| > Do you believe he has alienated more women from FOSS than he has inspired people to contribute to it? Almost certainly not, but at this stage it is not unlikely that he'll put off more than he'll encourage going forward. So by the same "net effect" argument you make for accepting his behaviour up to a point in the recent past, he should go. Live by the sword, get asked to resign because of the sword. > Considering the frankly extremely low percentage of female contributors That low number of female contributors is at least in part due to the impression people have of working in these areas. Allowing him to continue to alienate people works against efforts to rectify that impression (and where it is true rather than just an impression, work to fix the behaviours that are causing the problem). > all of the anecdotes of actual bad behaviour that seem to come up are from about two decades ago Perhaps most, but not all. I've definitely seen some more recent claims, and they were mentioned before this particular episode. They weren't as egregious as the earlier behaviour so he was at least controlling/curbing/changing the creepy behaviour for which I suppose there should be some credit, and there is definitely some curious timing wrt MIT and the Epstein contributions so there is presumably a bit of "throw him under the bus as a distraction" going on, meaning this is a case with significant grey areas, but I think painting him as an entirely innocent victim is a step too far. Let's be fair handed: if we wouldn't accept it from a politician or other celebrity, we shouldn't accept it from someone whose other ideas we agree with either. |