[Mz]

Just because you are paranoid, doesn't mean they are out to get you. I wouldn't use the word hero, but he did found the Free Software stuff while being intermittently homeless. He didn't sleep on the street. He slept in a hacker space where he worked. He finally got to exercise his right to vote when an article in a national publication validated that he was homeless and sleeping at his job. This convinced the Registrar's office to issue him his voter registration card.

So he certainly made significant sacrifices for what he believed in. I would not call him a hero because I think that cheapens the word. We typically apply that word to people who put themselves in harm's way for the greater good and my father, my ex, my ex's father and grandfather all served in the military. So I would not personally write a piece describing him with that term

But he did make personal sacrifices for a cause he believed in and to which he devoted himself while being crapped on and disrespected and managed to make a real difference in the world in spite of how much hostility he was met with. Props to him.

[hga]

but he did found the Free Software stuff while being intermittently homeless.

Do you mean the FSF, or the preceding GNU project? Because we were roommates when he founded the latter, and he most assuredly wan't homeless then. His willingness to be "homeless" later might in part be an artifact of a couple of kids playing with matches and kerosene burning that building down (in a not so good part of Cambridge, MA) and his losing his worldly possessions. Not that he was, to my observation, very materialistic.

As for "being crapped on and disrespected", well, if you've spent enough time with him, you'll understand why that was a common reaction, he's ... a difficult person, and is proud of ignoring a number of social norms, including ones that tend to keep a person and their friends alive.

But a lot of it after the GNU/FSF started was due to his extreme abrasiveness towards many people who didn't entirely buy into his mission. We were, for example, called "Software Hoarders" (this, while working for for Unipress, the legal licensee of the version of Emacs he stole to start Gnu Emacs, and we ran on a "gated open source" model, if the licencor of a piece of software agreed, you got a copy of the source, you just couldn't distribute it, but you could share patches with other customers). His regular imputation of ill will when there is none (well, to start with), his gross distortions of the historical record (especially as seen in Levy's Hackers, but also see GNU/Linux) ... they lose him a lot of support he might otherwise get.

[Mz]

Do you mean the FSF, or the preceding GNU project?

I read his biography, but I don't follow his work or life very closely. So I used a vague, hand-wavy term because I have a vague, hand-wavy understanding of it all. Therefore, I cannot clarify.

As for "being crapped on and disrespected", well, if you've spent enough time with him, you'll understand why that was a common reaction, he's ... a difficult person

Yeah, I get called "difficult" all the time. I have a life threatening, incurable medical condition. I am pretty laid back, inclined to go along, to get along, and a conflict avoider. But, unfortunately, in order to be socially acceptable, I would need to politely die a slow gruesome death. Failing to go along with that plan for me has caused me shitloads of social problems.

Thus, I am inclined to be sympathetic to rms. Many of his predictions have come true. There is no telling how much more problematic things would be had he not stuck to his guns.

"Difficult" sometimes just means you aren't going along with social norms. If you firmly believe those social norms to be a very serious problem, it is foolish to go along with them. In my experience, no matter how politely you decline to go along with them, and no matter how compelling your reasons for politely declining, simply declining will get you a fuck ton of backwash.

[hga]

"... difficult" was my trying to be minimally polite, I'm quite sure from even our short interactions over the last few days that there's at least an order of magnitude difference. E.g. his baseline does not include "pretty laid back, inclined to go along, to get along".

More like "Do whatever I feel like, whenever I feel like, without regards for consequences, including lethal harm to bystanders." The latter lost him more than a few friends/acquaintances.

Which biography would you be referring to?

[Mz]

I don't recall which biography off the top of my head. I kind of am under the weather this weekend, so the brain is not in gear.

Sorry, I don't mean to dismiss your observation that he is difficult. But I see it as more complicated than "he is just difficult."

My oldest son is genuinely difficult, but I get along well with him. One of the reasons I get along well with him is that I recognize that his IQ is higher than mine, so unless I have a specific objection, I have a tendency to go along with what he wants because it tends to get better results, even though my default personality is risk averse and his default personality is risk seeking, so he really makes me crazy at times. I have long experience with dealing with difficult people and doing so in a manner that makes them easier to deal with rather than making them more intractable. Most of the time, difficult people are dealt with in a manner that causes them to dig in their heels.

So while I don't doubt that Stallman can be genuinely difficult, I also don't doubt that the degree to which he has been given crap while being repeatedly proven correct most likely only makes his bad habits intractable when they didn't necessarily have to become so. My son gets real respect from me on things where he is more knowledgeable than I am and he gives me real respect and defers to me on subjects where my knowledge is superior. If I just crapped on him all the time, there would not be a two way street of respect.

It gets really difficult to put a stop to a negative social dynamic once it gets going. At this point, it is probably impossible to break rms of his bad habits because, from his perspective, it probably never seems to matter if he is right, if he is polite, etc. It does bad things to someone's personality to be consistently right and get no respect because people do not like what you are saying. I have had a taste of that, so I have sympathy for his side.

I'm sorry that probably makes no sense to you.

[hga]

Part of the problem is that RMS is an all or nothing proposition. Look at some of the major things he rails at, like closed source and DRM. He's got lots of company (and it's near universal when it comes to DRM), but if you don't buy into his "copyleft is more important than software quality or uptake in the real world" approach, you're not just wrong, you're evil. GCC, one of the two biggest crown jewels of the GNU project, is in dire straits and being replaced by the non-copyleft LLVM, not so much because of the different licenses, but because of his totally inflexible ideological stewardship that is not allowing GCC to do some things that are now expected of compilers but that would make it easier for Software Horders to use GCC in ways anathema to him. (As a steward of software development projects, he's really, really, REALLY bad, large parts of which are due to those "bad habits" discussed below.)

Your eldest son may be a risk taker, but does that go so far as (truly futilely) hitting on a gangster's moll while eating with a group of innocents who didn't sign up for that level of danger when they went for a normally routine run to the favorite late night Cantonese restaurant?

As for his "intractable" "bad habits", they were set in stone long before GNU/FSF, and as for respect ... hmmm, I don't know, he's weird about that. But not very flexible (I'm not the best person judge all that, seeing as how you grant me a degree of respect or else, and he did that).

[Mz]

Stallman sounds really socially clueless. My son doesn't hit on gangster's molls, in part because he identifies as asexual so he doesn't hit on anyone. He was born really socially deficient and still gets reactions like people would like to strip search him for using his debit card to pay for pizza in the presence of his mother.

My son probably qualifies as ASD, though he has no formal diagnosis.

I am sure I wouldn't want to be within 30 feet of Stallman. I did not watch the video of him eating something off his foot, but I have a compromised immune system. For me, cleanliness is extremely important and I will end relationships over people being unable to abide by my (necessary) standards of cleanliness.

There is probably little point in me trying to convince you of my view of how social dynamics work. Perhaps we should leave this for now.

:-)

[vacri]

> We typically apply that word to people who put themselves in harm's way for the greater good and my father, my ex, my ex's father and grandfather all served in the military.

Weirdly, the US has become a place where anyone joining the military is now a 'hero' (and military opponents are never described so graciously). It used to be that you had to show uncommon valour in the military to be called a hero; now it's just signing up that gets you the appellation.

[kordless]

> I would not call him a hero because I think that cheapens the word.

This is a blaming statement and is judgemental. The point here is that someone else thinks he's a hero. Heroism implies bravery, which is an emotion. You don't get to speak for other's feelings or emotional responses (like mine) in that regard just because he was homeless and your relatives fought in a war. Those arguments are biases and ad hominem in nature. I would note that you will be unable to present an equivalent valid logical argument without the introduction of biases. The biases are the 'tell' for the misapplied logic.

Heros don't need to be well spoken, socially normal or face danger. All they need is to display the characteristics of a hero, which includes someone who, from a position of weakness, displays courage. This describes RMS perfectly given the guy has stood by what he believed (courage) while being homeless (a position of weakness).

[Mz]

I am currently homeless while pursuing something I believe in. He has nothing but my deepest respects and it was meaningful to me to read his bio while on the street myself.

I didn't say other people were wrong to call him a hero. I said I would be unlikely to use the word and explained why. I think you have misread and mischaracterized my remark.

[throwaway_exer]

Choosing to sleep at school or work is not the same as being homeless. As far as I know, rms wanted to pursue his own interests, so slept wherever he was allowed, rather than live a more traditional lifestyle involving paid work and board.

And if rms is not a hero, then who is?

[Mz]

His bio describes him as, according to his own words, finding himself between apartments periodically and thus sleeping in the hacker space. Technically, that makes him homeless, even though not literally out on the street. It is possible to be homeless without being out on the street. (I have had a college class on the subject, so I am aware of official definitions in use.) (Edit: Also, on one occasion, his apartment burned down, leaving him without a home. I think that surely qualifies as homeless.)

I already stated what makes a hero in my mind. My father fought in two wars. He got a purple heart. I am currently homeless, and literally out on the street. So I am experiencing things far harder than what rms endured. Hardship and heroism are not the same thing.

That's just my opinion. If you see him as a hero, you are entitled to your opinion. Having known people who did put themselves in harm's way and paid a real high price for it, I can't say that sleeping in a hacker space rates the same as what it takes to get a purple heart.

Anyway, I am not planning to argue this further. I already responded to a different reply making much the same point you made. So I am not sure why you are repeating what was basically already said to me.