Computer scientist Richard Stallman, who defended Jeffrey Epstein, resigns from MIT CSAIL and the Free Software Foundation

Computer scientist and open software advocate Richard Stallman said he has resigned from his position as a visiting scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) after describing a victim of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein as “entirely willing” in emails sent to a department list. Stallman has also stepped down from his roles as president and board director at the Free Software Foundation, the nonprofit he founded in 1985.

Last week, the Daily Beast reported that Stallman had also called for the legalization of child pornography and abolishment of age of consent laws on his personal blog in multiple posts published over the course of 15 years. https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-defends-epstein-victims-were-entirely-willing

In his MIT CSAIL resignation, also posted to his personal blog, Stallman wrote: “To the MIT Community, I am resigning effective immediately from my position in CSAIL at MIT. I am doing this due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings.”

MIT has been under scrutiny for its ties to Epstein, who a New Yorker investigation found had secured $7.5 million in donations for the MIT Media Lab, far more than what was previously disclosed. As a result, its director, Joi Ito, resigned last week and MIT ordered an investigation into the Media Lab’s ties to Epstein, who was found dead in his jail cell last month while awaiting federal trial on sex trafficking charges.

As part of its preliminary findings, MIT president Rafael Reif admitted that the law firm conducting the investigation had uncovered a letter he wrote to thank Epstein for a donation in 2012, four years after Epstein had already pled guilty to procuring for prostitution a girl under 18. “I apparently signed this letter on August 16, 2012, about six weeks into my presidency,” Reif wrote. “Although I do not recall it, it does bear my signature.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/mit-president-l-rafael-reif-admits-he-knew-about-jeffrey-epsteins-donations

👉🏼 Read more:
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/16/computer-scientist-richard-stallman-who-defended-jeffrey-epstein-resigns-from-mit-csail-and-the-free-software-foundation/

#stallman #epstein #ChildPornography #pedo #thinkabout
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Reasons not to use the Discord communications system

The Discord communications system requires running a nonfree client program. That alone is reason to refuse to use it.

❗️ The program reportedly collects lots of data about users.

❗️ The developer denies the claim that Discord reports which processes are running on the user's machine. I have no way of determining the facts about this specific point. Whether it collects those particular data is a minor detail; I mention it only to avoid appearing to assert a criticism that might not be true.

❗️ For the same reason, I mention that selling personal data is not the sole way that the company makes money.

❗️ I don't think that question how it makes money really matters. What matters, ethically, is what the software does to users.

❗️ The developers' motives for making it do those things are pertinent to understanding the situation but should not affect our moral judgment of mistreatment of users.

❗️ One user quit using Discord because it demanded she fill out a Google reCAPTCHA, apparently because she was connecting through Tor.

❗️ Google CAPTCHAs didn't work for me, because they required running nonfree Javascript code.

❗️ Discord insists on tracking users. If a user connects through a VPN, Discord demands that user provide a phone number.

❗️ Discord locks accounts that don't have associated phone numbers. When an account is locked, also called "deactivated", the user is not allowed to make real use of it until person adds a phone number.
Discord may demand to talk with you by phone if it decides you are suspicious — for instance, if you contact it via Tor.

❗️ If I understand right, if you use Discord regularly via Tor you would need to carry that phone with you all the time. A burner phone, one what you possess only for a short time, would not be allowed to do the job.

❗️ Thus, whoever uses Discord gets tracked either by the Discord server (and anyone looking at where the packets are coming from) or by the phone.

❗️ Users report that Discord shut off their accounts and won't tell them why.

The Discord web site also offers application nonfree programs. You shouldn't use them, naturally, but they are a separate issue from using the communications system itself.

💡 Reasons not to use the Discord communications system
https://stallman.org/discord.html

#stallman #discord
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Richard Stallman: A Discussion on Freedom, Privacy & Cryptocurrencies

Dr. Stallman spent most of his time advocating for free software, but nowadays, he has been adopting a critical stance on cryptocurrencies.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/richard-stallman-a-discussion-on-freedom-privacy-cryptocurrencies


#therichard #rms #stallman #cryptocurrencies

We are calling for the removal of the entire Board of the Free Software Foundation

Richard M. Stallman, frequently known as RMS, has been a dangerous force in the free software community for a long time. He has shown himself to be misogynist, ableist, and transphobic, among other serious accusations of impropriety. These sorts of beliefs have no place in the free software, digital rights, and tech communities. With his recent reinstatement to the Board of Directors of the Free Software Foundation, we call for the entire Board of the FSF to step down and for RMS to be removed from all leadership positions.

We, the undersigned, believe in the necessity of digital autonomy and the powerful role user freedom plays in protecting our fundamental human rights. In order to realize the promise of everything software freedom makes possible, there must be radical change within the community. We believe in a present and a future where all technology empowers – not oppresses – people. We know that this is only possible in a world where technology is built to pay respect to our rights at its most foundational levels. While these ideas have been popularized in some form by Richard M. Stallman, he does not speak for us. We do not condone his actions and opinions. We do not acknowledge his leadership or the leadership of the Free Software Foundation as it stands today.

There has been enough tolerance of RMS’s repugnant ideas and behavior. We cannot continue to let one person ruin the meaning of our work. Our communities have no space for people like Richard M. Stallman, and we will not continue suffering his behavior, giving him a leadership role, or otherwise holding him and his hurtful and dangerous ideology as acceptable.

https://rms-open-letter.github.io/

#stallman #rms #fsf #openletter #thinkabout
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Mob Mentality Threatens The Free Software Movement

Richard Stallman recently announced on a video that he's back. He's back at the Free Software Foundation and is reinstated as a board member. And the haters are out in full force, actively trying to cancel Richard again. And not just Richard, the haters actually are trying to force the entire board of the FSF to resign.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uun2YhnUNGc

#stallman #rms #fsf #openletter #thinkabout #video
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Red Hat statement about Richard Stallman’s return to the Free Software Foundation board

Red Hat is a long-time donor and contributor to projects stewarded by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), with hundreds of contributors and millions of lines of code contributed. Considering the circumstances of Richard Stallman’s original resignation in 2019, Red Hat was appalled to learn that he had rejoined the FSF board of directors. As a result, we are immediately suspending all Red Hat funding of the FSF and any FSF-hosted events. In addition, many Red Hat contributors have told us they no longer plan to participate in FSF-led or backed events, and we stand behind them.

In 2019, we called on the FSF board to use the opportunity created by Stallman’s departure to transition to a more diverse, inclusive board membership. The FSF took only limited steps in this direction. Richard Stallman’s return has reopened wounds we had hoped would slowly heal after his departure. We believe that in order to regain the confidence of the broader free software community, the FSF should make fundamental and lasting changes to its governance.

On Wednesday, the FSF board of directors committed to a series of changes related to organizational governance and the appointment of members to its board of directors. However, we have no reason to believe that the most recent FSF board statement signals any meaningful commitment to positive change. We look forward to working with the FSF and others to enable the FSF to once again become an effective and trusted advocacy organization in line with its chartered non-profit mission.

https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-statement-about-richard-stallmans-return-free-software-foundation-board

💡 most recent FSF board statement
https://www.fsf.org/news/preliminary-board-statement-on-fsf-governance

#stallman #rms #fsf #openletter #redhat #statement
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Richard Stallman is trying to apologize

In a personal statement, he blames controversial remarks on personal incompetence.

Ever since my teenage years, I felt as if there were a filmy curtain separating me from other people my age. I understood the words of their conversations, but I could not grasp why they said what they did. Much later I realized that I didn't understand the subtle cues that other people were responding to.

Later in life, I discovered that some people had negative reactions to my behavior, which I did not even know about. Tending to be direct and honest with my thoughts, I sometimes made others uncomfortable or even offended them -- especially women. This was not a choice: I didn't understand the problem enough to know which choices there were.

Sometimes I lost my temper because I didn't have the social skills to avoid it. Some people could cope with this; others were hurt. I apologize to each of them. Please direct your criticism at me, not at the Free Software Foundation.

Occasionally I learned something about relationships and social skills, so over the years I've found ways to get better at these situations. When people help me understand an aspect of what went wrong, and that shows me a way of treating people better, I teach myself to recognize when I should act that way. I keep making this effort, and over time, I improve.

Some have described me as being "tone-deaf," and that is fair. With my difficulty in understanding social cues, that tends to happen. For instance, I defended Professor Minsky on an M.I.T. mailing list after someone leaped to the conclusion that he was just guilty as Jeffrey Epstein. To my surprise, some thought my message defended Epstein. As I had stated previously, Epstein is a serial rapist, and rapists should be punished. I wish for his victims and those harmed by him to receive justice.

False accusations -- real or imaginary, against me or against others -- especially anger me. I knew Minsky only distantly, but seeing him unjustly accused made me spring to his defense. I would have done it for anyone. Police brutality makes me angry, but when the cops lie about their victims afterwards, that false accusation is the ultimate outrage for me. I condemn racism and sexism, including their systemic forms, so when people say I don't, that hurts too.

It was right for me to talk about the injustice to Minsky, but it was tone-deaf that I didn't acknowledge as context the injustice that Epstein did to women or the pain that caused.

I've learned something from this about how to be kind to people who have been hurt. In the future, that will help me be kind to people in other situations, which is what I hope to do.

https://www.fsf.org/news/rms-addresses-the-free-software-community

#stallman #rms #fsf #excuse
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Justice for Dr. Richard Matthew Stallman

Dr. Richard Matthew Stallman (born 16 March 1953), known by his initials rms (occasionally uppercase RMS) is an American computer scientist, programmer, philosopher, free/libre software movement activist and ethical hacker. He pioneered the campaign for software to be distributed in such manner that its users receive the fundamental freedoms to use, study, distribute, and modify it. Software that respects these four freedoms is termed free software (or libre software).

https://jorgemorais.gitlab.io/justice-for-rms/

#tolerance #rms #freesoftware #gnu #healingcommunities #restoretruth #reinstallrms #freethought #stallman
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#Stallman has been extorted to support the current thing, again

https://mastodon.xyz/@rms/112424611210136204