On the otherhand, I greatly appreciate that we don't pretend everyone is 100% awesome all the time. We shouldn't hold people up as role models that we don't want to emulate, and whatnot.

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philipallstar 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If we're not pretending everyone is awesome then why permanently deselect certain people as role models?

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Brian_K_White 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

One of them is legit a saint and the other almost as much. They absolutely are role models, and the way they are talked about now is exactly a lesson in the problem. If more people emulated them, the world would be a much better place.

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queenkjuul 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I can't help but disagree with you 100%. Brilliant technicians aren't automatically role models, and both men have plenty of characteristics that shouldn't be emulated.

Their positive influence on open source is real; that doesn't make them, as people, role models.

	▲	Brian_K_White an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Technical abilities are nothing more than big muscles. No one with any depth at all would mean anything like that when they say things like "role model" and "saint", and no one with a lick of sense would assume anyone else would.

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tptacek 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you're talking about Eric S. Raymond here, I'm having trouble not believing that this is just bait. Even in the Linux community, purely on Linux terms he's a problematic and polarizing figure.

I'm annoyed at the arc these discussions invariably take into Raymond's backstory or whatever, because I think CATB fails objectively, on its own merits (or lack thereof) and we don't need to wade into this other stuff. But if we're having the discussion: seems like kind of a wild statement to say he's any reasonable person's role model.

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wahnfrieden 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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Brian_K_White 5 hours ago | parent [-]

There isn't any such "advocacy".

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queenkjuul an hour ago | parent [-]

He very literally said having sex with minors is not sexual assault

>The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex.

> We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.

> I’ve concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term “sexual assault” in an accusation.

Reminder that the subject of his writing is a 17 year old girl that was raped by one of Epstein's clients

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Some more of RMS' enlightened thoughts on child rape, a subject he just can't stop himself from writing about ad nauseum. And he insists on calling teenage girls "women" every chance he gets.

But, uh, "a saint" - Brian K White

> I expect that Sudanese law defines “rape” to exclude rape by the husband. That’s comparable to US laws that define “rape” to include voluntary sex with under N years of age (where N varies). Both laws falsify the meaning of “rape”.

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> the article makes it pretty clear that the “children” involved were not children. They were teenagers.

> What about “rape”? Was this really rape? Or did they have sex willingly, and prudes want to call it “rape” to make it sound like an injustice? We can’t tell from the article which one it is.

> Rape means coercing someone to have sex. Precisely because that is a grave and clear wrong, using the same name for something much less grave is a distortion.

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> The law is an ass again: a woman who invited a teenage boy to have sex (and he did, 4 times) has been sentenced to years in prison for “sexual abuse”.

> He did not live in her household. Evidently he repeatedly made arrangements to suffer this “abuse”. The code word “grooming” probably means, in this case, what we normally call “asking for a date”. While I can only guess the specifics, I speculate that he never complained about this “abuse”, and the relationship was discovered in some other way.

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Kinda getting grossed out so I'm gonna stop

	▲	Brian_K_White an hour ago \| parent [-]
		He very literally said nowhere in there that he thinks rape or non consentual sex or even statutory non-consent is ok. He very literally spoke nuanced thoughts that were unwise to speak where idiots can hear them. That is his promary failing is failing to understand others well enough to manage his own appearance to them. Or maybe not even that. Masybe he knowingly and willingly accepts what comes because he has 140x the integrity of you or I who very much manage our appearance to get a more comfortable life at the expense of a more honest one and making the world a better place for everyone else who suffers various things because of all the little injustices you and I and almost everyone else let slide. Only maybe. Maybe he would happily take a more comfortable life and simply doesn't know how to manage it. Either way, he never did any such thing as advocate for rape or pedophilia or anything like that. He just didn't repeat the unthinking chant, and even questioned the official gospel is all. You that thing people with the most integrity are supposed to do.