ianmacd

The way that some tech millionaires are now queuing up to sacrifice Stallman after having become rich beyond their wildest dreams on the back of his pioneering work reminds me of all those former Facebook executives and prominents we see in mainstream social media documentaries, who are now, after having secure their financial future, at pains to express remorse for the monster they designed and created. Yet, no-one ever feels bad enough to donate all of their blood money to a charitable cause.

Talk is cheap.

Why should "the leader of the FSF" not make "as many public comments about unrelated matters as Stallman"?

This seems to suggest that a leadership role results or should result, ipso facto, in a reduction of its occupier's freedom of speech.

I don't follow that rationale at all, which isn't to say that I don't acknowledge that such comments can and obviously do in some cases lead to public distraction from the actual work of said leader, shifting the focus to the leader's perceived identity and moral fortitude.

That's a lamentable development to be sure, but to advocate abstention from public discourse as a precaution against the danger of becoming a distraction from the cause you advocate seems to be a clear case of blaming the victim. Stallman is not at fault here.

Can you direct me to the thread in which you detail what Stallman did to damage "student perception of anything associated with the FSF" at your university?

I have seen Stallman speak at various universities over the years, and I have witnessed the same speech and its intrinsic message fall flat on its face at, say, Stanford, whilst receiving a rapturous response from students at Berkeley just a week later.

The prevailing student culture has much to do with how well a message is received, particularly in these politically charged and volatile times when people so easily get distracted from the message by the messenger himself, or even third-party reports regarding the messenger's past.

But Stallman would argue that the standard word, if we're talking about 'they', 'them' and 'their', is inappropriate. He acknowledges that these words have historically been used in the singular, but convincingly points out that this merely proves that our ancestors also faced the same paucity of choice for referring to the indefinite singular.

What Stallman didn't employ in his defence, and a fact also ignored by many proponents of 'they' who regularly cite its historical usage as proof of transphobia in anyone who refuses to engage in the practice the now, is that this historical usage was applied when the subject of the sentence was indefinite, whereas the modern call to use 'they' is in the case of a specific, known person. This usage does not have a long linguistic history, regardless of whether the existence of such would, in itself, form compelling grounds on which to continue its usage.