IN HINDSIGHT, or in sight/light of recent news, more people understand that Dr. Stallman was wrongly maligned, maybe even used as somewhat of a scapegoat/sacrificial lamb to distract from what Bill Gates had done in MIT.

"Racism will go away when we get rid of racist companies like the I's (IBM and Intel, which actively harmed black people, collectively)."In any event, it's worth reminding people of the message of Stallman on technical and ethical issues, setting aside all the political stuff that he's being blasted for.

Listen to the above video and pay attention to what he said about 3 minutes into this talk. It's a subject that I spoke to him about in the past. It's about microprocessors coming with back doors (more of them over time; it's not limited to Intel anymore).

What I found curious, personally at least, is the fact he used "master" and "slave" as metaphors. That was 3 years ago.

Nowadays the very same companies he's criticising in his talk are trying to dilute or narrow down our vocabulary, making it harder to express or explain the relationship between us and those abusive corporations that work for the government (their master), not for customers/users (slaves). Racism will go away when we get rid of racist companies like the I's (IBM and Intel, which actively harmed black people, collectively). Those companies are big contributors to racial injustice. Banning or "eradicating" -- as they put it -- a bunch of supposedly 'offensive' words will accomplish almost nothing in practice. ⬆

Photo source and licence: CC BY-SA 4.0