• devnull
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      4 years ago

      It’s always accusations, not a clear-cut case.

      No, there’s a tons of evidence on many episodes when he embarrassed the Free Software movement by acting poorly in public speaking events. You can find pictures, videos and descriptions of him doing weird things ranging from older comments around age of consent, annoying women with unwanted attention, walking around barefoot or poorly dressed, throwing temper tantrums and the list goes on.

      This is not about judging him as a person. A spokeperson is responsible for representing a community in public. Bad publicity harms other people.

      • Ephera
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        4 years ago

        I mean, speaking as a member of said community, Free Software is punk. I don’t want a fashionable representative who only says things that everyone agrees with.

        Sure, I don’t need my Free Software representative to philosophize about the age of consent, but as long as he’s not telling people to rape others, I do not have a problem with that, and again, would rather have him speak his mind than not say anything that’s pushing the boundaries.

          • aab
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            4 years ago

            I don’t think he is anti equality or sexist, his actions only reflect poor social skills. His take on pronouns for example just seems like he was being overly pedantic about language again (GNU/Linux anyone?). And the reports about him annoying women sound like he just lacks awareness about how he is perceived.

            So yeah, this punk supporting gender equality and anti-sexism. The punk that, last time I checked, didn’t have problems with people expressing themselves in idiosyncratic ways.

      • ghost_laptop
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        4 years ago

        The age of consent and the annoying of women is bad, but the rest I don’t really care, IMO I kind of like it, it is fun and I prefer that to a souless kind of CEO.

        • devnull
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          4 years ago

          …and yet the evidence is overwhelming.

    • ndarwincorn
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      4 years ago

      It’s always accusations, not a clear-cut case.

      With Stallman, pretending it’s not clear cut is ridiculous.

      Some receipts.

      Probably the most damning one:

      • In a 2007 interview, he said:

      I don’t have any experience working with women in programming projects; I don’t think that any volunteered to work on Emacs or GCC.

      A number of women have contributed to GCC, including:

      • Janis Johnson maintains the test suite and has been a contributor since 2001
      • Sandra Loosemore is the lead author of the GNU Library Reference Manual;[3] RMS is listed as her co-author.
      • Dorit Nuzman made major contributions to loop scheduling and vectorization.
      • Carolyn Tice is also mentioned as a contributor.
      • gohqoi
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        4 years ago

        With Stallman, pretending it’s not clear cut is ridiculous.

        The “not a clear-cut case” referred to Minsky and not Stallman. What are you claiming that Stallman is obviously guilty of? Because the discussion was on his alleged endorsement of child abuse and sexual assault and you linked to articles which make accusations based on assumptions and further dilute it with describing how disgusting and asocial he is. Your highlighted point in no way supports the claim of him endorsing such behaviors and comes from an interview, in which Stallman also states that:

        I know most of the maintainers only through email, which means that I don’t know whether they are male or female unless their names show me. I just looked at the list: one maintainer is probably female, and a few others have names that might be male or female.

        Yes, saying that no women contributed to GCC is false and wrong but it’s not a reason to exclude him from the movement or a justification for the CancelStallman campaign.