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Comment by ng12 | Hacker News Reader

The issue is that Stallman has been this way for decades -- he's always been outspoken, nitpicky, and aggressively libertarian -- and FSF has flourished under his sole leadership.

It's only in 2019 that internet culture and clickbait media have made it a "problem". To me, that is significantly more harmful than any of the wonky things RMS sometimes says.

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I don't know or care much about Stallman and the situation, don't really have a dog in this fight. What I do know is that "It's been like this for decades" is never an appropriate defense.

Not "it's been like this" -- he, a human person, has been like this. In fact he's been voluntarily blogging his political thoughts for decades (which, again, in 2019 is an incredibly dangerous thing to do).

So the question is this: if he's had his outspoken opinions on controversial topics for decades, there's no evidence of his opinions actually causing any real tangible harm, and under his tenure the FSF has been a runaway success -- why is it an issue now?

> What I do know is that "It's been like this for decades" is never an appropriate defense.

You know what?

He got better with time, given where he came from.

So he's still better than the majority of puppets lurking in his background to find something to use against him.

For example: he never threatened anybody nor accused anybody falsely nor asked for somebody to be "removed".

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