Oddbean

@0c1a9324 @639ed14f @c39d2605 Stallman displayed abrasive and unpleasant behaviour in pretty much every situation I've met him in. At some point it's basically like fuzzing, and he's bound to have made nearly every single controversial statement to someone at least once

@0c1a9324 @639ed14f @c39d2605 he has also written super gross things about children and age of consent. I was gonna list more but you could fill a book with all the ways he is morally objectionable and deeply unpleasant to be around.

@f3ad697a @639ed14f @c39d2605 The point is, if you condone such behaviour just because "he's done good stuff for the free software movement" you're on a down-slope which ends with condoning Hans Reiser. And friends don't let friends go there. (TLDR: Hans Reiser, author of ReiserFS, once the bright hope of Linux filesystems, is serving a life stretch for murdering his wife. Some folks don't seem to get that no amount of software libre good works balance *those* scales.)

@f3ad697a oh god code offset credits. That sounds more like something like, "we realize these 100 lines of code create tons of new infohazards that are going to haunt at least five generations of people, but in exchange we've paid this offshore company who has certifiably™ deleted 100 loc somewhere else in turn so tge world doesn't just collapse into one big nightmare of buggy enterprise code."

@0c1a9324 @f3ad697a @639ed14f @c39d2605 Looking at the complexity of people, I think one has to acknowledge that the standard for harrassment and creepyness in a healthy community really is zero. While everyone has a bad day once in a while, given how much damage both visible and invisible it creates, the tolerable amount is actually only marginally larger than zero, and even that only if it's followed up by a sustained improvement.

@0c1a9324 @f3ad697a @639ed14f @c39d2605 OK, OK. Yes. But... I was in a group where a mentally ill person was a member. He would sometimes lose his temper & say things that made people uncomfortable. Some people wanted to exclude him, but a woman argued (persuasively) that if you want to be inclusive, you need to accept that some people will make you uncomfortable. And if you want to create a welcoming, inclusive environment you have to tolerate a certain amount of discomfort. Not murder tho.

@24a394fa @0c1a9324 @f3ad697a @639ed14f @c39d2605 The issue with this is the resources needed to sustain that. Even just one person with RMS-tier issues consumes enormous amounts of resources to deal with, and I think most people vastly underestimate just how much. At the hackspace I co-founded, we had several such cases and our stance was that we were first and foremost a hackspace, not a free mental health care center. You have to choose your battles.

@7f73a7d1 @24a394fa @0c1a9324 @639ed14f @c39d2605 mental health also isn't an excuse for persistently being an asshole, especially after being repeatedly told that a specific behaviour is unacceptable. assuming that someone can't learn to be better "because mental health" is infantilising (and kinda ableist, too).

@f3ad697a @24a394fa @0c1a9324 @639ed14f @c39d2605 You're right. Something like "social care center" would be more fitting. The way I intended that was not to describe the kind of issue of the person, but instead the kind of qualification you need to deal with it.

@7f73a7d1 @24a394fa @0c1a9324 @639ed14f @c39d2605 for sure; I wasn't criticising your handling of the hackspace thing, and we've had similar issues at our local one. I think a healthier way to frame it is that some people aren't at a place in life where they're able to have a healthy relationship with certain communities, and that isn't the fault of those communities. we can have patience and be welcoming and understanding, but that relationship has to be a two-way street.

@7f73a7d1 @24a394fa @0c1a9324 @f3ad697a @639ed14f @c39d2605 It's a tricky situation and I think it's also worth considering the nature of the problem--if you're asking people to accept discomfort versus asking people to tolerate harassment. It's worth trying to find ways to be inclusive but also important that a space not just be a free-for-all in terms of what behaviors are tolerated otherwise you wind up with only people who are either privileged or harassers and other people are scared off.