You can always write code for Free Software projects in your free time and contribute to a good cause.

But we need to convince people to care about freedom too. There will always be some excuse to not use the freedom respecting alternative. Look at Reddit users. They could all join us here and change something, but they don’t care. Same with Twitter, Windows, etc. It’s always difficult, it’s always annoying. But if we spread the message and help people with their issues, we can convince at least some of them.

Software takes time to improve. Matrix is a complicated project and unlike Discord it’s also federated. It’s possible that some things will always be harder with Matrix. But even if it improves a lot (which will probably take years), people might find other excuses to not use it. For example Discord might still be more popular.

I know Matrix takes effort to use. You have to understand what a homeserver is, how fediverse works, etc. I had to go through even more effort to set up my own server. It was difficult and took a lot of time of reading the documentation and tutorials. Some of the problems I had were ridiculous. Then to get people to use my server, I had to guide them step by step on how to create an account, because you can’t just send them an invite link.

But we can’t just give up on our freedom and privacy. We are aware of Matrix’s issues and they won’t be fixed in a month or even a year. In the future Discord will have even more users and it will be even harder to escape it. So there is no reason to wait, we have to fight this battle now. This is the right thing to do.

It took me a while to realise this, but 2 of the quotes that this person has posted were not full quotes. I will post them here in case you are curious.

The one from 2003:

The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, “prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia” also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally–but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.

Some rules might be called for when these acts directly affect other people’s interests. For incest, contraception could be mandatory to avoid risk of inbreeding. For prostitution, a license should be required to ensure prostitutes get regular medical check-ups, and they should have training and support in insisting on use of condoms. This will be an advance in public health, compared with the situation today.

For necrophilia, it might be necessary to ask the next of kin for permission if the decedent’s will did not authorize it. Necrophilia would be my second choice for what should be done with my corpse, the first being scientific or medical use. Once my dead body is no longer of any use to me, it may as well be of some use to someone. Besides, I often enjoy rhinophytonecrophilia (nasal sex with dead plants).

Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2003-mar-jun.html

The one from 2013:

There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.

Granted, children may not dare say no to an older relative, or may not realize they could say no; in that case, even if they do not overtly object, the relationship may still feel imposed to them. That’s not willing participation, it’s imposed participation, a different issue.

Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2013-jan-apr.html#04_January_2013_(Pedophilia)

The one from 2006 was a full quote, but that post contains a note now:

[Many years after posting this note, I had conversations with people who had been sexually abused as children and had suffered harmful effects. These conversations eventually convinced me that the practice is harmful and adults should not do it.]

Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05 June 2006 (Dutch paedophiles form political party)

Exactly. There have been things that I had believed for most of my life that were false. If we punish people for being wrong, then nobody will ever change their mind. The cost of doing so will be just too big.

Richard also doesn’t care if some subject seems disgusting or if his ideas seem radical to most people. He will talk about the ethics anyway, without any emotions attached. That’s what philosophers do.

They have to make it look like some conspiracy, a “cult”, etc., since they have nothing else that they could use. There are always people attracted by that sort of thinking and for them it will be enough. In 2019 we saw multiple Free Software projects joining a hate campaign against Stallman based on a blog post that misquoted him and another blog post with fake rumours. The second one was linked by the Software Freedom Conservancy (https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/sep/16/rms-does-not-speak-for-us) and it contained stories like these:

I recall being told early in my freshman year “If RMS hits on you, just say ‘I’m a vi user’ even if it’s not true.”

I think all of those people are either blinded by hatred or have some other motive (in this case it’s hard for me to believe they are all this stupid and can’t recognise obvious trolling). Maybe some of them want proprietary software to exist and Richard’s ideas are too radical for them. But the only way they can fight him or the FSF is with lies.

So him changing his mind was fake, him leaving his own foundation was fake, is there anything that could prove you wrong then?

He was only sorry once he got a lot of flak for his pro child rape opinions.

No, he got in trouble, because he was misquoted by the media when he talked about Minsky. If he is such a liar, why didn’t he apologize for that, since that was actually what the drama was about? He could have said that he was wrong and that he no longer believed that. But for some weird reason he didn’t.

Put it this way - if Andrew Tate all of a sudden said that sexism is wrong and he’s sorry for his actions, only once YouTube started removing his videos, would you believe it to be genuine? Or just him trying to maintain his position?

So mentioning pedophilia 3 times over 10 years (2003-2013) makes it comparable to Andrew Tate?

It certainly seems like a convenient time to have a change of heart, no?

Let’s see. He mentions it for the last time in 2013. Then people dig up his old posts in 2019 and he responds. He had only 6 years to change his mind, very suspicious. Btw, do you know how people knew about those posts? They were on his public website. It was not a secret.

Sorry, I have no time for people who want to see children get raped.

You’re just salty, because we are going to destroy your precious little proprietary software and there is nothing you can do to stop it.

a. i think she was too young to appear willing

That could be true. It’s a valid point.

b. he’s staying at this weird rich dude’s island and suddenly a very young woman wants to have sex and you don’t think she’s cooerced?

It’s certainly weird, but I think there is some chance that he didn’t know.

but the other term would be statuary rape, which still implies violence…

I don’t know much about that, but according to Wikipedia, it’s usually not connected to violence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_rape. Statutory rape is a legal term, it’s not actually the same thing as rape. See, this is another example of what Richard was talking about.

given his position, i don’t think it’s responsible to try to claim pedophilia might be moral, if the child is “consenting”, etc… like sure, it’s okay to discuss ideas… but he acted as if he knew for sure there’s no evidence that it’s harmful…

It would be better if he didn’t have stupid or weird opinions, but he is a philosopher, so he thinks and talks about ethics and stuff like that all of his life. Especially on his blog - you can check stallman.org. He is even against using paid toilets. I don’t know where he got the idea that a child could consent or that it wasn’t harmful, but I’ve seen some pedo say online that there is some research, which allegedly proves that. So I assume they just cherry pick to find something that supports their claims, but then they of course ignore all of the overwhelming evidence against it. This often happens in pseudoscience. So maybe he read something stupid like that, I don’t know.

i don’t think he should be punished, but i don’t think he should be accepted as a spokesperson, figurehead, or leader…

But if he wasn’t who he is, I don’t know if he would have created the Free Software movement. Many people today still think that it’s a radical idea that users should have rights, which nobody should be able to take away from them. I think we need people like him in our society. I also don’t know anyone else who has been fighting for this for 40 years refusing to make compromises on people’s freedom (unlike Linus Torvalds for example). To this day he still travels the world and gives talks about Free Software in multiple languages.

i felt the same way about Stallman as i did about Allen Ginsberg when i found out he was a pedo…

But Richard Stallman is not a pedo.

The Software Freedom Conservancy, FSF Europe, and Bradley Kuhn are the good guys.

To me those are the bad guys. Any organization that wants to cancel someone based on unconfirmed or made up rumors is corrupt to me.

Software Freedom Conservancy has literally spread false information about Richard Stallman: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/sep/16/rms-does-not-speak-for-us. In that post they link to a medium blog post with unconfirmed rumors about him (some of them were later debunked - https://stallmansupport.org). That medium blog post is a second part. In the first one, the author has misquoted Stallman, which was later repeated by media. But this time she gives us stories, which are supposed to show Richard’s alleged abusive behavior. Here is my favorite one:

I recall being told early in my freshman year “If RMS hits on you, just say ‘I’m a vi user’ even if it’s not true.”

Seriously? Who would believe this? The Software Freedom Conservancy apparently. This just sounds like the blogger got trolled by someone and that post is full of ridiculous stories like that. But I guess SFC will believe anything, even from an anonymous source if it’s something that could hurt Richard Stallman.

More organizations participated in this hate campaign, including Mozilla and Tor Project (https://thetownreporter.com/mozilla-and-tor-join-calls-to-richard-stallman-software-foundation). I will never donate to them and I even considered quitting making Libre Software at the time. I couldn’t believe that our community has so many people who will spread lies about someone just to destroy their reputation.

Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like it. Between 2003 and 2013 he really used to believe that pedophilia doesn’t harm children. But he really only mentioned it a few times and hadn’t talked about it again until 2019 when it was brought up again. He said then that he had changed his mind since and that he was wrong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Controversies).

I don’t think we should cancel people for believing something stupid 10 years ago, but his haters love to use this. Just like they like to misquote him or spread fake rumors about him (https://stallmansupport.org). They are probably too angry to think clearly or verify information, but sometimes I wonder if for some of them it’s really only about his position on proprietary software (he wants to destroy it) and that’s why they wanted him removed from the FSF.

beat me to it… yeah, he said that weird shit about ‘consenting’ underage children not being traumatized or some shit… or there was no evidence they were… later apologized and said he was shown evidence but, nah… plus the whole Epstein friendship thing…(maybe he was just naively getting fsf donations? ) dude did some fantastic things for computers and humanity overall with gnu… but he’s definitely not cool

That’s not exactly what happened.

1. In 2019 he was misquoted by a blogger and then by the press:

Famed Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As ‘Entirely Willing’

Source: https://www.vice.com/en/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-described-epstein-victims-as-entirely-willing

What he really said was:

The injustice is in the word “assaulting”. The term “sexual assault” is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation: taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y, which is much worse than X.

The accusation quoted is a clear example of inflation. The reference reports the claim that Minsky had sex with one of Epstein’s harem. (See https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jeffrey-epstein-sex-trafficking-island-court-records-unsealed.) Let’s presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it).

The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex.

We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.

I’ve concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term “sexual assault” in an accusation.

Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism.

Source: https://stallmansupport.org/explaining-events-that-led-to-stallman-resignation-csail-emails.html

There is no “Epstein friendship” that I know of. He called him a “serial rapist” before that (source).

This is what he was criticized for at the time + unconfirmed rumors (some of them debunked now) of allegedly creepy behavior around women. You can read more on https://stallmansupport.org.

2. Some people dug up his old blog posts.

later apologized and said he was shown evidence but, nah…

Between 2003 and 2013 a few times he expressed his views on pedophilia. It was literally a few times, but yes this is something he actually said and used to believe. He hadn’t mentioned that topic again until it was brought up in 2019. That’s when he said that he had changed his mind since then and that he was wrong. You can read about it on Wikipedia (can’t find the link to the original quote at the moment): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Controversies

As far as I know that was the last time he mentioned this topic.

So now that we got the facts right, the question is if he should be punished for having a wrong/stupid opinion on something 10 years ago. I think no, but apparently some people disagree.

This is something he mentioned literally a few times between 2003 and 2013 (and he talks about a lot of stuff - check stallman.org) and he doesn’t even believe anymore. In 2019 he said that it was something he used to believe, but he realised he was wrong. You can read it on Wikipedia (unfortunately I can’t find the original source for the quote right now): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Controversies

Why don’t you include the more recent postings in which he states his opinion has changed?

Because he is biased.

What’s the problem? You want people to not discuss things that are offensive? It’s a shame he used to believe that, but he changed his mind, admitted to being wrong and moved on.

What would you want to happen instead? That we cancel people, because they have an opinion we don’t like?

he was just trying to keep his job

What job? The position at his foundation that he does for free? If he only cared about keeping it, why did he quit 2 days later?

Software is usually installed from repositories and not random websites, so there is less room for user error in general. Even if you download an executable file, you will most likely have to give it permissions to run first. So I think it’s more immune to viruses not because of its users, but because of the way it’s designed.

it’s a smaller target and that hackers aren’t spending as much time trying to attack it

It’s the most popular server system, so I’m not so sure about that.

You think it was just a fake promise? I haven’t thought about it, but it’s certainly possible.

Do you at least encrypt those documents?