I’ve tried using my incredible (british) brain using Google to see if these open source titans ever engaged in a battle of “friendly conversation” with one another.

I was always interested what Stallman thought of the angry but smart finnish man who gave us the robust penguin kernel that breathes life into older machines and powers supercomputers for the weather.

The same with Torvalds thoughts on Stallmans GNU involvement and him as a person.

This is because you sometimes had different organisations in the FOSS and OSS community that take on different meanings so I wanted a better idea if these chaps ever spoke in an interview together.

TLDR : Does finnish man like bearded GNU jesus man and the same vice versa

  • @Buffalox
    38•6 months ago

    I can’t remember having seen them debating each other, either in person or otherwise. But their positions are well known. Linus chose the GPL license from an engineering/pragmatic viewpoint, while Stallman is an idealist.

    Apparently they are quite friendly:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDxMJQLXmBE

      • @Buffalox
        15•6 months ago

        And what’s your point with posting this? My guess is that you don’t even understand it.
        He is saying there is no such thing as willing participation from a child in pedophilia. Are you saying there is?

        • @TheGrandNagusEnglish
          10•6 months ago

          Unfortunately, that is not the case. Stallman is absolutely a defender of having sex with children.

          Richard Stallman on paedophilia:

          “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.”

          RMS on June 28th, 2003

          "I think that everyone age 14 or above ought to take part in sex, though not indiscriminately. (Some people are ready earlier.)

          RMS on 25th May, 2003

          To be fair for that one, he doesn’t specify whether 14 or under is fine for an adult to have sex with. It’s certainly possible to interpret this as child-child relations only, but given his other comments where he says adult-child sex is fine, I decided to include this one.

          “I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren’t voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.”

          RMS on June 5th, 2006

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

          RMS on Jan 4th, 2013

          I understand that Stallman has excellent views on liberty in software, and he’s made enormous contributions to FOSS. But that does not necessarily mean he’s a good person or that all of his views are good ones. People are flawed. IMO his views on the morality of having sex with children aren’t good ones, but I recognise that I agree with him in other ways.

          • @Buffalox
            -5•6 months ago

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

            But per the quote in the meme above, you can’t have willing participation, it is always coerced.

            And you still don’t provide sources.

            • @TheGrandNagusEnglish
              8•6 months ago

              I’d say the quotes above show he absolutely believes children are capable of consent. Why else would he use phrases like

              • “it’s fine so long as nobody is coerced” (as if there are any situations where an adult can have sex with a child without there being coercion)

              • “willing participation in pedophilia” (children can’t consent to sex!)

              • “the arguments [against having sex with children] seem to be based on cases that aren’t voluntary” (None of them are voluntary! CHILDREN CANNOT CONSENT!)

              It doesn’t mean he supports it.

              He explicitly said it should be legal, and also alluded that parents are just prudish if they don’t want their children to be having sex. It’s very clear he supports it.

              You’ll be able to find this stuff in the articles that went around when he was pressured to resign from the FSF and from his role at MIT. It’s primarily quotes from him on his own site, stallman.org.

              • @[email protected]
                3•6 months ago

                Pre-blowback: fucking children is fine if they consent to it

                Post-blowback: friends explained to me that it hurts the children and that they can’t consent

        • @[email protected]
          3•6 months ago

          I think the phrasing isn’t the best. I think he needs an “is what” before “hurts children” in the first paragraph.

          • @Buffalox
            1•6 months ago

            I agree, the phrasing is bad, but that doesn’t change that if you read it carefully, the meaning is clear.
            There is absolutely no reasonable basis for claiming he is defending pedophiles, when what he does is the direct opposite, by logically proving that a common defense they use is invalid, because you can never claim to know participation is voluntary. It is per definition coerced.

            • @TheGrandNagusEnglish
              2•6 months ago

              There’s plenty of evidence that he’s pro paedophilia, which I have posted elsewhere in this submission.

              I think people need to stop this hero worship.

              Richard Stallman thinks paedophilia is ok or even good. It should be fine to find that view reprehensible whilst at the same time acknowledging that he has some good ideals when it comes to software, and his role in GNU was huge.

              People in the Linux world treat him as a deity figure and therefore treat any words against him as blasphemy. It makes them reject and dismiss the whole bestiality/paedophilia is good aspect of him, when they really shouldn’t as that is a rejection of reality.

              If you just view him as a flawed person, rather than some deity figure, then it’s easy to accept that he’s good in some areas and less good in others.

      • @TheGrandNagusEnglish
        11•6 months ago

        Unfortunately he’s said a lot more than that.

        Richard Stallman on paedophilia:

        “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.”

        RMS on June 28th, 2003

        "I think that everyone age 14 or above ought to take part in sex, though not indiscriminately. (Some people are ready earlier.)

        RMS on May 25th 2003

        “I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren’t voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.”

        RMS on June 5th, 2006

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

        RMS on Jan 4th, 2013

        People need to understand that you can be a champion of FOSS, and have some great ideas in terms of software liberty, while also having some really shitty views in other areas.

        It’s why people should avoid celebrity worship. Just because an engineer/sportsperson/actor/artist/CEO does something you like, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a good person, or devoid of human flaws.

        • @[email protected]
          9•6 months ago

          His view did evolve after being talked to later about it. On the grounds that power dynamics involved in age differences create a coercive effect of even someone who could be mature enough to logically and emotionally grasp the concepts.

          He is also deeply in the libertarian mind set that illegal means enforced with guns and batons and restrictions of rights, and that puts a higher bar to what should be legal.

          Though I do totally agree with you on hero worship. Nobody is perfect and that impossibility is expontetially more true if want them to have been, to be and continue to be perfect forever.

          • @TheGrandNagusEnglish
            2•6 months ago

            Thing is, do we believe his sudden change of heart? It only happened once his job was on the line. He U-turned on his views that sex with children is fine just 2 days before he was forced out of his role.

            To me, that reads as a last-ditch attempt to save his job, as opposed to a genuine sudden change in worldview for an opinion he held and championed for decades.

            You know, like when a questionable politician has racist twitter posts from 5 years ago brought up in an election campaign and they’re like *“Whaaaat? No no no I don’t believe that anymore. I’m a changed man! Vote for me pls.”

            But maybe he really did change his mind 2 days before he was forced out of the FSF/MIT, and I’m just being pessimistic.

            • @[email protected]
              1•6 months ago

              I think that it was a few months or so before the resignation, but I can’t find his post about it to really give the exact date.

              • @TheGrandNagusEnglish
                5•6 months ago

                Nope. 2 days.

                Announcement that having sex with children is bad, actually: 14th September 2019

                Resignation: 16th September 2019

                E: not really sure why you’d downvote a factual statement. Go look at his blog (stallman.org) for those dates.

                Please stop defending this. Raping children is a bad thing. He’s not a deity figure to be worshipped. He is human and he is fallible. Having excellent ideas when it comes to software does not mean he has excellent ideas in every aspect of his life. You don’t need to defend him on this.