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A comment on Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT.

Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by geofft on Monday September 16, 2019 @09:03PM (#20990169)
Worth noting that (as far as I know) Stallman was not a paid employee of MIT, certainly not a professor or anything. He had an office because, I believe, Gerry Sussman (and probably others) thought he should have an office. He's listed as a "visiting scientist" on CSAIL's page: https://www.csail.mit.edu/person/richard-stallman He's around on the mailing list (mostly to reply to every mention of software with a question about its license and every website with a demand that it work without JavaScript) but he replies with his GNU address. `finger [email protected]` calls him a "Visitor" and says "Project: mail forwarding."

Source: was at MIT a decade ago, was on the CSAIL mailing list until I decided to actually start filtering mail last week (good timing me). Also he somewhat famously left MIT right before starting GNU to ensure MIT wouldn't own the copyrights, and it would be surprising/confusing if he rejoined.

(The cynic in me believes he's resigning because it's far more newsworthy to say "resigned from MIT" instead of "resigned from the FSF," especially given all the news headlines calling him "Famous MIT Computer Scientist," and it also has far less of an impact on his life or his goals than resigning from the FSF would.)

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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by jacobwilliamroy on Monday September 16, 2019 @10:31PM (#20990678)
>Stallman was not a paid employee of MIT, certainly not a professor or anything. He had an office because, I believe, Gerry Sussman thought he should have an office.

I will tell my descendants true stories about Richard Stallman, and none of them will believe me.

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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by jobigoud on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @04:33AM (#20992940)
> it also has far less of an impact on his life or his goals than resigning from the FSF would

He did resign from the FSF as well.

https://www.fsf.org/news/richard-m-stallman-resigns

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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by enriquto on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @05:30AM (#20993228)
This is a very sad situation. I hope that the FSF does not lose him forever.
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by brirec on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @02:50PM (#20998783)
This is a serious question: has he even contributed anything of substance to the FSF or GNU project within the past decade or two? Has he done much of anything besides give talks scrutinizing non free software?
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by pseudalopex on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @02:49AM (#21002918)
Advocacy is a substantial part of what the FSF does.
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by ocschwar on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @02:14PM (#20998366)
He can keep on coding and submitting PRs.
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by dgellow on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @08:21AM (#20994068)
> (The cynic in me believes he's resigning because it's far more newsworthy to say "resigned from MIT" instead of "resigned from the FSF," especially given all the news headlines calling him "Famous MIT Computer Scientist," and it also has far less of an impact on his life or his goals than resigning from the FSF would.)

If Stallman cared about his reputation or being considered famous his entire life would have been quite different.

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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by brian-armstrong on Monday September 16, 2019 @10:20PM (#20990611)
So he was crashing on their couch rent free, and he thanks them by posting crazy screeds on the mailing list? It's not terribly surprising it turned out like this.
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by SergeAx on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @03:30AM (#20992570)
Or he was lending them his name in exchange for a couch.
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[dead]
Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by iliketocomplain on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @11:15AM (#20996148)
He never said that there's nothing wrong with it, which means you're lying. Shame on you. (disclaimer: I dislike Stallman a lot anyway, but this is just a typical SJW witch Hunt. Because he did in fact never say it's ok nor defended it.) Edit: typo
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by vkou on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @01:28PM (#20997784)
He has, on record, said that he thinks there is nothing wrong with statutory rape 'as long as both parties consent'.

I'm not sure he understands the concept of consent.

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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by wiz21c on Thursday September 26, 2019 @04:30AM (#21079210)
Read this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_rape

(see Romeo and Juliet clause)

Stallman being a defender of freedom has, obviously, a very powerful definition of consent ('cos consent is a form of freedom). It's far of ours, and in a dangerous territory. But that doesn't make it wrong.

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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by iliketocomplain on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @01:46PM (#20998011)
He did say (write) that, yes. Still different to what the other poster wrote: that he's ok with non-consentual stuff. He specifically wrote that it might have _seemed_ consentual to the other guy. He nowhere implied it actually was. He also did not defend someone forcing others to do with things against there will while making it look consentual. I assume if one asked him this exactly, he'd say that yes of course it's terrible to force people do to things against their will. I guess, don't really know the guy of course. Cheers on not making stuff up btw, that's really, really cool :) and becoming a rarity :( Edit: excuse all the errors, I'm a phone poster
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by coolandsmartrr on Monday September 16, 2019 @09:51PM (#20990429)
A little tangential, but I didn't know there was a utility called `finger`. Is this supposed to be a profile directory envisioned for an Internet back when it was more decentralized?
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by fortran77 on Monday September 16, 2019 @10:12PM (#20990570)
There was a time when nobody was "NAT"ed and basically every workstation had an Internet Address. I would sit at my office at Olivetti Advanced Technlogy and be able to "finger" people's workstations at Sun, HP, and Adobe and see what they were up to.
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by ocschwar on Monday September 16, 2019 @10:44PM (#20990790)
In my undergrad years, if the campus police got a panicky parent call, they'd send an officer to the computer club to ask us to finger every host on the campus.
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by JadeNB on Monday September 16, 2019 @09:54PM (#20990457)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_protocol
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by ocschwar on Monday September 16, 2019 @10:07PM (#20990530)
Wow, I'm old
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by esotericn on Monday September 16, 2019 @10:12PM (#20990565)
/CTCP FINGER ocschwar
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by ocschwar on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @03:04PM (#20998913)
Your comment is the #5 Google suggestion for "CTCP FINGER"
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by gadders on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @04:09AM (#20992806)
How else were you supposed to find out about the status of ID games?
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by vichu on Monday September 16, 2019 @10:21PM (#20990616)
I’m likely not as, but kids in undergrad still “finger”ed people at my school as late as 2016. Can’t say anything about after that though :)
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by mindslight on Monday September 16, 2019 @10:39PM (#20990742)
We shall not talk about it due to the connotations of its name, but rest assured those responsible have been liquidated.
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by shantly on Monday September 16, 2019 @10:50PM (#20990830)
I'm pretty sure it was intended in the sense of "to finger a suspect" (cf git blame) rather than anything vulgar.

I think the tendency to take anything, in nearly any context, that could even maybe be vulgar, as vulgar 100% of the time, is actually relatively recent.

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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by zrobotics on Monday September 16, 2019 @11:57PM (#20991334)
Have you ever read Shakespeare's work? Taking things in a vulgar context, especially for humor, is certainly nothing new.
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by shantly on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @12:15AM (#20991464)
No I mean just refusing to let any mention of some normal use of a word go without taking it that way. I'm reasonably up on my Shakespeare (LOL "up on" LOL) so I know of the joys of double entendre and innuendo. It just seems like any innocent word or phrase that could be taken that way now must be avoided in a way that it didn't have to be as recently as 2-3 decades ago—which is a source of a good deal of humor for us now, as we mine historical media for things unavoidably funny to the modern, finely-tuned-to-spot-imaginary-sexual-references-in-everything mind, despite (often—not always) the same slang being in use back then.
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by zrobotics on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @12:07PM (#20996847)
Fair point, although I think that is a function of society becoming less formal. For instance, much of the lingo in the trades (historically less formal) is purposely slightly vulgar. For example, first thing that comes to mind is male/female terminology for things like sockets & connectors. The terminology only makes sense if one considers it in a vulgar context, and it isn't a recent usage (I've seen repair manuals from the early 20s that use this terminology).

What may make it seem to be changing is that society (or more particularly, white-collar workers & pop culture) has gotten far less formal than it used to be. Even non-tech companies are moving away from suits as required office attire, the only professionals I know personally who still wear suits to the office are lawyers or in the financial industry (which have always had a conservative, slow to change reputation).

Edit: typos & formatting

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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by shantly on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @01:15PM (#20997604)
Entertainment media's driven a lot of it, I think, for whatever reason. Generations X and Y have tended to make catching accidental (and not even especially interesting) double entendres a prominent feature of the humor-media they've (we've) created in a way it wasn't (yes, some, but not so constantly) before. Earliest example I can think of that did a lot of this is Beavis & Butthead, but it's been all over the place since then. I'm not sure reduced formality's behind the presence of so much of that in media, all of the sudden.
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by zrobotics on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @10:33PM (#21001976)
After articulating your point more, I'll definitely agree with that. Shakespeare was all about the double entendre, but cleverly writing double meaning into a turn of phrase is definitely different from forcing it into anything that would apply. Still haven't looked into the history of the naming of 'finger', but it's 100% possible that it wasn't intended to be sexual.

In a way, it cheapens the phrase 'double entendre', as AFAIK the phrase used to imply a clever, sometimes obscure, double meaning that was intentional vs. anything that could be taken out of context.

Or, as Archer would say, PHRASING!

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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by mrami on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @07:45AM (#20993839)
IIRC - it's from the yellow pages "let your fingers do the walking", although I could have made up that association.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SYpJ1IgGoc0

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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by garmaine on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @03:07AM (#20992466)
It was a joke response to AT&T’s tagline of the era “reach out and touch someone.”
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by fortran77 on Monday September 16, 2019 @10:07PM (#20990531)
Well, then, I guess Gerry Sussmann will have to go next!
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by geofft on Monday September 16, 2019 @10:27PM (#20990653)
He's got tenure, but I think CSAIL really ought to have a conversation about whether Sussman's sponsorship of Stallman was a benefit to the lab or not. I don't think there's much to be gained by kicking Sussman out (as far as I've heard, Sussman himself is not the problem, and as a former student I can say he taught classes just fine), but I think there's very much to be gained with a "blameless postmortem," so to speak, of what happened and how we can prevent it from happening again. In particular, given the stories coming out about both students and faculty going out of their way to ward off RMS, could the lab have picked up on him being a problem earlier and gone through some well-defined process? (Consensus is that he was an annoyance 10+ years ago when I was there, was he more than that / could we have established consensus that he was an actual problem?) What should the procedure / norms be to review sponsorship of a lab visitor? How did he get an office when the lab was pressed for space for actual paid researchers, and why was he allowed to have a mattress there?

(If you're applying standard SRE philosophy, someone resigning after a media firestorm is absolutely the sort of atypical and unwanted event that merits an unconditional postmortem. Whether or not you agree with them leaving, it's clearly not the right outcome: either they should have stayed or they should have left before the firestorm.)

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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by simulacrumparty on Monday September 16, 2019 @10:17PM (#20990590)
https://web.archive.org/web/20101112051649/http://www.jeffre...

"Jeffrey Epstein is one of the most amazing, interesting, and brilliant people that I know.” – Gerald Sussman, Panasonic Professor of Engineering, MIT

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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by ocschwar on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @02:21PM (#20998451)
That is such a disappointment. The MIT ethic is all about proving yourself by doing worthwhile things, not by flashing wealth around. Cool people eat ramen and advance the world's knowledge. Losers drop out of that and work in hedge funds. (Okay, that's an exaggeration, but not by much.)

So for a long established MIT professor to show himself susceptible to a guy like Epstein showing up with a model at each arm and flashing money around is such an unbelievable letdown. Even if nothing else was wrong with Epstein.

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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by thrower123 on Monday September 16, 2019 @11:29PM (#20991105)
The whole world is going to unravel like Mr Oogie Boogie in the Nightmare Before Christmas by the time all the strings back to Epstein get pulled.
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by fortran77 on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @10:14AM (#20995310)
I don't really think all these "strings" mean too much.
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by geofft on Monday September 16, 2019 @10:29PM (#20990665)
... yikes.
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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by sitkack on Monday September 16, 2019 @11:56PM (#20991328)
So Abelson left Swartz out to dry and Sussman says this !@#!. Lessig tries to put spin on the money as "complicated". While RMS spews some seriously libertarian viewpoints and defends Epstein, that we need to take a nuanced approach. I wouldn't say they were heros, but damn, that any of them even thought that what they were saying would be taken any other way ... is not fathomable.
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