[Nursie]

> You don't need to defend the views (some of which have already been retracted), but you have to accept Stallman as flawed human being.

This (the holding on to his views of 15 years ago, which he has since come to understand are wrong) is a major issue in the modern world IMHO.

That's not to defend Stallman's more recent gaffes, or even those older ones. But it raises a question - we know people can learn, grow and change. At what point does society start to accept that something said online in the past is no longer representative of the living person?

Because if it's "never", we appear to be gearing up for a future where politicians can only be people who have never set a single rhetorical foot wrong, and have been on-message since the day they came of age. And that scares me because such people are probably psychopaths or puritans.

[kodah]

> But it raises a question - we know people can learn, grow and change

I think we are starting to learn this. I believe this at my core because I've observed myself and others, but when I feel some type of way it's not always the first idea in my mind.

[ryandrake]

I hope I never become famous, because someone will surely trawl through my 25 year old USENET posts and probably find something to hang me with. Probably something that was benign and harmless back in the 90’s but now offensive.

I wonder what future discussion-archaeologists will find 25 years from now in our HN posts that by 2046 becomes offensive!