down to a more corporate friendly document.
To this end, they have employed their most effective weapon at squashing nerd resistance: The Cancel Mob.
There are billions, probably trillions on the line here if FSF can be cajoled or bribed into rolling back the GPL. US corps have done a lot more for a lot less in the past.
Re:What is this really about? (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, this statement from the article shows clearly that this is all part of an ongoing power struggle, where RedHat tries to take over the FSF:
A governance statement by the FSF earlier this week that related to transparency in the appointing of directors has done nothing to quell Red Hat's ire, which stated bluntly that the announcement did not signify "any meaningful commitment to positive change."
"Fundamental and lasting changes to its governance" would be needed to restore the confidence of the community, said the Linux distro maker.
These kinds of tactics are just what you would expect from IBM.
Re:What is this really about? (Score:4, Informative)
Basically this is Woke Culture crap.
A late (as in dead) AI researcher, Marvin Minsky was "Me Too'ed" by a victim of Jeffry Epstein (who did not kill himself).
Seeing as Minsky was dead, and unable to defend himself, RMS chose "due process" over "believe all women".
He was then harangued by the white knight brigade into resigning from the FSF.
And as we know with Wokeism, no matter what they say about apologizing, once they believe you "guilty" of something, you're scarred forever with a scarlet letter. The mark of Cain. Somebody uses a permanent marker to draw curlicue mustaches and coke bottle glasses on your face while you sleep?
As such, all these "liberal" people and organizations are choosing to act in a most illiberal manner because RMS refuses to toe their imaginary line.
Re: (Score:2)
Really? you think him defending a pedophile
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Re:What is this really about? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? you think him defending a pedophile
There is no evidence that Minsky was a pedophile.
and downplaying the crimes as not serious
What crimes?
Minsky is dead and was never convicted of any crime.
Nor was he accused of any crimes.
What Richard said is that even if he committed the crime he has not been accused of, it would only be a crime because of the jurisdiction. It would be legal on an adjacent island or back in Boston.
Richard's statement was factually correct and harmed no one. But there is no negotiating with woke-outrage.
Minsky is condemned, not for anything he did, but because of who he associated with. Now Richard is being thrown under the bus for defending someone who associated with a bad person. The next level of indirection is to destroy the career of anyone who defends Richard. Then go after the first people to stop clapping [disappearingman.com].
Re: (Score:3)
Re:What is this really about? (Score:5, Insightful)
Minsky was not proven to be a pedophile and there's little substance to the claim other than being at an Epstein party and claims that Epstein was trying to get someone underage to have sex with Minsky. RMS never justified any assault, or rape, or statutory rape, or anything of the like. He did put his foot in his mouth, because RMS lacks a lot of social graces and skills to say the least. He may or may not be autistic and unable to see a lot of social cues. He does know that Minsky was his long time friend and rose to his defense against the unproven allegations.
Yes, RMS is embarrassing. But you put up with it, because he does a lot of good, and for the same reason you put up with your embarrassing uncle with Alzheimers who keeps whistling at the nurses.
Re: (Score:3)
But you put up with it, because he does a lot of good, and for the same reason you put up with your embarrassing uncle with Alzheimers who keeps whistling at the nurses.
But you do not let your uncle with Alzheimer's lead a major charitable organization.
Re:What is this really about? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a lot of Neo-Puritans who like the instant gratification of attacking people based on immediate knee jerk outrage.
In the first attack, nobody had the time to digest the information fully, put it in context and understand what was going on, so it was somewhat difficult to counter the outrage with something coherent.
Now that people have actually looked, read, put in context and actually had time to mull over what the thrust and meaning of the entire thread was, the returning 'Outrage' now has to cope with people who are well informed, and those people are saying "Sorry, you have the wrong end of the stick here, that is not what was said, meant or implied. How did you come to this conclusion?" and the outraged are basically saying "It's common sense" (which it is not, nor is that a proof", and similar things. In other words, they have no evidence, so are going back to outrage.
What Red Hat has essentially just told me, by my interpretation is:
* They care more about politics, than about getting on with the job at hand.
* They believe it is ok to take earned achievements away from people because of knee jerk outrage and disiniformation rather than fact and rational thought.
* They are closed minded
* That they have no respect for due process of law
* That they have an agenda that is other than the implementation of a technical platform.
I will be sending them a very polite mail to that effect, and informing that that I'll no longer be utilising their product where suitable alternatives exist. I'm a very minor data point as my team is small, even though we're quite Linux heavy.
The fundamental idea that Free Software was founded on, was that it is supposed to be about freedom for everyone, no matter their ideology, creed or colour. RMS is very left leaning, but he was, and is, quite strongly protective of people who think other than him being able to benefit from his work.
Red Hat have now effectively said "Even though no crime has been committed, nor anyone been accused of committing a crime, someone speaking up in defense of someone and pointing out that very likely a situation is not nefarious, we are going to hound and harrass this person to the point of losing their lifetime achievements because we subjectively disagree with what they have said.".
I'm very sorry, but objectively, that's an incredibly bad thing for an organisation to be saying. Especially one that benefits, and is based entirely on the principles that are the diametric opposite of that statement.
Yeah, normal for college freshman to throw ... (Score:2)
You feel that someone having sex with a seventeen year old, when he likely didn't know her age, and likely didn't intend to go to a retreat to have sex with _anyone_, is equivalent to having sex with a sexually undeveloped little child? i guess we know where you stand.
And as a middle aged or later man do you think it odd that when at a billionaire's private island, lets be very generous and say college freshman aged girls, are making sexual advances towards you? You don't think she might be operating with the "encouragement" of the billionaire host? I suppose it is your opinion that one is not supporting sex trafficking if one is not personally paying the "bill"?
Then again maybe its quite normal for the hot college freshman to be throwing themselves at old pudgy profe
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And as a middle aged or later man do you think it odd that when at a billionaire's private island, lets be very generous and say college freshman aged girls, are making sexual advances towards you? You don't think she might be operating with the "encouragement" of the billionaire host?
Your intuition and mine differ. A substantial number of young women are into older men, or are interested in men with wealth and power. A substantial number of women are willing to date men that are less good looking than themselves. Not knowing the actual situation, the expected explanation of that scenario would probably not have been that she was an escort or sex slave.
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That's not the issue here.
On June 30, 2008, after Epstein pleaded guilty to a state charge (one of two) of procuring for prostitution a girl below age 18. In fact he was suspected of far more offences, but plead guilty to that one and then "donated" hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Sherriff's Office, serving his sentence in a private wing of the Palm Beach County Stockade.
In 2011 Minsky organized a symposium on Epstein's island. By that point it is impossible that he would not have known about Epstei
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You feel that someone having sex with a seventeen year old, when he likely didn't know her age, and likely didn't intend to go to a retreat to have sex with _anyone_, is equivalent to having sex with a sexually undeveloped little child? i guess we know where you stand.
And as a middle aged or later man do you think it odd that when at a billionaire's private island, lets be very generous and say college freshman aged girls, are making sexual advances towards you?
Umm....Minsky did not have sex with anybody at that retreat.
The FBI considered the person who made the accusation to be totally unreliable. And if you read exactly what she said, she didn't even say that Minsky had sex with anyone. She said she thought someone solicited him. But she couldn't remember any details at all, and seemed to blurt out Minsky's name because she couldn't remember anybody's name. Or what year it happened. Or anything.
But things have now progressed to the poinr that people are arguing
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Pedophilia is sex with a pre-pubescent human. Kings and queens ruled at age 13 back in the day as puberty defines humans of sexual maturity from children.
The law set an arbitrary age of 18, ostensibly because mental maturity occurs later than physical, due to life becoming easier as technology progressed. It’s highly-variable, though, and outside of the law, there is nothing magic about age 18.
It’s not pedophilia for a man to be physically attracted to a 17 year old. It might be weird to act o
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The law set an arbitrary age of 18, ostensibly because mental maturity occurs later than physical, due to life becoming easier as technology progressed. It’s highly-variable, though, and outside of the law, there is nothing magic about age 18.
Correct. The magic age is 24 [duke.edu], when the cerebral cortex finishes maturing. Ask any insurance company that offers auto insurance. Prior to age 24, humans are not adults. Post age 12 for girls (or thereabouts) and age 14 for boys (or thereabouts) they're not children either. But they're definitely not adults. There's a solid decade of bullshittery that happens inside every human mind. It's unavoidable.
Re:Yeah, normal for college freshman to throw ... (Score:4, Informative)
Here is also a little fact that gets glossed over in all this: In quite a few US states, there is an unconditional legal age of consent of 16.
In very few states, and often with very narrow age restrictions. We're talking HS senior / HS sophomore sort of age restrictions. Middle aged or older college professors need not apply.
Nope: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I count 18 states with an legal age of consent of 16 that has _no_ restrictions on the age-gap.
The one with the age-gap restrictions goes down to 11 in two states, but there are many with 13 or 14.
On other words: You either have absolutely no clue what you are talking about or you are lying.
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Billionaires tend not to be in the Trafficking game. There are way too many willing recipients of a very high standard of living, and consider sex to be a sport, and a sharing one. That's all very legal, and perfectly acceptable. You seem to have a very narrow definition of acceptable sexuality and "What's acceptable". Interestingly, this is a lot of what people in the 60s fought very hard to get allowed, as it's perfectly natural.
That's the common sense, not trying to paint it all as "Nefarious and de
Re:Nope that is it (Score:5, Interesting)
It's people who really don't even understand the issue. They did a quick skim of the summary and decided that the book must be banned. These aren't even interested parties. They dredged up past jokes told by RMS that are unsavory, but well, so what? RMS is the person they decided to use the purity test on. And that's because they original protesters were MIT students and were mad at MIT for daring to have hired Minsky. RMS, lacking the necessary political or social acumen rose to Minsky's post-mortem defense instead of hiding until the smoke blew over.
It's all stupid. I understand the outrage, the level of the purity test is overblown. No off color jokes in the past, no past friendships with anyone who might have once been a communist, er, I mean, had a scandal. Purity of thought and mind. But only if you're in the radar, if the purity was applied to everyone, then everyone in the world would be resigned or forced out because everyone is guilty of some impurity in the past.
Which means everyone else, for financial reasons, is trying not to touch FSF with a ten foot pole.
It's America though, which is like the rest of the world. There's always a witch hunt going on somewhere.
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It seems you don't understand the psychologocal mechanisms of jokes. They're stress relievers, that prevent burnours or escalation of adverse behaviour.
A culture that allows questionable jokes is actually inclusive, and mentally diverse and resilient (a desirable trait overall). One that hounds questionable jokes is exclusive, mentally and psychologically homogenouse and fragile (a VERY undesirable trait).
What we're seeing is the long term resilience of systems being subverted by long term fragility in th
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
she presented herself to him as entirely willing
From which Selam G. invents this:
he says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”.
No reason to put any faith in the rest of the article.
Re:What is this really about? (Score:4, Funny)
When your evidence of a long term issue begins with
I recall being told early in my freshman year “If RMS hits on you, just say ‘I’m a vi user’ even if it’s not true.”
— Bachelor’s in Computer Science, ’04
It is clear that you do not have any ability to distinguish a joke from reality, so your othering of RMS might be going a bit too far.
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Alright say one of the three letter agencies went to all this trouble to force RMS out. Mission accomplished. Now what? Who benefits? RMS is about as much a doctor as Colonel Sanders having a military title.
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He definitely doesn't get socially-appropriate behavior, misreads social cues, and tends to obsess on certain issues
If I didn't know that Big Tech was wrapped in a cloak of woke virtue, I might think they're being bigoted towards somebody with a well-known cluster of disabilities and conditions.
pssst: there isn't a virtuous side here.
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It's not about which side is virtuous, but which action is right. You and phantomfive both only offer ad hominem attacks against SJW wokesters. Even if I agree with that in general, it doesn't mean they are wrong about this particular question. So convince me why RMS isn't a toxic person who is seriously unprofessional and abrasive to people who deserve more respectful treatment.
They're not appalled by China's actions then? (Score:5, Informative)
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That defense certainly isn't helping his cause.
Then in 2011, he wrote: "'Child pornography' might be a photo of yourself or your lover that the two of you shared. It might be an image of a sexually mature teenager that any normal adult would find attractive. What's heinous about having such a photo?"
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does anyone want to explain to Redhat that if they truly want to distance themselves from the FSF, they're going to have to pull gcc, binutils, libc6, libm, autoconf, automake, gdb, m4, bash, grep, and all other GNU and FSF-funded software from the products that they sell.
Re:They're not appalled by China's actions then? (Score:5, Insightful)
With that said, wokeness should also come with consequences! A group or individual doesn't get to destroy someone without reprecusions. Since these people like to keep score, any woke person should be kept in a database, this database should be distributed to all governments or any place with any power. These people should be blacklisted! And never be allowed to have any meaningful career in any high up position.
If the woke can destroy lives, then the woke should also have its life destroyed.
A major blow to user freedom, free speech, sanity (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a HUGE blow to sanity and freedom. RMS never said, nor did, anything that was wrongful. His comments were sane, reasonable, and point out obvious hypocrisies. His comments were taken out of context and distorted to make it appear he said something he did not.
RMS has stood for years for users freedom. While seen as being extreme, he is right. He has expressed his opposition to users being imprisoned by their devices so that the devices control the users, rather than the other way around. He stood against free software from being used to create locked down devices that users cannot understand or modify their behavior and the workings of these devices being reviewable to any third party.
This is a very disappointing move by Red Hat against freedom. Destroying peoples lives over unapproved speech and opinions will lead us toward a totalitarian chinese-type future where people can be destroyed over their simple opinions. When we burn books, ban speech and destroy people over the opinions, it implies that speech is as serious as an offense as say murder, and therefore, people who make unapproved comments will be more likely treated as murderers, and history as shown, this is where things almost always lead with censorship,.
Boys will be boys ... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a HUGE blow to sanity and freedom. RMS never said, nor did, anything that was wrongful.
Not in the legal sense. However handing out cards to initiate romantic encounters at events where he is representing an organization or is a guest speaker is wrongful in the "bad idea" sense. Companies don't want to be associated with anyone with such tendencies.
Neither do companies want to be associated with a group that takes the boys-will-be-boys attitude, or in this case the RMS-will-be-RMS attitude, and dismisses such behaviors.
Yes, its completely corporate cover-your-ass but sometimes such cover is appropriate. RMS is a loose cannon and those involved can take collateral damage. Its not worth it.
Re:Boys will be boys ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Handing out that kind of card contributes to creating a hostile environment, and having a hostile environment is illegal. Combined with widespread requests for romantic relationships, and the absence of any official statements denouncing those actions, I wouldn't want to take my chances as a backer of such a conference or organization. People at software development conferences should be able to expect a more professional environment than that.
Re:Boys will be boys ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Handing out cards to initiate romantic encounters?
And what's wrong with that?
I'm not sure I can explain to you in a way that you will believe me. All I can recommend is that you go for the scientific approach and try it for yourself and see. Just don't forget to not shave your neck for a few months and hand over the card with a doff of your fedora and a charming "M'lady".
Handing out cards may be a strange way to do it, but most people will attempt to solicit romantic encounters one way or another.
Stop trying to "solicit" romantic encounters. ew.
You have to actually talk to people, build a rapport, see if there's any chemistry, and then move on from there. Handing out "pleasure cards" is not much different from striding up to a rando and saying "wanna bang?". Also stop hitting on women at tech conferences: they're strongly in the minority and so even if there's a small number of sketchy guys who hit on all the women they can see it means all the women get hit on all. the. fucking. time. They like you are there for the tech. Treat them like that.
Perhaps simply ignoring the card is better and less awkward for the subject in some ways than having to reject someone to their face for instance?
But still awkward. And it happens all the fucking time, that's the problem. Stop making it awkward.
Re:Boys will be boys ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Handing out cards to initiate romantic encounters? And what's wrong with that?
When it is at work, when you are representing an organization at an event.
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Re:A major blow to user freedom, free speech, sani (Score:5, Insightful)
And that is the point. Of course anybody is free to disagree with RMS here. But he said absolutely nothing that would in any way justify the witch-hunt that is being organized against him, obviously by some anti-freedom (software and speech) assholes and a lot of useful idiots cheering them on.
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An 80 year old computer scientist would not think a 17 year old girl wanting to have sex with him is doing it entirely of her own free will. Assuming he didn't know too much about Epstein he would probably assume she was a prostitute.
I just cannot understand why even posters who I know to usually be logical, cannot stop lying or abusing details abut this entire situation. Everything you have said above is just false.
The first time Minsky is known to have been on Epstein's island was in 2002 (and again in 2011). In 2002 Giuffre would have been either 19 or 20. Minsky would have been 74. Even *if* it happened, that is a big age gap, but illegal anywhere in the world? No.
I do not think it is unreasonable that a college-aged student might f
"GPL v3.0 or later" clause ... fun on the horizon (Score:4, Insightful)
And all over *accusation* of *relation*. (Score:5, Informative)
Not "He did it, we got proof".
Not even "He did it, but we can't prove it."
But "He knows somebody who did it. At least we're told."
Now I wonder if the RedHat board might ever have talked to a child rapist. E.g. working at a shop or cafe. Or maybe they met a murderer. Did they ever meet up with Hans Reiser?
Because if any of that *could* ever be the case, that according to their own, batshit insane, let's just note that, "logic", they all must now be expelled from society and hated for all eternity and accused of doing everything everyone they ever met once did.
Guilt by association (Score:4, Funny)
Because if any of that *could* ever be the case, that according to their own, batshit insane, let's just note that, "logic", they all must now be expelled from society and hated for all eternity and accused of doing everything everyone they ever met once did.
Well said.
In fact, I think I'll contact RH's sales dept soon (in a month or so), ask them for a big humongous quote, and be all serious about it, then right before signing the papers just say "Well, I've heard some rumors about some of your employees' uncles' roomates' cats belonging to some parlour in India where they sacrifice mice, so NOPE!"
Red Hat aren't true friends of Linux and Free Soft (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Red Hat aren't true friends of Linux and Free (Score:2)
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> Ever since I learnt that the Red Hat management never used anything Linux on their desktops
That would be terrifying, except it seems to be the standard world stupidity of today. Have you a citeable source, please?
Oh no... What will the FSF ever do without RedHat! (Score:2)
Seriously, why do these virtue signaling people/companies think they matter? The FSF has been around well before RedHat and probly most of the developers that work there, the FSF will probly be there long after RedHat is long dead and rotten in the ground.
I hope the FSF stands their ground, just because some mentally deranged people scream and cry like a 4 year old child, doesn't mean you get your way!
Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
I came here expecting to see hundreds of "Go Red Hat!" type posts, agreeing what an "outrage" it is letting RMS get involved again with anything....
I'm pleasantly surprised to see the opposite, at least so far. Maybe some sanity really is left in the tech sector? I've got to tell you, I never liked RMS very much -- but all of this just seems ridiculous, to remove the guy over what amounts to politicizing some software development.
Cancel culture is utter garbage, and it's really just an extension of the tired, old idea that you can successfully "boycott" any company you disapprove of in some way. (They just took it to a new level of trying to silence the individual.) I realized, a long time ago, that any reasonably functional business is made up of individuals who have a whole variety of personal beliefs about things. People accept work because they need to find someone willing to compensate them financially for their labor ... not because they have political views that perfectly align with the employer. I strongly dislike things like Coca Cola's recent support of this new agenda to marginalize white people -- but the people demanding a boycott of them over it? Yeah, not going to even bother with that one. They make a number of drinks I enjoy and I'll pay them for those, understanding it keeps a whole lot of folks employed. If I never gave a corp. giant like that another dime, they'd never even notice....
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure I've ever seen so many "I disagree with you, and therefore I'll mark you as -1 Troll mods amongst so relatively few comments. I wish I had mod points of my own right now, as I'd gladly burn them all redacting whoever when through here with an ideological chip on their shoulder. Frankly, it says more about them and their own intolerance than they may realize.
I don't really care for RMS as a person, as I find him to be something of a creeper. I also don't agree with the hard-line stance that both he and the FSF takes. I think proprietary software has it's place, and I don't think copyleft licenses are always appropriate for open source.
But I respect his previous contributions to free software, and I really don't think he's done anything worthy of being completely cancelled. The guy has and continues to make a lot of good points, and the fight for user freedom is, I think, worth fighting. This sort of thing just feels poisonous, more-so than whatever ill feelings he's engendered via his insensitivity or foot-in-mouth ramblings. It has the feeling of a mob mentality to me, with people gleefully signalling their own virtue by publicly decrying those that are not as enlightened as they.
Red Hat stands with Stalin (Score:5, Insightful)
Red Hat here is moving us closer to a stalinistic future where people can be destroyed, even killed for holding unpopular views. Red Hats actions are leading us closer to a future where people are enslaved in a totalitarian culture where people are destroyed, attacked, ruined, even killed, for their views, opinions and free speech rights. These mentalities and actions lead predictably, in the past, now and always, tot totalitarian regimes which oppress and obliterate human life. There is nothing compassionate about what Red Hat as done because their actions contribute to a cultural trend which can and probably will lead to mass persection, murders and other massive human rights violation against people for their views, opinions, or simply because they stumbled and said something by mistake or they later regret. There is no forgiveness with these people, this culture we are creating where someone can be destroyed and even after they apologize they are forever ostracized and their lives destroyed, has dire implications for human freedom, and Red Hat is clearly siding here with the most murderous regimes and killers of dissidents in the cultural trend they are reinforcing. Taking these kinds of actions against a persons ability to survive, feed themselves, against their livilihood, cannot be underestimated and in many ways is like a death sentance and actual death is where this kind of trend I fear leads. Red Hat stands against human liberty and life and is buying into like so many others that killing people who say unapproved things is justified.
RMS needs to get a good lawyer already and start filing lawsuits for how he has been defamed by this systematic attack on him,.
Not surprising. (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspected that Red Hat [slashdot.org] was tied to this. All the top contributors [github.com] to the open letter are affiliated with Red Hat. I suspect this was all used merely as an excuse to try to appoint people who are more "business friendly" than the current FSF leadership.
Remember, publicly traded corporations never intentionally do anything that isn't going to pump up their stock.
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"All the top contributors" are clearly NOT from Red Hat if you actually look.
I didn't write they were all from Red Hat, I wrote they were "affiliated" with them. Gnome is deeply intertwined because of Red Hat gives lots of money to the GNOME Foundation that keeps them going.
Here are the people who have committed the most changes:
Neil McGovern - 131 commits - GNOME
Elana Hashman - 39 commits - Red Hat
Molly de Blanc - 36 commits - GNOME
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Dumb (Score:2)
This is stupid .. there are a lot of worse people to cancel. Stallman didn't say anything attempting justifying what Epstein did. Although he said it stupidly, what he meant was that it's possible that Marvin had no idea of the circumstances involved. He questioned whether Marvin Minksy, who is now dead, even knew what the circumstances were. Is that worthy of him being canceled? It's not like he was trying to promote bad things.
Randomly canceling people because they are dumb is stupid.
He didn't do anything
Red Hat looking for virtue signaling clicks (Score:4, Informative)
After the fuckuups lately, they're looking for *anyone* to say they have value.
* Splitting up the software channels for RHEL 8 /etc/redhat-release. Get over the idea that "everyone will always do yum -y update every day!!!"
* systemd
* Modularity
* Screwing up the python3 update by calling it "python3" rather than "python36", so no one can publish python 3.8 for *anything* except in the unwelcome and unusable SCL rpeos.
* Pulling Ansible back into Red Hat and hiding the SRPMs for Ansible Tower behind a weaving wall of entirely unwelcome "pivots" designed to break every awx system in the world with incompatible requirements.
* Turning CentOS from a rebuild of RHEL into the beta release of new RHEL features, and hiding away critical "devel" packages which has been discarded from CentOS 8 Stream.
* Pretending that the name of CentOS 8 is "CentOS Stream", Yeah, it's been a "stream" alright.
* Hiding thee "devel" RPMs in a secret channel so that, even though used to compile software like FreeIPA, no one else can build it without rebuilding the devel packages from SRPMs. CentOS used to fix this,
* Pretending that they don't publish, or internally use, poiint release. It says 8,0, 8.1 8.2, etc. in
* Pretending that dnf is not yum mis-spelled and does not suffer from all the same primary flaws.
What it's really all about (Score:4, Informative)
This Daily Beast article does a great job covering his long history of problematic views on child pornography and statutory rape [thedailybeast.com]...
That was probably the biggest thing. Although there were a couple other things:
Long before this incident, Stallman was contributing to an uncomfortable environment for women at MIT in a very real and visceral way. Alumni from as far back as the 1980’s reached out to me...
"at a table with only the two of us, Richard Stallman told me of his misery and that he’d kill himself if I didn’t go out with him..."
"I recall being told early in my freshman year “If RMS hits on you, just say ‘I’m a vi user’ even if it’s not true.”
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To be perfectly honest, since those are apparently the two worst things they could come up with then making such a huge stink about this is just dumb.
I mean, since when do we vilify people for asking someone to go out with them? For sure worse pickup lines have been used.
What about Nike (Score:3)
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Don't be ridiculous. That's just child labour. It's nowhere near as bad as a comment that maybe somehow related to an allegation that sex with a minor may have been at some point that the victim can't remember committed.
Tiresome. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
This is exactly the kind of sexist drivel that is getting rms in trouble, and making nerds look like fuckwits when they not only fail to condemn it, but participate in, extend, and encourage it.
Freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
Red Hat is free to pull funding from an organization that reinstated someone whose behavior at the workplace was, to be charitable, not up to normal professional standards. Those of you decrying an assault on freedom should not complain about a company's freely-made choice of who to support.
Don't touch him with a bargepole (Score:3)