> I see a bunch of people beating up on and attacking an awkward "nerd". It reminds me of high school.

That perfectly captures my own impression of this whole debacle.

People keep piling on RMS because he's "weird" rather than anything objectively bad that he's done - notice how often his travel binder is being raised even though it's really completely harmless. That's literally witch-hunt behaviour: persecuting somebody because he's different.

And of the things he was attacked for that would be objectively bad, so much of it turns out to be either a misunderstanding, misinterpretation, or outright fabrication (like apparently the "hot ladies" sign).

I can believe that there is a true kernel of bad behaviour from RMS, but it's blown way out of proportion by all the other stuff around it, and that gives this whole affair the stench of persecuting somebody merely for being different. It's very frustrating.

Hey now, I was the proverbial awkward nerd in highschool, but you know what I've never done? I've never implied that child pornography is okay.. or bestiality.. so I see this differently.

I've heard nasty things come out of that man and I have no interest in listening to him.

This comment also reminded me of highschool - "Yeah, I'm a nerd who gets bullied but hey, at least I'm not like this other nerd who gets bullied. Actually, I agree with the people who bully him that at least he deserves it."

You're just as entitled to your opinion as I am to mine. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything.

But on Twitter all you see is this;

https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/1172283772428906496?s=21

Sarah Mei alternates between aggressive, mocking, and combative. She has no sense of humor. Her worldview is unbelievably bleak and threatening. And she views herself as special -- someone "woke". It's terrible to behold.

The truth is that people make mistakes. People are entitled to their own opinions, however much you may disagree with them. The world exists outside one's self, and any one person just a small, small part of it. The world is not to blame if I feel hurt or threatened, and life is not fair. But within this world we have complete freedom. Do not try to take that away.

Sarah Mei is just defending her own freedom to want to exist in a professional capacity without harrassment.

Who's taking freedom away? RMS is still a free man. He's just lost his privileged positions.

Yikes, what an awful group of self-righteous people. Bullying and slander is perfectly fine when the virtuous do it I see.

Funny how much you can tell about these people from their twitter profile. These people are so privilidged that they have so much time to spend on the most trivial of subjects.

Previously from Sarah Mei:

https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/1073234104311734273

That thread definitely has a lot of interesting information. Some things seem kind of off though... but in general it seems mostly fair.

There is nothing fair about it.

On the contrary. She's being quite fair.

Keep in mind that the premise of the thread (the picture of the name tag on the door) is actually a setup. Someone graffitis on Stallman’s door, and that mob justice character assassination spews forth from it.

If you think that this situation has much to do with that door tag, you really are reaching.

Not in the least.

Assuming that's correct, and that the "hot ladies" thing happened as she describes, how do you excuse away all the other inappropriate and harassing behavior he's displayed over the years?

Such as?

Most of "examples" that were in circulation for past days were usually misunderstood jokes that others made at his expense. Seriously - how can one treat somebody mentioning "if he ever hits on you, just tell him you use vim" as an example of what's wrong with rms seriously? Stories about plants being kept by female professors just to scare him away? Please. You need to be completely missing the context to interpret it even remotely close to how it's being used now.

If you haven't seen the actual quotes from him by now, theres no chance you will pay attention to them going forward.

The point is - I've seen plenty thrown around, most very clearly manipulated. What's more - some small amount of them made me doubt in Stallman a bit, like the "knight for ladies" thing, but after a while it turned out it was manipulated as well, so... it feels like standing on rms side here might be a pretty safe bet after all.

If you're too lazy to do the research yourself, I've even found a page that collects it and does proper justice to objectively present them in full context: https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/ (although this text could do just as well with a few less "paid to write, not to read" repetitions...)

Either you've been not paying attention (in which case, why are you so self-righteously claiming there's nothing else that happened), or you have been paying attention, and you're deliberately ignoring or are mischaracterizing all the actual, real accounts of bad behavior that have been reported over the past week or two.

Either way, I'm not really in a mood to educate you.

"inappropriate and harassing behavior"

What exactly are you claiming he did to harass people?

What exactly did he do that was inappropriate?

Stallman did nothing to harass people. It's all hearsay. Some of the supposed harassment stories contain verifiably false details, for example, that Stallman was in an open marriage. Stallman was in fact never married. There is a very good reason that we do not admit this level of evidence in courts of law.

You know all the people on Twitter claiming that "numerous" women have confided in them that Stallman kept them out of tech? It's all fake. These claims are identical in structure and purpose to Joseph McCarthy's famous "I have here in my hand a list" line. What the mob is doing now to Stallman is exactly the same thing that the mob did to everyone suspected of communism in the 1950s.

Why isn't the harassing behavior being brought up through the right channels? Is internet rage the right way to do this?

Who says it hasn't been? In general, universities and non-profits and companies don't disclose private reports of abuse or harassment. Who says MIT, the FSF, and GNU Project haven't all been getting private reports in addition to the people tweeting and blogging about their misadventures with RMS?

And regardless, this behavior has apparently been going on for decades without anyone taking action. Can you blame people for thinking that "the right channels" aren't working?

Exactly what channels? The police? A lot of what RMS has done isn't illegal and generally there's a very high legal bar for harassment.

So people eventually share their stories through social media and even that doesn't work sometimes (see: Riot). His behavior doesn't have to cross into illegality to be reprehensible.

For a start just leaving a paper trail of formal complaints at MIT would help ascertain this has been happenning for a long time. I just find it shocking that there is no formal complaint. Instead, what we have is just random people claiming that other people got harassed. None of this is verifiable and honestly if internet has thought us anything it is that everybody lies in social media just to get a few likes.

You realize that that very well could be the case and reason why Stallman stepped down, correct?

MIT could likely get into deep trouble if they chose to publish all of the formal complaints against Stallman for obvious privacy reasons and this incident could've just been the proverbial final straw.

And regardless: Apply Occam's Razor here. What is more likely: A group of random people consisting of professors and students bringing grievances against Stallman, or some sort of conspiracy where all of those people are lying, embellishing etc for some form of revenge? If multiple disconnected people are calling someone an asshole, maybe there's an issue here. It's amazing to what lengths people will attempt to create a narrative defending RMS.

> A group of random people consisting of professors and students

A group of random people with a certain radical ideology, most of which work at google[0][1][2], the military[3], or have personal issues with him due to their history[4][5], etc. I certainly do not believe that it is a conspiracy - ie they are being honest on the fact that they do not like him (not necessarily on why they do not like him though) and that they are not being paid by someone to do it, but they are far from random people.

Also, I personally saw no professors being involved, although I might be mistaken.

[0] https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa...

[1] https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1172422966904160257

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20995556

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21090851

[4] see 0 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bushnell#GNU_Hurd

[5] https://twitter.com/migueldeicaza/status/1173981287037751297 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza#Advocacy_of_Mi...

Seriously, for a public figure you accept evidence this weak? No, Occam's Razor wouldn't let you make this conclusion at all.

I'm not even sure I have a problem with the hot ladies comment irregardless of whether he wrote it or not.

I agree with you, but it is being used as one strike against him. Given that there is evidence that he didn't even do it himself, it further proves how desperate the people who dislike him are to drag him through the mud.

You shouldn't. There's nothing wrong with it. Having an interest in the opposite sex is the most normal thing in the world and there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to state it.