Frankly, he’s always been an ass, but here he sounds like a Neanderthal. He’s done some great work, but I’m happy to see him go.
Is it really that hard to think and say “I believe that everyone should follow the age of consent laws”?
My reading of it is that RMS is not defending Epstein, but defending Minsky. RMS’ supposition is not that the victims were willing, but that they presented (aka faked) being willing to Minsky, following the coercive orders of Epstein. Perhaps I’m giving RMS too much benefit of the doubt, but my paraphrasing of what he says is, “I can’t imagine Minsky doing something so horrible, he must have thought the victim was willing.” In that sense, some of the articles are misscharacterizing what RMS said.
Of course, RMS then goes on to say that statutory rape at age 17 in the Virgin Islands is arbitrary, so he doesn’t accept that as a good definition of rape. He’s right in that in different jurisdictions the age of consent can be 16, 17, 18, or whatever. But he’s wrong in that at that place and at that time they had decided it was 18, so having sex with a 17 year old was rape. For somebody who thought so much about the technical aspects of software licensing, I’m amazed he has so much trouble with something like this. I mean, “you must provide the source code when distributing the software” versus “you can provide a link to the source code when distributing the software” are important distinctions to RMS.
Yeah, he’s always been an ass, which is probably a big part of why we have free software.
Having said all that, I’m not trying to defend RMS here. Just saying be angry at him for the bad things he actually said, not the other bad things he’s being reported to have said.
Jumping Jehosaphat, that Ars Technica article has some doozies. Stallman seems like someone I would not want to have to deal with. It’s a travesty anyone has had to put up with his nonsense, even outside his evolving commentary on age of consent.
And then there’s this comment.
I clicked on the “pleasure card” link. It’s a business card with his name and contact information under the heading “sharing good books, good food and exotic music and dance tender embraces [emphasis in original] unusual sense of humor.”
I suppose he doesn’t need the jobs, what with his fat software royalties. 
Richard is 66, so he can get Social Security and pensions.
I’ve been following the tales about the whole mess at MIT. When I saw the first thing by RMS it was :eek:. He then “clarified” by basically repeating it. :eek:
He’s always been an insufferable jerk. Completely uncaring about others viewpoints. I’m surprised he lasted this long.
RMS has been a fucking creep for decades. It’s unfortunate that it took this long for something to happen. MIT and the FSF happily shrugged their collective shoulders for years as Stallman went on bizarre rants defending necrophilia, child pornography and sex with minors.
That’s just the beginning, of course. You want to be really creeped out, see if you can dig up his old conference riders wherein he lists his requirements for accommodations. (No, he doesn’t want you to pay for a hotel. He wants to stay in your house. Then it gets worse.)
Edit: maybe he’ll have more time now to work on HURD. lolz
The first article linked by the OP has a link to one of those e-mail messages: rre-rms/rider.txt at master · ddol/rre-rms · GitHub
The article itself notes:
Some things I noticed (it’s really long):
Pardon me ifI need help following this thread, but who is Richard Stallman and why should I care about him? Seems like everyone else knows so don’t give the backstory?
From the first link:
An extremely influential programmer who started the Free Software movement, which advocates for software code to be freely available to users and for users to have the right to redistribute software, potentially with their own modifications/improvements. His GNU Compiler Collection in particular was an absolutely critical piece of software in that allowed the development of an untold number of free and open-source software projects.
Unfortunately, as we’ve seen in this thread, he’s also a raging asshole.
He is also an extremist who refuses to use any kind of proprietary software.
It occurred to me a while ago that this rather undercuts Stallman’s evangelism for “free” software. He does want something in return for his software, but it’s not money, it’s recognition.
I am part of a listserv that Richard participates in. He’s quite regularly an ass there, so this is not at all surprising.
Yep. See his posts (my emphases, archived by himself!) hereon 28 June 2003:
The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, “prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia” also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally–but that is unfortunate.** All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.**
and here in 2006:
I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren’t voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.
“voluntary pedophilia”:mad:
He has since walked that stance back. I am “skeptical of his claim” to newfound empathy for abused kids, given the timing.
Note that a lot of GNU software has been developed in spite of RMS rather than due to his help.
Take the GNU OS microkernel, his pet project. Work started on it in 1990. In 2016 it reached version 0.9 (so not a full version). No major updates since. There’s a GNU-Hurd-Debian thing now but it’s one of those “Why bother?” things.
You’re not going to convince people to use “Free” OS software if after almost 20 years you haven’t produced version 1.0.
Free as in freedom, not free as in no-cost. You can charge for free software, but you can’t limit what the purchasers do with the software once they have it. They can turn around and give it away.
The two big contributions by RMS are the idea of Free Software in the firstplace, and the Gnu Public License. All software started as Free. People wrote it and passed it around. Not trying to paint them as evil, but then companies got into it and started the idea of software licenses, limits on what you can do with the software you have, and not releasing the source code for the software. RMS came along and said, “hey, things were much better when everything was free, we should do that again.”
To insure that software stayed Free, RMS (along with others) came up with the GPL, which subverted copyright to make sure that software released under the GPL stayed Free—copyleft. The GPL basically says, you can do whatever you want with this software, but if you distribute it then you must provide your source code, and allow other people to also do whatever they want with the software, and attach this license.
The GNU project that RMS started provided the tools and ground work for the Free and Open Source software explosion that started in the 80s, and has been growing ever since. The GPL provided the license necessary to make sure the movement stayed Free and Open.
In my opinion RMS is definitely on the short list of people who have made major contributions to the technical look of the world today. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs certainly had better publicists, but I don’t think that makes RMS any less important. Like other founding fathers, RMS can make incredibly important contributions to society, and still be a deeply flawed individual.
I read through that rider. It’s really long and detailed and honestly he comes off as someone who is full of himself.
I’m sure RMS would agree.