If there was criminal conduct, someone should file a criminal complaint and have it adjudicated in a court of law with evidence, a jury and witness testimony and once convicted the accused should be appropriately punished.
Otherwise, how is anyone going to determine the truth of the allegations?
If the behavior was non-criminal then the decision should be made through normal non-profit governance mechanisms. We have due process of law for a reason which is that people are innocent until proven guilty and there are the proper protections to make sure a fair trial occurs.
Another well known non-profit in the biotech space received a 20 million donation and right after that a group of people kicked out the founder citing perceived sexual innuendo in old emails that did not risen to the level of a criminal offense. The donor wanted their money back, because they had given it to support the founder and his mission, but it was too late.
Having read this, I don't think there is any accusation of criminal behavior in this report.
The accusation is that he made people uncomfortable, didn't do enough to change that when it was raised, and defended criminal behavior by insisting on distinctions that the authors of the report consider immaterial or harmful.
I worked for RMS/FSF briefly and I think there is something about his radical refusal to compromise on anything conceptual (to avoid conflict or misunderstanding, e.g.) that is fundamentally incompatible with running an organization. This is on display here.
So I think it's probably right for FSF and RMS to part ways, but I also think it's positive for the world for him to keep on insisting on moral clarity in his terms.
At the same time, everybody should read the whole report and decide whether they think RMS's insistence on the distinctions rejected by the authors is helpful or unhelpful. I think some of RMS's distinctions could be helpful to the cause of reducing the incidence of sexual abuse.
And this is kind of key to the whole argument. It's not just about his behavior and questionable views on consent and age (though those are the disqualifying issues). Beyond that... The movement is stagnating because its leadership can't compromise and the computing world is moving beyond the era of personal computers and one-org mainframes that Stallman concocted the Four Freedoms in.
How do the Four Freedoms apply when it's not your computer, but a cloud service instead? FSF has struggled to find an answer because it's a philosophically different arrangement than the simpler "I should be able to control my own hardware" argument. Their dominant advice is "Don't use cloud," which is so out-of-touch it's laughable. You might as well tell people in the late 1800s to not use lightbulbs because it gives the electric company too much power over their lives.
On the one hand, the case seems too little. Some weird opinions (but are you in the free country with free speech to express even weird opinions?), then an interaction back in the 80's(!!!), exactly one weird comment on stage, suggestive behaviour...
On the other hand, it's not a criminal charge. It's about who and how leads an institution.
I've seen post-USSR academic institutions led by old directors for decades, with good scientific achievements in the background, but at the time just being there for the old merits, doing ceremonial stuff and signing the necessary minimum of papers. At the time, academia was centrally financed, so they negotiated the money with the upper ranks of the same age and background.
Their behaviour was weird to many people around: comments about ages & sex (like "women's business is the kitchen"), broad judgements, "don't be stupid kid, turn your brain on" kind of comments, making people unease. Quite likely bitter about the USSR collapse. My female friends said they were told after studying or working in academia that they should go have kind rather than try getting PhD. There was no other institution of the same kind in the city. And after all, why should YOU quit as soon as you get unprofessional treatment?
Recalling this, I can understand the discontent with Stallman and the board.
That's pretty insightful comment for someone of post-USSR background as well. The important difference here is that all the institutions in question were founded by Stallman himself. And there are plenty of open-source communities that don't involve Stallman at all, and the barrier to create new ones is low as well - as soon as people are willing to follow you.
And, indeed, I can't speak for everyone but his continued involvement with FSF has put it off the list of organizations I'm interested in working with at all.
Thus demonstrating an effective filter against the type of pitchfork wielders and keyboard warriors who want to destroy and punish, rather than create and flourish.
Furthermore, while that same IP address (46.23.81.157) no longer hosts the stallman-report.org website, responding with "404 Site not found" if requested, it still has a certificate for stallman-report.org, which can be observed if a matching SNI record is sent during the TLS handshake:
I don't think rms should have returned to the FSF board and I do believe his continued presence there does more harm than good, and not because of hit pieces against him damaging his reputation, but because of his own behavior. I'm also aware that some of the vocal voices defending Stallman are nothing but channeled bigotry of their owners (oftentimes much worse than anything Stallman has ever been alleged of) and all I can say about those is how disgusted I am by them.
That said, I read this page in its entirety and I can't help but notice how manipulative this report is. I can't tell whether this was intentional malice, a sign of subconscious bias or maybe just careless use of words, but constructs like "we can conclude that [statement that doesn't follow from what was said before]", placing whole paragraphs that are hard to disagree with but aren't related to quoted positions and are clearly meant to inflict negative emotional response to induce implicit misrepresentation (such as the one that starts with "The actors involved in pornographic films...") and stating things like "absolves the perpetrator of wrongdoing" or "consistently defends [something]" despite of that not being present in the quoted source material nor able to be inferred from it without making possibly wrong assumptions on intentions behind the words written make me doubt whether this was authored in good faith, even when the report makes some points that I ultimately agree with.
I'll be extremely charitable and assume you meant to link to the site in general as a rebuttal, and not specifically to the webpage that just lists his awards, because saying that someone's misdeeds don't matter because they also did great things is a rather gross viewpoint and a continuing insult to the people who are victims both of the "Great Men" and the wannabe-"Great Men" who feel safe doing such acts in the belief that future greatness will similarly exonerate them.
The page that's most responsive to what's brought up is here: https://stallmansupport.org/debunking-false-accusations-agai.... However, I feel that it doesn't really debunk the core accusations here, which is essentially that Stallman's views on what constitutes consent just aren't acceptable in today's world.
I think it is good that people put in a lot of effort to collect this in one place. The report opens with a very strong perspective:
>The case against Stallman is clear, and yet the free software community has failed to act, in particular at the level of institutions and leadership but also in the form of grassroots support for Stallman. Many defenses of Stallman rely on a comfortable ignorance: ignorance of the scope and depth of Stallman’s political campaign against women and victims of sexual violence, or a comfortable belief that Stallman ceased his problematic behavior following his 2021 re-instatement in the Free Software Foundation. Some believe that Stallman’s speech has not caused material harm, or that his fringe views are not taken seriously; we provide evidence to dismiss all of these arguments in this report.
One thing I have consistently encountered when discussing contentious topics with people is that intentional ignorance is a tactic. One cannot be held responsible for acting one way or another on an issue if they do not know anything about it. Women I know in industry report this as by far the most common reaction of male coworkers to one of their colleagues facing allegations of sexual harassment. They don't know anything about it, it seems complicated, they haven't followed it closely, they don't want to get involved, etc. It is very frustrating and I am glad the report has identified this phenomenon and is pointing out this has been going on for long enough that it cannot be reasonably deployed by anybody.
This is really great work getting all of the evidence into one place. Really helpful, thanks. I really like the focus on the victims.
I am a previous PhD student who worked under Marvin Minsky, and I do believe that there is no evidence that Minsky was present for any sexual misconduct, and some of the quotes about Minksy do not mention that there is no evidence of Minsky's sexual misconduct. I believe the quotes about Minsky unfairly harm Minsky's reputation.
Again, this is great work, and I'm mostly nitpicking from my very particular perspective as someone who has worked directly under Minsky.
We reviewed our references to Minsky throughout the report and felt that we could indeed improve the presentation of the quotes which mention him, and we have done so.
However, I will state just for the record here that our researchers have looked into the allegations regarding Minsky and do not feel comfortable exonerating him or standing up to defend his reputation, as it were -- we find the evidence plausible, but not conclusive. But our report is about Stallman, not Minsky, so we have not made a point of it in the report.
And if he were a sociologist or anthropologist, published in the field with any reputation at all in it, who could speak on that complex dynamic over history and the interplay between environment, tradition, human biology, and social context, he might have a prayer of using reason to move the needle on the taboos in his own culture. But he's not. He's a professor in another field speaking way out on the deep end of a field he doesn't have the credentials to be taken seriously in.
We all have freedom of speech, but academic professors are expected to uphold a level of rigor that most people are not, and his writings on this topic harm his credibility and therefore, indirectly, his ability to advocate for free software.
But he's using that right to say very public things that are very objectionable, in a space he understands poorly, and everyone else can use their same rights to call him on his nonsense. And when one is an academic, one's word carries weight outside one's area of expertise.
For all the good he did for science education, a common criticism of Carl Sagan is he was an astrophysicist (damn good one) who dabbled in neurobiology, which was well outside his area of expertise---his oft-repeated "reptile brain" theory basically doesn't match to a contemporary understanding of neuro-anatomy and didn't when he wrote Cosmos either. But because he shared it from his platform and wrote a book on the topic, "humans are a fish brain wrapped in a lizard brain wrapped in a monkey brain" is an oft-repeated untruth.
We hold those whose reputations and positions are built on knowledge more accountable to be right when they speak than we hold others. Stallman chooses to exercise his freedom of speech, and we choose to hold him accountable for his position on topics that have real consequences for people who aren't him.
GNU kind communication guidelines the report purports to be transphobic:
"Please think about how to treat other participants with respect, especially when you disagree with them. For instance, call them by the names they use, and refer to them using words whose meanings (as you understand them) cover those participants' stated gender identities. Please also show tolerance and respect for people who do that using different words from the words you use."
Also strongly disagree with stopping support FSF, in particular from an anonymous group.
Recommendations are quite of, despite the generally accurate and reasonable report.
> refer to them using words whose meanings (as you understand them) cover those participants' stated gender identities
If I were trans, that portion of the guideline would be enough to nope me out of participating in GNU projects. The "as you understand them" parenthetical gives cover for transphobes to intentionally misgender trans people, since they can hide behind saying that they feel it's only appropriate to use these terms for the appropriate biological sex.
I'm trans and the GNU Communication Guidelines feel way more empathetic to me than CoC-like documents.
> gives cover for transphobes to intentionally misgender trans people
It also gives cover to people who prefer to always use gender neutral pronouns.
If a transphobe is acting on their views on gender to bully people, I'd rather deal with them on a case-by-base basis, while being empathetic to everyone else who might have meant to harm.
BTW, I've met RMS in person a few years ago, and exchange emails with him every once in a while. I've found him to be very fun, and not hard to deal with if you're used to hanging out with neurodivergent people.
Presumably this refers to his peculiar set of neologisms (“per” and “pers”) as a gender-neutral pronouns.[1]
Stallman is an extremely stubborn language hyper-pedantic with some fairly unconventional views and usages on any issue, not just this one. And he has 20 years of documented support for trans people. So with that context in mind, I think it makes sense to take it in good faith.
To say I find his position on this peculiar would be an understatement. But I find that on many of Stallman's positions on similar topics wrt. language. Either way, I'm reasonably confident it's not intended as a cover for transphobic bullying or the like, even though it may appear like that at a glance.
More like it might discourage participation from people who very much resent the fact that they can't exert control over the speech or thoughts of others. And also people who like to make mountains of molehills.
For once doesn't seem like a hit piece, the arguments are pretty solid and well documented.
Very thorough job and if RMS was smart he would gracefully step down.
The only argument I find here against it is the question of whether someone's personal opinions should be a reason to be removed from a leadership position.
Edit: Oh wow just read the recommendations. Can't agree to most of it, sorry.
What?!? It must be the outcome of a meticulous reading on what must be millions of words from Stallman, tolling for anything that reflects one just aspect of his outlook on life. Based on that alone one outlook it recommends he be banned from everything. There must be at least man months of work in it.
I guess there has to be, as it's a weak case. It's based on thought crimes, not actions. The difference between the two is obvious - just look at the real damage the dispute between Automattic and WPEngine has on bystanders. They are actively trying to inflict harm on each other and succeeding. Never mind the collateral damage.
No mention of the more positive aspects of his personality - like him buying coffee for the homeless he met in the street. Very little acknowledgement of the positive changes social he's wrought through man years of labor and giving the results away for free. We all have bad points. If you evaluate any of us just based on them, the scales are always going to point one way.
To me, it's an exemplar of a hit piece by someone with an single minded obsession. To make matters worse, it's an anonymous someone.
Whether you find the people who want RMS to resign obnoxious or not, this is a very well documented and clear-headed collection of what they think (and convinced me) is wrong with the man
Leaving the mental, emotional and physiological damage of being treated as a "matured adult" the moment you start your 14th year (or puberty) as a human on this planet aside, not because it's small, but it's the contrary.
On the other hand, the freedom of speech does only guarantees that you can tell what you believe openly, but never ever protects you from the consequences of your actions.
Just because some communities believe that entering puberty is enough for these things, it doesn't make it right or harmless. I can find many examples of wrong things which range from funny to atrocious but harmful at the same time.
I'm a big believer of GNU and GPL, and use the four freedoms as the blueprint of what I develop or participate in, however being right and wise in these subjects doesn't make one free from consequences of other actions one may take.
So as a result, linking to a comment telling that being 14 is enough for these things doesn't put the words into context or vindicate the person saying these things.
I may equally say that these words should be punished with a mouth pear (which I do not support in any way, honestly), but we decided that people should be punished in more honorable, better and ethical ways as a planet.
Then, just because some communities prefer mouth pear to this day, it doesn't make the device a legitimate and correct way to punish people.
So, your link to a comment doesn't provide anything in context. Just adds another person who believes in things which are heavily damaging the person who receives this treatment.
The man has weird views on non tech issues. Some are thought provoking, some are plain bad hills to die on. But I don't see how this is something I should be getting up in arms over.
The FSF has largely failed to garner political/public influence to prevent the enshittification of the digital world. What is there to be gained from a putsch like this? If these people truly cared about the mission RMS set out to achieve they would realize that further dividing the minuscule libre software community (which is already co-opted by corporate interests to a large degree) will only get us further away from making a difference in the areas that actually matter.
Like damn, we only narrowly avoided a future where I can't even browse the internet without a TPM attested bootchain deemed "trustworthy" by corporations, and somehow a 71 year old cancer patient is the hottest issue in the tech world right now? Get a fucking grip.
This all just seems like a toxic power grab by people who are blinded by their narcissistic self righteousness.
>Unless of course your whole point was using whataboutism to defend your hero,
No. My point is that replacing him with people who prioritize political grandstanding over fighting for the cause at hand are just as worse if not more.
The people who gave their signature on the previous failed deplatforming attempt were numerous enough to easily fund their own FSF that is not encumbered by the influence by rms. But they didn't. They didn't because that takes actual work unlike spewing vitriol like they do here. They can only destroy but not create.
If you look at the history of the NAACP trying to fight legal discrimination, one of the things they were quite focused on was ensuring that the cases involved people who are as clean as possible. The messenger matters as much as the message does; the more imperfect the messenger it is, the more it allows those against the message to turn the conversation from the message to the messenger.
Stallman, even without the stuff mentioned here, was already a pretty poor choice for messenger. His tendency to focus on semantic nitpicking gave his arguments a kind of tedious quality to them (GNU/Linux, anyone?). The outspoken political views can turn off people who are not politically aligned. And he's always given off this sort of skeevy vibe to me personally--and that sentiment has seemed to be shared by lots of other people. Long before any of the stuff being complained about here happened!
The negative influence of Stallman isn't purely theoretical anymore. We now have a couple of stories of people saying that he made them personally uncomfortable with unwanted seemingly sexual advances. Apparently, these have continued after being explicitly told by several people to knock it off. Several organizations have suspended their funding and involvement with the FSF over his reinstatement. Whatever you think of the accuracy of the accusations against him, the general perception of him is clearly negative, and to be frank, it doesn't seem like he brings any positive qualities that would make letting him go be a tough call (consider Elon Musk, who is obviously a pretty effective salesman for the future and props up Tesla's share price even as his outspoken political views are causing real problems for his companies).
What is the goal: to promote free software or to stand for people's rights to have sexual relations with fourteen-year-olds?
If the former, having the movement spearheaded by someone who has pretty controversial views on the latter isn't really doing the movement any good. If FSF clings stubbornly to a thought-leader who people can't take seriously, they're canceling themselves.
I've seen the accusation leveraged in this topic that this anonymous piece could be FUD by Microsoft or a similar big-name software giant. I'd actually suggest the opposite: if I wanted to throw sand in the gears of free software, keeping Stallman in the leadership chair so that his opponents can point to him and say "You really want to listen to the guy who wants to sleep with your teenage daughter?" is the way I'd discredit the movement.
Back when RMS was writing the GNU utilities, if you weren't willing to have an occasional chance encounter with him in the same building, you were limiting your options for a productive computer science career.
I'm half serious when I say he's the reason so many women at MIT went to biotech instead, and so we can thank him for mRNA vaccines.
But that is no longer the case. Refusing to be in the same room as him will in no way retard your progress in computer science nowadays. If anything, it enhances your prospects.
So I don't see a problem with having a space marked "Beware the RMS," where he can keep on with his work and the people who can put up with him, do. I don't see a problem with that space being marked "FSF" either. Namespace is a large space.
I am concerned about the fact that we don't know the identities of any of the authors of this web page.
There are people who find it very enjoyable to destroy someone's reputation (for basically the same reason that there are people for whom murder is such a turn-on that they cannot stop themselves from doing it till they get caught).
Also, there might be ways to profit or personally benefit from a campaign like this. E.g., one of the authors of this web page might covet one of the titles or jobs Stallman currently holds -- for themselves or for a friend. E.g., Stallman or one of his supporters might be approached in the coming days with an offer: I can make this web page disappear from public view, but it will cost you. Basically any rival has an incentive to try to get you fired and to destroy your reputation.
I suspect that we as a society should adopt the general rule that anonymous attacks on the reputation of a person should be ignored. In the absence of such a rule, anyone can keep on waging campaigns of reputation destruction (in pursuit of getting ahead somehow or of a twisted kind of enjoyment) with little to no cost or risk to themselves. The attack can include lies, and even if the lies are discovered, again there is no cost or consequence to the attacker.
It seems that you are worried about cases but there are no witness/proof that is where the truthfulness of accusations is in doubt.
No such thing here, they are basically quoting him and putting related quotes together.
Almost like someone writing a book review of a philosopher or something.
You could say "what about out of context quoting!?" but he seems quite consistent in his ideas and it would be quite a coincidence that so many excerpts expressing the same idea are taken out of context.
The Epstein quote is taken out of context and his controversial opinion about age of consent (which isn't even that different from the opinions held by esteemed philosophers like Michel Foucault and Simone de Beauvoir) was retracted publicly by him years ago.
Well if you have read the document he only retracted his opinion on children children and childhood seems to stop for him at 14 and after that you are a teenager and you are fair game.
I have a lot of sympathy for teenager leading their own sex lives with each other. I have a lot less sympathy for adults that bring up the fact that teenager are entitled to a sexuality when the implication is that adults shouldn't be frowned upon for courting teenagers. Even less so for someone who had to retract his previous positions that children of all age...
EDIT: You haven't read the document clearly because it does not rely on the epstein quote and clearly marks what has been retracted
I am pretty confident that when Stallman writes about large age gaps, he wasn't condoning predatory behaviour, but wanted to emphasize the fact that some people can be fully capable of making their own decisions even if they are in their teens. (I would go a little further to add that some people in their twenties or later can be equally vulnerable to predatory behaviour as regular sheltered teens, and it's mostly up to the upbringing they recieved) Maybe I'm too charitable in my interpretation, but "teens being fair game" is not what I understood for sure.
Yes but there has to be a limit. Legislators western countries have agreed that this was around 14/18 with some caveats regarding age gaps. It seems most countries are ok with teenagers having sex lives between themselves but try to avoid relationships where an older man has a position of authority over the teenager. It seems sensible enough.
But I notice that he hasn't written at length about how teenagers should be able to vote before they are 18 that I know of. The fact that he is weirdly fixated over this issue reminds us of Gabriel Matzneff and others who were basically men who wanted to be able to have sex with teenagers because they enjoy it and had no issue with having power over their younger partner.
Teenagers are already allowed to have a rich sex life, what they need is more protection from older men not less.
I mean it is enough to read the report and the quotes to understand that that man is a militant and wants better acess to teenagers for sexual purposes. The report also does a good job of explaining what's wrong with it if you care about those issues.
Anything more to these allegations than there was last time?
Or is this yet another chapter of someone's envy resorting to character assassination instead of finding contentment in their own work?
If these people succeeded in their apparent goal of making RMS less popular, do they think the world will love them for it? Why aint they signing their name?
I've read most of the report and it's got a lot more than "last time". Speaking as someone who has done a lot of my own research on Stallman's bullshit, the depth of this report is astonishing. The allegations it makes regarding the conduct of the rest of the FSF is particularly alarming.
I think you should at least skim it before you comment.
Of course you've "read most of" it. You wrote it after all- or did you ask ChatGPT to write you an anti-free software screed and only read part of it before you posted it?
Bullying an old man with cancer over off-colored jokes made half a century ago and opinions that he publicly retracted is "the right thing"? That's absurd.
The Free Software movement has been completely routed. MS owns GitHub. The farmers fighting for the "right to repair" their tractors are the "front" of the "battle" for user empowerment. But sure let's beat the shit out of the dead horse that's actually a real live old man with cancer who wrote fucking Emacs, see if that helps?
More charitably, perhaps people are looking at the movement foundering and asking if the reason is that its leader has too much baggage to talk to the people with political power to move free software forward?
The uncharitable take is that the people who wrote this incredibly uncharitable and obsessive character assassination of an old dying guy are working for Microsoft et. al.
Since Stallman (and basically the whole FSF) doesn't have anything to say about cloud computing other than "don't use it" and his movement hasn't come up with a better alternative, Microsoft doesn't even think about Stallman anymore.
It's a bit hard to do that for the people who still care about the movement when the "old nerd" is still on the board of directors.
You make an interesting point though: perhaps the FSF has made its bed and the best solution is to give up on it and rally behind another organization with similar goals. Maybe the 'net interprets Stallman as damage and routes around him.
I mean, yes, that would be an obvious alternative to bullying Stallman into resigning from the organisation that he himself created around his own ideas - why didn't it come to anyone's mind before?
Probably for similar reasons people would rather change leadership at, say, Mozilla than fork Firefox. Again. To create another fork nobody cares about. Again.
Politics is, often, about centralization and coordination of power. It's a lot more effective to change leadership at an organization with good ideas but questionable people than to split power and focus by forming a competing organization. The two resulting organizations may end up politically weaker than one organization (especially if they can't coordinate their efforts because the membership of one of them expects their org to boycott the other org for the reasons they split in the first place).
Jill Stein may, for example, have ideological purity over the Democrats but she'll never be President.
In any case, I hear the FSFE decided to split from working with the FSF when the FSF re-instated Stallman. I'd prefer to have an org with more direct influence over US law and policy, but I'll happily support FSFE since it's the closest thing I have to supporting free software as a concept without supporting continued discussion of age of consent on the side.
Given that much of the tone of the discussion here is not only dismissive of the report but the link has been actively suppressed via flagging, I don't think it's credible to argue there is some kind of organized anti-RMS "manipulation" happening here.
(I don't think there's some kind of organized pro-RMS manipulation happening, either. I think there's a fairly large segment of HN readers who minimize credible reports of RMS's reprehensible behavior because of his past accomplishments and his importance to the free software movement.)
Turn on "showdead" and look how many comments critical of the report have been flagged. That strongly indicates an organized suppression of dissenting views.
Many are of no substance, or worse. One of them is an unhinged conspiratorial rant about COINTELPRO. Another starts with an insult against the author of this page. There's a transphobic rant. etc.
I went through all of them; there is only one that I would "vouch worthy" and should not be flagged (the one that links to stallmansupport.org), so I vouched that one. All the others I've seen should be flagged, not because they're "critical of the report", but because they're garbage.
This is telling. They don't want discourse, they want to silence and bully everyone who disagrees with them so only they are allowed to speak.
All they have is anonymous accusations with zero proof, an off-context quote regarding an MIT professor, off-color jokes made 50 years ago and a couple of (retracted) opinions that are no worse than the things being said by prominent philosophers like Michel Foucault and Simone de Beauvoir.
For the sake of correctness, it should be noted it did not say that when first posted, only "Enable showdead in your profile, find the post on /newest, and click [vouch] whenever it's flagged.". It was later changed into "Don't upvote it -- just "vouch" for it if you think it belongs.", and immediately after "Don't necessarily upvote it -- just "vouch" for it if you think it's on-topic.". The revision history is available on Mastodon by pressing the "Last Edited" hypertext.
Instant 100+ upvotes out of nowhere. A bunch of new accounts posting supportive messages that after checking about 20 of them had posted on the sub before and just magically appeared. Downvotes to anything asking questions.
There is one infamous mastodon troll "developer" that can't get enough of themselves and I would put money on them being involved in this, if you know you know.
>If you want to discuss our report on Hacker News, you will have to help us overcome the systemic reactionary bias on HN.
The message is clear: HN has a "bias" (according to them) and their readers must take action in order to discuss it.
It could be that readers here disagree with them, it could be that readers don't buy their attempt at character assassination, instead they play victims as if there was a grand conspiracy to keep a homeless old man with cancer at the head of a nonprofit.
This seems like an irrelevant tangent. Powerful men can hold other powerful men to account, that is still holding powerful men to account.
(In fact, one change desired by is for powerful men to stop reflexively responding to allegations like these by protecting each other and being more skeptical of unsubstantiated pleas of innocence, given the statistics that we know on the nature of sexual assault allegations).
You haven't read it and you should, maybe it would cut down the paranoia. This is not an attack on the free software movement and this is clearly from people who do care about the free software movement values.
I've skimmed through it and see nothing much to actually be concerned about. We all know Stallman is a rather strange, socially awkward man with some oddball views that go against the grain.
A document berating him for being a weirdo, while shrilly exaggerating all the "evidence" in an effort to destroy him and everything he's built over his lifetime, is not particularly useful or necessary.
The purpose of this is clear, and it's very telling that it's being fired at Stallman from the shadows by the unknown and unaccountable.
It seems to me that the purpose of this report is not to say "look, that guy is a weirdo". But rather, to point out in excruciating detail how he is enabling vile behaviours (like normalizing possession of CSAM, pretending like making out with 14 year olds is not sexual abuse, etc) in the FOSS community, by being a very visible figure head that some people look up to.
Please read this[1] while keeping in mind that a 14 year old does not fit into Stallman's definition of "child":
> I don't think it is wrong to distribute "child porn" images, even when they [depict] children rather than adolescents. However, making them is wrong if it involves real sex with a child. For the sake of opposing sexual abuse of real children, I suggest that you boycott the images that involve real children. Imaginary children can't be hurt by drawing them.
In other words: pornography involving 14, 15, 16 year olds is all good according to Stallman. He is enabling all of the above by changing the definition of what child pornography is, responding to someone who emailed him asking for advice, and then posting about it publicly.
Given the subject matter, anonymity is used to protect sources. It's pretty well-understood how people who allege sexual misconduct get disproportionately destroyed by the adversarial process we used to try and find truth in society.
Neurodivergent people can be taught appropriate standards of conduct and basic human respect. Sometimes you gotta spell it out for 'em, that's what the CoC is for. But you don't just give people a pass for making others uncomfortable or afraid "because muh neurodivergence". Especially in a position of leadership. Leading is a skill. If your disability really prevents you from exercising that skill, you don't get that position. Sorry.
Otherwise, how is anyone going to determine the truth of the allegations?
If the behavior was non-criminal then the decision should be made through normal non-profit governance mechanisms. We have due process of law for a reason which is that people are innocent until proven guilty and there are the proper protections to make sure a fair trial occurs.
Another well known non-profit in the biotech space received a 20 million donation and right after that a group of people kicked out the founder citing perceived sexual innuendo in old emails that did not risen to the level of a criminal offense. The donor wanted their money back, because they had given it to support the founder and his mission, but it was too late.
reply