Free Software Is Under Attack! (Will You Help Defend It?)

submitted by
[deleted]
edited

youtube.com/watch?v=NLHIIVppdMw

Watch on piped.video

A group of people including Drew DeVault are trying to cancel RMS again, basing their claims on ancient misinterpreted quotes. Stallman may be controversial, but these activists are just acid for the entire Free Software movement.

27

Comments are disabled.

10 Comments

this is the attack on stallman

seems prett damning to me

also i'm going to let devault himself rebut this

also no: stallman being under attack for credible accusations and even non-retracted public statements is not an "attack on free software" but a much needed clean up. call it a refactoring of legacy assets, if you want.

53

The cult of Stallman continues to baffle me. The man is venom in the veins of the free software community and people just adore him.

I love the ideals of the free software movement but RMS is so toxic that I won’t associate myself with it while he’s tolerated.

34

Deleted by moderator

5

A lot of the 'debunking' here is very poor, it assumes Stallman's innocence at every junction, argues that Stallman's word is more important than his actions, fails to engage with the full complexity of arguments against him, and more than once uses "but he's tender hearted, so he can't be bad" as an argument.

Certainly not "rational and objective" like it claims.

12

I will defend the Free Software movement, but Stallman? Nah

40

the only reason this is being kept up and locked and not deleted is to make it clear where Beehaw stands on Richard Stallman, which is: stop defending him, he is an awful person and he completely deserves to be put over the fire for his words and actions.

37

He has said some fucked up shit to be fair. You can't deny the amazing efforts he's put into Free software, but as a person he's pretty dubious and not a great figurehead for the movement. Basically, thanks for all you have done, but ewwww...

29

Yay free software and lets fuck kids

9

Absolutely disgusting that you could read the report on Stallman and still defend him. Fucking vile

19

Deleted by moderator

4

RMS is a huge figure head and representative of free software, so it matters what he says and does.

I have seen no-one argue that everything RMS has said is bunk because of this, personally I think he has had some good ideas, sure; but that doesn't mean I just ignore everything else because "its politics and not free Software related".

Free Software is in itself political, maybe the links between RMS's words and actions, and Free Software are not direct or even close - but separating "politics" and Free Software just seems like burying your head in the sand.

8

Comments from other communities

I was concerned when I saw Lunduke report on finding out Drew (very likely) hosts the Stallman report. (All while alluding to previous ""attacks"" on Hyprland and NixOS)

Of course DistroTube has to make an even worse video about it.

It's a guy babbling about an anonymous website with the same-old stuff against Stallman, and how that is part of a conspiracy to harm free software.

I watched it (most of it) despite having formed my opinion on the quality of that DistroTube channel a while ago... you might want to be wiser than me and do something else with your time.

PS:

Before you put me in the pro-Stallman faction, let me clarify that I think the FSE (non the FSFe - BTW you should change your name guys) is largely irrelevant and so I've never investigated the allegations to Stallman enough to take a stance pro or against: I do not care.

I won't even bother to see/hear what this guys is babbling, because I never understood how people can watch a guy like this. DT has never shown anything new, innovative or even knew how to say sorry when he made mistakes, so it's another shitfluencer of our era.

And supporting RMS makes him more shit than he ever was.

>
Primary sources documenting Stallman’s political advocacy for:
The normalization of sexual relations between adults and minors [1]
Defense of individuals both accused and convicted of sexual crimes, including the rape of minors, sexual assault, and sexual harassment [2]
Dismissal of legal norms regarding sexual assault [3]
Dismissal of legal norms regarding sexual harassment [4]
Support for the possession of child sexual abuse material [5]
Legal and social normalization of sex between humans and animals [6]
Legal and social normalization of sex with corpses (necrophilia) [7]
Credible allegations of sexual misconduct regarding Stallman [8]
Misconduct of the Free Software Foundation board of directors [9]
Calls from the free software community for Stallman’s removal [10]
Recommendations for reconciliation and closure [11]

https://stallman-report.org

fuck him, and fuck you for defending this useless waste of flesh

forgot to add this from 2017

A national campaign seeks to make all US states prohibit sex between humans and nonhuman animals.

This campaign seems to be sheer bull-headed prudery, using the perverse assumption that sex between a human and an animal hurts the animal. That’s true for some ways of having sex, and false for others.

you lost me at
" Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it.

Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that. I am grateful for the conversations that enabled me to understand why."

the guy did NOT change his mind, hes scared of getting caught and called out for being a pedo, necrophiliac, and enjoying bestiality

Stallman remarked most recently on the subject of pornography featuring humans and animals in 2018:

Prudish censorship attacks again in the UK, convicting someone for possessing “extreme pornography”, including images of sex with animals.

I can’t imagine a possible reason to punish people for this. The article does not report that the animals were harmed, or that they objected to the experience, or that they thought of it as sexual. The law does not consider these questions pertinent.

What is, however, clear is that prohibiting the possession of copies of some image or text — no matter what that image or text may be — threatens human rights. It creates excuses to search through people’s possessions and files. It creates ways to make people vulnerable to criminal charges without their cooperation or even their knowledge. All such laws must be repealed.
by
[deleted]

Just an advice for you, OP: Lemmy hates DT and RMS quite a lot. Post about it somewhere else if you don't want active hate coming to your side.

by
[deleted]
[OP]

It's okay. People can have a different point of view, I have no problem with that.

I learned something new! So thank you. I didn't know any of this. And every once in a while i'll watch a DT video, and i dont think they are bad. And i dont hate DT :)

This banning culture of hate is ridiculous, you can disagree with someone, or even just ideas, but procuring "canceling" and "banning" to everything we don't agree is crazy. This mono culture of hate really saddens me. But perhaps you're right on your appreciation.

Some of these periodical rebirths of the debate about RMS, what are really looking for is discredit on the Free software, which is not the same as open source software. Drew is one of those, if I'm not mistaken because his blog is prolific, who believe free software has no hope, and the total triumph of open source, which in practice is correct, but ethically I'm not so sure. We should be aware of what's behind all these attacks, and I believe it's naive to think these attacks are just about RMS. Free software is ethical in the sense of the freedoms it seeks for the users, but that has no place on enterprises and corporations, open source has enjoyed a different fate because it's not as strict on respecting those freedoms, which under enterprises and corporations are believed to be too restrictive and against their interests. And here we are over and over attacking the organizations (yes, the FSF is attacked not only because RMS is part of it, it was founded by him as well) and people defending those principles, because in the end our minds tend to disqualify everything way too easily, made easy with this banning culture of hate. I've read about how useless it is the FSF, and also about how useless it is the copyleft, and these recurrent intend to discredit the one who started all that of course discredits what came from him, one way or another. I wish I'm wrong on this, and that there was no pun intended towards free software...

The original post was most probably included into the wrong community for sure BTW, this is an open source community, so looking to empathize about free software stuff in here is not going to happen, even less for RMS.