Richard Stallman's resignation
by Lysander666 from LinuxQuestions.org on (#4QHDW)
Quote:
https://stallman.org/archives/2019-j..._(Resignation)
More info here. Slashdot gives a nice rundown of what happened:
Quote:
https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/0...-marvin-minsky
What are peoples' thoughts on this here? It's a thorny issue, but I feel that this is another example of a journalist misunderstanding the facts of a story, getting too emotional [she said she was "too angry to work" on other stuff so wrote the story and leaked the emails] and then getting some 'news' out there to further her own cause. And now Stallman has been forced to resign.
Is this good or bad for the free software movement? And what else could be the ramifications of this outside of software?
| 16 September 2019 (Resignation) To the MIT community, I am resigning effective immediately from my position in CSAIL at MIT. I am doing this due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations. Richard Stallman |
More info here. Slashdot gives a nice rundown of what happened:
Quote:
| Richard Stallman posted a new update today on his personal site. "I want to respond to the misleading media coverage of messages I posted about Marvin Minsky's association with Jeffrey Epstein. The coverage totally mischaracterised my statements. Headlines say that I defended Epstein. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've called him a "serial rapist", and said he deserved to be imprisoned. But many people now believe I defended him -- and other inaccurate claims -- and feel a real hurt because of what they believe I said. I'm sorry for that hurt. I wish I could have prevented the misunderstanding." On MIT's internal Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) listerv, Stallman had seen the description of a protest of Marvin Minsky which said Minsky was "accused of assaulting" one of Epstein's victims. Stallman argued that "the most plausible scenario" is that "she presented herself to him as entirely willing" -- even if she was coerced by Epstein into doing so -- whereas the phrase "assaulting" implies the use of force or violence, faciliating what he calls "accusation inflation... Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism." An angry MIT alumni who was forwarded the email then "started emailing reporters -- local and national, news sites, newspapers, radio stations" -- and then not receiving quick enough responses, published it herself in a Medium essay titled "Remove Richard Stallman. And everyone else horrible in tech." And then leaked the whole thread to Vice. |
What are peoples' thoughts on this here? It's a thorny issue, but I feel that this is another example of a journalist misunderstanding the facts of a story, getting too emotional [she said she was "too angry to work" on other stuff so wrote the story and leaked the emails] and then getting some 'news' out there to further her own cause. And now Stallman has been forced to resign.
Is this good or bad for the free software movement? And what else could be the ramifications of this outside of software?