beat me to it... yeah, he said that weird shit about 'consenting' underage children not being traumatized or some shit... or there was no evidence they were...
later apologized and said he was shown evidence but, nah... plus the whole Epstein friendship thing...(maybe he was just naively getting fsf donations? )
dude did some fantastic things for computers and humanity overall with gnu... but he's definitely not cool
beat me to it… yeah, he said that weird shit about ‘consenting’ underage children not being traumatized or some shit… or there was no evidence they were…
later apologized and said he was shown evidence but, nah… plus the whole Epstein friendship thing…(maybe he was just naively getting fsf donations? ) dude did some fantastic things for computers and humanity overall with gnu… but he’s definitely not cool
That's not exactly what happened.
1. In 2019 he was misquoted by a blogger and then by the press:
Famed Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As 'Entirely Willing'
The injustice is in the word "assaulting". The term "sexual assault" is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation: taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y, which is much worse than X.
The word "assaulting" presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex.
We 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.
I've concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term "sexual assault" in an accusation.
Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism.
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.
later apologized and said he was shown evidence but, nah…
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.
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.
The Software Freedom Conservancy, FSF Europe, and Bradley Kuhn are the good guys.
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:
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.”
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.
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.
I hate the RMS cult. He's done good stuff for software, but he's not a guy you should worship.
Richard Stallman on paedophilia:
"The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, 'prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia' also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally--but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness."
RMS on June 28th, 2003
"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing. "
RMS on June 5th, 2006
"There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.
RMS on Jan 4th, 2013
E: FFS. "But he changed his mind" - no, he put out a statement saying he doesn't believe those decades-held opinions days after there were calls to remove him from a public-facing position. Call me a pessimist, but that timing seems awfully convenient to me. He didn't change his mind, he was just trying to keep his job.
The RMS cult is fucking insane. Are the downvoters paedophiles too, or are they merely fine turning a blind eye to these views, just because their guy was the one to say it? If it was, idk, Zuckerberg who said this, would you defend him like you people are defending Stallman?
But people that publicly champion child rape, bestiality, and parent-child sexual relationships doubly so.
The fact there are so many people who are pro child rape, or at the very least pro people who are open advocates for having sex with children, is absolutely disgusting.
I would agree with a small portion of it, but pedophilia, no, no way.
Though I do have something to share on the subject. I used to go out with this girl, I was 19, she was 17. We had sex and all that (willingly, of course). Legally speaking, I was a pedophile, but let's take a look at the age gap and how old I was.
Anyway, I wasn't that into this girl, so I break up with her. I did know that she kinda had a crush on me, but I didn't think it was that serious. Three weeks pass after the breakup and her dad shows up at my doorstep with 2 other guys (his relatives... or at least I presumed as much) accusing me of raping his daughter... I tried to explain that there was no such thing and that yes, we did have sex, but at no point was it against her will. Sure, I might have been the one that instigated the intercourse, but it wasn't like she didn't like it. Regardless, her dad was pissed as hell and even threatened to submit this to the DA 😱... I was about to be taken to trial and very possibly go to jail for what? A girl that I broke up with that was probably deeply hurt (I am sorry for that, but you can't force someone to love someone else) and wanted to get back at me, so she involved her parrents in the ordeal, not thinking things through (of course, she's young) how this might affect the other person and stain him FOR LIFE.
Luckily, things cooled down, I went to talk to her parrents about this, I said I was sorry and I shouldn't have had sex with her, but the truth of the matter was that, I didn't rape her! They also called her to confront me on this, we had a long converstaion with her parrents present, she was furious, lying through her teeth, portraying every single time we had sex as rape. I think her parrents saw through this, since there were personal insults at my expense, not to mention that "why did you break up with me!?" was mentioned quite a few times throught the conversation and that kinda sealed the case that this was nothing more than a broken heart. I promised them I'll never contact her again, for her sake (and mine as well), and to let her heal, and I never did.
My point is, things could have ended up being A LOT worse for me. I think that me showing up alone at their house kinda made them think about the whole situation and that maybe our daughter is actually lying to us (why would I show up there and risk getting my head chopped off if I really did rape her, right). Just goes to show you that people can be mean, take advantage of a certain situation and portray it as something completely different.
I always asked a partner's age after that, ALWAYS. Unless it was blaintly obvious she's not a minor.
This wouldn't be illegal in the UK or many countries. Age of consent is 16 here. From what I've read, USA is an outlier that infantises young adults to impose mortality.
Always weird because the music videos exported by the US are often soft porn and the music industry has a thing for barely legal girls.
Thats the thing about saying an opinion on the internet, its tied to you forever. In real life people tend to change their minds and can re-evaluate on their own shitty opinions after a few decades. Not always, but it happens. But that doesn't change the fact you said that thing that one time 20 years ago. The people who don't really care about you and just want a mental straw man to hate don't care about things like personal growth or that you have changed stance, just that you thought that bad thing at one time.
Im personally guilty of saying some real edgelord shit as a teenager on the internet. If someone somehow collected a few comments I made when I was 15 and went on a 5 paragraph essay about how terrible of a person I am now it would make me roll my eyes and tell them to get bent. Who I was as a 15 year old and my opinions then is completely independent of who I am now and my current stances. But the 5-paragrapher doesn't care about that, they got their ragebait strawman and a ride on the high horse so they are happy.
Lol, you mean when he changed his opinion 4 days after his comments were outed, and only when it looked like his job was untenable?
Seems awfully convenient that RMS would change his decades-held opinion that paedophilia is fine mere days after he found himself in hot water.
If Andrew Tate, right when Google was mulling over removing his content from YouTube, said "you know, I actually think misogyny is a bad thing. Honest.", would you believe him? Would you think he's a changed man?
I wouldn't. But maybe you're just more trusting than I am.
What's the problem? You want people to not discuss things that are offensive? It's a shame he used to believe that, but he changed his mind, admitted to being wrong and moved on.
What would you want to happen instead? That we cancel people, because they have an opinion we don't like?
he was just trying to keep his job
What job? The position at his foundation that he does for free? If he only cared about keeping it, why did he quit 2 days later?
He didn't change his mind. He only "changed his mind" to try to keep his job, and it didn't work.
He was only sorry once he got a lot of flak for his pro child rape opinions.
Put it this way - if Andrew Tate all of a sudden said that sexism is wrong and he's sorry for his actions, only once YouTube started removing his videos, would you believe it to be genuine? Or just him trying to maintain his position? It certainly seems like a convenient time to have a change of heart, no?
And he didn't "quit" he was ousted. He "resigned" in the same way Liz Truss did, for example.
Sorry, I have no time for people who want to see children get raped.