He's also been the victim of some pretty vile smear campaigns and is still going on. I know if I was the target of the crap he got, I wouldn't want to continue doing anything anymore.
I know someone personally that he behaved unprofessionally and inappropriately towards. This was before allegations of his MIT went public. So I was not shocked when that happened.
I guess that's why fake, phony, status-oriented people can't stop themselves criticizing him for all his superficial shortcomings. It's as if his genuineness is a trigger for them and they need to attack him to feel better about how phony they are in comparison.
- the MIT mailing list discussion of a few years ago where he got a lot of flakes for what I indeed believe was a lot of misunderstanding. He seemed reasonable to me, but you really need subtle and careful reading to notice this. It was easy to misread and understand the contrary of was he thinks. I think he should have refrained from participating in this discussion though. While I don't know if it was intentionally driven by opponents, I do think he was defamed a lot, regardless one's opinion on this story.
- his inappropriate behavior with women, who mostly had to (find tricks to) avoid him, from was I read there and there. I don't think he is misogynistic (many examples on stallman.org supports the opposite) but I believe there's no excuse for this inappropriate behavior if true. He should have shown more respect and learned to avoid making people and women in particular uncomfortable. He is incredibly clever, I can't imagine he would be unable to learn what patterns to avoid, he should have bothered more. I know it's difficult in particular for some autistic people (which he might be) to take hints, but I also know some who became incredibly good at it after learning (better than non-autistic people even, precisely because it was a conscious process - not saying it's easy; it is exhausting for some people). And it does not require being able to take subtle hints to avoid obvious sexist behavior. I was thinking of this and the many times he was mean to someone when I mentioned "unacceptable" in my first comment.
> He is very clever, I can't imagine he would be unable to learn what patterns to avoid
I've worked with some very clever people in the past, and many of them are indeed no longer around (in the industry) because of their flabbergasting capacity to not pick up on 'patterns' that would save them from social assassination.
But autistic people are not doomed. They can learn to avoid problematic behavior. Pretty well.
As well as the rest of the population can learn about the difficulties autistic people can encounter in a mostly non-autistic setting and be more understanding / show some empathy.
Probably in the case of Stallman, he grew up in an era before better understanding of the condition and how to deal with it properly. I'd also assume from his general attitude that he wouldn't take too well to being told how to behave.
> I don't think he is misogynistic (many examples on stallman.org supports the opposite)
Intent, outcome and self-image can drift apart quite substantially. Few misogynists would consider themselves as such. Usually because misogynist behavior is still considered normal by quite a few people and pushback against the status quo comes at a social cost.
When I hear stuff like "you need really subtle and careful reading"... it's just an excuse to discount the actual content of the message and invent the meaning you wanted all along. Like, how could I be so stupid to not pick up on this totally opposite point from what RMS was saying?
This point was discussed at length over the years. You have your opinion on it. Likely different from mine. At this point I don't think any of us can change their mind, we both have been forming our respective opinion for a long time now.
Let me precise my phrasing: you might have read this thing with "really subtle and careful reading" and reached a different opinion from mine. I believe it. It's fine. But I do maintain that, in any case, you need really subtle and careful reading to avoid jumping to widely wrong conclusions. I think it was easy to understand horrible things from his wording by skipping a word or two or thinking too fast. The thing with Stallman in particular is that he is particularly very careful with his wording, and I think this whole MIT discussion was no counterexample to this. It's up to us to understand the right thing and it is clear that strongly different interpretations emerged this time, for some reason. And what's worse is that his clarifications might have strengthened both interpretations.
Anyway, that's why I said "Regardless on one's opinion" on the matter. It's easy to find inappropriate comments on RMS that defame him.
That's a long way to say "I gave every statement the maximum benefit of doubt".
A lot of people need to learn that culturally engrained bad behaviors aren't the same as intentionally being a bad person. But neither does it free you from responsibility for your behavior.
What one thinks / what one's ideals are is different from how one actually behaves. Especially when speaking about sexism. Apart from obviously bad behavior, there are many things we do that are sexist without even us noticing and it's important to be aware of this so it can be fixed.
[*] With a difference: I understand a "misogynist" as someone who actively dislike women. See [1]. Sexism ≠ misogyny.
Knew him a long time ago. It's a very different thing not understanding what other people are, compared to bearing them ill will. Definitely interactively incompetent, but doesn't carry ill will.
> From what I gather the big thing is that he's basically very misogynistic.
> And I've seen very little that can disclaim that.
Hang on, no. It's those that claim that someone is misogynistic (let alone very misogynistic) that has the burden of showing that the accused has hatred or prejudice against women, not on others to disclaim it.
If, to that, we add the absolute vilification against anyone trying to defend the accuse, then the allegations can't be evaluated properly in such an environment and deserve nothing but dismissal.
Really? Should OP just bask in Stallman's glory and not notice things that were bad etiquette even in the Victorian era?
Stallman's done some amazing somethings, some average things and some repugnant things (including the field of software engineering/Free Software; see the Emacs and GCC forks, his maintanership of Emacs in the latter part of his time as main maintainer, etc).
Like clockwork, women in tech continue to beg for our community to hold a reasonable standard for how half the humans on earth should be treated when they choose to work in this industry.
Woohoo RS and thank you for your contributions. But one of those contributions is being a living example of how brilliant and highly valuable people in this field can still need to learn the basics on how to treat other people with respect. For the women he's mistreated, it's very unfortunate they had to play a role in that collective lesson. The least we can do is not ignore it or rationalize it away.
On that note, I just don't appreciate or frankly understand the repeated insistence from some people that this is some kind of scheme, there is some kind of conspiracy to complain about successful contributors for mistreating the people around them. This take especially makes no sense to me when the mistreatment is well known and documented. Like, some of us don't want to be treated like shit! So we bring it up when the community lauds praise around someone who does! I don't think this is related to some personality complex held by RS' inferiors with a compulsion to tear down his achievements. Most of the time when I see these criticisms voiced, they are actually wrapped in a highly-polite package that includes heaps of praise besides.
It's exhausting, isn't it? Moralizers will come for anyone and everything.
Tearing down the world, one individual at a time, until finally, after enough characters have been destroyed and enough personalities beaten down, we'll all happily exist in a world where no one's behavior will ever offend. We can all rest easy knowing that we won, that the _____ists of the world have been banished, and finally egalitarianism will prevail.
For those in this thread chomping at the bit to attack a dying 70yo's character, did I do your cause justice?
