[tptacek]

What's "conventional morality"? Where's the line between a moral fashion and something more fundamental? If there's no one line, then isn't this all just an exercise in line drawing, and aren't the people who refuse to associate with Stallman simply drawing their own lines?

[yabadabadoes]

> aren't the people who refuse to associate with Stallman simply drawing their own lines?

It seems to me like he has enough allies to continue all of his organisations with some replacement of those who wont associate with him, so it seems to me like people are drawing lines for other people.

I have mixed feelings about his running of the organisations on a technical level, but I have more reservations about organisations after such a social coup. Similarly, I find Brendan Eich's political views distasteful, but I am more inclined to draw a line against interacting with Mozilla than Eich over people drawing lines for other people, and I would definitely shun Mozilla had they removed Eich for expressing political thoughts without making actual monetary donations.

I've worked with people far more distasteful in far more areas of their belief and behavior than those two, and I would rather the nonsense stop than empower one more moron on the web to bring someone to "justice". How is this mob going to sleep at night in a few months?

[tptacek]

I'm not sure how they're meant to draw lines for other people; if they don't have a critical mass, Stallman can simply ignore them. If they do, he can't lead effectively, and it's their own personal lines that are the problem.

[yabadabadoes]

So you think a critical mass of people who actually work with Stallman in the FSF and Gnu did some secret ballots then discussed this with him their shared decision or you think a critical mass stopped showing up at work (is that online?) each independently?

More realistically, he was hounded by a loud minority with most people shruging and waiting. Given that his situation with MIT is somewhat more complicated and he has a limited amount of resources for handling simultaneous emergencies..

[tptacek]

I think people who have come into professional contact with Stallman have had these problems for a very long time, and Stallman's extraordinarily ill-advised comments about Minsky and Epstein crystalized them.