People only see what they want to see. I see a bunch of people beating up on and attacking an awkward "nerd". It reminds me of high school.
That perfectly captures my own impression of this whole debacle.
People keep piling on RMS because he's "weird" rather than anything objectively bad that he's done - notice how often his travel binder is being raised even though it's really completely harmless. That's literally witch-hunt behaviour: persecuting somebody because he's different.
And of the things he was attacked for that would be objectively bad, so much of it turns out to be either a misunderstanding, misinterpretation, or outright fabrication (like apparently the "hot ladies" sign).
I can believe that there is a true kernel of bad behaviour from RMS, but it's blown way out of proportion by all the other stuff around it, and that gives this whole affair the stench of persecuting somebody merely for being different. It's very frustrating.
I've heard nasty things come out of that man and I have no interest in listening to him.
https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/1172283772428906496?s=21
The truth is that people make mistakes. People are entitled to their own opinions, however much you may disagree with them. The world exists outside one's self, and any one person just a small, small part of it. The world is not to blame if I feel hurt or threatened, and life is not fair. But within this world we have complete freedom. Do not try to take that away.
Who's taking freedom away? RMS is still a free man. He's just lost his privileged positions.
So people eventually share their stories through social media and even that doesn't work sometimes (see: Riot). His behavior doesn't have to cross into illegality to be reprehensible.
MIT could likely get into deep trouble if they chose to publish all of the formal complaints against Stallman for obvious privacy reasons and this incident could've just been the proverbial final straw.
And regardless: Apply Occam's Razor here. What is more likely: A group of random people consisting of professors and students bringing grievances against Stallman, or some sort of conspiracy where all of those people are lying, embellishing etc for some form of revenge? If multiple disconnected people are calling someone an asshole, maybe there's an issue here. It's amazing to what lengths people will attempt to create a narrative defending RMS.
A group of random people with a certain radical ideology, most of which work at google[0][1][2], the military[3], or have personal issues with him due to their history[4][5], etc. I certainly do not believe that it is a conspiracy - ie they are being honest on the fact that they do not like him (not necessarily on why they do not like him though) and that they are not being paid by someone to do it, but they are far from random people.
Also, I personally saw no professors being involved, although I might be mistaken.
[0] https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa...
[1] https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1172422966904160257
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20995556
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21090851
[4] see 0 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bushnell#GNU_Hurd
[5] https://twitter.com/migueldeicaza/status/1173981287037751297 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza#Advocacy_of_Mi...
And regardless, this behavior has apparently been going on for decades without anyone taking action. Can you blame people for thinking that "the right channels" aren't working?
What exactly are you claiming he did to harass people?
What exactly did he do that was inappropriate?
You know all the people on Twitter claiming that "numerous" women have confided in them that Stallman kept them out of tech? It's all fake. These claims are identical in structure and purpose to Joseph McCarthy's famous "I have here in my hand a list" line. What the mob is doing now to Stallman is exactly the same thing that the mob did to everyone suspected of communism in the 1950s.
Most of "examples" that were in circulation for past days were usually misunderstood jokes that others made at his expense. Seriously - how can one treat somebody mentioning "if he ever hits on you, just tell him you use vim" as an example of what's wrong with rms seriously? Stories about plants being kept by female professors just to scare him away? Please. You need to be completely missing the context to interpret it even remotely close to how it's being used now.
If you're too lazy to do the research yourself, I've even found a page that collects it and does proper justice to objectively present them in full context: https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/ (although this text could do just as well with a few less "paid to write, not to read" repetitions...)
Either way, I'm not really in a mood to educate you.