He's a terrible communicator, and sort of repellent in person. Contrast someone like Cory Doctorow who manages to be right about stuff and actually communicate effectively.

I don't really share that point. If the message is correct, why would the other things matter? Due to "social norms"? It is a similar problem with Code of Conducts. In general I don't care about CoCs. That does not mean I act in the opposite manner either - I just don't feel the need for CoCs.

> why would the other things matter

Because on the other end of the argument is an audience of human beings, not a theorem solver. Pretending that delivery does NOT matter, or even shouldn't matter, is out of touch with reality.

because brilliant jerk is not acceptable

Publicly defending pedophilia arguably isn't “right”, but if you restrict Stallman's positions to software licensing, then I'd agree with you.

I keep hearing this.

Please quote Stallman's quote where he defends pedophilia.

Not a quote of someone else saying that Stallman defends pedofilhia, but a quote by Stallman himself.

He was wrong about refusing to make gcc more modular by fear that it would be used to insert proprietary plugins, which is why llvm is behind every new language or dev tool now and gcc is only relevant because the kernel still depends on it (for now).

His opinions on software have been largely out of touch for the past 20 years. People might yearn for his ideals, but it's just not the world we live in.

> His opinions on software have been largely out of touch for the past 20 years

I said “software licensing”, you're talking about “software”.

The only instance in which he's ever engaged in "publicly defending pedophilia" was in remarks he made 20 years ago about the innocuity of "voluntary" sex with minors. He has since retracted those statements and publicly espoused a different and more informed opinion. There's certainly a large amount of very low-quality journalism engaging in bad-faith interpretations of things he's said in other contexts, though these aren't serious characterizations, only hallucinations manufactured by professional scheisters to fulfill unspoken agendas. At this point dredging it up and holding it against him in-perpetuity is a bit wrongheaded.

Of course restrict it to his opinions on software licensing. I think that is the sort of thing people mean when they say he was right.

Lots of people made similar claims. Most notably The National Council for Civil Liberties (now called Liberty), the UK's leading civil/human rights organisation made submissions to parliament claiming that sex with minors was not always harmful, had a pro-paedo organisation as an affiliate and give them a representative on the gay rights subcommittee: https://www.thetimes.com/travel/destinations/uk-travel/scotl... The people involved were unaffected, some reaching fairly high political permissions.

A lot of other people whose works are respected have actually had sex with minors. Eric Gill and Oscar Wilde for example.

None of that makes Stallman's opinions defensible in my opinion. On the other hand I am happy to ignore his opinions on that topic and still value his opinions on other things.

The entire point is of my post is that it's no longer his opinion.

> Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that.

https://stallman.org/archives/2019-sep-dec.html#14_September...

Both your point and my point are true.

Obviously I am glad he has abandoned his opinions.

I do think it is terrible that the politicians, activists, teachers etc. who held such opinions in the past did not suffer severe career consequences even if they subsequently changed their opinions. I think they cannot be trusted in those areas. However, Stallman is not in such an area.

Tell that to my spouse who, at age 14, was given his contact card by him directly.

I'm not following - are you implying that handing a contact card to someone is a sexual pass? Or is it only considered sexual when the recipient is underage?

I wish at 14 I had people of such integrity around me.

Wow, I'd be thrilled if I met stallman and got his contact card at age 14!