[Ipg-smz] On Stallman

[Christine Hall]

As I life long misfit, thanks for this post.

Christine Hall
Publisher & Editor
FOSS Force: Keeping tech free
http://fossforce.com

On 9/18/19 11:23 AM, Tom Henderson via Ipg-smz wrote:
> 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
> 
>