> I recall being told early in my freshman year “If RMS hits on you, just say ‘I’m a vi user’ even if it’s not true.”
That sounds like a joke. I mean, it is a joke. That isn't a serious comment/strategy on harassment. No creep has ever been forestalled by someone claiming to be a vi user.
1 stupid opinion and 3 negative comments, one of which looks like a joke, from 1980 to 2019 isn't evidence of a problem with Stallman.
How is a host meant to figure any of the details in that rider out ahead of a Stallman visit without him telling them? It could easily be a log of all the things that have gone wrong for him in the past.
People like to go to the parrot quote. It wouldn't at all surprise me if a Stallman fan who was putting him up the the night tried to buy a parrot if they thought it would make him happy. The man's selfless dedication to the public good has earned him a couple of true believers over the years.
It is also comprehensive and doesn't mention anything about Vi.
"He's a pretty eccentric bloke" is not enough to justify using something that looks like a joke as evidence of problems stretching back to 1980. That quote is 33% of the shocking evidence mentioned in this link section 2.
The vi vs emacs 'holy war' is also a long running joke that Stallman gets involved in sometimes. He doesn't actually object to vi.
> Someone else downthread also linked about how a woman he worked with on a Linux project had to be warned of his arrival ahead of time so she could leave because of his aggressive advances toward her.
Just an FYI the person who said that already had beef with RMS. I’d recommend reading fully into the situation - perhaps you still believe it, but at least you’ll know.
Or perhaps a counter-balance to the "Stallman run amok/let's crucify him" variety? How about that?
Is the "tip of the iceberg" meant to be sarcastic? One of the headings is even "1. Richard Stallman has problematic opinions". Opinions are enough to have someone persecuted? What happened to free discourse then?
Are only "non problematic" opinions allowed? And who would be the arbiter of this? At some point a gay man being married was also a "problematic opinion". Or a mixed race couple. And not in Nazi Germany, in e.g. 70s USA. Let that sink in, before condemning "problematic" opinions.
"MIT, by endorsing Stallman, also gives legitimacy to these ideas."
MIT endorses Stallman as an academic or whatever he employs him for. Not as a wholesale controller and endorser of Stallman's ideas and personality.
"I recall being told early in my freshman year “If RMS hits on you, just say ‘I’m a vi user’ even if it’s not true.”"
That's a horrifying story? At best it's a joke about someone who hits on freshman students frequently.
"He literally used to have a mattress on the floor of his office. He kept the door to his office open, to proudly showcase that mattress and all the implications that went with it."
Oh, the humanity.
"the mattress was also known to have shirtless people lounging on it…"
Spoken like a person who has never experienced the 60s and 70s campuses...
"I don’t know if he and I were the last two left, but at a table with only the two of us, Richard Stallman told me of his misery and that he’d kill himself if I didn’t go out with him."
OK, that's creepy. Could also be a desperate attempt at connection by a depressive. It was also a conversation between two adults, and one could tell him to fuck (which from what I gather, is what happened, if more eloquently, and without further issue).
"But MIT is a privileged place. We have the right to choose who we admit, hire, or endorse."
I thought the whole idea these days was against privilege.
And where were all these good souls when their privileged MIT helped threaten Aaron Swartz with jail, and helped led him to commit suicide?
https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-appendi...
Someone else downthread also linked about how a woman he worked with on a Linux project had to be warned of his arrival ahead of time so she could leave because of his aggressive advances toward her.