Re: [Discuss] RMS in the news

2019-09-18 Thread Rich Pieri
On Wed, 18 Sep 2019 17:28:13 -0400
Kent Borg  wrote:

> I was once introduced to Stallman, but I had met him before, so I 
> reminded him of the party, and of the conversation we had had.
> 
> He remembered me: "Oh, your *that* asshole."

You win the Internet this week. :)

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Re: [Discuss] RMS in the news

2019-09-18 Thread John Abreau
I first heard of RMS at the Boston Computer Society in 1985. My friend
Glenn Hoffman gave me a BCS membership for Christmas in 1984, and we both
attended the BCS/Mac meeting in January 1985, where Bernard Aboba handed
out printed copies of the GNU Manifesto. I was duly impressed by his ideas.

Many years later, after I founded the BCS Linux/UNIX SIG, we had a meeting
where the speaker cancelled a few days before the meeting, and the
alternate speaker we found at the last minute gave a talk on booting
diskless Sun workstations from a Linux server, but his entire talk lasted
about 10 minutes. RMS was in the audience, and during the Q after the
talk, someone asked about running WordPerfect on Linux. RMS immediately
responded to this by loudly asking, "Why bind yourselves in the chains of
commercial software when you can be *FREE* !!!".

Since we had another 90 minutes to fill, I turned the meeting over to him.
His impromptu talk was lively and entertaining.

A few months later I invited him to give a talk on software patents, to
which he responded that he won't speak at any of our meetings until we
rename our group to the BCS GNU/Linux SIG. Needless to say, I found this
demand unreasonable and unacceptable, so the meeting never happened.




On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 5:29 PM Kent Borg  wrote:

> On 9/18/19 1:53 AM, Rich Braun wrote:
> > I’d love to hear more RMS stories. -rich
>
> Many, many years ago...
>
> I was once introduced to Stallman, but I had met him before, so I
> reminded him of the party, and of the conversation we had had.
>
> He remembered me: "Oh, your *that* asshole."
>
> One of my proudest moments, I retell it every chance I get. Kinda feel
> like now people will think I'm just heaping on because it is cool to dis
> Stallman. No, he's been worth it a long time.
>
> I'm glad his vision of open source software is out there, he had a lot
> of influence over where we are...and I am also very glad he didn't get
> his way as to all his utopian details--because utopia is a perfect
> place, and one man's perfection and absolute utopia is another man's hell.
>
> -kb
>
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Re: [Discuss] RMS in the news

2019-09-18 Thread Randy Cole
It's interesting that the media yesterday was talking about the SNL
comedian first, then eventually RMS.
 * * *
When my brother was in high school he got a guest account at the AI
lab.  Something happened & that person couldn't sponsor guests
anymore, so he got one sponsored by RMS, which led to a summer job
working there.
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Re: [Discuss] RMS in the news

2019-09-18 Thread Rich Pieri
On Wed, 18 Sep 2019 11:34:44 -0400
Dan Ritter  wrote:

> And then we do.
> 
> RMS hasn't stopped in at least 30 years.
> 
> Don't use Asperger's as an excuse for RMS acting like an asshole.
> It's rude to all of the rest of us. 

This.

I would like to add that I'm sick and tired of RMS' friends telling me
I need to be tolerant of whatever his damage might be. I'm a difficult
person to deal with. I know it. I'm not always good at handling it but
I try and when someone tells me to knock it off I knock it off.

RMS has somehow leveraged *not* knocking it off into a career.
Now it's over.

Instead of telling us that we should be tolerant of RMS who "thinks
differently" from most of us, maybe those of you who call him friend
should have been telling him to knock it off. If you had done this 30
years ago instead of making excuses for him and encouraging his
assholery then maybe this whole situation could have been avoided.

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Re: [Discuss] RMS in the news

2019-09-18 Thread Derek Martin
On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 06:40:31AM -0400, Jack Bennett wrote:
> I thought it was a mildly funny exchange at the time, but I hadn't
> known of his reputation for singling out women in the audience and
> making them uncomfortable. I wonder if he would have done the same
> call out with a male professor in the same situation.

I've interacted with RMS on a few occasions, and my impression has
always been he would not hesitate to confront anyone, regardness of
any of their identifying characteristics, for any reason he deemed
suitable.  I tend to think this is as it should be, except that his
threshold for when it's OK to confront people needs some rather
heavy-handed tuning.

Despite that I mostly agree with his message, I would characterize
100% of those interactions as negative.  He is coarse sand paper, and
a taste I would prefer not to acquire, much like every other SJW type
I'm aware of having encountered (since such awareness has generally
been imparted via similar behavior).

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Re: [Discuss] RMS in the news

2019-09-18 Thread Dan Ritter
MBR wrote: 
> I've known RMS since the 1970s when we were both regular attendees at the
> MIT Folk Dance Club.  His Aspergers has always made him a difficult person
> to deal with.

My dad has Asperger's. I have Asperger's. My son has Asperger's.

Aspies find it difficult to interpret non-literal social cues.
As a coping mechanism, all of us who are fundamentally
reasonable people say things like "If I make you uncomfortable,
please know that it's not my intention. Just tell me if I have,
and I will stop it immediately."

And then we do.

RMS hasn't stopped in at least 30 years.

Don't use Asperger's as an excuse for RMS acting like an asshole. It's rude
to all of the rest of us. 

-dsr-
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Re: [Discuss] RMS in the news

2019-09-18 Thread MBR
I've known RMS since the 1970s when we were both regular attendees at 
the MIT Folk Dance Club.  His Aspergers has always made him a difficult 
person to deal with.


You say you "wonder if he would have done the same call out with a male 
professor in the same situation".  I'm pretty sure that the answer is, 
"Yes."



On 9/18/19 6:40 AM, Jack Bennett wrote:

He came to give a public talk at Brown which was very well attended because
he was quite well known among the CS, science, and engineering world.

He gave a pretty typical rms talk - software freedom is important, open
source is not good enough, closed systems are bad since you don't know what
they are doing to your personal information. All the usual messages that
he's been an uncompromising pitbull about for 35+ years.
Almost offhandedly, he mentioned that people shouldn't procreate because
having kids takes away from the time that you could otherwise be spending
on REALLY important things, like working on free software and/or activism
for software freedom. That was a new one that I hadn't heard. It kind of
underscored his single-minded obsession to me. Here he is talking to a
pretty diverse audience and he's saying that his "thing" is more important
than literally any other important thing in any other person's life.

Later on, one professor in the department, a member of my dissertation
committee, was quietly leaving the talk a little bit early. rms noticed and
called her out directly for leaving early so she retorted, "well, you know,
I gotta pick up the KIDS".

I thought it was a mildly funny exchange at the time, but I hadn't known of
his reputation for singling out women in the audience and making them
uncomfortable. I wonder if he would have done the same call out with a male
professor in the same situation.


On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 1:55 AM Rich Braun  wrote:


I have a fond memory of RMS crashing one of our BLU meetings to hammer at
the point that our organization’s name included the word Linux and that we
should amend it to include the word Gnu. With rumors of his death not quite
entirely exaggerated—departure from FSF is tantamount to interment, it’s
been his whole life—I’d love to hear more RMS stories. -rich
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Re: [Discuss] RMS in the news

2019-09-18 Thread Seth Gordon
When I was an undergrad, roughly thirty years ago, I worked as one of RMS’s
typists.

I’m not comfortable describing the experience in detail on a public forum.

On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 10:30 AM Brendan Kidwell  wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 18, 2019, at 06:40, Jack Bennett wrote:
> > Later on, one professor in the department, a member of my dissertation
> > committee, was quietly leaving the talk a little bit early. rms noticed
> and
> > called her out directly for leaving early so she retorted, "well, you
> know,
> > I gotta pick up the KIDS".
>
> It's funny to hear a story of that kind of disrespect now.
>
> Just last week before the current drama erupted, I was talking to a friend
> who is a radio host in New York City. My friend said that he'd invited RMS
> to give a keynote at some event, and RMS not only ignore the parameters of
> the time slot -- he COVERED the clock.
>
> So, apparently RMS's talk is the most important thing in the world. He'll
> end when he feels like it, and you may not leave when you're satisfied.
>
> I've given talks, myself, where I end with 80% of the audience I started
> with and I literally didn't notice anyone left.
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Re: [Discuss] RMS in the news

2019-09-18 Thread Brendan Kidwell
On Wed, Sep 18, 2019, at 06:40, Jack Bennett wrote:
> Later on, one professor in the department, a member of my dissertation
> committee, was quietly leaving the talk a little bit early. rms noticed and
> called her out directly for leaving early so she retorted, "well, you know,
> I gotta pick up the KIDS".

It's funny to hear a story of that kind of disrespect now.

Just last week before the current drama erupted, I was talking to a friend who 
is a radio host in New York City. My friend said that he'd invited RMS to give 
a keynote at some event, and RMS not only ignore the parameters of the time 
slot -- he COVERED the clock.

So, apparently RMS's talk is the most important thing in the world. He'll end 
when he feels like it, and you may not leave when you're satisfied.

I've given talks, myself, where I end with 80% of the audience I started with 
and I literally didn't notice anyone left.
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Re: [Discuss] RMS in the news

2019-09-18 Thread John Abreau
I'd like to see his original email that sparked the whole mess. From what
little I've seen, it sounds like RMS condemned Epstein but defended Minsky,
as Minsky is dead and thus cannot defend himself.

The impression I got was that RMS had claimed Epstein forced the
17-year-old girl to come on to Minsky, but that Minsky was unaware that she
was being coerced.

Also, Gregory Benford, author and professor, claims to have witnessed the
incident where she came on to Minsky. He says that Minsky turned her down,
and that neither he nor Minsky had any reason to suspect that she was being
coerced. If this is the case, then all the blame belongs with Epstein.


On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 6:34 AM Jack Bennett  wrote:

> He came to give a public talk at Brown which was very well attended because
> he was quite well known among the CS, science, and engineering world.
>
> He gave a pretty typical rms talk - software freedom is important, open
> source is not good enough, closed systems are bad since you don't know what
> they are doing to your personal information. All the usual messages that
> he's been an uncompromising pitbull about for 35+ years.
> Almost offhandedly, he mentioned that people shouldn't procreate because
> having kids takes away from the time that you could otherwise be spending
> on REALLY important things, like working on free software and/or activism
> for software freedom. That was a new one that I hadn't heard. It kind of
> underscored his single-minded obsession to me. Here he is talking to a
> pretty diverse audience and he's saying that his "thing" is more important
> than literally any other important thing in any other person's life.
>
> Later on, one professor in the department, a member of my dissertation
> committee, was quietly leaving the talk a little bit early. rms noticed and
> called her out directly for leaving early so she retorted, "well, you know,
> I gotta pick up the KIDS".
>
> I thought it was a mildly funny exchange at the time, but I hadn't known of
> his reputation for singling out women in the audience and making them
> uncomfortable. I wonder if he would have done the same call out with a male
> professor in the same situation.
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 1:55 AM Rich Braun  wrote:
>
> > I have a fond memory of RMS crashing one of our BLU meetings to hammer at
> > the point that our organization’s name included the word Linux and that
> we
> > should amend it to include the word Gnu. With rumors of his death not
> quite
> > entirely exaggerated—departure from FSF is tantamount to interment, it’s
> > been his whole life—I’d love to hear more RMS stories. -rich
> > ___
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> > Discuss@blu.org
> > http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
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>
>
> --
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> ajbenn...@gmail.com
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Re: [Discuss] RMS in the news

2019-09-18 Thread Jack Bennett
He came to give a public talk at Brown which was very well attended because
he was quite well known among the CS, science, and engineering world.

He gave a pretty typical rms talk - software freedom is important, open
source is not good enough, closed systems are bad since you don't know what
they are doing to your personal information. All the usual messages that
he's been an uncompromising pitbull about for 35+ years.
Almost offhandedly, he mentioned that people shouldn't procreate because
having kids takes away from the time that you could otherwise be spending
on REALLY important things, like working on free software and/or activism
for software freedom. That was a new one that I hadn't heard. It kind of
underscored his single-minded obsession to me. Here he is talking to a
pretty diverse audience and he's saying that his "thing" is more important
than literally any other important thing in any other person's life.

Later on, one professor in the department, a member of my dissertation
committee, was quietly leaving the talk a little bit early. rms noticed and
called her out directly for leaving early so she retorted, "well, you know,
I gotta pick up the KIDS".

I thought it was a mildly funny exchange at the time, but I hadn't known of
his reputation for singling out women in the audience and making them
uncomfortable. I wonder if he would have done the same call out with a male
professor in the same situation.


On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 1:55 AM Rich Braun  wrote:

> I have a fond memory of RMS crashing one of our BLU meetings to hammer at
> the point that our organization’s name included the word Linux and that we
> should amend it to include the word Gnu. With rumors of his death not quite
> entirely exaggerated—departure from FSF is tantamount to interment, it’s
> been his whole life—I’d love to hear more RMS stories. -rich
> ___
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Re: [Discuss] RMS in the news

2019-09-18 Thread Dan Ritter
Rich Braun wrote: 
> I have a fond memory of RMS crashing one of our BLU meetings to hammer at the 
> point that our organization’s name included the word Linux and that we should 
> amend it to include the word Gnu. With rumors of his death not quite entirely 
> exaggerated—departure from FSF is tantamount to interment, it’s been his 
> whole life—I’d love to hear more RMS stories. -rich

Years before I met her, my wife-to-be went out on a date with RMS.

She says he was rude to the waitstaff, was obnoxiously overbearing
on every subject, and she feels that every allegation against
him is believable.

-dsr-
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