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throwaway wrote

Politically, he's quite the confused liberal, but what he has created, and the FOSS idea that he's been advocating for his whole life, is not to be dismissed. I personally think that Stallman is an awesome guy, if you're able to pick out the parts that you like and ignore the parts that you don't.

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AgitatedStatesOfAmazement wrote

He's made some awesome contributions to both software and culture, but I'm hesitant to celebrate him as a person in general.

  • He said he is "skeptical of the claim that voluntarily [sic] pedophilia harms children"
  • He said he "[doesn’t] think that any [women] volunteered to work on Emacs or GCC" when at least 4 major GCC contributors are women including the lead author of its documentation
  • He said of people with Down syndrome, "If you'd like to love and care for a pet that doesn't have normal human mental capacity, don't create a handicapped human being to be your pet. Get a dog or a parrot..."
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lookin4 wrote

Do you have any source for this quotes?

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[deleted] wrote

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ziq wrote

Can /u/BigGeorge get modded on this forum please? My ban finger is itching.

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cumblaster1337 wrote

k, chill your base. I don't want to get banned. I just set up this account. You people are easily triggered.

−5

cumblaster1337 wrote

but in all honesty. If people can't deal with a little bit of trolling, I'd rather not stay in this place. It's unfortunately this site is full of cancerous people who are just raging around instead of creating content and engaging in something fun. peace

−6

ziq wrote (edited )

Because mocking ppl with Down's syndrome is 'creating content' and 'fun'.

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F3nd0 wrote

In case you list those as his negative points, I'd like to elaborate them in his defence.

He said he is "skeptical of the claim that voluntarily [sic] pedophilia harms children"

It seems reasonable to be sceptical of that until proven wrong. He continued¹ by writing that ‘the arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary’, and in his later comment on paedophilia² he writes:

‘There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.

‘Granted, children may not dare say no to an older relative, or may not realize they could say no; in that case, even if they do not overtly object, the relationship may still feel imposed to them. That's not willing participation, it's imposed participation, a different issue.’

Some of his remarks on the matter are questionable, but altogether there is more reason in them than multiple people who have complained about them have cared to see.

He said of people with Down syndrome, "If you'd like to love and care for a pet that doesn't have normal human mental capacity, don't create a handicapped human being to be your pet. Get a dog or a parrot..."

This is preceded by another quote³, which says that ‘There are people who argue for carrying these fetuses to term by citing how moving it is to love and care for them afterwards. Maybe it is, but that amounts to treating a human being as a pet. The first step in loving a human being is to choose to make that being more capable, not less.’

As I see it, he did not call them pets, but drew the comparison to criticise some people for treating them as such. It appears that the quote is no longer online, and it was replaced with a different, clarified message⁴, that reads:

‘According to Wikipedia, Down's syndrome is a combination of many kinds of medical misfortune. Thus, when carrying a fetus that is likely to have Down's syndrome, I think the right course of action for the woman is to terminate the pregnancy.

‘That choice does right by the potential children that would otherwise likely be born with grave medical problems and disabilities. As humans, they are entitled to the capacity that is normal for human beings. I don't advocate making rules about the matter, but I think that doing right by your children includes not intentionally starting them out with less than that.

‘When children with Down's syndrome are born, that's a different situation. They are human beings and I think they deserve the best possible care.’


  1. https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20June%202006%20(Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party)
  2. https://stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#04_January_2013
  3. https://web.archive.org/web/20161112132755/https://stallman.org/archives/2016-sep-dec.html#31_October_2016_(Down's_syndrome)
  4. https://stallman.org/notes/2016-jul-oct.html#31_October_2016_(Down's_syndrome)
−4

ziq wrote

Children are completely unable to consent to sex so how can it be 'voluntary' for them to be raped?

I can't tell if you're a pedo or just a serial debater but stop this shit either way.

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F3nd0 wrote

Children are completely unable to consent to sex so how can it be 'voluntary' for them to be raped?

Legally they are unable to consent (and I suppose there's a good reason for that), but not ‘completely’ unable. Suppose a case with two victims of paedophilia:

  • The first one may feel very uncomfortable about the whole thing, and be coerced into the act using threats and violence.
  • The second one may not be in distress and may even enjoy the act, possibly due to kind approach from the adult's side.

I firmly believe that the first victim would suffer and be left with deep mental (and possibly physical) scars, much more so than the second victim. That is not to say the second victim is mature enough to be sexually active (I leave that decision to people with appropriate knowledge), but it's pretty clear that more harm is done to the first one. In that regard, there is a form of consent, and it's an important factor.

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throwaway wrote (edited )

I can guarantee you that your second victim will come to regret their decision (if you can call it such - children are not capable of making such a decision, and should never be put in a situation in which they have to) deeply.

There is no way that fucking children is alright. Don't defend this sick, twisted view. There is no good way to be a paedophile, they should all be placed against a wall and shot by the dawn of day.

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F3nd0 wrote

I feel like you misunderstood my comment. Nowhere did I say paedophilia was okay; I have simply asserted that it's not a black & white affair, but rather one with different possible shades. (And given that darker is worse, it could be black, several very dark shades of gray & white, for all I know. I make no assertions on that part.)

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throwaway wrote

I got what you're saying, I just don't think you should be apologizing and making light of something as horrible as pedophilia. There's only one good pedophile, and that's the dead one.

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ziq wrote (edited )

Edit: I don't feel like being raddle's attack dog any more.

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GrimWillow wrote

ok seriously, you're so confused about why people are calling you a pedo apoligizer, I'll point out where you went wrong:

The second one may not be in distress and may even enjoy the act, possibly due to kind approach from the adult's side.

possibly due to kind approach from the adult's side.

due to kind approach from the adult's side

kind approach

The part you missed is that there is no kind approach.

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AgitatedStatesOfAmazement wrote (edited )

Older relatives having power isn't the only reason children can't consent.

He also said he thought people not being ok with adults fucking children was a symptom of "clingy parents being afraid to let their children go" or something to that effect.

You don't have to defend every shitty thing someone does just because you agree with their philosophy on software licenses.

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RevolutionaryCatalonia wrote

I don't quite understand how he can be a liberal upholding the FOSS idea? Isn't that contradictory?

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ziq wrote (edited )

He only applies anarchy in one specific area (computing) and considers it useless everywhere else. Most FOSS developers are the same way; some are even fascists. Pirates are the same way, and shoplifters, vegans, permaculturists, they all seem incapable of connecting the dots.

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edmund_the_destroyer wrote

In my experience, most people that experience some kind of political awakening or change experience it on a personal level in one domain first. A small portion expand from there, most others cling to their original beliefs and shoehorn in an exception.

For example, someone with Judeo-Christian beliefs comes to be vegan for ethical reason but ignores the fact that their religious writings are loaded with divinely sanctioned non-vegan meals. I still think using the term piracy for copyright violation is ludicrous, but anyway a so-called pirate rejects copyright laws and the ideas behind them. But the pirate never notices how capitalism and copyright laws are linked. The FOSS developer sees proprietary software and all of the freedoms it removes as an abuse of copyright and doesn't see that copyright itself is the problem. And so forth.

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edmund_the_destroyer wrote (edited )

I could have sworn Raddle had a discussion about this a month or two back, but I can't find it.

I think free-as-in-freedom software is an essential tool for uncensored communication and privacy. And from that, it's a critical tool for anarchists. So I'd say most Raddle'ers have a partial alignment with Stallman and the FSF there.

But otherwise, he's a capitalism advocate. He sees all of the attempts at proprietary software, abuse of copyright laws, patent laws, and digital rights management (DRM) as flaws in the modern forms of capitalism. He has an ideal of a free market in which they are all removed. For me and for most others here, we see those things as inevitable byproducts of capitalism and impossible to remove while preserving capitalism. (That is, if you outlaw those things in a capitalist society, people who could make money by bringing them back will find a way to bring them back.)

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ziq wrote (edited )

It was prob started by one of the shared accounts. A tankie logged into all of them and deleted pages of posts and comments right after someone noticed they were all being used to mass downvote anti-tank stuff.

There was one post about how Leninists are caps that I wish I had saved.

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ziq wrote

Frustrating liberal that thinks capitalism rocks.

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lookin4 wrote

Richard

Richard is male, white, has a degree, worked at M.I.T., travel a lot and seems healthy, so I would claim that he combines many privileges.

I am pretty sure he gets a salary as he is in position of President since inception of the Foundation. But as far as I know there is no statement where he's self-critical and asks himself if it's really needed to shrink donations by individuals or rely on corporate charity/sponsorship (whatever the money's source is) just to be certain oneself is not going to starve and is able to live a good life. Remaining in position for ever and making no public attempts to dismantle the formal and informal hierarchy coming with the figure and person he is today is very questionable.

His ideas, values and words are widely spread and in a niche also respected which I could imagine may be a feeling that is likely and easily to get used to. But it compromises the character ("My name shall be known beyond my death").

Regarding his private life however, not much is known and he has no obligation to talk about it, but as long as I do not know much about his lifestyle (without free software references or metaphors) I remain skeptic if Richard's willingly or unwillingly reproducing some kinds of oppression.

FSF

The FSF is a more or less ordinary NGO whose acting is usual, being proved "successful" in capitalism. At least for me a liberal world view is strongly associated with the term Non-governmental organization.

If it's not historically inaccurate I like the Foundations early belonging and promoting of Copyleft GPL, FDL etc. - BSD licenses smells like anarcho-capitalism. So as a platform or umbrella organization for more protection and privacy of the activists I like the Foundation (imagining the nightmare I must expose my personal information on every license-copy that is delivered with "my" software).

Besides this everything they do is a work of human beings, e.g. the campaigns, hosting, work of coding liberated forks of Unix software so no credit for the brand organizational skeleton, but the involved people!

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edmund_the_destroyer wrote

BSD licenses smells like anarcho-capitalism

A debate over that license and others like it - Apache, MIT, etc... - drives me crazy, because advocates of them say, "It's more free than the GPL! If I distribute BSD license code, the recipient can do anything they want with it. If I distribute GPL code, the recipient has to redistribute under the same license! BSD = more free!" But of course, that ignores the second, third, fourth, fifth, and nth level recipient. The second through nth level recipients of BSD license code are guaranteed zero rights. The second through nth level recipients of GPL license code are guaranteed the same rights as the original author and first recipient.

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throwaway wrote

as he is in position of President

I could have sworn that I read a post somewhere about a month ago announcing Richard stepping down as president of the FSF, but i may be confusing things as I can't find anything on it...

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5_0_4_1_5_8_7 wrote

He's never installed the very software he espouse's to uphold.

.... and this issue is re-posted regularly.

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edmund_the_destroyer wrote

He uses a free operating system on his computer, though. So even if someone else installed that for him, it's fine.

I am critical of some of the things he's said and done, but this particular thing doesn't bother me.

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throwaway wrote

That's taken out of context. Stallman isn't as online as everyone thinks, quite the opposite. For a long time he hasn't owned a computer at all. He's got the ethics down, but the technical part isn't his strong suit - and that, in my opinion, is completely fine.

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ziq wrote

If he had the ethics down he wouldn't praise free market capitalism and scoff at anarchy.

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throwaway wrote

I was talking about his ethics in relation to software, sorry if that wasn't clear.

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lookin4 wrote

scoff at anarchy

Do you have any source for this?

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ziq wrote (edited )

Me. I emailed him and asked him directly.

That article advocates going back to nature, and assumes anarchism would be great because it was great before. I see no reason to share that faith.

See stallman.org/articles/why-we-need-a-state.html.

However, I distrust the Venus project's claim that advanced technology and AI will eliminate the problem of how to organize society. Advanced technology can be good; AI might be good depending on details. But that problem remains.

I don't have time to discuss it further.

Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation

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martasultan wrote

I somewhat appreciate his responses; he's one of the few liberals you can actually hold a discussion with, based on my experiences w/ him.

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throwaway wrote

We need a state people for:

providing food, clothing and shelter to the poor
providing medical care and education to all
building roads, train lines, water pipes and sewers
funding research, including testing of pharmaceuticals
protecting public health
defending the nation
prosecuting perpetrators of crimes whether committed on a street or in a bank office
regulating businesses so they don't harm our health or our environment
ensuring workers can form unions; preventing exploitative working conditions
making sure employers don't steal employees' wages
inspecting foods for safety
Making sure products contain what they claim to contain and the stated amount, too
banning digital products that do DRM or censorship
reducing CO2 emissions to save us from global heating disaster
ensure that chemical products are not toxic
and protecting human rights for all
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AgitatedStatesOfAmazement wrote

He not only uses that software but also wrote a considerable portion of it. Criticizing him for not having installed it personally is like calling an anarchist who's also a food not bombs organizer a hypocrite because they own a cell phone.

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ziq wrote

Is that real? Yikes. No praxis there.

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