linuxmemes

He probably talked about age of consent in most of European countries. As mentioned by CrypticCoffee above even in UK it is 16.

beat me to it… yeah, he said that weird shit about ‘consenting’ underage children not being traumatized or some shit… or there was no evidence they were… later apologized and said he was shown evidence but, nah… plus the whole Epstein friendship thing…(maybe he was just naively getting fsf donations? ) dude did some fantastic things for computers and humanity overall with gnu… but he’s definitely not cool

That's not exactly what happened.

1. In 2019 he was misquoted by a blogger and then by the press:

Famed Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As 'Entirely Willing'

Source: https://www.vice.com/en/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-described-epstein-victims-as-entirely-willing

What he really said was:

The injustice is in the word "assaulting". The term "sexual assault" is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation: taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y, which is much worse than X.

The accusation quoted is a clear example of inflation. The reference reports the claim that Minsky had sex with one of Epstein's harem. (See https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jeffrey-epstein-sex-trafficking-island-court-records-unsealed.) Let's presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it).

The word "assaulting" presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex.

We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.

I've concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term "sexual assault" in an accusation.

Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism.

Source: https://stallmansupport.org/explaining-events-that-led-to-stallman-resignation-csail-emails.html

There is no "Epstein friendship" that I know of. He called him a "serial rapist" before that (source).

This is what he was criticized for at the time + unconfirmed rumors (some of them debunked now) of allegedly creepy behavior around women. You can read more on https://stallmansupport.org.

2. Some people dug up his old blog posts.

later apologized and said he was shown evidence but, nah…

Between 2003 and 2013 a few times he expressed his views on pedophilia. It was literally a few times, but yes this is something he actually said and used to believe. He hadn't mentioned that topic again until it was brought up in 2019. That's when he said that he had changed his mind since then and that he was wrong. You can read about it on Wikipedia (can't find the link to the original quote at the moment): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Controversies

As far as I know that was the last time he mentioned this topic.

So now that we got the facts right, the question is if he should be punished for having a wrong/stupid opinion on something 10 years ago. I think no, but apparently some people disagree.

He was not friends with Epstein and never met him. He called him a serial rapist.

I thought you didn't believe in bad people? Or was that just a convenient point that can change at the drop of a hat to help your arguments seem more legitimate?

And it's kind of funny that some inappropriately pedantic activist is constantly under fire even after saying Epstein isn't described harshly enough (pedantic again, but useful this time?), but much fewer people seem to care about the tech billionaires with real connections to him. If we should be demanding anyone be disgraced, it should be them.

EDIT: They've expressed no more interest in replying and they don't seem to be being disingenuous, so I'll not leave another reply, but note how that entire post was devoted to the usage of the words "good" and "bad" and addresses nothing about Stallman's actions.

Tl;dr his point was that coercion is coercion regardless of age, and of course sensationalist media spun that. Of course, the younger you get the more easily you are coerced, which is why there's a point where you can reasonably say a person could not have consented. But Stallman was not arguing against that. He was arguing that a year's difference doesn't change the morality of the situation.

And his take is that the situation was immoral ("she presented herself as entirely willing", and noting that she was coerced by Epstein to do that and that it was wrong). Of course people always overlook that part and cut his words short to make it seem like he's defending it.

EDIT 2: I just noticed that they have also said that after being accepted onto the FSF board after a change in opinions (not even back to his original role!), that means that the FSF endorses the opinions he no longer holds? Make it make sense.

At least that’s my thoughts. I’ve written a lot more about all this here.

Spamming your Babylonian whore warez!!

The Software Freedom Conservancy, FSF Europe, and Bradley Kuhn are the good guys.

To me those are the bad guys. Any organization that wants to cancel someone based on unconfirmed or made up rumors is corrupt to me.

Software Freedom Conservancy has literally spread false information about Richard Stallman: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/sep/16/rms-does-not-speak-for-us. In that post they link to a medium blog post with unconfirmed rumors about him (some of them were later debunked - https://stallmansupport.org). That medium blog post is a second part. In the first one, the author has misquoted Stallman, which was later repeated by media. But this time she gives us stories, which are supposed to show Richard's alleged abusive behavior. Here is my favorite one:

I recall being told early in my freshman year “If RMS hits on you, just say ‘I’m a vi user’ even if it’s not true.”

Seriously? Who would believe this? The Software Freedom Conservancy apparently. This just sounds like the blogger got trolled by someone and that post is full of ridiculous stories like that. But I guess SFC will believe anything, even from an anonymous source if it's something that could hurt Richard Stallman.

More organizations participated in this hate campaign, including Mozilla and Tor Project (https://thetownreporter.com/mozilla-and-tor-join-calls-to-richard-stallman-software-foundation). I will never donate to them and I even considered quitting making Libre Software at the time. I couldn't believe that our community has so many people who will spread lies about someone just to destroy their reputation.