Re:An elegy for GNU and RMS
by justinator on Saturday October 01, 2022 @11:54PM
(#33052670)
It seems to me that he created a toxic work environment - especially for women, and got away with it because of seniority and it seems having narcissistic personality traits.
It is illegal to sexually harass women in the workplace. Gather all the evidence you have and send it to the district attorney and he will be given a fair trial at a court of law.
It's typically a civil matter, not a criminal one.
Ok, he will have a fair trial in a civil court. You just have to convince the alleged victims to sue for damages. If the case has merits, it will be decided upon the available evidence.
Re:An elegy for GNU and RMS
by justinator on Sunday October 02, 2022 @07:28PM
(#33061486)
Oh you sweet summer child.
Re:An elegy for GNU and RMS
by discardable_dan on Sunday October 02, 2022 @07:29AM
(#33054988)
Cancelled or not, it's a bad look to put a super-cringy and offputting old guy in charge of a group in serious need of recruiting and support.
Re:An elegy for GNU and RMS
by collegeburner on Sunday October 02, 2022 @11:16AM
(#33056623)
yea i completely agree. "he's a asshole" is a perfectly good reason to not make somebody the public face of something. as i said i feel like he's one of a fairly small number of people i'd genuinely dislike spending time with
> it's more pro-abortion than anti-abortion so i'm not sure why progressives got mad.
"Progressive" got mad at him for being pro abortion, because anything goes.
I wrote about it here: https://stallmansupport.org/testimonies-letters-writings-and...
* stuff like "knight for hot ladies" is just corny not bad.
* the abort() joke was as follows: "Proposed Federal censorship regulations may prohibit us from giving you information about the possibility of calling this function. We would be required to say that this is not an acceptable way of terminating a program." that's not that bad honestly. it's more pro-abortion than anti-abortion so i'm not sure why progressives got mad.
* the "emacs virgin" shit is cringe but not rly sexist? anyway i think he switched it to be either men or women later so it was still cringe but not gendered.
idk if there's other stuff i missed but that covers what your article and the twitter thread you mentioned point out. like, yeah, it's cringe asf. but is it rly "cancellable? nah.
btw i still think his presence in the open source community is a negative in part because of goofy ahh shit like emacs virgins or knight for hot ladies, mostly because the amount of cringe it produces attracts more asocial weirdos like rms and puts normal people off open source stuff. like, i'm a outgoing person and can sit and enjoy a coffee with almost anyone. but i feel like spending 5 minutes face to face with rms would make me lowkey want to unalive. i also really don't like a lot of his politics. so i'm in no way an apologist, just don't think a lot of what you referenced is problematic.
ofc, i think there's enough evidence of creepy behavior, especially now, to kick him out and don't really have a problem with it. just the goofy ahh jokes isn't the right reason to do it.