An anonymous Medium author who wrote the "Remove Richard Stallman" posts and an appendix documenting complaints about his behavior.
HN commenters cite the appendix as evidence that complaints about Stallman span decades, in arguments over why he left MIT and the FSF.
There is a sexual harassment allegation from 1985:
>>>When I was a teen freshman, I went to a buffet lunch at an Indian restaurant in Central Square with a graduate student friend and others from the AI lab. I don't know if he and I were the last two left, but at a table with only the two of us, Richard Stallman told me of his misery and that he'd kill himself if I didn't go out with him.
I felt bad for him and also uncomfortable and manipulated. I did not like being put in that position — suddenly responsible for an "important" man. What had I done to get into this situation? I decided I could not be responsible for his living or dying, and would have to accept him killing himself. I declined further contact.
He was not a man of his word or he'd be long dead.
Betsy S., Bachelor's in Management Science, '85<<<
Source: https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix-a-a7e41e784f88
I have seen in this very same thread other people saying there are accusations, but that the people in question do not want to come forward.
Another secondhand (third-hand?) accusation of sexual harassment:
>>>He made overt sexual advances to women at work [in the late 1990s at VA Linux]. One young woman who worked next to me was so upset from his multiple advances that she took it to senior management. She was able to deal with the problem without taking the issue outside the company. I don’t know the details, but she was given advanced warning anytime Stallman was headed over…
> Source?
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-described-epstein-victims-as-entirely-willing
https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-defends-epstein-victims-were-entirely-willing
Versus what he actually said. The original e-mails are easily available, they've even been quoted in Salem G.'s blog post.
> for these specific allegations RMS was being conflated with ESR, another known sexual predator who has some fame in the early world of FOSS
I hope your phrasing here is accidental, because it could be read as alleging that RMS is a "known sexual predator". I'm pretty sure some people will read it that way and run with it.
> I saw nothing lying about him being a pedophile.
Me neither. Him defending a pedophile (Epstein) was a lie news outlets run with. Him believing at some point in the past pedophilia may be harmless when both sides are willing is true, because he wrote exactly that years ago (recently retracted, whether because of actual change of mind or damage control is besides the point).
> The man's a known pedophile sympathizer, and clearly based on the dates published he doesn't intend to retract any of his own articles proving such any time soon.
Now that is, from what I can tell, factually incorrect. He only wrote in the past that he think the popular opinion on pedophilia is wrong due to issues of bias.
EDIT: You actually quoted the exact statement. Re-read it carefully.
>…
>> Source?
>https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-sci...
>https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-r...
>Versus what he actually said. The original e-mails are easily available, they've even been quoted in Salem G.'s blog post.
I carefully reread the statements, and I still maintain my opinion on it. I see what you are getting at — he suggested that the girl _presented herself_ as entirely willing, and that this may have been coerced by Epstein. I said in my original comment that I don't want an innocent person accused of sexual assault, and indeed he's suggesting Marvin was innocent in that regard.
However, at this point we're debating whether another person is innocent in order to determine the innocence of some phrasing. My Occam's Razor interpretation really is not that clear here. I honestly cannot say that I think the Vice, et al., interpretation (that he is referring to victims as "entirely willing") is particularly far fetched.
>> for these specific allegations RMS was being conflated with ESR, another known sexual predator who has some fame in the early world of FOSS
>I hope your phrasing here is accidental, because it could be read as alleging that RMS is a "known sexual predator". I'm pretty sure some people will read it that way and run with it.
Yes, indeed there my phrasing is accidental. I'll admit that is very poor phrasing. I'll be clear that I do not think RMS is a "known sexual predator." I also can't say I actively…
Bushnell* writes a very reasonable piece. It deals with a number of issues with Stallman as a leader of the FSF and MIT and suggests Stallman is unlikely to come back to either of those institutions.
But he doesn't deal with what the big problem here is - the way this was done is concerning. Stallman wasn't forced to resign by people like him - who are quite happy to say "Look, Stallman, you've dedicated your life to this, you've done good work, but we want to take the movement into a more mainstream place".
Stallman resigned in the middle of a press firestorm, based on lies, with people publicly accusing him of supporting someone he called a 'serial rapist'. He is now facing large numbers of people retroactively justifying his treatment by spreading various rumours that may or may not be true but certainly can't be enumerated and assessed for accuracy. They are unfalsifiable and undebunkable because so far there is very little substance and a lot of hearsay. I've seen the odd comments justifying all sorts of weird assumptions, in one case literally because 'he was an eccentric bloke'. This is gross pigeonholing and stereotyping.
This is not a reasonable process and the outcomes are horrible. Stallman has literally dedicated his life to trying to make the world better for other people. He was bought down by leaks by someone who now says "Did I even really know who Richard Stallman was before those emails? To be honest, not really" [0]. This is not how these things should…
>All those references from stallman.org seems like perfectly reasonable opinions to hold and express though. Seems like you'd have to be fairly deep into radical leftism to read it as anything that "speaks for itself" that the author is due for an extra large helping of sexual taboo condemnations and being ousted from his job.
Alright, I guess we're gonna have to unpack this.
In the item "prudish ignorantism" [0,1] Stallman suggests that a British woman having sex with adolescents is not an issue as long as they used protection, and that adolescents don't need to be "protected" from sex. The adolescents involved were reportedly as young as eleven. It is not perfectly reasonable to consider sex between a sixty year old woman, her seventy year old husband and children as young as eleven to be appropriate.
[0]https://web.archive.org/web/20170612074722/http://stallman.org/archives/2017-mar-jun.html#26_May_2017_(Prudish_ignorantism)
[1]https://web.archive.org/web/20170612074722/https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/19/ex-bbc-presenters-tony-julie-wadsworth-deny-indecently-assaulting-boys-warwickshire
In the item "pestering women" [2,3] Stallman dismisses the behavior of a man who constantly pesters women for sex as not being an issue because he didn't force them to have sex, or punish them for refusal. While it is true that both of those would be worse than the behavior described, the behavior described is nevertheless a form of sexual harassment and it is not…
> questioning whether one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims was truly a victim or not.
I’ve never really been much of an RMS fan beyond admiration for what he has done for free software, but this is not what he said, at least according to his words as quoted in the post that initiated his cancellation[1]. I’ve pasted it from that post below [2]. The author of that post quoted this and then somehow inferred this [3]. How she (and everyone reading it thereafter) went from one line to the next from “she PRESENTED herself as willing” (not that she actually was willing), “assuming she was being COERCED by Epstein” somehow got reinterpreted as “she was entirely willing”.
Nothing RMS said stated he thought she wasn’t a victim, just that Minsky may not have known due to how Epstein coerced her to present herself.
But hey, the witch hunters got their burning.
[1] https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec210794
[2] We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that
she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was
being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her
to conceal that from most of his associates.
[3] and then he says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”.