IMO RMS already has the attitude of a billionaire. He’s a thoroughly weird man who says stuff he really shouldn’t then stands by it. He’s right about a lot of things when it comes to software, licensing, and open source in general but outside of that track he’s more than a little loopy.
I think it might be because he’s had to fight society so long for things he knew he was right about that now he doesn’t know how to have people tell him “no Richard, that’s ducked up”.
Anyhow, I don’t think him being a billionaire would be a good idea, him having enough funds to branch off into doing wherever strikes his fancy could be very bad.
And Linus, I love Linus but look at how he’s grown as a person and listened and changed how he interacts with other kernel developers. Would he still have been as receptive if he was a billionaire? Something tells me no.
but I’m not sure if the commenter is mixing two unrelated accusations towards him.
stallman is known for his fixation on certain choice of words, which is the reason most people get him wrong. that’s why I shared the link to read his exact words and make up your mind by yourself.
Since the other person hasn’t (surprise), here’s Richard Stallman on paedophilia:
“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.”
RMS on June 28th, 2003
"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. "
RMS on June 5th, 2006
"There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.
Granted, children may not dare say no to an older relative, or may not realize they could say no; in that case, even if they do not overtly object, the relationship may still feel imposed to them. That’s not willing participation, it’s imposed participation, a different issue. "
Yeah. He had/has some great ideas when it comes to free software, but it doesn’t mean he isn’t a POS in other parts of his life.
I’m tired of the Linux world literally worshipping him. It’s weird. Hilariously it’s no doubt the same people who would cringe at the cultish following of Steve Jobs. Another person with some good ideas but was an awful person.
“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.”
RMS on June 28th, 2003
"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. "
RMS on June 5th, 2006
"There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.
Granted, children may not dare say no to an older relative, or may not realize they could say no; in that case, even if they do not overtly object, the relationship may still feel imposed to them. That’s not willing participation, it’s imposed participation, a different issue. "
I understand your point, but those weren’t the words he said. though I don’t think that’s going to make a difference.
I like RMS for what he did(and is doing) for the free software community. I can also talk about some uncanny things about Gandhi, but that doesn’t make his contribution to the independence movement and his views on nonviolence any less relevant.
to me, a person should be seen in his entirety. because only fictional characters are without flaws.
People should indeed be seen in their entirety, the failure of this is why so many people get upset about Stallman.
The guy is routinely portrayed as a bastion of righteous good will, championing the little guy against the evil corporations. The hero worship is real.
Some of us see Stallman as a misogynistic asshole who routinely belittles people on mailing lists when they don’t agree with him and publicly defends people who sexually abuse children.
For some of us, it feels like we need to go out of our way to point this out because we don’t want a guy like that as the public face of something we care about.
a pretty much reasonable, reasoned and merciless account on the figure of rms. I very largely agree with it - spoiler he isn’t a misogynist, just a super massive weirdo
this thread is terrible… people reporting "I heard of"s as proofs. eh once I read, eeeh once someone told… once sjws bite, there’s no chance they let go. and the most important thing is that 99.999999% of the people bad mouthing rms have at best fifth hand reports about him.
to all the superior etichs white knights: I’m not defending rms.
I’m very worried about the lynching, with proof based on I once read, i heard of, and also straight out of jealousy and envy.
rms, like suggested in the article I posted, could very well be a neuro divergent person. I wonder how many of all of these rabid dogs biting at him preach themselves as super supportive, super inclusive, 360° hexa-dimensional full rainbow, but then aren’t able to understand the person they have in front of them. let’s start by ruining someone. there’s always time to say “I was wrong, I’d like to apologize. At the time I didn’t know. I vow to be a better person.”
Your comment came across as attacking me, and also as a little bit crazed. That said I completely agree with your last sentence, being able to admit you are wrong is a very important skill and one many people could do with learning (I try, I don;t always succeed but I try)
I agree with your point in spirit, but again, he didn’t say any such thing. I haven’t talked to him in person, so, I can only rely on internet to validate/refute those claims.
he is the public face of free software because others have their own terminologies(e.g.: open source championed by bruce perens and eric raymond), with which the GNU project disagrees.
“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.”
RMS on June 28th, 2003
"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. "
RMS on June 5th, 2006
"There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.
Granted, children may not dare say no to an older relative, or may not realize they could say no; in that case, even if they do not overtly object, the relationship may still feel imposed to them. That’s not willing participation, it’s imposed participation, a different issue. "
“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.”
RMS on June 28th, 2003
"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. "
RMS on June 5th, 2006
"There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.
Granted, children may not dare say no to an older relative, or may not realize they could say no; in that case, even if they do not overtly object, the relationship may still feel imposed to them. That’s not willing participation, it’s imposed participation, a different issue. "
I fight laws that restrict what bits I can put on my website.
Unlike humans, computers see everything as bits (numbers). They can’t tell the difference between the random movement of a lava lamp and a copyrighted song. I believe that our technology should similarly make no distinction and that I have the right to transmit arbitrary bits.
Here’s a list of laws that restrict this right, in order from least controvertial (i.e. most people agree this freedom shouldn’t be restricted) to most.
…
…
…
In the US, it is illegal to possess or distribute child pornography, apparently because doing so will encourage people to sexually abuse children.
This is absurd logic. Child pornography is not necessarily abuse. Even if it was, preventing the distribution or posession of the evidence won’t make the abuse go away. We don’t arrest everyone with videotapes of murders, or make it illegal for TV stations to show people being killed.
Yes, these are global stats, but as someone from the third world myself, I can say that most gamers around here resort to piracy, even though steam has gained a lot of popularity, so, only a fraction of us are included in the steam statistics, which would make such data not very representative.
Perhaps a better source for understanding software usage in the third world is data from statcounter. They show something around 3 to 5%, a much higher number. However, even this data can be biased, because they only count machines connected to the internet and who browse certain sites.
In that case steam doesn’t need to send the survey to all users, but only to a randomized sample, and it will statistically represent the whole of steam users.
I don’t think he was ever a billionaire, though he’s certainly done quite well for himself. Since leaving Apple, he has founded several new companies and projects, focusing a lot on education and philanthropy. He was also involved in founding the EFF.
He’s an engineer first and foremost, and several of his projects never achieved mainstream success, partly for being, IMHO, ahead of their time – for example, a programmable universal remote in the 80s, and a GPS-based item tracker in the early 2000s.
As far as I know, he has never been involved in any notable scandals.
Reminds me of this tweet from Merman_Melville: “Being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth, new skin. All your chairs cost 20,000 dollars and weigh 2,000 pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences. In terms of cognitive impairment it’s probably like being kicked in the head by a horse every day” The experience itself is probably harmful and changes the person. https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/18e0c77d-e341-4343-bbeb-80a0c47c8be9.png
Studies have shown that people change at a certain amount of money, like they cross a line in the sand. When you can buy anything everything just becomes yours by default in your mind. And anyone who can’t do that are basically sheep dogs - useful but not worth your time. These studies were done in the twenty-tens and the number then was between 20 and 30 million for most people. Imagine your view on the world if you have 100 times that amount.
There’s a whole bunch of people that deserve to become billionaires a lot more than people in tech and that would have a much better impact on the world if they did. I would much rather have a bunch of billionaire physicists, immunologists, virologists, pediatricians and so on.
No he didn’t. He made atx and worked closely with the guy who make markdown. He also was part of the group that made RSS and contributed to the early CC.
I’m sorry but arch is a terrible choice for a first Linux OS: it breaks often, and has problems updating it if you don’t update regularly, (stuff only Linux Nerds overlook when advising an OS).
It doesn’t break often, it doesn’t have problems updating it you don’t update regularly.
It might be a bad choice for a first-time Linux user due to the heavy setup process/time post-install, but as a gaming platform it works absolutely fine. Steam Deck runs on Arch ffs, come on now. 😄
Curious: when was the last time you used Arch? Seems like you haven’t used it of late, considering those misconceptions you spewed. Or maybe you are running experimental/unsupported stuff?
I’ve used it for over a decade now and had less problems with it than with Ubuntu that I ran for much less time before Arch.
Let me try to reply to your somewhat heated rebuttal, Last I used arch (that was manjaro 4years ago; endeavorOS 3 years ago) so yes quite a while back I confess, I encountered multiple issues updating some of these listed below:
As I updated sporadically around once every 1-4 months with little time to spare for system maintenance and the prime requirement It Just Works™️ running Steam, in both cases eventually it didn’t cut it for me.
I only recently learned that updating without being subscribed to their newsletter is not recommended, none of the YouTubers or Arch enthusiasts I’ve come across warn about this.
wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenanceRead before upgrading the system Before upgrading, users are expected to visit the Arch Linux home page to check the latest news, or alternatively subscribe to the RSS feed or the arch-announce mailing list. When updates require out-of-the-ordinary user intervention (more than what can be handled simply by following the instructions given by pacman), an appropriate news post will be made.
I don’t know what kind of issues Manjaro or Endeavor have had, probably plenty, but I’m running vanilla Arch for over a decade as I said, no issues. I update once a week maybe. I take a look at the packages that will be updated, and I do as the wiki said – check the website for big news/manual intervention. Sometimes there’s manual intervention, but they almost never concern me because it’s due to something I don’t have installed. This is standard routine for Arch, and if you don’t pay attention then you are not using Arch properly. (I don’t pay attention most of the time either, honestly, but it still doesn’t break.)
I also use Nvidia and Steam (Flatpak) and it works great and I’m very satisfied. Works better than my Windows installation actually; better performance.
Arch being an unstable mess is a misconception these days since a long time, I think. It’s been great.
I’ve updated old laptops with Arch that have been sitting for years without updates. I just run -Syu and it basically replaces every single package 😅, then I reboot into a fresh, working system. 👍 All good. Happened plenty of times.
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