[Smithalicious]

Amazing how whenever someone does something controversial and gets forced out soon afterwards, it's never the thing they said, but "consistent creepy and inappropriate behavior" based on 10 year old anecdotes that suddenly appear out of nowhere... I'd think that if someone was "consistently" creepy and inappropriate, there would be a pretty good public record for that, but what do I know?

EDIT: Let me give a bit more of a nuanced position, because reading my post back, it looks like I'm saying that Stallman never did anything inappropriate before this.

Of course, I recognize that Stallman is fucking weird. I'm not saying that parrot-fucking, foot-fungus-eating St. IGNUcius never did anything inappropriate before; we'd be here for a long time if we were to make a list of all the times Stallman failed to read the mood.

However, I strongly believe that Stallman is not a creep. He holds some odd views and is pretty autistic, and so he occasionally makes inappropriate advances. Add to that that Stallman has been a very prolific person for decades and you won't relaly have trouble coming up with a list of anecdotes that, when framed a certain way, make him look bad.

I've read quite a few of these anecdotes by now. Some of them look fairly innocent to me. Some of them are clear social blunders. None of them look seriously harmful or in bad faith to me. Even taking all of them together, believing that all of them are remembered 100% correctly and played out as portrayed without any additional context, I don't think the appropirate reaction is to remove Stallman from his position(s).

What ticks me off so much about all this is the way the media deals with it. Stallman is portrayed as some kind of sexist, some kind of patriarch keeping women out of tech. It's ridiculous; Stallman is quite possibly the most inclusionary person I can think of. Stallman has had an immense, direct contribution to making tech more open for everyone.

I can understand the criticism of Stallman. I don't even think he necessarily makes for a good figurehead for Free Software; he has poor social skills, unhelpfully rigid and strong positions, and I feel like he often conflates free software issues with other social issues he cares about. He makes for a better philosopher than a political leader.

In this case, he's being thrown under the bus to score social points. People in tech are very itchy to do whatever they can to seem more inclusive, and condemning Epstein and his ilk is a noble goal (that also makes you look good). Stallman's statements that sparked this controversy were naive and he failed to read the mood, but they were not unacceptable things to believe or say. He did not deserve to have his words twisted, get kicked out of his own organisation based on the strawman, and then have people say that he was always bad, anyways.

[atoav]

One could also see it the other way round: because of the importance of his figure people were more willing to keep their mouths shut and look the other way. Once the tipping point is reached, they don’t see any reason to do that anymore. This is why medival monarchs had jesters to tell them what is really going on.

The right thing to do of course is to speek truth to power openly and before everybody else does it, but this could come with serious consequences for the person speaking up. This is why they’d only do it once they are 100% sure they didn’t misread the situation, the thing that happened was actually big enough and they are willing to carry the consequences this could have for free software.

In other words: people in positions like Stallman can get away with much more than any regular guy, which means they should be extra considerate of their role and their environment if they care about the effects their own power and fame has on it. If it everybody steps up now, it means there was clearly a disconnect between his self image and what his environment thought about him.

[Smithalicious]

> If it everybody steps up now, it means there was clearly a disconnect between his self image and what his environment thought about him.

Oh, certainly. And I'd say the reason for that is

> because of the importance of his figure people were more willing to keep their mouths shut and look the other way

I don't necessarily blame people for not spekaing out if they were troubled by his behaviour, but this is really unfair towards Stallman. Decades worth of small issues that Stallman was mostly unaware of are being condensed into one big issue. That's why I think the situation is crooked; in my view, Stallman never did anything particularly bad, nor did he harbor any ill will, yet he's facing the consequences of a major scandal.

Also, I don't think that Stallman should be held to the standards of a "medieval monarch". I think you're overstating just how powerful Stallman is (was?); I don't think he was actually in charge of many impactful decisions.

Your points are good but perhaps more applicable to someone like Linus Torvalds, who is fully aware of his controversial behaviour and does actually hold a position of substantial power.

[flatb]

> Decades worth of small issues that Stallman was mostly unaware of

As a reminder, the "small issues" you mention include accusations, by several independent parties, of, among other things:

-Asking female coworkers to lay down topless on a mattress in his office.

-Threatening a colleague to kill himself if he/she didn't go on a date with him.

-Posting up signs in his workplace along the lines of "Knight for Justice (Also: Hot Ladies)".

[dang]

Please don't copy/paste the same material on HN. Even if the discussion is getting repetitive, making it more repetitive makes it worse.

More importantly, please don't post in the flamewar style to HN, even if the topic is inflammatory and divisive.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[Smithalicious]

The second is unacceptable if it happened as told. I don't know what to think of the first point without context. The third point seems like an innocent joke to me, if slightly inappropriate.

I don't mean to defend him from any kind it accusation, but all of this is meaningless without full context and hearing the story from both sides.

[Izkata]

> The second is unacceptable if it happened as told.

I've seen enough narrative flipping over the years that this is the one I find least plausible, and requires more information.

[Smithalicious]

Hence "if it happened as told". These kinds of allegations are tough because while these things do happen, they're also strong enough allegations that they require serious proof, while also being essentially unprovable. I never know how to feel when something like this comes up since on the one hand I don't want to discourage victims from speaking up, but on the other hand, no good ever comes from them.

[doubleunplussed]

Interestingly, in a world with strong norms against speech having career consequences, people would have been empowered to speak up earlier. The expectation that unpopular speech will have consequences for them makes them keep quiet until they are sure their views are popular.

[Smithalicious]

Oh, certainly. The way it is now encourages both wielding controversy as a weapon as well as remaining silent to avoid a conflict (for their own sake, but also the other party).

[cgriswald]

Would there? A friend of a friend hit on my under age sister at a party at my house. He later hit on my girlfriend in front of me in Spanish because he didn’t know I understood. There were witnesses to both events. I’ve gotten a couple complaints from other women attending my parties as well. And he’s always had a “creep” vibe and being generally inappropriate but my friends think of him as “harmless”. I had to tell mutual friends he wasn’t welcome. They had no idea and I’m not sure they really believed me. I’m sure to them this was all a bunch of stories coming out of the woodwork but to me it was suspected in the beginning and confirmed repeatedly over time.

[distances]

There are accounts of his behaviour going back decades, so I'm not sure what you're claiming with this?