1. rumors

2. a mattress with “obvious implications” which I doubt he found obvious

3. rms: “I’m suicidal, please date me”

Regardless of whether or not this qualifies as “harassment” (semantic arguments being pointless), I don’t think this justifies Removing him in any sense.

I mean, I've had a mattress in an office before, and the implication was I for a time lived in the office. No sex happened there, just poor work-life balance.

A lot of the complaints against RMS seem like ableist assumptions about intent to me.

Some of his behaviours are clearly problematic, but so is piling on someone this way.

Frankly a lot of these attacks tells me more about the lack of empathy shown by the attackers.

RMS isn't even the only person that has had a mattress by the door in their office at MIT. It used to be common enough, among both males and females, that nobody thought anything of it.

I'm not seeing much from women that actually went to MIT and interacted with him there. A lot of the accusations I've seen are second hand stories/rumours from third parties that never went to MIT or interacted with him directly.

There are three direct quotes from women who attended MIT in the linked article.

It's not clear that the first two even had direct contact with RMS and they don't even make any serious allegations. Barely anyone cares that RMS had a mattress in his office, lots of people at MIT have done that, and nobody is even making the allegation that anything inappropriate happened beyond him having it and him sleeping on it alone. The third is socially awkward and bad behaviour but it happened almost 40 years ago.

Even if I accept that these quotes are an accurate portrayal of events that happened, I'd expect you to have more damning evidence to support canceling someone that has been extremely important in this industry for over 50 years.

He's not cancelled, he's free to go work any other job he wants. I just hope he doesn't work for the FSF any longer because the FSF is important and he's doing damage to it.

> He's not cancelled,

Meanwhile over at the open letter:

> We urge those in a position to do so to stop supporting the Free Software Foundation. Refuse to contribute to projects related to the FSF and RMS. Do not speak at or attend FSF events, or events that welcome RMS and his brand of intolerance.

Emphasis mine.

The whole text constitutes a textbook character assassination attempt. Consider the amount of support and credibility you want to give to these people, including the Twitter mob that has apparently gone crazy after these announcements.

Those read as, "he made me uncomfortable". That's not sexual harassment.