He's a terrible communicator, and sort of repellent in person. Contrast someone like Cory Doctorow who manages to be right about stuff and actually communicate effectively.
I don't really share that point. If the message is correct, why would the other things matter? Due to "social norms"? It is a similar problem with Code of Conducts. In general I don't care about CoCs. That does not mean I act in the opposite manner either - I just don't feel the need for CoCs.
Because on the other end of the argument is an audience of human beings, not a theorem solver. Pretending that delivery does NOT matter, or even shouldn't matter, is out of touch with reality.
The only instance in which he's ever engaged in "publicly defending pedophilia" was in remarks he made 20 years ago about the innocuity of "voluntary" sex with minors. He has since retracted those statements and publicly espoused a different and more informed opinion. There's certainly a large amount of very low-quality journalism engaging in bad-faith interpretations of things he's said in other contexts, though these aren't serious characterizations, only hallucinations manufactured by professional scheisters to fulfill unspoken agendas. At this point dredging it up and holding it against him in-perpetuity is a bit wrongheaded.
Of course restrict it to his opinions on software licensing. I think that is the sort of thing people mean when they say he was right.
Lots of people made similar claims. Most notably The National Council for Civil Liberties (now called Liberty), the UK's leading civil/human rights organisation made submissions to parliament claiming that sex with minors was not always harmful, had a pro-paedo organisation as an affiliate and give them a representative on the gay rights subcommittee: https://www.thetimes.com/travel/destinations/uk-travel/scotl... The people involved were unaffected, some reaching fairly high political permissions.
A lot of other people whose works are respected have actually had sex with minors. Eric Gill and Oscar Wilde for example.
None of that makes Stallman's opinions defensible in my opinion. On the other hand I am happy to ignore his opinions on that topic and still value his opinions on other things.
He was wrong about refusing to make gcc more modular by fear that it would be used to insert proprietary plugins, which is why llvm is behind every new language or dev tool now and gcc is only relevant because the kernel still depends on it (for now).
His opinions on software have been largely out of touch for the past 20 years. People might yearn for his ideals, but it's just not the world we live in.
He's a terrible communicator, and sort of repellent in person. Contrast someone like Cory Doctorow who manages to be right about stuff and actually communicate effectively.
I don't really share that point. If the message is correct, why would the other things matter? Due to "social norms"? It is a similar problem with Code of Conducts. In general I don't care about CoCs. That does not mean I act in the opposite manner either - I just don't feel the need for CoCs.
> why would the other things matter
Because on the other end of the argument is an audience of human beings, not a theorem solver. Pretending that delivery does NOT matter, or even shouldn't matter, is out of touch with reality.
because brilliant jerk is not acceptable
Publicly defending pedophilia arguably isn't “right”, but if you restrict Stallman's positions to software licensing, then I'd agree with you.
The only instance in which he's ever engaged in "publicly defending pedophilia" was in remarks he made 20 years ago about the innocuity of "voluntary" sex with minors. He has since retracted those statements and publicly espoused a different and more informed opinion. There's certainly a large amount of very low-quality journalism engaging in bad-faith interpretations of things he's said in other contexts, though these aren't serious characterizations, only hallucinations manufactured by professional scheisters to fulfill unspoken agendas. At this point dredging it up and holding it against him in-perpetuity is a bit wrongheaded.
Of course restrict it to his opinions on software licensing. I think that is the sort of thing people mean when they say he was right.
Lots of people made similar claims. Most notably The National Council for Civil Liberties (now called Liberty), the UK's leading civil/human rights organisation made submissions to parliament claiming that sex with minors was not always harmful, had a pro-paedo organisation as an affiliate and give them a representative on the gay rights subcommittee: https://www.thetimes.com/travel/destinations/uk-travel/scotl... The people involved were unaffected, some reaching fairly high political permissions.
A lot of other people whose works are respected have actually had sex with minors. Eric Gill and Oscar Wilde for example.
None of that makes Stallman's opinions defensible in my opinion. On the other hand I am happy to ignore his opinions on that topic and still value his opinions on other things.
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Tell that to my spouse who, at age 14, was given his contact card by him directly.
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He was wrong about refusing to make gcc more modular by fear that it would be used to insert proprietary plugins, which is why llvm is behind every new language or dev tool now and gcc is only relevant because the kernel still depends on it (for now).
His opinions on software have been largely out of touch for the past 20 years. People might yearn for his ideals, but it's just not the world we live in.
I keep hearing this.
Please quote Stallman's quote where he defends pedophilia.
Not a quote of someone else saying that Stallman defends pedofilhia, but a quote by Stallman himself.