> Stallman suggested Minsky might somehow not have known she'd been forced to do so.
> In the same thread on MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory listserv, he also referred to Epstein's victims as a "harem."
Is that the full story? That sounds very mild comments to trigger such a strong reaction. I don't really understand what is awful here, the first comment seems to say "Maybe Minsky wasn't aware", which sounds plausible (though, I wouldn't personally bet on it...) and doesn't invalidate the woman's claims or justify Minsky or Epstein actions. The second one seems to use "harem" to design how Epstein was behaving around his victims by surrounding himself with young women that he was exploiting, which sounds insulting against him and not them.
Pretty much. If you read the letters and news articles, he seems horrible but when you read the source material its much much more tame.
He is being called a transphobe because he wants English to contain a new word which is singular and non gendered because he doesn't think 'they' is appropriate since it has historically been collective. Since he uses his new invented word for this purpose, he is being called transphobic for not respecting peoples choice to use 'they'.
When you look in to the details of what rms is being grilled over, he looks like someone who is honest and well intentioned but fails to communicate in a non controversial way.
> He is being called a transphobe because he wants English to contain a new word which is singular and non gendered because he doesn't think 'they' is appropriate since it has historically been collective. Since he uses his new invented word for this purpose, he is being called transphobic for not respecting peoples choice to use 'they'.
Am I missing something or isn't this exactly what neutral language folks do with their made-up pronouns (Xe/Xem etc)? So they singled out Stallman for doing the same?
Also, interesting to see another flagged thread that points to an article with strictly factual information from a very popular source here.
From what I can tell, the problem they see is that stallman is proposing one standard word which applies and is correct for everyone rather than allowing everyone to create their own words and respecting their choices.
Very few people care about newly invented pronouns. The main problem people have with Stallman and pronouns is he refuses to use the standard word and uses a strange and alienating word instead.
But Stallman would argue that the standard word, if we're talking about 'they', 'them' and 'their', is inappropriate. He acknowledges that these words have historically been used in the singular, but convincingly points out that this merely proves that our ancestors also faced the same paucity of choice for referring to the indefinite singular.
What Stallman didn't employ in his defence, and a fact also ignored by many proponents of 'they' who regularly cite its historical usage as proof of transphobia in anyone who refuses to engage in the practice the now, is that this historical usage was applied when the subject of the sentence was indefinite, whereas the modern call to use 'they' is in the case of a specific, known person. This usage does not have a long linguistic history, regardless of whether the existence of such would, in itself, form compelling grounds on which to continue its usage.
If you don't regularly run into issues with people dropping pronouns without proper or with ambiguous antecedents, who exactly are you talking to? It seems like just trying to get normal folks to unambiguously state nounwise what they are talking about tends more often than not to get hackles raised because people (wrongly) seem to assume you're being patronizing.
I just maintain more conversational context than most, and pronouns can get askew really quick. Please, I don't need yet another layer of faux pas to be added on to getting people to unambiguously communicate.
If you haven't met RMS in person, it's hard to understand what a raging asshole he is. Frankly I'm surprised it has taken this long for him to be called to account for his behavior.
That does not remotely justify ousting him on the basis of lies, which is what happened before. If you do that, it's really hard to argue that the correct course is anything but reversing the actions you took that were driven by lies.
He was staying for a few days at a colleagues house and even thought he seems to have some weird preferences I didn't really hear anything negative about him. Seems to be a nice guy to be honest and I trust in my colleagues ability to be a good judge of character. (Didn't meet RMS myself so can't attest for him myself)
Here's a long-term FSF insiders perspective: http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html - that specific instance was just the thing that pushed it over the edge in the end.
And now they surprised everyone with this return announcement out of the blue, with little to nothing indicating any commitment to change.
And both of those posters made thoroughly emotive based arguments which boiled down to difference of opinion. Differences of opinion are not justification for ousting.
Stallman was more concerned with preservation of a historical record of hacker culture (The abort joke). Karen (was that her name? I think I may have forgotten) wanted it rewritten, along with other instances of "90's hacker detritus". Stallman refused. Coding is as much artform as it is engineering, and in that sense, a relic of the times. To wipe it out is to assault our very shared hacker culture's. It was against a wave of PC inclusiveness oriented imperialism that Stallman remained opposed to. The other fellow, Brad got frustrated because Stallman is a stickler for internal consistency of principle and adherence of the meaning of language to the form of life it is a nominative signpost for; which is something I personally find to be one of the best qualities in him.
You've posted something in your link that raises the question of whether any of these complaints should be considered valid.
>No one is indespensable, no one is disposable.
This is equality. The GNU maintainers raised their concern to the Board, the Board made their decision, the Maintainers don't like the outcome, even though the Board lived up to the very principles that Stallman's detractors would leverage to oust the board. As I've mentioned to user geofft elsewhere, you don't get to claim favoritism when your problem was raised and considered, but it just didn't go your way. You also don't get to trash someone just because they chafe with you when they aren't actively detracting from the mission. Now; if you want to challenge his fitness based on forwarding the mission based on objective results, that's one thing, but you have to make a dang good case given he bloody started the entire movement, and plays a significant part in codifying and acting as an arbiter of it's principle direction.
I won't even go into the whole "non-adherence to Safe-Space Policies", as I see those as a fundamental impediment to the pursuit of truth and intellectual advancement. Furthermore, after going through the profferred librePlanet recording, there is no interjection by Stallman that I can find inappropriate, even what I'm guessing is the alleged outburst at the end where Stallman asserts that as the President of the FSF, he is not bound by rules, as to me, it is clear that it precipitated out of a procedural question of the event in that room being at "time". Others were free to leave, and he was exercising perogative after the presentation had officially come to a close. He clarified his stance as the author of the GNU manifesto, and there is nothing controversial to doing so. Everyone had seen what they had come to see.
This is exactly the character of the ridicule and bad faith that seems endemic to this controversy. There isn't anything to it on further examination. If you only read and accept at the surface level, or ascribe to the notion that it is somehow inappropriate to engage in a deeper dive or clarification of something you yourself are the progenitor of or ceremonially highest authority on is wrong, do any of these accusations this seem to hold water. If that is truly the issue that the GNU maintainers are in a tizzy about, then it does not at all seem like Stallman is the one in error, and it is, in fact, those accusing him, that are. Every time I look into something offered as a datapoint in support of his dismissal, I see a human being acting in good faith. There is nothing wrong there.
Just to prove that I'm not cherry picking in Stallman's case, I've had a similar event back in my college days when I was specifically asked to not give feedback or ask questions with regard to someone's presentation. I had to respectfully decline, on the principle that in the event they (the asker) or someone in the audience were to continue working on the subject matter at hand, it would only detract from the pursuit and furthering of the state of the art down the road to not in good faith ask additional questions where their material raised them, or had holes. It's a question of integrity, and I cannot begrudge someone for doing so. It can be uncomfortable. Remaining calm and defending one's thesis is not a natural skill, but nevertheless critical in the pursuit of the truth, and nothing but it. If we don't subject that which is before us to the acid of a contrasting or different viewpoint, we really don't get the most out of any intellectual encounter.
My moral compass is not skewed that hard (at least I like to think it isn't, but then again, no one does), and I'm probably in possession of much rounder edges than I was 5 or 10 years ago, but I can't accept that half of these complaints are well founded or anything else than "how dare they not capitulate". It's rather the point that they don't. If they were that easy to get to roll over, I wager they shouldn't be stewards of Free Software.
I want to get behimd it; but... I'm just not seeing FSF or Stallman as having done anything wrong, all things considered.
Stallman has a long trail of accusations of mistreating women at MIT, as well as a long history of adopting some extremely unpleasant opinions. Many of these instances didn't get much attention until he was scrutinized for defending Minsky. Stallman and his defenders like to frame this debate in terms of a single email to a mailing list, but people associated with the FSF see it as a longer-running problem with his personal behavior. I am not comfortable repeating any of the stories about this, but they have painted a fairly consistent picture for some time now.
Finally, his return to the board came as a surprise to everyone outside the FSF board, including sister organizations like FSFE and even voting members of the FSF. Now it looks like the current FSF president is planning to step aside for Stallman to assume the presidency, all with no apology or even expressed remorse for the behavior which led to his resignation in the first place, and I think that's adding fuel to the outrage.
> Stallman suggested Minsky might somehow not have known she'd been forced to do so.
> In the same thread on MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory listserv, he also referred to Epstein's victims as a "harem."
Is that the full story? That sounds very mild comments to trigger such a strong reaction. I don't really understand what is awful here, the first comment seems to say "Maybe Minsky wasn't aware", which sounds plausible (though, I wouldn't personally bet on it...) and doesn't invalidate the woman's claims or justify Minsky or Epstein actions. The second one seems to use "harem" to design how Epstein was behaving around his victims by surrounding himself with young women that he was exploiting, which sounds insulting against him and not them.
Am I missing something here?
Edit: fixed some typos