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Comment by sremani | Hacker News Reader

Lack of proportion is the problem for me. Mr.Stallman could be censured - but again the people went after his position/job for what are at the best mis-guided or flawed statements.

If Mr.Stallman were to be in Epstein's Island well that is whole level of any issue.

Committing Rape and Questioning the logic behind defining the "act" of rape are not the same.

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A comment further up this chain explains that SFC and GNOME were tired of Stallman’s tendency to speak first and worry about bigger picture later.

Basically, looks like this situation was a long time coming.

Politics. He disregards politics and politicians and they eventually had enough weaponry to remove the threat his disregarding their political aims was to them. Nothing more.

It's always interesting to me when people try to downplay politics as somehow "less than" the technological and theoretical aspects of software engineering. I wonder what those people imagine software is for.

Or, it was annoying but tolerable, until an opportunity presented itself to score virtue points while having past problematic behavior to use for plausible deniability.

It really wasn't tolerable though. As much as I deeply respect Dr Stallman's work, he has a long history of reputationally troubling statements:

https://stallman.org/cgi-bin/showpage.cgi?path=/archives/200...

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20Jun...

I meant this technically: it was tolerable because it was tolerated. They could've disassociated from him after any of his troubling statements. They didn't.

It is, perhaps, plausible that he's a popular enough individual that they were worried about a mob reaction, if you will, if they cut ties with him because he did anything short of try to defend rape.

But to be clear, that's still a bed of his own making.

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