The quickest and most common way to do this is by labelling someone crazy or a sex offender, both of which are constantly tried against RMS, to the point where there's a whole website to counter the most common misinformation: https://stallmansupport.org/
It shouldn't take years of conversations to understand that pedophilia is bad.
Ironically BSD doesn't have "a ruler", a cult-like leader like RMS. It is more democratized than GNU.
[Without taking the bait of addressing "pedophilia," but the specific comment RMS made that got generalized...]
Your objection is he committed thoughtcrime by not taking certain gospel on a taboo subject at face value, has actually thought about it and discussed it with folks, and even changed his opinion on the subject in the end. Note that there is zero evidence he has shown any personal interest in having sex with children and this is some abstract analysis by a heterodox, and analytical mind, dare I say neurodivergent and on the spectrum, looking at it.
If it helps, what you consider such an obvious settled matter, even on its simplest dimension, the age-of-consent, varies among the united States, let alone the entire world where lots of cultures have different opinions about it.
> Ironically BSD doesn't have "a ruler", a cult-like leader like RMS. It is more democratized than GNU.
The BSD community has had their fair share of drama and accusations of misogyny too. RMS is hardly the driving force behind modern decisions that drive Linux distros. That crown, if any, probably belongs to Red Hat.
Thank you for stating this.
However, the website you cite points out that the beginning of the whole sex offender thing was a single MIT alumna who wrote a blog post. It seems unlikely that this was part of a greater conspiracy (by big business) to cancel Stallman.
And that really put me off, because reading a bit about her with an open mind showed quickly, she was genuinly enraged and a real simple student. She was maybe not right, but her anger was for real.
And dismissing this as hired defamination prevents seeing why the outside world has no idea about what RMS want to tell the world.
I said what I said, though, you should understand there doesn't need to be some 'entity' making dictates. Just powerful people whose interests align; who all went to the same schools, are in the same clubs, and have the same fucked up views [0].
'Muting' isn't the word I'd use; I'd go with 'marginalize'. Close enough though.
RMS' vision of free software is an existential threat to big tech, and to the ecosystem of mass surveillance they enable.
Much as Assange's autism was weaponized to paint him as 'arrogant' in corporate media, RMS' quirks have been magnified to mark him as 'crazy' despite the fact that it's possible no one alive, ever, has had such a clear view on software freedom.
> However, the website you cite points out that the beginning of the whole sex offender thing was a single MIT alumna who wrote a blog post.
Whereever the initial spark came from, it was carefully nurtured into a blaze, most obviously by Vice. Vice deliberately twisted RMS' words, craftily removing clear and vital context to make RMS look as creepy as possible.
Then, corporate media took that steaming turd of a Vice article and repeated it ad nauseum, without talking to Stallman, without ever adding context, and without any apology or retraction after the truth slowly filtered through.
Here's [1] a great and short article that shows how people like Stallman (Assange, Snowden, Donziger, non-establishment Pres candidates, etc) go through 'ritual defamation' in the US. Once you start seeing it, it's everywhere - look at how people protesting war and genocide are being labelled as terror supporters, for example.
0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAFd4FdbJxs
1 - https://stallmansupport.org/the-practice-of-ritual-defamatio...
FAANG would literally not exist without "open source" software. Being able to use volunteer developer effort for free has saved the industry trillions and made today's corporate Internet possible.
Open source has also spread more than a few backdoors, some apparently written by state actors.
(Of course we've found all of them now. Of course we have.)
As a politician, Stallman is an idiot. His pitch - "You can write your own printer driver and customise your OS and this will save the world" is a naive appeal to the tiny minority of the population which enjoys tinkering.
It excludes most users - which you'd think would be an obvious issue. So in practice it's an adolescent, oppositional and tribal view of how computing operates, socially and politically.
Global infosec, corporate exploitation, user accessibility and customisation, three letter agency surveillance, personal privacy, disinformation factories, user empowerment, developer trust, attention farming, ad tech, and the politics and economics of data ownership are all hugely complex issues.
"Give everyone the source code to everything and poof! - you'll solve all of them" is just such a stupid take.
So no - he is neither a threat, nor a martyr. He's a distraction, and politically that's all he'll ever be.
Do you want to be taken seriously? Starting your comment with such a claim is no means to do it.
> FAANG would literally not exist without "open source" software.
Open-source software has contributed to the technological ecosystem. Attributing the entire existence of major corporations solely to open source is silly, and I find it hard to believe anyone could do so in good faith.
> Open source has also spread more than a few backdoors, some apparently written by state actors.
And closed source hasn't? I honestly can't tell if this is advanced satire.
> As a politician, Stallman is an idiot
Most of us are - that's a good thing. Being a canny political actor without being a shitbird of a human being is about a one in a million skill.
> His pitch - "You can write your own printer driver and customise your OS and this will save the world" is a naive appeal to the tiny minority of the population which enjoys tinkering.
Your strawman sucks - that's not his pitch. Stallman's advocacy focuses on empowering users with the ability to control and modify their software, not expecting everyone to write their own software.
> in practice it's an adolescent, oppositional and tribal view of how computing operates
What's "adolescent, oppositional and tribal" is making weak strawmen like this.
> "Give everyone the source code to everything and poof! - you'll solve all of them" is just such a stupid take.
Another strawman. Stallman's advocacy for free software is not a panacea for all societal and technological challenges, nor did he ever claim it to be. It addresses fundamental issues of user rights and autonomy, complex though they may be.
> So no - he is neither a threat, nor a martyr. He's a distraction, and politically that's all he'll ever be.
Fortunately, Stallman’s significant contributions to the philosophy and practice of free software, with their enduring impacts on technology, privacy rights, and digital freedoms, do not depend on your opinion. For your own sake though, I hope you clear up your thinking; because once you blame open source software for surveillance you've probably lost the run of yourself completely.