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Thomas Bushnell, former maintainer of GNU Hurd until his dismissal by Richard Stallman, has opined in a biased blog post that the forced resignation of Stallman from MIT and the Free Software Foundation is deserved.
https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-rms-18e6a835fd84
So Richard Stallman has resigned from his guest position at MIT and as President of the Free Software Foundation. You can easily find out all you need to know about the background from a web search and some news articles. I recommend in particular Selam G's original articles on this topic for background, and for an excellent institutional version, the statement from the Software Freedom Conservancy.
But I'll give you a personal take. By my reckoning, I worked for RMS longer than any other programmer.
[...]4) RMS's loss of MIT privileges and leadership of the FSF are the appropriate responses to a pattern of decades of poor behavior. It does not matter if they are appropriate responses to a single email thread, because they are the right thing in the total situation.
5) I feel very sad for him. He's a tragic figure. He is one of the most brilliant people I've met, who I have always thought desperately craved friendship and camaraderie, and seems to have less and less of it all the time. This is all his doing; nobody does it to him. But it's still very sad. As far as I can tell, he believes his entire life's work is a failure.
6) The end result here, while sad for him, is correct.
The free software community needs to develop good leadership, and RMS has been a bad leader in many ways for a long time now. He has had plenty of people who have tried to help him, and he does not want help.
MIT needs to establish as best it can that paramount are the interests of women to have a safe and fair place to study and work. It must make clear that this is more important than the coddling of a whiny child who has never reached the emotional maturity to treat people decently.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @03:05PM (2 children)
Are you saying men have not been subjected to the same things? I can't seem to find that history book where it says men pranced around singing jolly songs to eachother while harassing women. I'm not excusing any such behaviour against any living creature, but seriously.. the trouble is with the elite. Those who set the rules, those in power. If you're making this a gender war, we're all going to loose once again to the elite, who thrive when we fight eachother. Do you want to solve the problem? Are you choosing the right path to solve the problem? Nothing is going to change until this obnoxious behaviour of the lower classes fighting eachother ends.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday September 23 2019, @10:23PM (1 child)
Apparently fraternities, bachelor parties, strip clubs, and churches (to name just a few places where that happens) don't exist where you come from. Well, except for the prancing part in some cases.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 24 2019, @12:00PM
Okay, so now I know that you think that fraternities, bachelor parties, strip clubs and churches are a hotbed for men prancing around singing jolly songs and harassing women.
Thank you?