I agree with you here. Stallman's comments on this topic are characteristically appalling, insensitive and pedantic, but I think the headlines printed about him are inaccurate and malicious. These publications have no stake in the matter of Stallman's status at MIT save to entice readers with the promise of scandal. I'm certainly not going to defend Stallman's character, but I think the retaliation against him is disproportionate. One can't help the feeling that when it comes to this kind of scandal there are plenty of bad actors willing to fan the flames for personal gain. I would definitely call into question the motivation of the authors of the articles on this event. Despite this, and despite the fact that I really dislike the modern use of the word 'problematic', I can't think of a better word to describe many of Stallman's statements and positions. For someone to be a community leader of any kind this kind of tone-deafness, even if only to politics, is unacceptable.

They should all be held accountable, sadly I do not wield such power to hold them to account.

That said, while the headlines are sensational, the fact is that RMS doesn't seem to understand what willing means or power dynamics.

RMS is being used because of cluelessness of the person who called for his removal:

"This was not, actually, all that much about Richard Stallman. Stallman was just the last straw. This was really about all the times I have heard about a classmate’s advisor crushing her dreams, about Seth Lloyd mocking female students, the number of women alumni that were too jaded to feel surprised by this revelation, the story I read from a 1987 alumn about the trauma she experienced at the MIT and the world of that era. This was really about everything that has come out before and after the Epstein revelations, before and after Richard Stallman’s emails.

Did I even really know who Richard Stallman was before those emails? To be honest, not really — I’m a mechanical engineer who didn’t pay enough attention, apparently."

https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21...

> Why is RMS being used to set an example? Do you think RMS actually hurt any children?

That implies that there's some sort of process or council there deciding Stallman gets cancelled. Also this just isn't about his most recent comments about underaged trafficking victims potentially being entirely willing, he's had a long trail of classically sexist "look a girl" moments in speeches and really out there opinions about pedophilia and consent that he only outwardly came out against last weekend _after_ he started getting in hot water about those emails.

Often who gets hit and who doesn't isn't 100% about the most recent events and depends a lot on the story catching fire and in this case it caught and there was a whole barn of old dry tender that had largely been brushed aside because of his technical work.

It's a useful deflection from further examination of the slimy tentacles of Epstein's influence throughout tech and academia. Stallman is not terribly well-liked, and made the mistake of shooting off his mouth and grabbing onto the third rail hard with both hands at an inopportune time. He's a useful scapegoat to sacrifice up to Molloch.

I think it's worse than that. IIRC, he discussed it on a private mailing list and someone leaked his emails.

That's not what happened. If RMS had actually argued the case objectively, he would have used reported testimony that cleared his friend. Instead he went off on some hypothetical to excuse the bad behavior (which reportedly didn't even happen) of his friend.

It was the wrong forum, the wrong topic, and the wrong argument. It shows a complete and total lack of good judgement. Combined with his history of such a lack of judgement, that is the standard which we should hold people to.