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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: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @02:43PM (5 children)
RMS crossed the line of professional behavior many times and now reaps the consequences of NGAF.
I understand and sympathize with both sides of this debacle, but ultimately his behavior and use of MIT communications for his personal soap box are well out of line.
Freedom of speech meet freedom of association.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @05:44PM (4 children)
When? What did he do?
I keep hearing vague assertions, never specifics. I suspect people are bullshiting here in a desperate effort to shore up a bad mistake.
What did rms do? Be specific.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @05:51PM (2 children)
Stallman said that sexual assault requires the use of force, right in his post that got him fired. So "Attacker beats victim and has sex with victim" is rape according to Stallman, but "Attacker tells victim he will kill the victim's mother if they do not have sex, and then has sex with the victim" is not rape.
In the past he has written, "There is little evidence to support the widespread assumption that pedophilia hurts children". https://stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html [stallman.org] (his own fucking website)
Still support him?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @06:08PM
you are either stupid or a liar. the first he argues law and words. the second is a questioning of science and law. IOW, doing what he fucking does. too bad the "people" he's always advocating for ate him for dinner.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @07:09PM
I'm pretty sure he was arguing that our age of consent laws are all over the place (they might be 16 in one state, 17 in another, and 18 in another) and that having sex with someone under the legal age of consent is not necessarily morally equivalent to violently raping someone.
Your quote is a lie. Here are the actual words:
The only question is whether there can even be "willing participation" in pedophilia. You can use facts and logic to argue that point, but to shame someone for even trying to have the conversation is nothing more than a lynch mob mentality.
He was not saying that pedophilia does not harm children at all, under any circumstances, like your fake quote suggested.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @10:43PM
RTFA, then RTFTFA. Then tell me you don't know.