[Ipg-smz] On Stallman

Tom Henderson thenderson at extremelabs.com
Wed Sep 18 15:23:56 UTC 2019


Fellow Guilders,

I go way back in Linux. Long ago, the Linux Business Expo was part of 
COMDEX, and I was one of many functionaries in the greater spheres of 
COMDEX program development. Lots of interesting characters evolved Linux 
for a variety of motivations.

Stallman was the anti-Microsoft. The pillar of free. I'm not a licensed 
medical/health/psych practitioner in any jurisdiction, but Stallman had 
brains, perhaps some autisim, and thought things through. He cared not 
one whit about his personal appearance or scent. Clue #1.

He had boundaries in the philosophy of Free. They were well-developed 
and thought through. Much of his hard work in finishing the utilities 
that make the operating system we know as Linux were at his hands, or 
one step-away.

His lip flatulence was notorious, as is/was/were many in the early 
free/open source movement. Many of them had a gripe with the sheer 
mendacity of Microsoft and its minions. SJV-N believes Microsoft has 
changed. I'm not sure if I share that believe, but as an researcher, I 
continue to observe.

Stallman is a member of a wider body of men that think within their own 
context. It's difficult to shift outside of that personal context for 
them. I'm not excusing their behavior, just observing it.

Nor am I forgiving it, and history shouldn't, either. The object that 
we'll look backwards upon 100yrs from now, should have that stain 
mentioned, not just the bullet-point of: founder of "free" as a 
construction and architectural concept. He was also: a dick.

Can he help being a dick? I'll leave that to others. Too many men follow 
their hormones rather than something evolved in the pre-frontal cortex. 
Is being a dick part of autism? Does it being autism make it forgivable? 
No, is my answer-- it's a quality that doesn't offset the fetid scent.

Every day I deal with my autistic brother's shenanigans. He is built, 
how he's built.; in the 1960s it was rare to even get a diagnosis and 
few knew what to do with autistim diagnoses. He's trainable. Graduated 
high school. But moving outside of his own context is nigh impossible. 
Change comes after daunting repetition. Only then. Trust me: only then. 
My late mother had him queued in a very Pavlovian way, and was 
successful, but my brother doesn't live with me. I've developed a 
support network for him. At a family event, he will blurt the most 
insane stuff, not understanding how a poop joke might not go over well 
with his aging aunt. Clueless. There are many clueless in the world. 
Their population doesn't forgive the cluelessness, just makes us work 
harder at inculcating manners. Like most of us, he wants to be loved.

And so, atop the object that we might describe about others, their 
incredible accomplishments but their amazing lip flatulence and even 
more morbid felonies: some were built to not recognize the emotive 
response of other humans. It's just the way things are.

There are many "Aspie" and autistic people somehow in my immediate 
circle of people, or perhaps, one step away. Here in the university town 
where I live, it's like the aforementioned Mensa meeting, where people 
came to study, and unable to live in the real world, became academics, 
or failing that, became "townies" with IQs in excess of 145 joining 
their peers. They never succeed in any recognizable way, but they fit 
into a rag-tag bunch of intellectual misfits which in turn, becomes a 
subculture of snorters. Nothing inherently wrong with snorters. And a 
common denominator of humanity is: Misfit, if of differing cultures and 
acumen.

To address therefore Dana's "everyone is eventually forgiven" comment, 
my answer is no, that's not quite correct. Like most things, it's more 
complicated than that. Some will want to understand the complexity, 
while others just want to ascribe to The Winning Team or soundbite.

Tom


-- 
Tom Henderson
ExtremeLabs, Inc.
+1 317 250 4646
Twitter: @extremelabs
Skype: extremelabsinc




More information about the Ipg-smz mailing list