> Seeing as an awful lot of people on this very thread were outraged by [Eich's] behaviour

I can't speak for everyone, but while I strongly disagree with his (implicit) views on gay marriage (I even protested against Prop 8 leading up to it passing, though I unfortunately wasn't quite old enough to vote against it at the time), I also was - and still am - pretty harshly critical of him being pressured to resign from the organization he co-founded solely because of his political leanings. He was the right leader for Mozilla, despite his politics; while it's possible that maybe he was some raging egotist bringing down Mozilla and running counter to its mission, I've yet to see a whole lot of evidence for that.

Meanwhile, Stallman is well-documented to be abrasive, uncooperative, and egotistical even to the people who supported him, and while this specific incident was rather benign, I can understand it as a "straw that broke the camel's back" situation. His dogmatic views - while sometimes absolutely spot-on - were also often at the detriment of the free software movement (e.g. the hard stance against OpenBSD's "blobs", and the hard-line stances against non-FOSS programs on FOSS operating systems despite multiple GNU subprojects releasing supported builds for Windows).

Stallman, in other words, was to the FSF as Ballmer was to Microsoft in the sense of being both passionate about their organizations and also being the reasons why their organizations were hemorrhaging influence. Ballmer's departure allowed Microsoft to regain its footing, shake off some of its more toxic dogmas, and become actually decent(-ish; shoving ads down the throats of paying Windows users is pretty scummy, but other parts of Microsoft have actually started to be better members of the broader tech ecosystem). Hopefully Stallman's departure will have a similar effect for the FSF.

Source or STFU? When did he say "paedophilia is harmless"? You can't even have a conversation about paedophilia in reference to a 17 year old without seriously going off topic.

"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren’t voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing."

https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20...

That's a sickening viewpoint. It's from ten years ago, so I hope his views have changed since then. I'll still defend his right to say that, as long as it's outside the venue of his work. And if a preponderance of evidence were to support him, I'd have to accept that view, as much as I disagree with it. I strongly think he's wrong though and the evidence is against him.

I bet some people at MIT felt that view was sickening as well, and don't want their institution to be associated with that view. And actively want to show their community that they oppose it. I wonder how they could do that effectively...? Oh wait, fire the guy who said it! Brilliant.

Yeah, if he has a history of saying things like that, it's a much more understandable reaction.

However, as a university it still seems like dangerous territory. I think communists are just as sickening, in light of the horrors of the twentieth century. Should I fire them if I'm making those decisions at MIT. Like if a professor said the gulags are a worthwhile evil on the road to socialist utopia? Is it really necessary to end a person's career when you disagree with them on matters unrelated to their work?

This comes down to your allowance and interpretation on self-determination. There are consequences for every action - sometimes positive, sometimes negative. MIT made a calculation and rolled the dice. Most people are pleased, but it just as easily could have gone the other way. Every organization and individual has this right - you're essentially asking if its okay to make this choice if the outcome is negative - yes it is. Thats up to the individual to decide. Stallman made his choice and so did MIT

They did: https://stallman.org/notes/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September_20...

It looks like it was just an ignorant thought from a decade ago that had long since been corrected. Not a strongly-held viewpoint.

It did: https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...

It looks like it was just an ignorant thought from a decade ago that had long since been corrected. Not a strongly-held viewpoint.

> as long as it's outside the venue of his work

But it wasn't outside of his work. It was on an email list whose recipients included 17- and 18-year old undergraduates.

Here is my conspiracy theory. It is completely hypothetical and unsourced and I really hope it is untrue, but any scenario should be considered.

Brendan Eich is a shill controlled by Google and US goverment agencies. The social media mob attack on him was actually a planned marketing campaign with aim to create an image of an independent, anti-establishment and alternative leader.

His actual goal is to create a "controlled opposition" for Google Chrome and a replacement for Tor Browser. Brave project is needed by Google in order to avoid antitrust charges from the EU when Chrome reaches ~90% market share. It will be still selling user data to Google and it will contain TOR backdoors known only to the US agencies (which will be easier to hide in proprietary browser).

Oh please. We use torproxy unmodified from upstream so the risk is fingerprinting — which is why we warn people looking for Tor-level network privacy on fear of life and limb to use Tor directly. Tor private windows in Brave are for users who should not have to find a trustworthy VPN to cope with untrusted wifi hotspots and the like.

The “selling user data” line betrays ignorance of how data is valued. Google doesn’t sell bulk data to advertisers, it gives API access to ad exchange operations that leak data but not the whole user profile, especially not the valuable correlations, brand loyalties, and shopping searches that run for weeks in case of cars or other major purchases.

Brave builds client only alternatives for anonymous donations and private ads that pay the user 70% of gross. We are making this verifiable on chain in the next stage of our BAT roadmap. If we defected and stole money or data, we would thus be caught and roasted into the ground by our lead users. This is by design.

Last thing: I am hardly an anti establishment leader. I am too busy running a startup, trying to get revenue to cross over based on flat and small/standard fees that leave the big fee to the user.

If you want to find controlled opposition, ask to see the terms of Google’s search deals with other browsers, especially the ones that have been slow and weak on tracking protection that is on by default. A Microsoft contact last year said he suspected those terms include proscription of tracking protection that is on by default, or at least that impairs Google search ads confirmation.

I didn't mean what Brave does now, I meant what it could do after the competition is marginalized or eliminated.

I'm sorry if this sounded like a disrespectful accusation. It was just my attempt to rationalize and make sense of the apparently irrational things that happened around your person. When identity politics and large capital are involved, I'm always suspecting machiavellian and cynical motives.

I wish you prove me wrong and Brave will become a real competitor for Chrome with strong focus on user privacy and security.

We are so far from cornering the market or even taking Chrome’s share that this seems like misdirection. Anyway, of course a monopoly or big enough company can go wrong, but Brave is built on ideas from https://brendaneich.com/2014/01/trust-but-verify/ and if future Brave ever went bad, I’d join many others in taking it down. It helps greatly, beyond the properties discussed in that blog post, that we don’t track, silo, or process any user data in the clear. Privacy by default must use client processing more, along with advanced cryptography, to blind and weaken the natural path dependent advantages of servers.