[norswap]

- Please refrain from name calling.

- His "crime" was to play down an accusation on an acquaintance by arguing on the sense of words. It might have been insensitive (use your own judgement), but it's hardly heinous.

- As a mirror question, why waste so much time and energy trying to pull down someone that merely committed social gaffe? If people really have to hunt witches (they don't), they are some much scarier ones running around. Myself, I think it has to do with Stallman being an easy target.

[mikeash]

Sorry, I’m going to call assholes assholes. I don’t know why people get so upset at swear words. People are saying all sorts of heinous shit in these comments, but apparently this is fine as long as you don’t use one of the Seven Deadly Words.

Your mirror question is missing the decades of context that led up to this.

Edit: I should note that “asshole” isn’t a random insult. It’s highly relevant. People get fired for being assholes while at work. For jobs that involve interacting with other people (which is just about all of them, including Stallman’s) this is not only factual, but perfectly reasonable. Asshole loses job, what’s the big deal? The only surprising thing is that it took this long!