from Hacker News

A Reflection on the Departure of RMS

by rwolf on 9/18/19, 3:14 PM with 43 comments

• by geofft on 9/18/19, 3:32 PM

  For some context, Thomas Bushnell was the chief architect of the HURD from its founding in 1990 until 2003. He understands the FSF and Richard Stallman as well as anyone does.

• by scohesc on 9/18/19, 6:37 PM

  I'm pretty sure RMS exhibits most of all of the symptoms of Asperger's and would immediately get the diagnosis if he walked into a psychiatrists' office.

  It's a bit ignorant for Bushnell to be degrading RMS by calling him a "a whiny child who has never reached the emotional maturity to treat people decently" when the man 99.9% likely cannot cognitively do so.

  It's really unfortunate that people with Asperger's (potentially like RMS) are at a massive disadvantage when holding positions of any kind of power in a public setting.

• by zozbot234 on 9/18/19, 6:07 PM

  I'm quite willing to entertain the notion that RMS was a problem in some sense (though, if he has been 'coddled' for decades, one has to wonder if that problem was due to any fault of his own that he ought to have been cognizant of!) But pay attention to what this post is actually saying. It's inappropriate to defend Minsky in the wake of the Epstein scandal? (And there are people, considered reliable by others, who have said that when sex was inappropriately offered to Minsky, he turned the offer down! Of course RMS did not say that, and what he did say was rather tone deaf to say the least. But still...) RMS must go because he is fat and ugly, and thus makes women uncomfortable (the horror!) even when he's simply trying to joke around and be charming? Come on.