• Manmoth@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    Yeah. I’m not a big “celebrity” person but he’s had a net positive impact to the world and devoted his life to his cause. I have a signed copy of his hacking book from a seminar in college. I hope he comes out on the other side. I have a lot of respect for him despite his eccentric statements.

    • fartsparkles@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      I’m with you. I have a lot of friends with Aspergers and other ASDs (one of the joys of a life in tech - lots of interesting and intelligent friends). Stallman’s post following his return to the board of FSF and his unnecessary public comments and debate around Epstein, his guests, and child abuse strongly reminded me of some of the troubles my ASD friends have gotten themselves into by not quite groking social cues, “reading the room”, or knowing which topics and situations welcome debate and which ones don’t or will likely get emotional responses from other participants rather than rational.

      • urshanabi [he/they]@lemmygrad.ml
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        11 months ago

        I didn’t know about him and ASD. Of course creating the environment in society at large (as opposed to small hidden spaces) for women, non-binary, gender diverse and other LGBTQ2SI+ folks is important.

        I really don’t know what a decent method forward is that looks like in a way that in the interim doesn’t lead to issues like the surge of derision and cruelty towards trans folks in the UK. To me, this is evidently something that occurs towards neurodivergent or otherwise broadly defined individuals whom do not conform where gender is not the primary distinguishing factor (lingual, ethnic, etc.)

      • Manmoth@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        Even if I don’t agree with you on all of what you said I agree with most of it. Sound reasoning and all that. The autism/aspergers ‘excuse’ is definitely hard to accept given his history.

        Regardless, someone like him simply shouldn’t be at the positions he has held if the open source community is to gain progress.

        I’m conflicted here. The fact that he’s a weirdo is kind of irrelevant imo. He’s philosophically uncompromising and unmoved by social pressure. The only thing separating him from most tech CEOs is that he lacks an organization investing millions into his health, image, publicity etc Most big time executives are degenerates but no one cares because they are good at what they do. I think he’s good at making software free even if he’s a socially inept [insert criticism here] in his personal life. Additionally I’m saying this as someone who disagrees with him on basically every other issue he takes a stand on.