October 14th, 2024 Richard Stallman (aka “RMS”) is the founder of GNU and the Free Software Foundation and present-day voting member of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) board of directors and “Chief GNUisance” of the GNU project. He is responsible for innumerable contributions to the free software movement, setting its guiding principles, organizing political action, and directly contributing to a flourishing free software ecosystem. The majority of Stallman’s political activity has been of priceless value to society at large.
An anonymous hit job that reads like it was written by Ehmke. We should give this any credence because…?
it’s literally his own words all the way down here. if it’s a “hit job” it’s entirely Stallman’s own fault for being a freak with morally abhorrent takes. one of the first things mentioned here is that he had to retract the position that “voluntarily pedophilia” doesn’t harm children (a category of person he defines as anyone under about 13)! any reasonable person would find this abhorrent and Stallman a horrible person for ever having defended said position in the first place, because it is genuinely abhorrent to defend something like that. that’s just child abuse.
Not defending pedophiles, but there was a time when 13 was considered adult. It’s still legal for teenagers to marry in most countries.
Anything can be taken out of context.
you are about to defend pedophilia. rethink this and stop talking.
and? Stallman is not talking about a previous time at any point here. also: that previous time was bad anyways. why would we want to–especially with respect to age of consent–go back to considering 13-year olds and younger to be adults? they cannot meaningfully consent to sexual relations with adults; it’s just child abuse. all of this is why Stallman’s words are abhorrent.
Stallman is not talking about teenagers. he explicitly distinguishes children (again, people <13 for him) from teenagers (people 13-17).
You’re free to look at the context that they frequently link to, it doesn’t help. His political notes that contain the majority of his public musings are typically very brief and the quotes used typically replicate the entirety of the original text or cut off changes of subject.
Stallman is very clear in his beliefs.
It looks pretty well cited to me. The fact that it was written anonymously doesn’t really take away from that.
It really kind of does. If the author is so ashamed of the work that they won’t sign it, that speaks volumes.
You can say that speaks volumes about the character of the author (though you are the one assigning said “shame”). You were asking why this report deserves credence. The points raised in the report have citations such that you can decide where you fall on the presented issues.
This would only really make sense if they were trying to throw around the weight of the authors, which they clearly are not. Who makes these points is irrelevant when it’s simply highlighting rms’ own words and linking to them directly. Why should I care who wrote it?
Ummm or the authors are concerned about retribution because stallman and the FSF are very powerful in the FOSS community, and I think it’s reasonably likely that they would be sued (seemingly with poor grounds) or harassed online for publishing it.