Richard M. Stallman resigns

The person Sarah Mei seems to be leading this fight against Stallman even going so far as renouncing the concept of free software and the GPL because of the association with Stallman.

This is entirely wrongheaded, you can agree with the concept of free software and the GPL and disagree with the political views of Stallman. Personally I don't agree with Stallman's political views but he is right on the issues of software freedom and without that I don't think we would be where we are today, having legally protected operating systems, compilers and so forth free for anyone to use, study, or improve upon.

- How someone is treated depends heavily on whether they're perceived as being part of the right clique. For example, a few years ago Nintendo sacked someone who thought it was a great tragedy that owning photos and videos of kids being raped was illegal and bloviated about this on social media. (Probably not for that reason as it turns out, although her job did involve interacting with kids.) She was in the clique and the people who drew attention to this weren't, so all the right-thinking folks and publications rewrote her views into something much less objectionable, then insisted that repeating what she actually said was a bigoted lie and the whole thing was a misogynistic attack against her. I'm pretty sure there's a heavy overlap between those people and the ones going after Stallman by rewriting what he said in the opposite direction now.

- The views you have to hold in order not to be a bigot aren't consistent from year to year. For instance, there's a faction of self-proclaimed feminists who're really hateful to trans people and have successfully lobbied for some rather bigoted laws. A few years ago any trans woman who merely pointed out the harm they'd done was labelled as a terrible misogynist. Sometime around 2016 this flipped and all the same people who'd been demanding everyone shut up decided those views were now so evil that they justified beating up elderly women merely for holding them, and that the people who were uncomfortable with this violence were the bigots. There was zero overlap between the views that were acceptable before and after the flip, and no room for a more moderate position. That faction has become increasingly irrelevant over the years, so fighting them is actually less important than it used to be.

I did. To me, it says "I've known a lot of creepy people; as long as they get their work done, it's ok". And I don't agree with that.

> self-described borderline autistic thinking.

That's another thing: has he actually been diagnosed? If not, well, he may still be autistic, but that just sounds like RMS himself hiding behind a shield of autism that he's crafted himself, which is pretty low.

> Pointing out that somebody is austistic and thinking about how that may affect their actions isn't excuse-making. It is empathy. It is critical thinking.

Maybe, maybe not. It depends on what was written. The parent even said "if RMS was some random superhacker doing his thing" he'd defend him. To me, that's excuse-making, not empathy or critical thinking.

But I do agree that autism can certainly explain some behaviors, and it's worth trying to understand people, even though the explanations may not excuse the behavior. The parent's post just did not strike me as that.

As we know, rms is a very dear person to most of the Computer Science and programmer community.

Through the years, he's said many shocking things. We've often disagreed with him. He's been extremely stubborn.

At some points it's been comical.

Yet we still see him as a technology treasure, and we should keep this in mind before judging him harshly based on a single e-mail.

rms is actually reacting logically here, yet also emotionally as he's wanting to protect his friend - the late Marvin Minsky. Seemingly by letting go of common sense, and sure enough this is just cause for harsh criticism.

But by simply removing a living legend from his position because he's not able to be politically correct, is far worse in my opinion. (I assume he was asked to leave).

This same lack of political correctness also happens to be one of his strengths. It built his character. It's not perfect.

I don't know what more to write at this point. It's ridiculous and turning into a witch hunt against someone we actually owe a great deal of gratitude.