[wizzwizz4]

I haven't heard any “Richard Stallman ad-libbed one of his comedy skits badly and made members of the audience feel uncomfortable” stories since 2010 at the latest. I haven't heard he got better; I've just stopped hearing complaints. From this, I infer that he got better.

One of the more hidden benefits of people being more willing to raise concerns like this is that people bad at noticing that they're doing stuff wrong get told it – and then, if they care, they get better. (And if they don't get better, keep shaming them; even if they care, just caring isn't enough.)

I would rather people focused more on legitimate complaints like these, even though they aren't snazzy enough to make newspapers; making up stuff like “Richard Stallman supports child sexual abuse” helps nobody (except sensationalist newspapers, but they're not worth helping), whereas calling out the many small components of systematic injustices (e.g. many women feeling excluded from tech and hackerdom because they're women) helps many.

[throwanem]

Well, I can attest from personal experience that he was still stuffing his foot in his mouth that way as late as 2016; I didn't leave the talk, but I saw enough people do so that it was clearly not by happenstance.

I've discussed the incidents of that talk before on Hacker News, at considerable length and in the face of the same anger borne of discomfited hero worship that seems to attend every criticism of Stallman's behavior. If you're interested in the details of that discussion, I'll ask you to find it in my comment history here, as I have occasions today both more urgent and more appealing than to attract yet another tiresome crowd of would-be shouters-down.