this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2021
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Libre Culture

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What is libre culture?

Libre culture is all about empowering people. While the general philosophy stems greatly from the free software movement, libre culture is much broader and encompasses other aspects of culture such as music, movies, food, technology, etc.

Some beliefs include but aren't limited to:

Check out this link for more.

Rules

I've looked into the ways other forums handle rules, and I've distilled their policies down into two simple ideas.

Libre culture is a very very broad topic, and while it's perfectly okay for a conversation to stray, I do ask that we keep things generally on topic.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (3 children)

That’s the very essence of the accusations against him.

I'm getting tired of this, exactly this is the problem. It's always accusations, not a clear-cut case. We can talk when accusations turn into facts.

And I mean, yes if the girl lied about her age I don't know how you expect the other person to know? Obviously transactional sex is still unethical, but calling it willing child abuse is pretty strong if the abused lied about her age, and was nearly an adult.

Edit: being nearly and adult matters, because it may make it much harder to visually tell the person's age

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 years ago (3 children)

It’s always accusations, not a clear-cut case.

No, there's a tons of evidence on many episodes when he embarrassed the Free Software movement by acting poorly in public speaking events. You can find pictures, videos and descriptions of him doing weird things ranging from older comments around age of consent, annoying women with unwanted attention, walking around barefoot or poorly dressed, throwing temper tantrums and the list goes on.

This is not about judging him as a person. A spokeperson is responsible for representing a community in public. Bad publicity harms other people.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 years ago (1 children)

I mean, speaking as a member of said community, Free Software is punk. I don't want a fashionable representative who only says things that everyone agrees with.

Sure, I don't need my Free Software representative to philosophize about the age of consent, but as long as he's not telling people to rape others, I do not have a problem with that, and again, would rather have him speak his mind than not say anything that's pushing the boundaries.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 years ago (1 children)

This punk supporting gender equality and anti-sexism?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 years ago

I don't think he is anti equality or sexist, his actions only reflect poor social skills. His take on pronouns for example just seems like he was being overly pedantic about language again (GNU/Linux anyone?). And the reports about him annoying women sound like he just lacks awareness about how he is perceived.

So yeah, this punk supporting gender equality and anti-sexism. The punk that, last time I checked, didn't have problems with people expressing themselves in idiosyncratic ways.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 years ago (1 children)

The age of consent and the annoying of women is bad, but the rest I don't really care, IMO I kind of like it, it is fun and I prefer that to a souless kind of CEO.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 years ago (1 children)

That's just a false dichotomy.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 years ago (1 children)

No, I know that he did some interesting stuff (including, among the ones you listed, eating his toe skin in public).

I was talking more about the motives behind "canceling" certain people; that is, not many people have been canceled because of facts, it's always accusations

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 years ago

...and yet the evidence is overwhelming.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 years ago (2 children)

It’s always accusations, not a clear-cut case.

With Stallman, pretending it's not clear cut is ridiculous.

Some receipts.

Probably the most damning one:

  • In a 2007 interview, he said:

I don’t have any experience working with women in programming projects; I don’t think that any volunteered to work on Emacs or GCC.

A number of women have contributed to GCC, including:

  • Janis Johnson maintains the test suite and has been a contributor since 2001
  • Sandra Loosemore is the lead author of the GNU Library Reference Manual;[3] RMS is listed as her co-author.
  • Dorit Nuzman made major contributions to loop scheduling and vectorization.
  • Carolyn Tice is also mentioned as a contributor.
[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 years ago (1 children)

If anything that just shows how fucking disconnected he is from everyone... it's kinda been like that for a long time, nothing new there

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 years ago (1 children)

the 'everyone' he's disconnected from just happening to be his women colleagues, huh

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 years ago (1 children)

Maybe, but in general he sometimes seems pretty disconnected from reality

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 years ago (1 children)

You do realize that's a bad attribute for someone leading the Free Software Foundation.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 years ago

Yes; and I wouldn't want him to lead the FSF. But having him on the board of directors is not the same

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 years ago

With Stallman, pretending it’s not clear cut is ridiculous.

The "not a clear-cut case" referred to Minsky and not Stallman. What are you claiming that Stallman is obviously guilty of? Because the discussion was on his alleged endorsement of child abuse and sexual assault and you linked to articles which make accusations based on assumptions and further dilute it with describing how disgusting and asocial he is. Your highlighted point in no way supports the claim of him endorsing such behaviors and comes from an interview, in which Stallman also states that:

I know most of the maintainers only through email, which means that I don’t know whether they are male or female unless their names show me. I just looked at the list: one maintainer is probably female, and a few others have names that might be male or female.

Yes, saying that no women contributed to GCC is false and wrong but it's not a reason to exclude him from the movement or a justification for the CancelStallman campaign.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

Lets be factual here, no one is accusing Richard Stallman of child abuse.

What he did, and no one is even remotely denying that, is publicly defending someone who likely did something of incredibly bad taste (regardless of the specific details and the exact age) for exactly that thing the person allegedly did (so Stallman must assume it to be true as well).

This in itself is not illegal or anything like that, but associated organizations like the MIT or the FSF have every right to decided that because of that Richard Stallman is no longer suited as a public high level representative or a honorary professor.

As much as I also think this witch-hunt on the internet went too far (with Stallman being an out of touch ex-hippy who probably thought we was beyond touch due to his cult following), this is not by any means a hill I am willing to die on. In fact it was probably a good reality check for him and I don't see much problems him him being back on a lower profile position in the FSF now.