Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by BugsJustFindMe 1895 days ago
> Is this about Thomas Bushnell? Because I feel this is about Thomas Bushnell

It doesn't have to be. I've known over a dozen people working at the FSF over the years, and they _all_ had the same stories about trying to avoid RMS as much as physically possible because of his behavior and how he treated people. At some point we have to stop looking for excuses and start listening to the people who are actually there.

> First it was the Epstein connection

Correction: _Last_ it was the Epstein connection, a straw on a pile of many straws.

1 comments

> start listening to the people who are actually there.

I'd love to, if only these people who are so aggrieved would properly write down their experiences instead of "I didn't like him anyway" after-the-fact tweets.

> Correction: _Last_ it was the Epstein connection, a straw on a pile of many straws.

Yes, quite enough to build a strawperson as an effigy, and now you're doing it, because there was no Epstein connection. In all of MIT, the only person you can trust not to have any sort of connection to Epstein would be rms, but yeah, let's blame him and the dead guy, and take it from there.

> and now you're doing it, because there was no Epstein connection.

If you prefer the phrases "defense of Minsky in his 70s having sex with a minor on a private island where Minksy then later hosted another conference _after_ Epstein's public conviction for sex trafficking and being designated a level three sex offender" or perhaps "refusal to recognize sex with minors as rape" we can use one of those instead. I don't mind. Because Stallman _did_ say he believed that Minsky had sex with a 17 year old on a billionaire's small private island and saw nothing wrong with it, and Minsky _did_ host a conference on Epstein's island after Epstein's crimes became public.

> I'd love to, if only these people who are so aggrieved would...

I think it's weird for you to expect everyone to blog about their daily negative experiences instead of venting to their friends and then trying to forget.

The two sides here are people who work at or with the FSF (or who have close friends who work at or with the FSF) and people whose only exposure is shit blogs that come up on google. And the people who work at or with the FSF are like "RMS is a nightmare for me or for a close friend of mine", and the people who google shit blogs are like "I don't find these shit blogs to be compelling enough to notice the fact that the people saying that RMS has been a nightmare are all the people who have to work with him". Everyone gets to pick their side though.

No, actually I would prefer facts instead of this incessant and tiring framing with laden and erroneous terms.

> I think it's weird for you to expect everyone to blog about their daily negative experiences

And I think it's weird that most with personal grievances against rms can't be bothered to write anything but the shortest of anecdotal tweets and most with pleasant or neutral experiences take the time write long form articles including names, dates, locations, etc.

If one sets out to ruin someone's life one could at least put in some effort to convince those that are not automatically on your side.