[ariabuckles]

It wasn't just this incident. RMS alienated so many women from open source and free software over the last 30 years, and we've lost all of those potential contributions. He's been getting breaks for 30 years.

That he has also done some very good things isn't a good argument for continuing to tolerate his harmful behaviour after he's been asked to fix it for literally decades, and hasn't.

[4bpp]

Do you believe he has alienated more women from FOSS than he has inspired people to contribute to it? Considering the frankly extremely low percentage of female contributors, it seems that he would have had to personally (considering that all of the creepy behaviours listed seem to be limited to his meatspace circles) alienate multiple women for every one woman who did wind up working on in free software, which seems unrealistic simply on the basis that most people in FOSS never met Stallman. (On the same basis, I would actually be inclined to believe that he has probably inspired more women specifically than he has alienated, too.)

Note also that all of the anecdotes of actual bad behaviour that seem to come up are from about two decades ago, and we seem to be supposed to conclude that the pattern never stopped on the basis of that and a pathologically misquoted and misrepresented email he sent on the Epstein/Minsky case. Considering that the real email is at most slightly tone-deaf, the most likely model of reality to me seems to be that he has fixed that behaviour well over a decade ago, but a number of activists had resolved to never let it go until they found some way to completely destroy any status and reputation he has.

[ariabuckles]

That's an interesting way of framing it—I expect that no, he hasn't directly dissuaded more people than he's encouraged.

But I expect that the second- and third-degree network effects have. MIT has had a huge influence on open source software. Keeping the number of women who contribute to FOSS lower has a snowball effect of discouraging other women from contributing—there are fewer leaders to look up to, and day-to-day misogyny in FOSS spaces goes unchecked more often.

As another commenter pointed out, I also don't think net impact is the bar. But besides that, it's very hard to measure, so I prefer to focus on having positive impacts and limiting/fixing negative impacts. I think the things he said on the CSAIL mailing list continue to contribute to a negative environment for women at MIT.

[4bpp]

> But I expect that the second- and third-degree network effects have. MIT has had a huge influence on open source software. Keeping the number of women who contribute to FOSS lower has a snowball effect of discouraging other women from contributing—there are fewer leaders to look up to, and day-to-day misogyny in FOSS spaces goes unchecked more often.

Surely second- and third-degree network effects occur on the encouragement side of the equation, too. Why would we expect any putative discouragement of women by Stallman to travel further in the social graph than his encouragement of both men and women?

> I think the things he said on the CSAIL mailing list continue to contribute to a negative environment for women at MIT.

Which things specifically, and in what way?

[ariabuckles]

I think the negative effects spread further because they skew the field more. I think women are more likely to avoid FOSS because there are few women, even without knowing who RMS is, than men are likely to go into FOSS because of RMS or someone who was inspired by RMS. That's an assumption on my part, but I think making tech more equitable for all people is a worthy goal in itself, even if that doesn't increase the total number of contributors.

> Which things specifically, and in what way?

Saying that we shouldn't call sexual assault "sexual assault", and implying that there's any way a rich, famous, 73-year-old man can "have sex with" (rape) a 17-year-old girl, whom he has extraordinary power over, and who, in in this case was his friend's trafficking victim.

The idea that Minsky's "honour" is in any way more important than harm in what happened to Giuffre perpetuates rape culture. It perpetuates the idea that women are worth less than men, and that it's okay for famous men in CS to rape girls. That emboldens other rapists and makes CS very unwelcoming for rape victims.

Minsky should have known. Implying there's any way what he did was okay creates an unwelcoming environment for women, especially young women and girls at MIT.

(Background and links from https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21... )

[4bpp]

> implying that there's any way a rich, famous, 73-year-old man can "have sex with" (rape) a 17-year-old girl, whom he has extraordinary power over, and who, in in this case was his friend's trafficking victim.

...what are the scare quotes for? Is "have sex with" not a definitional superset of "rape"? As far as I can tell, Stallman does not assert that Giuffre was not raped, only that Minsky would probably not have known. (As far as he knew, she could equally have been one year older and legally, voluntarily engaged in prostitution...?) You could argue that (and I think that if Minsky did indeed have sex with her, you would have a very good case) that Minsky was extremely naive and/or irresponsible to not suspect anything amiss in the setting, but sexual (or any other) assault, in the view of many people, requires intent to harm someone against their will.

Here, it seems that the intent, and hence the primary guilt for the assault, most likely was squarely with Epstein and his associates: if a gun salesman takes you to his shooting range and tells you to fire a weapon at a target that he actually secretly tied a person to the back of, and you shoot that person dead, you are not on the hook for murder even if you should really have known that something is off and recall hearing muffled screams from somewhere at one point in hindsight.

> The idea that Minsky's "honour" is in any way more important than harm in what happened to Giuffre

Where did Stallman claim that?

[tzs]

> Minsky should have known. Implying there's any way what he did was okay creates an unwelcoming environment for women, especially young women and girls at MIT

How would Minsky have known? It was 2001 or early 2002, before Epstein's trafficking came to light. From Minsky's point of view, a girl who worked at Epstein's retreat as a masseuse and was above the age of consent [1] offered to have sex with him. (Which, according to Gregory Benford, who was there, Minsky declined).

[1] 16. It wasn't until later that the US Virgin Islands raised it to the current 18.

[shagie]

https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jef...

> In 2012, the Jeffrey Epstein Foundation issued a press release touting another conference organized by Minsky on the island in December 2011.

The press release is at https://www.pr.com/press-release/383199

[dspillett]

> Do you believe he has alienated more women from FOSS than he has inspired people to contribute to it?

Almost certainly not, but at this stage it is not unlikely that he'll put off more than he'll encourage going forward. So by the same "net effect" argument you make for accepting his behaviour up to a point in the recent past, he should go. Live by the sword, get asked to resign because of the sword.

> Considering the frankly extremely low percentage of female contributors

That low number of female contributors is at least in part due to the impression people have of working in these areas. Allowing him to continue to alienate people works against efforts to rectify that impression (and where it is true rather than just an impression, work to fix the behaviours that are causing the problem).

> all of the anecdotes of actual bad behaviour that seem to come up are from about two decades ago

Perhaps most, but not all. I've definitely seen some more recent claims, and they were mentioned before this particular episode. They weren't as egregious as the earlier behaviour so he was at least controlling/curbing/changing the creepy behaviour for which I suppose there should be some credit, and there is definitely some curious timing wrt MIT and the Epstein contributions so there is presumably a bit of "throw him under the bus as a distraction" going on, meaning this is a case with significant grey areas, but I think painting him as an entirely innocent victim is a step too far.

Let's be fair handed: if we wouldn't accept it from a politician or other celebrity, we shouldn't accept it from someone whose other ideas we agree with either.

[mav3rick]

You are okay forgiving people as long as their "net impact" is positive? Is it okay for someone to murder a person if they saved more than one life before ?

[4bpp]

In general, yes. Murder is a very peculiar case that is hardly suitable to be the benchmark for building our intuitions about trading off harm in general: human lives are not fungible, murder is not reversible, the victims do not generally get a meaningful way of influencing how the murder impacts them etc., all properties that do not apply in the case of being put off a pursuit like FOSS. (Even then, we're sometimes okay accepting murder to save more lives: e.g. the Allies' actions in WWII are considered a heroic even with nearly a century of historical distance) Arguably, the progressive argument for {affirmative action, inverted burden of proof in Title IX, ...} also amounts to "accept some harm if the net impact is positive"; few people claim that these policies will not result in some people being rejected from positions they deserve or punished for crimes they did not commit.

Some countries are more explicit about this and actually constitutionally single out matters of life and death as being prohibited from being traded off against each other (e.g. Germany), i.e. the state is not allowed to play in trolley problems. The corollary is that the state, and most everyone, finds it okay to trade off other harms: you can for instance choose to build an airport that will drive down the value of some people's homes and expose them to considerable noise in order to give convenience and good business to a large number of people. I think discouraging some women from participating in FOSS is much closer in quality of harm to "your home is now worth half as much and you have to put up with the noise of planes flying overhead everyday" than "you die a painful and untimely death".

[mav3rick]

Also notice how it is almost always okay for "women" to be discouraged and counted as collateral damage. The fact that you do that tells me a lot.

[DarkWiiPlayer]

> Also notice how it is almost always okay for "women" to be discouraged and counted as collateral damage.

Quote one person in this thread who said that it wouldn't be ok if it affected men instead. Or just one person implying that.

You're assuming a lot here. If anything, I think it's likely less people would care if a bunch of men were alienated, since there's already so many of them in the field in the first palce.

[lostjohnny]

> "women" to be discouraged and counted as collateral damage

this never happened though.

According not to me, but to Thomas Lord (if you don't know who he is, go and check)

> One remarkable thing about the FSF at that time, when we worked out of dinky spare offices on the campus of MIT, was the degree of participation by women. In the tiny society that was then the FSF, women were more prominent than I had seen in Silicon Valley, or acadamia prior.

https://archive.is/7qepC

And it says a lot about the amount of fabrication going around.

[mav3rick]

Wow I've seen everything on HN to protect RMS. The Allies action was to counter gratuitous aggression and persecution of large swathes of people. Are you telling me RMS has had the same experiences in his life to warrant his egregious behavior ?

[4bpp]

I don't think my leap from murder to war was greater than your leap from some gauche remarks during a talk in the '90s and a handful of emails lawyering about word choice that might have put some people off working in the speaker's discipline to murder. Other than that, what exactly is your point? At no point did I imply that rms's life history should be compared to the Allied intervention in Europe; I merely brought it up as as an example that proves there is no such thing as a universally accepted rule against trading off murders and people saved.

("Wow, I've seen everything on HN to attack RMS. (...)")

[mav3rick]

If any other person did this, especially someone from FAANG etc. you'll be out with your pitchforks. The double standard is so real.

[pjmlp]

That is what armies happen to do all the time.

[flatb]

Can you explain, in general, how armies and war are ethically relevant to Richard Stallman threatening coworkers to kill himself if they don't go on dates with him, or asking them to lay down topless on a mattress in his office?

[pjmlp]

I was answering to "Is it okay for someone to murder a person if they saved more than one life before ?".

Armies don't have much issue with that ethical question.

[donatj]

Yes? lol. Why does everything always come to the Trolley Problem?

I think anyone who was ever in favor of any war would agree that sometimes a death is justified when it saves many more?

[JamisonM]

It is not the Trolley Problem, you seem to misunderstand the issue. There is no binary choice here, it is not comparable.

[4bpp]

There is one: (1) let Stallman keep his position and inspire/encourage one set of people, while discouraging/putting off another; (2) remove Stallman from his position, foregoing both the inspiration/encouragement and the discouragement/putting off.

[donatj]

> Is it okay for someone to murder a person if they saved more than one life before ?

That is a yes or no question. That is literally a binary choice. Yes or no - is murder OK if that murder saves more than one person.

That is literally the Trolley Problem.

[bitofhope]

That wasn't really the question, though. There was nothing there about saving lives _by_ murdering someone. It's more like "is it ok do do bad things if you've built up good karma beforehand by doing more good stuff".

[JamisonM]

It is not the Trolley Problem because the literal question is "Is it okay for someone to murder a person if they saved more than one life before?" and that is not the Trolley Problem, that is the "letting someone off the hook for present and future misdeeds based on past good acts."

It just isn't the same thing.

[knolax]

That's not a good analogy because murder are both one time actions. Punishing a murderer who saved before doesn't prevent more people from being saved. A more apt example would be granting clemency to a highly talented surgeon specialized in an operation nobody else can do.

[lostjohnny]

> Is it okay for someone to murder a person if they saved more than one life before ?

Murder is a crime.

Where is the crime here?

It is ok to let go a "fuck you" if that persons did good before.

[flatb]

> Where is the crime here? The analogy is between a good thing not cancelling out a bad thing. The police are not involved. There isn't a crime. He has been pressured for making people very uncomfortable in pursuit of his sexual interests, which is a perfectly good reason to reprieve someone.

He has been accused, by several independent parties, of, among other things:

-Asking female coworkers to lay down topless on a mattress in his office.

-Threatening a colleague to kill himself if he/she didn't go on a date with him.

-Posting up signs in his workplace along the lines of "Knight for Justice (Also: Hot Ladies)".

[lostjohnny]

> He has been accused, by several independent parties, of, among other things:

Who, exactly?

> -Asking female coworkers to lay down topless on a mattress in his office. > -Threatening a colleague to kill himself if he/she didn't go on a date with him.

Sooooo, your entire analysis is based on legends circulating since the 90s about a weird man who was even told to be scared by plants?

For reference, Thomas Lord, creator of GNU arch (think about Git before Git), who worked for FSF for a long time said

    One remarkable thing about the FSF at that time, when we worked out of dinky spare offices on the campus of MIT, was the degree of participation by women. In the tiny society that was then the FSF, women were more prominent than I had seen in Silicon Valley, or acadamia prior. 


    p.s.: In the closet-sized "office" Bushnell, McGrath, and I shared for a time we did have some spider plants as part of a running silly joke. They did not actually scare RMS away **OF COURSE** and he usually had helpful criticism and advice of our efforts, from my point of view. 

> -Posting up signs in his workplace along the lines of "Knight for Justice (Also: Hot Ladies)".

Can you tell an inside joke when you see one?

p.s. all of us have being young and done some innocent stupid shit, the kinds young people do, like having stupid signs on the door. It doesn't make any of us a criminal.

[TulliusCicero]

> Do you believe he has alienated more women from FOSS than he has inspired people to contribute to it?

If I save a hundred lives as a doctor and then murder one person, does the calculus go in my favor?

[ralfd]

> If I save a hundred lives as a doctor and then murder one person, does the calculus go in my favor?

It can be. A sharpshooter killing a terrorist and saving 100 lives would be lauded as a hero.

[flatb]

Do you mean to say that your analogy is relevant to the claims against RMS being partly or completely dismissed as a "necessary evil" comparable to shooting a person who's on a killing spree, when weighted against his contributions?

I'm just asking. I got that feeling reading your comment. I get that feeling reading a lot of comments here. I could be wrong.

As a reminder, he has been accused, by several independent parties, of, among other things:

-Asking female coworkers to lay down topless on a mattress in his office.

-Threatening a colleague to kill himself if he/she didn't go on a date with him.

-Posting up signs in his workplace along the lines of "Knight for Justice (Also: Hot Ladies)".

[TulliusCicero]

Don't be obtuse, I said murder, not kill. Of course there are some justified instances of killing.

Again, if you save a bunch of lives, but then murder someone in cold blood, does the fact that you saved way more than you murdered mean that society ought to look past the murder? After all, your net contribution is very positive!

[shagie]

Except now he’s being investigated for kicking a handcuffed prisoner over a cliff.

[GoblinSlayer]

Mortality from smallpox vaccine was small, but not zero.

[TulliusCicero]

Yes, but that's an inadvertent side effect of an otherwise-beneficial treatment. 'Murder' implies explicit intent.

[zaphirplane]

That just can’t be true, a lot , I’ll go as far as say absolute majority of paid and hobby OSS developers have no interaction with RMS

Even projects under the gnu.org umbrella probably don’t interact that much with RMS, let alone have discouraging interaction.

I have no dog in this fight but have a bias for factual discussions

[megous]

Pretty much. I think I've seen one of his speeches this year for the first time, yet his ideas hugely changed my life forever, since I understood them. My exposure was just reading some texts onf fsf website in 2003, and jumping into learning GNU/Linux back then.

[knocte]

I agree with you about all the past bad behaviour, but the e-mail about Minsky was a bad choice to be the "last straw". It was an email calling for accusation-inflation prevention, which the media portrayed as completely the opposite (and this way of manipulation information from the media should be criminal, in my opinion).

[hdfbdtbcdg]

If we made deliberate or negligent defamation a criminal offence it might restore some sanity to society.

[DarkWiiPlayer]

That's similar to how "free speech"* works in Germany, and you have people like crowder saying in public that "Germany has no free speech".

I agree in principle, but I think there's lots of good arguments against it as well.

More importantly than the question of whether it's legal, I'm amazed that people can still see themselves as "the good ones" after all the things they do to their fellow humans.

* In German, we use the word "Meinungsfreiheit", which literally translates to "Freedom of Opinion", not "Free Speech", so yes, technically speaking, we don't have free speech; only the right to express our opinions.

[hdfbdtbcdg]

Sounds non-insane. Opinions should indeedbe free. Facts should be free. Lies that harm should not be OK.

A nice side effect of criminalizing defamation would be that the enforcment would be up to the state. When it is a civil affair only rich people can defend themselves.

[sprafa]

Didn’t know about this. Where can I read more about his behaviour around women?

[ariabuckles]

https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman and https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix... are good starting points; I also saw threads about it from women MIT alumns on twitter.

[norcalli]

It would be horrifying to have meticulously documented notes on every thing you ever said that may or may not be true, and may or may not have been a joke. If his career had been a comedian and not a FOSS advocate, then would he still be crucified for saying the same things or would he simply be an awful comedian?

I would be dollars to doughnuts that the author of that site and the editors of that "wiki" have made or thought worse things at some point, but because they have not reached a certain level of celebrity, there's no dossier on them. It's truly ridiculous to me the amount of effort spent on trying to claw others down.

I accept that inequality exists and perhaps RMS has some awful opinions, but if that's the case then just ignore him.

If there are people who are choosing to make it incumbent upon themselves to take down these "problematic" individuals, then it must be because they think that all of the systems that have allowed a person to continue to exist despite those opinions must be unreliable in adequately judging them. If that's the case, then wouldn't it be more practical to fix the endemic problem rather than destroy a single person? I'm guessing that the latter is just easier to do and more profitable as well. You gain "credibility" by attacking someone else, so it's difficult to believe that they are doing it for altruistic means.

All in all, I'm pretty sick of this nonsense. A world where everyone is constantly being watched by eachother and reported on is already too authoritarian for me to want to continue living in, not to mention the already authoritarian governments doing the same.

[ariabuckles]

Honestly, I think we let a lot of mean-spiritedness pass as "comedy", and I think sexist comedy causes a lot of real-world problems.

> I would be dollars to doughnuts that the author of that site and the editors of that "wiki" have made or thought worse things at some point, but because they have not reached a certain level of celebrity, there's no dossier on them. It's truly ridiculous to me the amount of effort spent on trying to claw others down.

"With great power, comes great responsibility." When operating in contexts where you have a lot of power, one has to be more careful with their words and actions. If he had voiced that opinion to a friend of his, no one would have complained. But voicing his opinion minimizing rape on a university mailing list has direct negative effects for a lot of people.

Also, some people do listen, apologize, and put in the work to learn.

> I accept that inequality exists and perhaps RMS has some awful opinions, but if that's the case then just ignore him.

The problem is that other people don't just ignore him. By ignoring his harmful behaviour, we let his negative impact spread further as others repeat his misogynistic ideas.

> A world where everyone is constantly being watched by eachother and reported on is already too authoritarian for me to want to continue living in

I'm sorry and hope you find a way to continue living in this world. And I agree strongly about authoritarian governments.

I don't really think calling out a post on a large mailing list counts as "everyone is constantly being watched by each other" though.

[craigsmansion]

> on a university mailing list has direct negative effects for a lot of people.

That very mailing list was about to arbitrarily accuse a dead innocent man of a crime to help provide cover for actual criminals still walking the halls at MIT.

This charade around Stallman is an injustice against Epstein's victims, the decent people at MIT, and Minsky.

[concordDance]

> his misogynistic ideas.

I can find nothing that meets this criteria in the above links. Do you have an unusual definition of "misogynistic", were you being rhetorical or do you have another source?

[craigsmansion]

Those are terrible starting points.

For the actual background on the current chain of events at MIT:

https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/index.html

For earlier allegations, take the original sources including quotes and references:

https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html

(note: there are many more archives. This also gives you an idea of the effort it must have taken to find those few "damning" posts, and to skew those out of context)

[donatj]

> In 1993, he asked for birth announcements to be banned from emacs mailing list, unless they are announcements for seahorses, because then it would be the male that gives birth and therefore interesting.

I feel like that is pretty sensationalized. The argument being made there is that regular birth is a common thing, and should be left off the list unless it is something out of the ordinary.

[lostjohnny]

Selam G. builds weapons for US Department of Defense...

That's not really feminist, isn't it?

> • Co-Principle Investigator for a U.S. Department of Defense SBIR Phase II research contract, prototyping autonomous ground vehicle (AGV) with collection system.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/selam-gano-089895ba

[cat_plus_plus]

What kind of women and does anyone else find it sexist to assume that men will always be the offenders and women the offendees? Programming involves deconstructing complex problems into basic steps while ignoring full real world nuances in order to derive a reasonable abstraction. Like... deconstructing allegations against Minsky into basic aspect (instructed to have sex vs actually had sex, aware of lack of consent or not, aware of age or not, 16 can consent in jurisdiction X year Y or not). Successful programmers trend not super socially aware and often on autism spectrum. So maybe women genuinely interesting in programming would be like Ada Lovelace, a compulsive gambler with messy love life who dreamed of building a computer to beat poker? How long would she last in 2019 MIT?

And if you get alienated from a career path because of one bad professor, go and find something else that you want so badly that you are willing to tough it out. Otherwise you will always blame your professional success limits on people not supporting you enough, or cracking an off-color joke or two or microaggressions. Do you honestly expect to never have to deal with a problem boss/coworkers/customer in a super-competitive private sector job? Don't tell me nurses and schoolteachers never have to deal with someone like RMS or worse. And sure, some degree of bad behavior should have proportional consequences, but do we hear about how women get alienated from these professions en masse?

[lostjohnny]

> RMS alienated so many women

[citation needed]

[luckydata]

Agreed, the message is worth spreading and fighting for, the man can go, he's too toxic.