Re:The Right to Read (1997)
by murgindrag on Saturday October 24, 2020 @09:30AM
(#24879106)
No, this is false. The reality of the people and the personalities was that there was a smear campaign of RMS by his enemies going back to at least ESR and early versions of CaTB. The open source movement started out as "free software without Richard," with some pretty nasty people wanting to be the new leadership.
Perhaps it was inevitable that RMS would be taken down by neutral third parties, but now we'll never have any way to know. The reality is he WAS taken down by people who had been smearing him with exaggerations and half-truths for at least the last quarter-century, and this was part of that dynamic.
I don't feel bad if people are taken down fairly. I only feel a little bad if people are taken down by, in your words, "a witch-hunt by prudish SJWs." I feel very bad when people are taken down by enemies spreading half-truths.
If he'd put as much effort into distancing himself from his past beliefs as he did advocating for them, he likely wouldn't have found himself in the position where no one was willing to grant him the benefit of the doubt when he footgunned himself and MIT with an awkward, tediously pedantic argument on the nature of consent. What happened to him wasn't a smear campaign by enemies of free software, or a witch-hunt by prudish SJWs who hate neuro-atypicals, it was inevitable.