Richard Stallman and the GNU project

I don't agree that complaints against Stallman are useless because they are anonymous. If the evidence is sufficiently solid, then the identity (or anonymity) of the person denouncing the fact is of no importance. This is basically how whistleblowers protection works: their identity may be concealed, but they still have the full burden of providing the evidence of what they are assessing.

In the case of the complaints against Stallman, most of the people reporting awkward anecdotes actually did it under their real name. And why wouldn't they? Now that the beast is down, they can only get social virtue points by doing so ("wow, you're so brave for speaking out!"). Even though these anecdotes are rather thin to justify his current crucifixion.

I have yet to see strong evidence that Stallman is a genuine pervert or a harasser. All the testimonies I have seen describe one-time encounters where he awkwardly asked for a date, got rejected, and never mentioned it again. For sure, this is awkward, insensitive even. But a 30 seconds interaction like this does not constitute harassment, no more that it makes him a perv. All I see is a clumsy and lonely man, and that is not a crime.

The picture of the sign on his door also dramatically lacks context. Have you noticed that there is only one picture of that sign circulating? Had I come across this, I would surely have taken a picture. Why is there only one documented picture then? Do we know how long it was displayed? Was it written by Stallman himself, or by a colleague who wanted to make a joke, and then took it off after a one day or two? As far as I know nobody can clarify this, but people are prone to jumping to conclusions very quickly when they believe righteousness is on their side.

Note also that these complaints have nothing to do with my point in this thread: that RMS' words have been misrepresented, and that this misrepresentation is now considered as truth in the public eye, unfairly damaging his reputation and leading to his resignation from the MIT and FSF. And also, that the same thing can happen to you if you WrongThink in public.

I think the evidence for this is rather self-explanatory, and knowing my name would not make it any stronger. I don't want to pollute LWN with links to garbage, but please look up the articles I mention earlier and tell me whether a journalist worthy of the title would say that Stallman "defended Epstein behavior". Not to also mention the original piece on Medium written by a former student whose cluelessness is despairing (never heard of Stallman before, but let's ask for his removal!). And of course there is the unavoidable Twitter rabble.

Does Stallman's lack of social awareness and tendency to say whatever he thinks without a filter make him fit to represent the FSF? That's up for discussion, and for what it's worth my opinion is that his succession is overdue. But should he be subjected to this online assassination and humiliation, and negation of his life's work? Absolutely not, and if I cannot say it under my real identity, well I will say it anyway.

Paul Graham wrote a good essay a few years ago named "What you can't say", which provides a good lens to understand this kind of online bullying, and will make you feel better if you happen to entertain a few thoughts that most of your peers would consider suppressive.