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> It's a pattern of behaviour over years combined

This is a tough rhetorical device. I’ve read quite a bit about this recently. I am not a huge RMS reader and while I’ve known of him for 25 years or so, I haven’t nearly read everything he said and everything written by people who met him.

So maybe he does have a pattern of behavior that’s negative enough to be fired. But maybe he doesn’t have a pattern but some people incorrectly perceive a pattern. It’s tough without proper data to differentiate.

What I have read is a half dozen accounts of not really clearly defined “charges” like “he asked me out once” and “someone told me that women at MIT keep plants to wars him off” and “he made jokes about virgins.”

Granted, I don’t know the method for cancellation but even if everything I read on HN is true. If every story ends up being completely accurate in the most negative way possible, thats like 20 things over 40 years. And not a pattern unless implicitly add in much more.

I think that these anecdotes are useful if I’ve already decided RMS is a misogynist and I want to back in some evidence. But I feel like if this were given to a jury of his peers he would be acquitted

It also seems weird to me how these few stories are presented as evidence as if they count for a lot. That’s scary as I’m not sure how anyone can defend themselves against faulty evidence. Or even to determine if it’s faulty.

So we run the risk of going into a weird mob event where only negative evidence can be presented. There is no defender. There is no real judge.

This is not a healthy way to treat people. And I don’t think it’s a good way to produce good software.

Jury of peers is for criminal prosecution, not job performance assessment, which is closer to civil cases, in which preponderance of the evidence is the standard.

There’s a judge and sometimes jury in civil cases. There’s still evidence rules. My comment stands with preponderance of evidence standard.

I feel like if all this was handed to a judge or jury it wouldn’t meet the standard for civil verdicts either.

It’s only when I see this stuff presented in the tumbler verse world of most uptweets is true or whatever that it seems to stick.

It’s certainly currently effective, but I don’t know how sustainable it is because it seems like a poor way to produce quality things.

Perhaps there will be a critical mass of people who just adhere to a rational ideal and break the boycotts to the extent where we can have a parallel world that ignores such style of medium-post fueled discussion.

> This is a tough rhetorical device.

There is no particular charge to defend so it is indefensible. It is more insinuation than accusation. It also sounds vaguely convincing without needing to provide any actual evidence or cite any specific instance, and turns singular instances of not-really-a-problem into a 'pattern' (eg, like what happened to his door sign).

> But maybe he doesn’t have a pattern but some people incorrectly perceive a pattern.

I went to a Stallman talk on Free Software once when he was in Australia. The questions he fielded after the talk where honestly jawdropping and one of the first encounters I had with how little some people understand subtle arguments.

"Software must be free, but people can be paid to work on it!" then "So what you are saying is that people should work without getting paid?" style exchanges.

Stallman is defiantly no stranger to having his words misunderstood. It wasn't even malicious, people just didn't understand him.

Would you be willing to provide a few links to those stories over the years? I never knew enough about his personal behavior to judge that and have no idea how to search for it.

my last comment is a good jumping off point

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21113873

I might have to add a bunch of sources since we seem to have a lot of people in denial. The responses to the Medium article are... not nice.

Thanks for the link. It's interesting start. But it doesn't show me a predator as I expect at the end of sexual assault accusations. It shows more of a sad lonely guy, that's probably sometimes annoying and is not welcome by people. This date-suicide thing is still abusive, but on very personal and not even ethical level. Not sure if it should involve some organization in any way. It's a bit hard now to figure out what's happening, as I've thought of RMS as a moral person and somewhat aligned my morals to him. It's now dificult to dissect them to figure out what's wrong. And also, it rings a bit like the story of Socrates and what Seneca said about it.

That's a thing that often is misunderstood: Intent is not required to be a cultural detriment.

RMS still refuses to take any sort of criticism, even now.

People refuse to see the problem in this very thread.

That is what's wrong with tech. Not wanting to see the problem.

Couldn't it be just a plain understanding of imperfections in human nature? The old adage of perfect being the enemy of the good?

He worked in MIT for over 30 years, do share any evidence at all of the pattern you are referring to.

And then fire whoever allowed it to go on for 30 years!

>He worked in MIT for over 30 years

walter lewin was at mit for 43 years before he was exposed and fired for sexual abuse.

He sent inappropriate messages in an online course, there are no accusations against him, proven or unproven regarding his career at MIT. And what point are you trying to make with your statement? Lewin supposedly asked a student to do sexual role playing with him and asked for inappropriate videos. Richard Stallman hasn't done anything of the sort and if you disagree provide proof.

> pattern of behaviour over years

Let's say I found 10 times over two decades where you did something inappropriate (I think the average person would be a saint if this was the number of times they erred in two decades) and put them all into a single article. Would that mean you have a "pattern of behavior"? It would certainly present as one. Or merely that you are human and occasionally say or do dumb, inappropriate things? It seems at this case that all of the "pattern of behavior" was speech in this case, and not particularly egregious in any instance.

Maybe, but maybe they would have other tools, better tools, built by the people his behaviour, and the behaviour of people like him, have driven from the industry before they got a chance to have the impact that people like him seem to assume is a right.

They ware free to develop whatever they want. If they do not wish to be a part of the GNU project that is fine, make your own project and develop whatever you want.

If people out there were willing to put in the years to create better software than what the GNU project provides than they would have done so.

And a lot of great free software has been created outside of GNU.

It is like saying that unless you get commit rights to the Linux kernel, or if you didn't partake in Linux development you could not write software. Maybe Linus called you an idiot.

Your argument is that if Linux hadnt written the kernel we would have had a better operating system today.

Being a part of a project is not a right, it is a privilege. Writing free software is something anyone can do, and they can do it a lot better because of GNU/Linux. Just do it.

> Maybe, but maybe they would have other tools, better tools, built by the people his behaviour, and the behaviour of people like him, have driven from the industry

We do have some evidence as to how likely that is given that projects such as Mastodon, NodeJS, GIMP and others have been forked by groups claiming to be dissatisfied with the 'toxic' behavior around said projects. They have indeed produced elaborate code of conducts, but no computer code to speak of.

FWIW, this is from a wikipedia article:

In September 2019, it was reported that Stallman had made statements on an internal CSAIL listserv in defense of deceased MIT professor Marvin Minsky, in relation to Virginia Giuffre's deposition that she was directed to have sex with Minsky by Jeffrey Epstein.[117][118] As a response, Stallman resigned from both MIT and the Free Software Foundation.[119][120][121]

"What this is really all about" is wildly subjective for such a circumstance (not a legal criminal context with judge/crime). This might be what it's "really about" to some, like the activists campaigning for this.

For the institutions making the decisions (MIT, FSF) I'm pretty sure this is "all about" scandal. One highly visible scandalous statement. A pattern of scandalous statements. Rumour os scandalous behavior. Most importantly, the promise of further scandal unless you disassociate from him.

I think RMS is one of those judgments that people would make differently in public and in private.

> no interest in listening to other people or accepting that he might be in the wrong

About what exactly? Are the "other people" also as humble in their opinions?

> This latest incident

There is no "incident", his comments are entirely fair if quoted properly.

> it's pure assertion

much like the the "stories of his behaviour"

> going and asking women what comes to mind when they hear about people like this

What a standard to aspire to - forget "presumption of innocence", the new standard is "what come to mind" for whatever bias floats from the unconscious at the time.

You're spectacularly misguided and wrong.