The problem is that RMS didn't state it like you did. He's a victim of his own pedantry. A victim of his own indiscretions. He didn't need to opine about such hateful acts. No job and no reputation.

Well he didn't _need_ to voice his opinion on copyright and proprietary software either.

But I am glad he did.

Look I agree what he did was dumb, but he is free to voice an opinion on anything he likes. We don't have to agree with it but we don't have to turn it into a witch hunt either..

yes, and the FSF should be free to fire him as well. him being fired isn’t a witch hunt.

cut the crap dude. this guy has been either defending or trivializing young girls having sex with older men, or whatever you want to call 12, 14 year old girls having sex with 50, 60 year old men, for 20 years now. he is specifically saying on record that he isn’t convinced it’s a big deal, among numerous other comments. 20 years.

this guy isn’t being hounded out of his job over one slip of the tongue, one mistake. he has been making these comments for a long time, and it finally caught up to him.

this is entirely a problem of his own making.

> cut the crap dude. this guy has been either defending or trivializing young girls having sex with older men

Stop with the bullshit already. Stallman himself stated that the accusations (being offered sex by a 17yo girl) amount to statutory rape. In what twisted mind does this come even close to match your entirely made up story?

Stick to the facts instead of resorting to use your imagination to fabricate any support for your self-righteous witch-hunt.

The problem is trying to minimize human trafficking or suggesting that it's ok as long as the victim appears to be willing.

Selling sex is o.k., so what if Minsky didn't realize that she wasn't willing, how was he supposed to know. She was 17, and surrounded by money, not exactly what you consider a child sex slave chained to a bed in a developing country. Sex for money is o.k.

splitting hairs on what is and what is not pedophilia, and suggesting that girls who were likely trafficked or groomed by older men for sex, yet might have been entirely willing participants, is exactly what he said, and it’s just as bad and boneheaded of a statement as about any others you can make on this subjects.

and he SHOULD lose his job. he isn’t some grunt programmer, he is the senior representative of the FSF and the FSF deserves to have people on its board that aren’t going to embroil them in such boneheaded and unnecessary distractions, and they deserve someone on their board who shows better judgement than this.

and unlike some people here I am not about to split hairs about whether a 14 year old girl that is being groomed for prostitution is or is not capable of giving consent, and i’m not about to engage in semantic quibbles about what the right _word_ is to describe someone who engages in these things.

some you are completely missing the forest for the trees here.

> splitting hairs on what is and what is not pedophilia

An accusation of someone having sex with a 17yo does not correspond to pedophilia anywhere in the world.

> and suggesting that girls (...) might have been entirely willing participants, is exactly what he said

He said that if all girls were willing participants then the accusation of having consentual sex with a 17yo girl corresponds to statutory rape.

Stick to the facts.

Sticking to the facts is exactly the problem here, everyone gets so wrapped up in their moral outrage and presumed superiority that they aren’t looking at what this guy actually said.

I think a lot of people are forgetting that the guy has 20 years of public comments like this. You can pedantically pick apart this single statement as much as you want, defend him because this statement has been twisted, and argue that it’s therefore a witch hunt, but... this didn’t exactly come out of left field here.

This is a problem entirely of his own making, stretching out over decades.

> I think a lot of people are forgetting that the guy has 20 years of public comments like this.

The honest reaction to being forced to recognize that the absurd accusations being thrown at Stallman are absurd, entirely made up, and without any link to what he actually said is not to try desperately to move the goal post.

Stick to the facts.