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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.
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.
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.
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.
