I'd like to clarify some things, and provide some references. Since I
sent my original post in this thread, several people have accused me of
slandering or defaming RMS, lying about what he has said, making false
accusations against him, repeating false media reports, and the like.
Well, I am not a liar.
I'm aware that some news reporting and social media posts have
inaccurately characterized RMS's remarks about Virginia Guiffre as a
defense of Epstein. I'm aware that is not what he actually said in that
particular instance, and I have not repeated those false
characterizations, or based any of my thinking on that inaccurate reporting.
Here are some actual things that RMS has said about sexual exploitation
of minors, with references to the sources of the quotes.
"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children."
https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%202006%20%28Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party%29
"There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that
willing participation in pedophilia hurts children."
https://stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#04_January_2013_%28Pedophilia%29
"Cody Wilson has been charged with hiring a "child" sex worker. Her age
has not been announced, but I think she must surely be a teenager, not a
child. Calling teenagers "children" in this context is a way of smearing
people with normal sexual proclivities as "perverts". [...] She may
have had — I expect, did have — entirely willing sex with him, and they
would still call it "assault". "
https://web.archive.org/web/20181005115646/https://www.stallman.org/archives/2018-jul-oct.html#23_September_2018_(Cody_Wilson)
"Possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia ....
should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only
because of prejudice and narrowmindedness."
https://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html
There are many more of them, but you get the picture. These are the
kind of statements I referred to as "disgusting" in my previous message.
And yes, these quotes came from his personal web site and not the FSF
or GNU project, but it's an organizational problem when RMS's public
comments in any forum result in news coverage like this
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-described-epstein-victims-as-entirely-willing
and this
https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-defends-epstein-victims-were-entirely-willing
and this
https://www.zdnet.com/article/richard-m-stallman-resigns-from-free-software-foundation/
and this
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/richard-stallman-leaves-mit-after-controversial-remarks-on-rape/
that all highlight his organizational ties and role in the free software
movement. MIT got the brunt of it because of their other problematic
involvement in the Epstein scandal, but note that the reporter of the
first article linked above is specifically asking for help in
investigating "abuse in the open source community" (with the underlying
assumption that this actually exists and is a serious problem) so we've
all been tarred with the same brush. Beyond the news articles, there've
been a *ton* of blog and social media posts trashing both Stallman and
the free software community for looking the other way for far too long.
Some of those comments have been wildly inaccurate and off-base, but
there is a public perception that the problem is all of us, not just
RMS. :-(
I'm confident that RMS's statements on child pornography, pedophilia,
etc do not reflect a consensus view of the GNU developer community. So
why can't we stand up and say that "this is not us"? It makes no sense
for us to die on this particular hill trying to defend those views or to
defend having him as the public face of our organization. And trying to
excuse him by claiming he didn't really say those things is not going to
work, either, because the evidence is there.
I can talk about my own personal experiences working at the FSF in the
early days of the GNU project in a separate post if people are
interested (it's mostly tangential to the current discussion about
leadership), but for now let me just say that I enjoyed my time there
and have always been grateful to RMS for finding me something useful and
fun to do when I was between "real" jobs. I don't have a grudge against
him, and I'm not trying to smear him with fictional stories of things he
didn't really say or do. It's the things he really *did* say that are
problematic.
-Sandra