> Literally none of the factual claims of “RMS said X” have been false, it’s pretty much all been on the record.

On the contrary, literally every single claim about what RMS said or did was fabricated, or pulled out of context so badly you could still see the severed threads trailing behind. The original posts and subsequent press articles were one big patchwork of lies and manipulative statements; this was all trivial to verify and apparent to anyone except those who, for some reason, really wanted to believe it's true.

Literally every single claim. That includes https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26708993 then, so go on, tell all about how that was fabricated or pulled out of context.

And even if it wasn't fabricated, it's still character assassination.

Look, if you take any public figure, and spend enough time looking through all the things they ever written or said in their lives, you can probably find some terrible thing to paint them as a terrible person. Someone could be a role model, have a lifetime of charitable work and positive achievements, bbbbbbut years ago they once said they didn't like gay people (or whatever), all of a sudden none of their achievements matter and they're actually monsters!

Any of us with a long posting history on the Internet probably at one time said something that wasn't nice. Cherry picking that one thing and holding it up as the summation of who we are, is character assassination.

From what I remember they plainly called him anti trans or transphobic because he suggested something different than they/them during a default pronouns discussion way back when this was all rather new. A curious statement given his track record.

I also remember him being called a creep because he used to sleep in his office.

And at no point was any kind of change of opinion and/or public apology even hinted at.

It didn't feel like an honest attempt at all.

If you want to help your argument, especially since you're looking for an honest attempt at something, it's best to go by facts rather than memories. Another step that could strengthen your argument would be to define who is calling RMS anti-trans.

This is especially important, as time moves forward and people who never even met RMS read about this, to make sure we are relying on contemporary reports and not just fading memories.

I was referring to the original open letter and it's writers. https://rms-open-letter.github.io/

He was advocating for "perse" (as in "person"), which is genius because there's no they/them for "Hello, sir/ma'am". If someone's gender is ambiguous, you're fucked. But you could say, "Hello, perse".

Vice put out one of the most blatantly false and disgusting smear jobs in recent history [0].

You're defending the indefensible - why?

0 - https://stallmansupport.org/debunking-false-accusations-agai... (with links to primary sources throughout).

Wasn't the primary premise of the cancellation attempt him defending pedophilia? Everything else was anecdotes and general "he is a weirdo" type accusations, which are probably true, but I don't remember much in the way of "factual claims".

> Wasn't the primary premise of the cancellation attempt him defending pedophilia?

That’s certainly the one I remember, and everything else was just people piling on to try and provide more ammo or more legitimacy to that claim because “look he’s a creep in other ways too!”.

But the claim that he defended pedophilia is itself false. The lady making the claim quoted him as saying one thing and then immediately criticised the quote as if it said another thing. I don’t remember the details now, but I remember reading the original open letter at the time and being baffled by how that was considered as evidence against RMS.

Im not saying he’s not a weirdo or creep, I don’t know if he is or not, just that the accusations against him about his comments on minsky’s visit of epstein’s island were strawnan accusations.