Richard Stallman Owns Man Pages

Community Tech Policy & News
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Apparently.

Good to know for those of us contributing to GNU projects.

I heard about this on another podcast, and I thought it was a joke. These guys are known for playing Stallman sound bites and being sarcastic when using his name in vain, so I thought shirley… Shirley this couldn’t be real.

Welp, I was wrong. Stallman has sunk to new lows. The burn out, no talent hack from the 80s still rears his fat, ugly, authoritarian head to shit on those doing actual work.

First, I’ll say that the whole thing is entirely overblown. Still, my feelings for the false idol and the FSF as a whole remain the same.

The TL;DR is Stallman wrote a joke about abortions. Lmao. For a guy that looks and sounds like he does, it was pretty funny. Someone removed the joke. The reasoning, from what I understand, was absurd in it’s own right. There was a fear of someone getting “”“triggered”"" by an abortion joke when working on the glibc project. Eh… I don’t buy it. But, I can understand how it would be viewed as tasteless. Either way, it was voted on and by consensus, agreed upon to remove the entry from the man pages.

That’s not good enough for Stallman.

So, in his defense of censorship, Stallman exercises … censorship.

I’ve noticed this for a while about Stallman, his little followers, and the FSF. GNU is not free; you are working within a framework, decreed as acceptable by Stallman or his appointed goons. You are free as long as you do what I say. So far into the realm of ridiculousness that a fucking manual page cannot be edited without the Supreme Overlord throwing a bitch fit about it.

He has often spoke about what will happen when he dies, and the state of the GNU project. I foresee a civil war, routing out all of the grey beards, throat bears, and “”“hackers”"". I use the term “”“hackers”"" loosely, because running ls -la and taking screen shots of your anime porn with screen fetch isn’t fucking hacking. They’re culture killers and leeches. Spawning off the drama and infighting they cause and relishing the fact that their elitism and ego prevents innovation and mainstream adaptation.

What will happen win Stallman dies? Hard to tell. I believe that we can start the road to true freedom.

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So I know this isn’t answering your question but what was the name of the podcast you first heard this on?

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Linux Unplugged

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Censorship

The suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.

What hes doing isn’t censorship.

The people who are wanting to remove it are the censors in this case.

What are you defining as free?

GNU has always had very specific rules around it’s software, specifically the four freedoms through the GPL that stipulates the rights afforded to the user of the program and code.

The fact that it has a license at all means by some definitions its not ‘free’. Did anyone think otherwise?

(might be also worth noting if people really thought this was an issue, its free software. They can fork it or make a safe space distro)

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If its a change with the lib that doesn’t affect the functionality in any way who gives a cold shit. Leave it or keep it, who cares. Why is this even news? (Not to shit on your thread) Just bewildered why the dumbest petty shit in general makes the headlines.

The public sees abortion jokes, and all I see is /* */

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Because its a mix of sjw type actions and RMS so people jump on it for the clicks.

Worth noting as well, it was reverted following the projects guidelines as well. Since there isn’t consensus on the original commit to remove it (which seems to be required), it was reverted.

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At the end of the day it’s just a joke. If someone doesn’t like what someone says, they can use their “grownup power” to ignore it. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. Basically thicken your skin and grow up.

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I’m quite sick of politics [or the spastic, hyper visible, hyper reactionary, hyper hyped failed ABORTION of it that exists now.] being hauled into every possible space and facet of life in general these days. That’s my thought.

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If you read his views, I don’t think this lines up with your claim either.

Worth taking a step back to see if some of the wording are the correct choice of words?

(not meaning this to come off any other way than in a positive way…)

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Mmm… this kind of detracts from what you may be trying to say.

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This forum is lost in vulgarity, exaggeration, and deceit every time nVidia farts. I posted the article and Stallman’s words. You don’t have to read what I say to see what a hack Stallman is.

To the rest of you, this isn’t my news story, I thought it was bogus and ridiculous on all fronts. However, bottom line is if you don’t contribute, you shouldn’t dictate what others do, especially when it came unanimously.

Walks like a duck and talks like a duck :man_shrugging:

Work without the constant micromanaging and attention whoring of those who are constantly talking about the Golden years 40 years later.

Who cares if they removed a joke. What’s more important, people maintaining and contributing to the project, or immature references in the documentation?

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Well that’s a very different definition from probably most people so I can see why there’s a big difference in opinion.

His literal words say otherwise. So talks like a duck? If he’s not saying what your saying your listening to someone else.

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I don’t follow FOSS/GNU/whatever, but I feel like this is a mountain out of a molehill.

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So you feel you need to add to that?

I lost you after that sentence. It was thrashing all over the place. It has nothing to do with my opinion of Stallman, it has only to do with how you communicate. I attempted constructive critique so that your own critique would come across as more serious.

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GNU is not a purely technical project, so the fact that this is
not strictly and grimly technical is not a reason to remove this.

– Stallman; src: Re: [rain1 at airmail dot cc] Delete abortion joke

I would say this is the crux of what happened; most everyone else saw this as a technical project, while Stallman views GNU and its subprojects as a more political organisation.

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I don’t think anyone has any thought otherwise, part of GNU is non-technical, if you don’t think this you’ve had blinders on which is worse.

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I would guess that many saw FSF and GNU as part-political, but saw the projects themselves, like glibc, as apolitical.

I.e. the library is an apolitical, but the reason many people are working on it is for political reasons.

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alias stallman='man'

Ask Stallman

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And for all its worth, that work and the people doing it may deserve some reasonable respect regardless of politics.

Although, without holding those political views, they never would have done the work in the first place. So there may be some value in those political views too.

Not being socialist, just pointing out the obvious - we may benefit (greatly) also from people we may disagree with.

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That’s all this is. Opinion from my perspective of how I saw things went down.

Maybe from where you’re sitting. From what I’ve seen he screams spyware and demonizes anything that smells like success or profitability.

Often the case with Stallman and the FSF.

Not at all. My point was all things considered, this was a very tame opinion piece.

Then ignore it. I didn’t want this to come across as serious. The whole thing is a joke, including the FSF and Stallman. In my opinion.

Arguably the case. Open Source is as much a movement as it is a technology, that’s fine. But don’t name drop yourself and interfere with others doing real work.