The Epstein stuff was more of a last straw. RMS has had terrible reputation for decades, you just don't hear about it unless you talk to people at MIT. The me too movement has shifted the window in such a way that it's finally coming out in a public way.

The FSF sadly functions as a cult of personality for RMS at this point. I do not believe either of them are doing anything to help the cause of FOSS at this point.

Here's the letter that details the concerns about RMS: https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix

It's significantly more detailed and complex than "allegedly defending Epstein".

Here's the letter supporting RMS: https://rms-support-letter.github.io/

Regardless of how abhorrent you might think RMS' actual views are, that letter really unfairly characterizes a lot of things they're claiming RMS said. I appreciate them throughly citing sources for their claims, so its easy to compare what the letter accuses him of saying and what the literal words he used are. Individual interpretation of the amount of twisting they do is left up to the reader.

That open letter against RMS is so cringe. The people who are attempting to purge him sound like intolerant, wanna-be dictators.

When studying history, I sometimes wonder - how certain things could have happened? Some of these seem ridiculous or unbelievable when you look back.

Now I know how it happens. Some people do something strange, then their number increases, they are very vocal, they're 100% sure what they do is right, they're very emotional about it, and at a certain point it seems like they are the majority. They do certain things like revolutions, usually with a bad result, and you can't do anything, you can just watch it powerlessly and hope it doesn't end badly this time.

According to some, he's been an out-of-touch, controversial, abusive voice for FSF for a while. The MIT/Epstein stuff is what gets talked about, and might have been what brought this to a more general public attention, but it's not specifically what the calls for resignation are about.

He isn't perfect, he said something insensitive in the Epstein causa, now all kinds of ridiculous allegations and warranted criticism gets mixed into a toxic cocktail, which doesn't allow anyone to move forward productively.

If RMS accepts his cancellation, he basically caves to wrongful accusations. If he stays, we can't move forward and get work done because of the drama and all the viable reasons why he shouldn't be a central, public FSF spokesperson anymore.

Plus, everyone really just wants to see the FSF fail anyway, for some reason.

There were no “wrongful accusations”. RMS did all of the stuff people are upset about. It’s not fabricated.

He continues to do intolerant stuff: https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix

I fail to see how any of this is intolerant, or transphobic. You might not like these opinions. Or disagree that there is good reasoning behind some of this. This does not make the one you are disagreeing with intolerant.

> I fail to see how any of this is intolerant, or transphobic.

Yes. RMS argued for gender-neutral pronouns since more than twenty years ago. Just because it is a different set of neutral pronouns than is popular today, some people mark him transphobic. That is absurd.

Indeed, and it's no surprise that this attempted cancellation of RMS is being pushed by the pronoun enthusiast crowd. These tend to be the type of people who simply can't stand any dissenting opinions to their dogma.

Unfortunately, the more tolerant attitude of just agreeing to disagree seems to have gone out of fashion. Now the preferred option is to destroy a person's entire career and slander their reputation with deliberate misinterpretations of what they've said and done.

It’s not slander if it’s true, and you can be disgusted with RMS without bringing politics into it. He’s bad for the free software movement. It’s as simple as that.

If there wasn't a wide spectrum of opinions on this then you'd be objectively correct. As it stands, the zeitgeist is undecided.

It's really funny that these people are incorporating pro-life arguments now. Cultural horseshoe theory.

is this the "we don't tolerate intolerance" logic?

You sound very intolerant of said "intolerance".

I am not certain whether you are making a very erudite joke or trolling, but either way, the "Paradox of Intolerance" might an interesting read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Being "intolerant to intolerance" is a fairly well accepted idea in societies that value personal freedoms.

I'm aware of the paradox, and it's a wonderful idea!

It still looks to me that in this case, it's the people calling RMS intolerant that are the intolerant ones. On the contrary, I think RMS actually tolerates a whole lot. He clearly has different views than others on a variety of topics, yet he doesn't let it affect his technical decisions. He's been attacked viciously in the media, but he's tolerated it and is coming back to the FSF. An intolerant person would disappear. Consider all the people on the board of the FSF with opposite political views than his, that he tolerates on a day-to-day basis. An "intolerant homophobe/transphobe" would not tolerate having homosexuals/transexuals on the board, for instance.

Ah, yes, I am mostly on board with the specifics of what you said in this message, even if I disagree with some of the generalizations. The original one lacked too much context for me to understand it.

Popper would have been disgusted by the treatment of RMS and cancel culture in general.

He'd also have been disgusted by being used in a propagandistic manner.