this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
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This is kind of an odd take imo. FOSS is important because it doesn't matter who the creators or maintainers are. Even if all of the people OP listed were in that room and agreed to write backdoors into their software for the government, others could just fork those projects and the community could move on without the bad actors. (I know that's easier said than done, but it is feasible.)
I'm not about to start cheering for Richard Stallman just because he's not MAGA. He had some pretty bad takes about the Epstein scandal.
stallman is a creep, but i found it weird how those comments in particular are what finally got rid of him considering how... tame they were compared to his earlier behavior. iirc he commented on an event where an elderly colleague of his had been propositioned by one of epsteins "girls" and turned it down, and stallman said something to the effect of the old guy couldn't have known she was being coerced so should not be seen as a guilty party (the age of the woman in question was not made clear).
like, compared to asking female colleagues to lay down with him on a filthy mattress in his office and eating his own toenails during lectures that's downright pedestrian.
edit: okay the age of the woman was pointed out to him later and he responded with his usual tact. of course.
we know the man is completely unable to read people or social signals, and bases everything he says entirely on statistics. the biggest controversy before the epstein thing was when he said he didn't think it would hurt minors if they were allowed sexual relations earlier, which was pretty damn creepy. but the fact that he then asked a psychologist about it and completely changed his tune instantly afterwards tells me that he is a man that has no human instinct. he runs on pure data.
What makes Stallman a creep? I believe many people are judging him by his nerdy look and personality, the guy is really just being himself and not putting up any masks, i would argue any other acting elegant for social status is a bigger creep
https://stallman.org/rms-lifestyle.html
It's unfortunately kind of well know that he's a creepy dude. I can't cite specific examples but I have heard pretty credible reasons to believe this in the past.
He does good work in the FOSS community and has been correct about basically everything he predicted regarding the future of proprietary software.
But somewhat ironically, it seems like every facet of his life is filled with kinda creepy anti-social behaviour.
i'm judging him for his actions, like his history of propositioning female colleagues half his age during work hours to "test" the mattress in his office, which there are tens of reports of.
but, in all honesty, i agree with you. if you read my other post you'll note that i started with that because otherwise discussion tends to stop entirely. the man has no filter and an extremely strong, if peculiar, sense of ethics. this tends to cause him to do creepy things.
Do you have a source for this?
this medium post from the time of the "remove rms" letter is the source i remember reading.
Many of the accusations from this article are addressed here:
https://techrights.org/o/2021/04/24/rms-false-accusations/#mattress
i did encounter that while searching. it's good that people were not hurt, but it's so weird to see both sides be so fervent on this issue. rms is a strange man, no doubt about it, and only he can vouch for his reasons, but the consequences of his actions are visible to everyone.
I don't know how I'd categorise him, but my major impression is basically what you conclude as well.
It seems to me he has little to no social skills, and may be lacking in empathy, to the point "cynic" may be a good description? The way I see him, my impression is that he looks at the world around him and draws what he believes to be logical conclusions from the hard facts he observes, and is willing to change his perspective if hard facts contradict him. The lack of human understanding has put him in some bad spots, but I have a hard time seeing him as a "bad person" in general.
I'm pretty sure it's the opposite: he's empathetic and egalitarian to a fault. If you read the stuff his accusers claim is defense of pedophilia, it's actually about him failing to assume that minors lack agency (as society expects), not defending predatory adults.
yeah exactly! he's a walking pr nightmare, and according to a friend who saw him try to interrupt a talk at europe's largest hacker con, he's completely unaware of other people. i don't think he's lacking in empathy, i think his empathy is targeted. combined with his extreme adherence to his ideology he's definitely autistic-coded (well, that and his rider). based on that i also have a hard time calling him a bad person, but if i don't open with "he's a creep" people tend to ignore the rest of the post because i must obviously be an apologist.
i think it's good that he was made to leave the fsf, because that organisation badly needs a shake-up. but the backlash that make him come back took the wrong lessons from the protest. you need ideologues, but you also need pr. we need stallman's ideas because i've not seen anyone else in the movement formulate them so absolutely, but we don't need stallman the person in public.
I like and respect RS. I wish people would learn not to judge others negatively without trying to understand their meaning or perspective.
Stallman might have autism. Social skills have never really been his forte.
yeah
I don’t think that shares a bubble with pedo comments.
Worked with enough people with autism who weren’t obsessed with pedophila.
These are two different things.
Lack of understanding social interactions, and lack of ability to understand how others feel in a given situation are marks of autism though.
My impression is that what people are accusing of being "pedo comments" are more a result of him not really understanding power dynamics between people, and not understanding the lack of judgment that kids and young teens have, to the point of not really understanding that a kid is literally incapable of sexual consent.
I also heard he walked back a lot of comments after having talked to a psychologist that laid down some hard facts for him regarding the matter of sexuality and the psyche of kids.
he only walked back after making hard defence of his comments at first. While we can say hey he was struggling with his own disorder: This is the type of undermining on someone’s psyche that so many victims are up against. while it’s good for him to finally come around, There should absolutely be no wiggle room. I’m glad it’s been called out as inappropriate regardless of reason.
That should be reassuring more than anything, in the sense that he came around after being genuinely convinced that he was wrong. There's nothing wrong with defending your position until you're genuinely convinced that you're wrong. I have a much bigger problem with people instantly folding when confronted, but not truly accepting that they were wrong in the first place.
So…..Your big take away here was defending the mediocre male who is at zero risk over a bumbling opinion .
Not even inkling of concern of how this impacts the vulnerable underage victims of the case and how these harmful opinions have been debasing them.
Well at least now we know where you really stand here on which hills you’re willing to die on .
Wat? Did you reply to the wrong comment or something?
I'm rationalising a persons reaction to a situation by trying to understand how they think.
I don't see how rationalising one persons train of thought says anything about my personal opinions or concerns about anything?
This is really what confused me the most. What about my comment made you think there was even any hill in the vicinity to die on?
Eats his own toenails…?
yeah
Can't watch :(
congratulations
.....thanks?
sorry, bad choice of word. i mean, you probably don't want to watch it. the age restriction is stupid, but it's still a gross video.
Ah, yeah I can imagine.
It does nowadays. Linus removed Russian devs/maintainers due to the US sanctions.
Oh wow I did not know about this, fuck.
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/17/761718975/free-software-pioneer-quits-mit-over-his-comments-on-epstein-sex-trafficking-cas
Reads like a non story. His comments are basically describing how many places handle this topic already. USians will get outrage at anything but their own making I swear
That’s the tip of the iceberg…
https://stallman-report.org/
Yikes.
Somehow I'm less than surprised that someone who embodies the free nature of the GNU project, is open to people having so much choice that they actively detriment themselves in their naivety.
Regardless, not a good look on Stallman. Very disappointing at the very least.
I understand his viewpoint for the most part, (not that I agree with him, I just understand him), and I would argue that psychologically, even 18/19/21 year olds often don't have sufficient comprehension of their actions to properly consent; the younger the person the more relevant and pronounced, this becomes. Combined with the trauma and lifelong mental suffering that many survivors have described, I can't see how, anyone, in good conscience, could possibly support the sexualization and exploitation of minors, even if they're 17 and almost of legal age. It's not a logical argument, it's a physiological, and a moral argument that must be considered.
Logically, he does have a point, where the specific age is less relevant; which I disagree with; but that argument does not hold up against the fact that morally speaking, there's more than enough reason to prohibit the activity for the psychological good of the children in question.
I appreciate all he's done for FOSS, but I can't support him as a person, especially not on this point.