His comments about women are inexcusable, but the fact he convinced Linus to adopt GPL is paying dividends to billions of people globally, and most of us don’t know it.
What comments about women?
Ugh. God damn. 🤢
Somehow I’m not surprised. He seems pretty eccentric. In a socially awkward way that makes you uncomfortable.
Smart guy. Not a good person. Don’t idolize people
Honestly it comes across to me not as him defending rapists, but actually just genuinely not understanding how rape works. The guy somehow understands people less than I do, and that’s saying something.
I wish people would read the published mail thread and not the news articles…he never defended rapists. His quote was quite different. Also, the victim, insofar as her interaction with his old boss, confirmed what happened.
sad to see that he thinks like that about rape and the whole Epstein thing :(
You have to separate:
- Stallman the person
- Stallman the programmer
- Stallman the philosopher
The first two are already quite ghastly. The final one just solidifies my opinion.
What’s your opinion of Free Software?
he was right about the computer stuff
I’m a woman, and have talked to him via email 2-3 times in the last 20 years. While I’ve met Torvalds, Jobs, and others in the industry when I was living in the Bay Area and working as a tech journalist, I never got to meet RMS – only via email. I think he has social issues, maybe he’s on the autistic side or something similar. I don’t think he understands clearly some of the things he’s saying when it comes to social stuff. He doesn’t get a pass, but at the same time, he’s a bit different as an individual, so that needs to be taken into account. When it comes to software, his heart is in the right place, and in fact, if it was me, I’d be even more strict (or more “Free” – depends how you see it), with GPL.
Defintly, we need GPLv4 already. To fix holes in licence which using coorps in GPLv3.
Lol the OP is literally GNU?
I prefer to call it Linux, not GNU/Linux.
RMS is a weirdo but generally a well meaning one, and many of his points are being proven correct. I’d rather have him around than not
I’ve been going with LiGNUx. The G is silent.
First, don’t listen to his opinions on anything that isn’t about comouters and software. He doesn’t have a good track record there.
Do pay attention to his takes on technology and freedom, there’s a lot of food for though there.
I was at one of his talks recently, and he’s definitely and eccentric fellow. When it comes to free software he’s a die hard extremist, and I have a feeling he knows and to a certain extent he does that on purpose. Case in point, he mentioned how he refused hearing aids and would similarly refuse a pacemaker as there are none running on free software.
As such, that’s how I take his ideas about free software: a good philosophy taken to the extreme to showcase what’d be possible if we went all in on that, and the dangers of not doing it. Definitely not something that can work for everyone, or a realistic pathway to a world of free software.
I do think, however, that someone like him is fundamental to advance the cause of free software, even if no one takes him literally and emulates his way of life.
I’m not gonna refuse a life saving treatment or device because it runs on propriety software, but I am willing to sacrifice some convenience to use a free software alternative when available.
I don’t know who that is.
I think he may have been right.
One of my greatest idols since I was a preteen. Learning about him and his existence made me confident that there was a future for people like me.
How he has been treated in the last few years has been making me feel a lot less optimistic about the future of humanity. :(
What part of how he’s been treated? Nobody is making fun of him for being neurodivergent and picking his toes in public. Its gross, but ultimately not harmful. People have problems with his inability to understand how his comments about sex with minors are not appropriate either. There’s a big gap between these two things and if you fall into it, you’re probably okay.
For those who don’t know much about him, I recommend watching the movie Revolution OS. It does a good job showing what he was working towards.
Love him. His one hot take, which was completely misconstrued by the Twitter mafia, doesn’t take away from the fact that he’s been right for 50 years straight.
We’d still be in the IT stone ages without him. If you don’t believe me just look at the software they used to charge money for in the 1990’s.
Microsoft would have likely taken over the Web Server market just as they had the Desktop market, without him. The internet would be a fraction of the size it is now.
I wish his license had allowed for more equitable distribution of profits. It’s a crying shame companies can build billion dollar enterprises off of open source software and not pay devs a penny. It’s a problem that continues to hobble libre open source software all the way into today. But he’s stated he’s not a socialist so I can’t hold that against him too much.
I haven’t learned much about him, but my impression is he’s made some pretty heinous statements about his personal views, but he’s done some useful things for FOSS. I don’t have a strong desire to learn more, tbh
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