I’ve read the mailing list comments. The problem is that he is trying to excuse something potentially horrible without sufficient data. A far better statement IMO would be to say that I hope Minsky didn’t know of the coercion or age. Because he doesn’t know what Minsky did or didn’t know.

If you’re around criminals enough, most of them try to simultaneously deny involvement while at the same time trying to excuse the crime. I’m not saying Stallman has this criminal mentality. I don’t know. But the types of statements are similar to those we all run into. And I think this also causes people to raise red flags.