Imagine a meeting between Trump and Stallman haha
this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
1035 points (98.6% liked)
BestOfLemmy
9566 readers
723 users here now
Manual curation of great Lemmy discussions and threads
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Two of the reasons I use Ubuntu is because of the cute animal wallpapers and the CEO has a cool af family name.
I can think of a pretty good reason why Ian Murdock isn't there.
Huh, TIL, how sad.
Its a really weird story. He kind of lost it, cops picked him up for banging on a neighbor's door, he said they beat him and started tweeting the n word then killed himself to "send a message". I'm honestly surprised there aren't all sorts of conspiracy theories around it.
Crazy, can't believe I never heard about it.
Imagine you are a billionaire. You have more money than anyone could ever spend. You could spend time on the things you enjoy, with the people you admire or who are dear to you, or even - sometimes - use some of that money to make the world a better place for everyone. Learn about different cultures, learn a new language. Be physically active.
And instead you find yourself sitting with the worst people in the world, crawling up the ass of some orange convict, rapist, and con artist.
If they weren't tearing the world around them down along with themselves, I could almost feel some pity for those suckers.
Having that much money is only possible through a mental disorder. They either have an overwhelming fear of "not having enough" or are sociopaths that don't realize/care that their amoral greed is inherently destructive. They should be hospitalized, not running companies or countries.
There are some very wealthy people that live like you imagine but they reach a wealth plateau. At some point, putting in years of conniving to multiply your massive fortune isn't worth the effort. Even a few hundred million dollars can let multiple generations live a lifestyle better than 99.9% of any human in history.
I make .00009 of a billion a year (ish) and im plenty happy and im pretty much satisfied as can be. And im one of the lucky ones. I cant imagine this level of greed.
There are no ethical billionaires. Because if any of us had that much, we would be giving it away as much as we can and still not even notice a dent.
If you are billionaire of first generation, you prolly barely clawed your way in and are so money-focused that banknotes instead of eyes wouldn't really be that much of a stretch.
If you're billionaire's kid, you are pressured from young age to do the same your family did, no matter what, until you don't know anything else because doing anything else than money is drilled into you as a failure.
Linux phone when?
Google is killing "sideloading" (aka: installing the software of your choosing on a device you own) and I need to jump ship
“sideloading” (aka: installing the software of your choosing on a device you own)
I was never a fan of this term, and now I see why. They took a basic function, unnecessarily gave it a weird name, and now they're taking it away.
Yeah, "side loading" is often just called "installing" on operating systems that respect user agency.
The term implies that the play store is the only true way to get apps on your phone.
I'm so over android it was honestly doomed from the start.
It's anti-property-rights propaganda.
Can't stop thanking him? It looks like it was coerced out of each of them, like a token service to appease the king and avoid the gallows. What a joke.
Another thing about free software: it does its job without distractions and useless features.
And if it starts to get shitty, it gets forked!
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
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.
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.
Do you have a source for this?
load more comments
(3 replies)
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.
may be lacking in empathy
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.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(14 replies)
load more comments
(6 replies)
TBH, I could imagine Mark Shuttleworth being there.
He is one of the first, if not the first space tourist.
yeah I always thought he was kind of a tool who appropriated floss and used his money to buy status in the community
There may be technical things we may not like about Ubuntu, but Ubuntu has been the flagship distribution which has brought countless people into Linux. After that introduction, many have gone to other distros.
There are successful distributions based on Ubuntu, so Ubuntu doesn't limits choice or freedom.
I don't understand shitting on financial success of FLOSS. Remember, free as in freedom, not necessarily as in beer.
Ubuntu doesn't prevent you, technically or legally from disabling snaps.
I rather not use Ubuntu, though but I think the impact has been a net positive.
view more: next ›