It seems that the campaign of the politically correct to eliminate everything they don't like is beginning to meet resistance. And, those of us who are against the culture of cancellation (whether we agree or not with the canceled one) have a return to celebrate. Richard Stallman returns to the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation.
"I am once again on the board of the Free Software Foundation," said Stallman, who was quick to assure that he will not resign again.
Stallman's return
To understand this story we need to introduce three characters:
- Jeffrey Epstein: He is a convicted billionaire who provided his rich and famous friends with female company including minors. He committed suicide in jail.
- Marvin Minsky: Pioneer of artificial intelligence and founder of the research laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). After his death, one of Epstein's victims said that as a minor she had sex with him at one of the parties organized by the tycoon.
- Richard Stallman: Founder of the Free Software movement, creator of the GPL license, the Free Software Foundation and the GNU project (Base of almost all Linux distributions)
Actualización
A reader reminds me via Twitter that the event was the following. In front of a witness, and prompted by Epstein, the minor offered to have sex with Minsky. He never accepted.
Stallman's "crime"
Stallman's "unspeakable" act that sparked the ire of the hordes of political correctness was sending an email. Commenting on an act of repudiation by MIT students he wrote:
Friday's event announcement is an injustice to Marvin Minsky:
“The late AI 'pioneer' Marvin Minsky (who is accused of assaulting
one of Epstein's victims [2]) »The injustice is in the word "attack." The term "sexual assault" is so vague and slippery that it facilitates the inflation of accusations: taking the claims that someone did X and leading people to think that it is Y, that it is much worse than X.
The cited accusation 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.)
Suppose that was true (I see no reason not to believe it).The word "assault" presupposes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself does not say such a thing.
Only they had sex.We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible is that she presented herself to him as fully willing. Assuming Epstein coerced her, he would have had every reason to tell her to hide it from most of his associates.
I have come to the conclusion, from various examples of accusation inflation, that it is absolutely wrong to use the term "sexual assault" in an accusation.
Whatever behavior you want to criticize, you should describe it with a specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism.
Request for resignation
A student at MIT decided to start a bell. Its objectives were clear:
At least Richard Stallman is not accused of raping anyone. But is that our highest standard? The standard to which this prestigious institution adheres? If this is what MIT wants to defend; If this is what MIT wants to represent, then, yeah, burn it to the ground ...
… Remove them all, if necessary, and let something much better be built from the ashes.
Stallman, who had a few questionable statements to his credit, had to resign from the Free Software Foundation in the face of public pressure.
The announcement of Stallman's return
During the LibrePlanet conference, the defender of Free Software said:
I have to make an announcement. I am once again on the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation. We were working on a video to announce it, but it was difficult. We had no experience of this kind of thing so we didn't finish it, but here's the ad. Some will be happy with this and others will be disappointed, but who knows. In any case, it is so. And I am not going to resign a second time.
Let's hope that Stallman's return is the beginning of the return of valuable people excluded just for thinking differently.
Stallman is the one who worked the most when it comes to free software. I'm so glad Stallman's return.
It is the best thing that can happen to the free software foundation, I believe that the associates and users have left a lot of ground for proprietary software.
I'm very happy.
A virtual hug Richard Stallman.
A happy day for the entire free community.
epic trouser drop
The harassment and demolition of Richard Stallman (and of course, since we are, of the FSF and the GNU project), is because it bothers certain interests that there is something as legitimate as Free Software. It is very similar to Open Software and other similar concepts, but thanks to witch hunts, manipulations and people willing to stone, we see that it is not the same.