Top all-time · #39
Richard Stallman
Personal blog · stallman.orgpoliticsphilosophyprogramming
Richard Stallman's personal blog at stallman.org covers politics, philosophy and programming. Since 2007, 645 different Hacker News readers have linked it 930 times, most often “How I do my computing”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 5 of 40 sampled comments recommend it, 5 are critical?
Why HN links it
HN readers link stallman.org for his essays on computing and Facebook, and for his own account of how he uses the internet. Threads often turn to his writing on pedophilia and consent.
- Recommended for · 5 comments
- 'rightly' objects to Facebook; 'should be read'; 'good civil rights stuff'; 'everything you need'; 'ahead of his time'
- Criticised for · 5 comments
- pedophilia writing 'questionable', 'troubling'; rejects 'sexual assault'; suggestions need 'huge sacrifices'
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- How I do my computing112 people · 121 mentions · first linked 2014-02-24
- Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook31 people · 31 mentions · first linked 2014-09-15
- Richard Stallman's Personal Homepage25 people · 26 mentions · first linked 2014-11-07
- Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing25 people · 26 mentions · first linked 2011-03-15
- On Hacking – What Is Hacking?22 people · 27 mentions · first linked 2014-06-02
- /archives/2019-jul-oct.html21 people · 27 mentions · first linked 2019-09-14
- Better Genderless Pronouns in English – Richard Stallman (2018)20 people · 22 mentions · first linked 2018-08-26
- Richard Stallman's lifestyle17 people · 18 mentions · first linked 2014-07-12
- /archives/2006-may-aug.html13 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2018-05-08
- /saint.html13 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2014-09-22
What Hacker News says?
Personally, I and my friends self host matrix for our organization but Mattermost is also a fine free-software alternative. There are plenty more reasons to avoid using Slack, see: Reasons not to use Slack by Richard Stallman < https://stallman.org/slack.html >
Comment linking /slack.html
on “Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year”Submitted Reasons not to use (i.e., be used by) Facebook as a story · 670 points
HN discussionI can understand Defending bad people. He is railing against freedom of injustice. I understand being abusive. He is feeling hopeless. I haven’t seen Harassment so I don’t know what to make of it. He seems to walk the path of purity of ideas. And may come off as aggressive. As a by product, he may also be aloof from the career ladder. His trust in being nice to people is broken (autism?). He has some good civil righ…
Comment linking /
on “Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android”Submitted Reasons not to use Facebook as a story · 605 points
HN discussionHe has written some very questionable things about pedophilia (from which he has since distanced himself): https://stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20June%20... To be clear: this does not diminish his contributions in the field of software! His ideas about Free Software have been visionary and are as important as ever. One can be brilliant in one field and a fool in another. This is actually very common am…
Comment linking /archives/2006-may-aug.html
on “Keep Android Open”Submitted Reasons not to use Uber as a story · 544 points
HN discussionIt seems that Richard Stallman is not so paranoid after all: > I am careful in how I use the Internet. > I generally do not connect to web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites I have some special relationship with. I usually fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program (see https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/womb/hacks.git ) that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to m…
Comment linking /stallman-computing.html
on “Reading privileged memory with a side-channel”Submitted My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie as a story · 524 points
HN discussionhttps://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html > It is hard to write a simple definition of something as varied as hacking, but I think what these activities have in common is playfulness, cleverness, and exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness. Activities that display playful cleverness have "hack value". I do not think that Margaret Hamilton would…
Comment linking /articles/on-hacking.html
on “Margaret Hamilton has died”Submitted Richard Stallman on Steve Jobs: correction as a story · 356 points
HN discussionStallman puts himself forward as an authority on the best way to use the internet, even though doesn't actually use the internet in any recognizable way.[1] He comes off like an internal combustion engine designer who has never been in a car, declaring himself a traffic flow expert. [1] "I generally do not connect to web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites I have some special relationship with. I usual…
Comment linking /stallman-computing.html
on “Firefox is on a slippery slope”Submitted Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT as a story · 342 points
HN discussionStallman's issue is that he comes across as a fundamentalist extremist, and most of his suggestions require making huge sacrifices to one's quality of life. Take Stallman's own website[1]. It is mostly text. While this makes it fast, it doesn't make it readable at all. And finding specific stuff is nearly impossible. Yeah, there is a search feature, but is extremely rudimentary and very user-hostile. If it were up t…
Comment linking /
on “Firefox is on a slippery slope”Submitted Reasons Not to Use Apple (2018) as a story · 338 points
HN discussionhttps://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929/091320191... This is an excerpt from the CSAIL mailing list archive, so start at the bottom and work your way up. All names aside from RMS have been redacted. Some people are also bringing up this post from April, so here is that text: https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jan-apr.html#25_April_201... But the main content is the mailing list.
Comment linking /archives/2019-jan-apr.html
on “Richard M. Stallman resigns”Submitted Thousands dead, millions deprived of civil liberties? (2001) as a story · 338 points
HN discussionThere are numerous items in play at this point. You are correct about the events of the past week. What's being referred to, in regards to his opinion of Epstein, is this piece from April: https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jan-apr.html#25_April_201...
Comment linking /archives/2019-jan-apr.html
on “Richard M. Stallman resigns”Submitted How I do my computing as a story · 334 points
HN discussionerm... except it's true? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia In no way is he defending Epstein. He actually calls for a harsher sentence for Epstein, and a more concrete term that paints him in a harsher light than the verdict. This is a simple matter of classification, which doesn't seem at all strange to me coming from a scientist at MIT... Link and full text below. https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jan-apr.…
Comment linking /archives/2019-jan-apr.html
on “Richard M. Stallman resigns”Submitted Facebook as a story · 317 points
HN discussionHe knows what pedophilia means.[1] [1] https://stallman.org/notes/2019-jan-apr.html#25_April_2019_(...
Comment linking /notes/2019-jan-apr.html
on “Richard M. Stallman resigns”Submitted My Talk at Microsoft as a story · 264 points
HN discussionIt did: https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September... It looks like it was just an ignorant thought from a decade ago that had long since been corrected. Not a strongly-held viewpoint.
Comment linking /archives/2019-jul-oct.html
on “Richard M. Stallman resigns”Submitted Reasons not to use Skype (2012) as a story · 223 points
HN discussionIt really wasn't tolerable though. As much as I deeply respect Dr Stallman's work, he has a long history of reputationally troubling statements: https://stallman.org/cgi-bin/showpage.cgi?path=/archives/200... https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20Jun...
Comment linking /archives/2006-may-aug.html
on “Richard M. Stallman resigns”Submitted Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing as a story · 205 points
HN discussionThey did: https://stallman.org/notes/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September_20... It looks like it was just an ignorant thought from a decade ago that had long since been corrected. Not a strongly-held viewpoint.
Comment linking /notes/2019-jul-oct.html
on “Richard M. Stallman resigns”Submitted RMS lifestyle as a story · 196 points
HN discussionIt's frustrating and hard to find real information regarding what he did say and what he did not say, so I feel I shouldn't play the judge here. I did find this direct quote of him on his website, and it doesn't sound to me, from reading this piece, that he was trying to defend Minsky: > Headlines say that I defended Epstein. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've called him a "serial rapist", and said he des…
Comment linking /archives/2019-jul-oct.html
on “Richard M. Stallman resigns”Submitted My Doctor's Office Asked me to Lie (2011) as a story · 194 points
HN discussion
