Or, it was annoying but tolerable, until an opportunity presented itself to score virtue points while having past problematic behavior to use for plausible deniability.

It really wasn't tolerable though. As much as I deeply respect Dr Stallman's work, he has a long history of reputationally troubling statements:

https://stallman.org/cgi-bin/showpage.cgi?path=/archives/200...

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20Jun...

I meant this technically: it was tolerable because it was tolerated. They could've disassociated from him after any of his troubling statements. They didn't.

It is, perhaps, plausible that he's a popular enough individual that they were worried about a mob reaction, if you will, if they cut ties with him because he did anything short of try to defend rape.

But to be clear, that's still a bed of his own making.

Politics. He disregards politics and politicians and they eventually had enough weaponry to remove the threat his disregarding their political aims was to them. Nothing more.

It's always interesting to me when people try to downplay politics as somehow "less than" the technological and theoretical aspects of software engineering. I wonder what those people imagine software is for.