1. As far as I can tell, he was never on the board of VA Linux.
2. RMS was never married. https://www.quora.com/Is-Richard-Stallman-married
3. It is a widely known that if anyone ever associates RMS with "open source", he will interject to say that he vehemently disagrees with open source and had nothing to do with its creation. The fireball guy who posted this story, clearly knows very little of RMS to post this without mentioning the fact that this part absolutely is false.
4. He dislikes the word "open" in general, and would never ever use it to describe anything he was involved in. Again, key fact that is clearly false.
5. RMS does not usually have bad hygiene.
6. One of the people who coined "open source" was involved with VA Linux, his name was Eric S Raymond. Perhaps this this is about him.
He does, actually. But yes, the story is most likely about ESR, and he's been quite open about his polyamorous relationships.
Given this, I'd expect (A) this is close to the worst concrete evidence that one can find on Stallman's misbehaviours, everywhere; and (B ) it's not exactly unbiased. Sure it sounds bad, but I would like details. Because at the same time, there's also this tale that sounds a lot more objective, verifiable & facts-based https://archive.is/7qepC. E.g :
> One remarkable thing about the FSF at that time, when we worked out of dinky spare offices on the campus of MIT, was the degree of participation by women. In the tiny society that was then the FSF, women were more prominent than I had seen in Silicon Valley, or acadamia prior. The general culture of inclusiveness and tolerance that RMS fostered meant that, at least when I was there alongside Bushnell, that social circle in and around the organization was feminized and all the stronger for it.
It somewhat makes me think that, coming from the greatest Apple fanboy ever, Gruber forgot that on many accounts Steve Jobs too had a personal hygiene problem.
If we don’t have a specific account and details are unknown, then I don’t think this is a fair characterization.
Ive had others think Stallman is creepy too. They actively avoided him, but he never did anything to them.
Sexual advances in and of themselves are not illegal - but again we don’t have a true source for this information. Assuming this is all 100% factually accurate and the sentiment is properly related: it sounds Inappropriate, but if he wasn’t fired, it sounds like it wasn’t far enough outside the acceptable conduct to warrant anything.
That's not how things work. Workplace "justice" is quite dependent on things like internal politics and personal affiliations. You can't rely tell how bad something was by the disciplinary response.
Eric S. Raymond ("ESR") was an author of the Open Source Definition and a member of the VA Linux board:
https://www.linux.com/news/eric-raymond-responds-changes-va-...
I find no current links indicating Stallman was ever on the VA Linux, or any other corporate board. Neither his personal bio nor Wikipedia bio mention any.
> followed up with a post relaying numerous first-hand reports from women subjected to Stallman’s harassment. One example:
The example it then lists (about Stallman at a buffet lunch) is the only "first-hand" report of harassment contained in the follow-up post. This is actually pivotal to the whole daringfireball post as he is purporting to have an ironclad case of harassment but there's only a single first-person account and an email he received about something happening to somebody else at VA Linux (I can't find any reference for Stallman ever being on the board of directors at VA Linux, although they changed their name a number of times which doesn't make things any easier).
I haven't read the description of anything that resembles sexual abuse by RMS.
(edited to remove an unintended reference to sexual assault)
The excerpt is from an e-mail that John Gruber received in 2011. It is the written testimony of someone who witnessed the events in question first hand.
Perhaps you need to read about more episodes:
> I worked 10 years ago at VA Linux which had Richard Stallman on its board of directors. You might have heard that Stallman applied his open source ideas to his publicly open marriage as well. The problem was that he was more than open. He made overt sexual advances to women at work. One young woman who worked next to me was so upset from his multiple advances that she took it to senior management. She was able to deal with the problem without taking the issue outside the company. I don’t know the details, but she was given advanced warning anytime Stallman was headed over so that she could leave. He was a creep and women at the company knew to stay away.
* https://daringfireball.net/2019/09/richard_stallmans_disgrac...