Richard Stallman Makes a Come Back in his first public appearance at an US event
The free software movement has been around for over four decades now. It started as a response to proprietary software licenses that restricted people from understanding, modifying, or sharing the programs they ran on their computers.
At the center of this movement is the Free Software Foundation (FSF), founded in 1985. It has been the organizational backbone for promoting software freedom, maintaining crucial free software licenses like the GPL, and supporting projects that respect user rights.
Dr. Richard Stallman has been at the forefront of this movement from day one, along with countless other people who joined up to make their collective vision a reality. If you want to hear from him directly, he’s speaking at Georgia Tech on January 23.
Is he one of those awful people who the civil route has been tried with and did not work, and the (seemingly) only way to chip away at their power is to make fun of them and call them weird?
No personal investment in the dude, but this reads more like finding an acceptable target to punch on now that a claim he is dangerous has been made. Now he is wide open to “lol what a weirdo!” that would be seen as just irrelevant bullying if there wasn’t the claim he has regressive and harmful views. Now anyone who points out “hmm maybe bringing that up is mean, and not a good practice for debate” can be shut up with “are you really defending this awful person? That means you are on his side…”
It is useful to spread information of when someone’s dangerous, so people do not get hurt, like the link already posted by someone else here, detailing his views that align with pedophilia, and one I found that has depressingly predictable remarks a person with pedophilic-justifying beliefs might make about Epstein victims. But who cares about what he does with his toes?
I am also reminded of
. Our entire problem with him is the pedophilia-justifying views and not weird but harmless personal habits. Not whatever toe thing he does.
Bullshit. He ate gunk from his feet on stage. I knew that about him before I knew about his views on sexuality. There’s stuff you can’t change and you shouldn’t ever be judged for (skin colour, scar tissue, that weird smile that shows way too much gum), then there’s stuff you might be somewhat responsible for but still shouldn’t be judged for because the circumstances might be just so that you can’t do much about it (weight, biting nails, that odd tooth that you didn’t clean properly when you were 11 and that’s now this odd colour) and then there’s stuff that’s just gross, completely under your control, something you should absolutely be told to not ever fucking do and be ridiculed for if you still just did it anyway (like being live on stage in front of a camera and removing your socks to eat gunk off your feet).
Wasn’t aware he ate from his feet specifically onstage.
Still not going to agree with you, sorry, as someone who does not agree with ridiculing people unless it’s necessary. Of course, I’m not a perfect human being, I have probably unfairly ridiculed people, especially when angry and when pretty sure my target is someone that nobody will argue against me ridiculing. I’m just… as a person who desperately tried to avoid being “the weirdo” and still might fail at avoiding that nowadays? I’m pretty anti-“what a weirdo lmao,” and want people left the fuck alone about their weird behaviors unless they are hurting people with the weird behavior; or they literally will not stop their actual harmful behaviors and ridiculing might have a slight chance to get through or erode the power they have to perform those bad behaviors consequence-free.
I can also admit that people probably do need some level of social judgment to not gross out the people around you, so the eating that onstage probably wasn’t a great move (do not know what happened in context, I’m not very up to date on the whole drama of Richard Stallman). Now I know it was onstage and not some leaked information about his personal life, this does at least make sense as something people would make fun of, especially given I think most people, even the socially inept, would figure out not to do this by 6th grade.
Still probably going to dig in my heels on my belief that in this particular discussion bringing this up after “this guy has dangerous/regressive beliefs” feels a lot more like “and look, he’s weird too!!! what a loser LMAO” gossip and less like a relevant thing we should know about him that can contribute to a useful informative discussion, though. Sorry.
I mean, the video is linked above? It’s also kind of anticlimactic as he just listens to the guy giving a talk, silently picking his foot, then eating whatever he got from it.
Also… It’s nice to be not too judgemental. Seriously, keep that.
I’ll freely admit that you know the “did not read the article and still commented” folks?
I’m a “didn’t watch the video” person and had to be told by other people what happened.
Also, at least one of them someone linked me of the foot thing was age restricted so I Xed out and took them at their word.