> However, you don't need to make women uneasy (among other things) to promote free software.
Plenty of people with physical disabilities make people "uneasy" -- who's wrong here? The burn victim or the person taking offence to it? Stallman didn't do anything towards women that warrants the criticism he received. The claims have been debunked and it just comes down to him coming across as a 'creep' -- aka considered unattractive. Yeah, okay.
> I remember being walked around campus by an upperclassman getting advice during my freshman year at MIT. "Look at all the plants in her office," referring to a professor. "All the women CSAIL professors keep massive amounts of foliage" s/he said. "Stallman really hates plants."
If this is true, he must have been doing something to women that goes beyond being unattractive, no?
You really really should avoid making people build such workarounds to avoid you. And the fact that it's women specifically is suspicious.
Now, I'd really like to be proven wrong, that'd be pretty great. It saddens me that RMS was like this.
People are complex and rarely just pure good or bad.
I agree its incredibly dangerous to accept bs just because someone is famous, but i also worry that if we throw out all the sinners we'll have no heroes left.
Its a hard question how to square all that and i don't have the answer.
I think we can recognize heroes as such, without idealizing them and still accept to hear about and recognize their worse sides. I would not want to throw RMS away.
And I think we should also stop considering huge assholes as heroes / models, like Picasso.
However, you don't need to make women uneasy (among other things) to promote free software.
His heroic work on free software shall not shield him from criticism about other aspects of him.
Reacting because accepting bullshit from heroes is widespread but dangerous (not saying you are doing it).