Low grade journalism is making another victim. Philosopher and activist Richard Matthew Stallman is having his ideas distorted and his writings taken out of context just so a journalist can get re-tweets from people that didn't even read their article.

If after reading this, you agree that Stallman suffered an injustice, please consider signing this petition, and showing this article to all your friends and colleagues.



Note: The petition website seems to require Non-Free JavaScript, I was not able to find a better alternative.

Now to what actually happened. In chronological order. (Not as long as it seems. Most of it are quotations from original sources because I'm not an incompetent journalist .)

First some background.

Jeffrey Edward Epstein was an American financier and convicted sex offender. Epstein began his professional life as a teacher, then changed to the banking and finance sector in various roles. Epstein developed an elite social circle, and allegedly procured women and girls, many underage, to provide sexual services for himself and some of these contacts.

On August 9, 2019 the news site The Verge published an article about the testimony of one of Epstein victims. The woman says she was directed by Epstein to have sex with Marvin Minsky. Mr. Minsky was a pioneer in artificial intelligence research and a professor at MIT. Stallman was also a pioneer in AI research at MIT.

The storm begins.

One month later an article was posted to medium, with the title Remove Richard Stallman – And everyone else horrible in tech. by Ms. Selam. There was a Facebook event calling for a protest regarding donations Jeffrey Epstein made to MIT. Stallman objected to the wording of the description of the event. Objecting to choices of words is something he is known for doing, he is a philosopher after all.

The objection was the following:

The announcement of the Friday event does an injustice to Marvin Minsky: deceased AI pioneer Marvin Minsky (who is accused of assaulting one of Epstein's victims) 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.

We can note two things here:

He is not disbelieving the possibility that Mr. Minsky did indeed have intercourse with a minor. Let's presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it). He is saying that the girl could have presented herself as entirely willing. This means that Mr. Minsky could not be aware of the fact that the girl was being forced to have relations with him. It's very important to understand that he said that the girl could have presented herself as willing. He did not say that the girl was in fact willingly having sex with Mr. Minsky.

The article goes on to say, shortly after, quoting this same e-mail, that:

…and then he says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be entirely willing .

Which we can clearly see he did not do. The author of the article is a mechanical engineer and a not a professional journalist. Moreover she admits to be very upset while writing the article. So maybe this was an innocent mistake.

The rest of the article talks about the under-representation of women in STEM and includes a picture of Stallman's room door at MIT with a sign that reads:

Richard Stallman: Knight for justice (Also: Hot ladies)

According Sylvia Paull, Stallman's pro bono PR advisor, this was written as a joke by someone else.

not the sign about welcoming “hot ladies” on his MIT Media lab office door, which someone else wrote as a joke and which he removed but not before someone took a photo of it

Then two more pictures of Stallman's emails deemed problematics and a link to the geek feminism wiki with other problematic quotes.

The article ends with:

Perhaps the only criticism I will accept is that I, personally, have been lucky enough to avoid a lot of gender-related discrimination in comparison to my peers.

Unfortunately it seems that this person is not open to criticisms.

The disinformation machine at work.

On September 13, 2019 the periodical MOTHERBOARD published an article titled Famed Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As 'Entirely Willing' .

As we've seen, Stallman did not say or imply that one girl was entirely willingly having sex with Mr. Minsky, much less that all of Epstein's victims were (note the letter s on the title of the article after the victim word, denoting plural).

As we've seen, Stallman said that one girl could have presented herself to Mr. Minsky as willing.

The article then goes on with its defamation, the first paragraph reads:

Richard Stallman, the computer scientist best known for his role in the free software movement, has joined the list of MIT men going out of their way to defend the university's relationships with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The journalist uses the article posted by Ms. Selam on medium(the one above) as its source. It continues with:

Early in the thread, Stallman insists that the most plausible scenario is that Epstein's underage victims were entirely willing while being trafficked.

Again two mistakes. Stallman did not talk about all of Epstein's victims and he did not say that they were entirely willing.

All this misinformation is then followed by:

Stallman goes on to argue about the definition of sexual assault, rape, and whether they apply to Minsky and Giuffre's deposition statement that she was forced to have sex with him. In response to a student pointing out that Giuffre was 17 when she was forced to have sex with Minsky in the Virgin Islands, Stallman said it is morally absurd to define rape in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17.

None of which is contained in the medium article by Ms. Selam. Instead, this is all in a 20 page screenshot of a mailing list at the bottom of the page. The screenshot has 20 pages because the journalist didn't bother formatting it for presentation, he just redacted addresses of people other than Stallman. It has in fact around 10 very short messages. If you want to read it, go from the last page to the first.

The message from which the quote: it is morally absurd to define rape […] was taken is this one:

Giuffre was 17 at the time; this makes it rape in the Virgin Isiands. Does it really? I think it is morally absurd to define rape in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17. I think the existence of a dispute about that supports my point that the term sexual assault is slippery, so we ought to use more concrete terms when accusing anyone. The Verge article includes the deposition snippet, which is not ambiguous at all: Giuffre directly says she was forced to have sex with Minsky I don't see any quotation from the deposition in the article, but it says, Giuffre says she was directed to have sex with Minsky. Given the circumstances, that implies she was coerced by Epstein into doing so. The article I know of, and have a copy of, is https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jeffrey-epstein-sex-trafficking-island-court-records-unsealed Are you talking of some other Verge article? If so, would you like to tell me its URL? Let's stop grasping at straws to defend our friends, and instead listen to the women who were harmed. We can listen only to what is said to us. All i know she said about Minsky is that Epstein directed her to have sex with Minsky. That does not say whether Minsky knew that she was coerced. It does not report what each said and did during their sexual encounter. We can imagine various scenarios. We know that Giuffre was being coerced into sex – by Epstein. She was being harmed. But the details do affect whether, and to what extent, Minsky was responsible for that. Looking through the article again carefully, I found a link that reportedly points to the deposition itself. I visited that URL and got a blank window. It is on Google Drive, which demands running nonfree software in order to see it. See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html Would you (not anyone else!) like to email me a copy of the part that pertains to Minsky? I say not anyone else to avoid getting 20 copies.

As we can see, his point can be boiled down to:

We know that Giuffre was being coerced into sex – by Epstein. She was being harmed. But the details do affect whether, and to what extent, Minsky was responsible for that.

Or in other words, that the girl could have presented herself to Mr. Minsky as willing.

The articles then talks about the resignation of another completely different professor, Joi Ito, for reasons that are beyond my understanding.

Also on September 13, 2019 another (un)renowned information source, The Daily Beast, published an article on the subject. The title of this one was Renowned MIT Scientist Defends Epstein: Victims Were Entirely Willing - MIT bigwig Richard Stallman dismissed Epstein's underage victims in emails and defended child pornography on his blog.

It starts with:

While MIT engages in damage control following revelations the university's Media Lab accepted millions of dollars in funding from Jeffrey Epstein, a renowned computer scientist at the university has fanned the flames by apparently going out of his way to defend the accused sex trafficker — and child pornography in general.

As we've seen, Stallman did not defend the sex trafficker, Epstein, he merely criticized the wording used to refer to Mr. Minsky. Crude mistake for such a renowned information source.

They then go on to repeat the same thing as The Verge:

his eminence in the academic computer science community came into question Friday afternoon when purportedly leaked email excerpts showed him suggesting one of Epstein's alleged victims was entirely willing.

Stallman never said the victims were entirely willing , only that they could have been presented to Mr. Minsky as entirely willing, as we've seen in the original emails above. But hey, it's 2019, what do we need fact for, right?

The author then mentions the fact that the emails are available in full and repeats the same mistake.

Stallman wrote that the most plausible scenario for Giuffre's accusations was that she was, in actuality, entirely willing. Vice's Motherboard later reprinted the emails in full. Gano did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

I guess they are being paid to write, not read, right?

The renowned news paper report on the matter ends here. The rest of the article, which constitutes most of it, is actually just quotations from Stallmans personal blog that are deemed questionable . Nothing he posted in the MIT mailing list. At the top of his blog we can read:

This is the personal web site of Richard Stallman. The views expressed here are my personal views, not those of the Free Software Foundation or the GNU Project.

But journalists are paid to write, not read. And all the other cool kids are already playing witch hunt anyways so what?

The first quote from stallman's blog is:

This child pornography might be a photo of yourself or your lover that the two of you shared. It might be an image of a sexually mature teenager that any normal adult would find attractive. What's heinous about having such a photo? Stallman wrote in 2011 on his personal site, stallman.org, in an argument in favor of Congress limiting laptop searches at the U.S. border.

Which does not include an URL, fortunately, I bothered searching for it (https://stallman.org/archives/2011-may-aug.html#4_June_2011_(Border_Searches)) :

Campaigning for Congress to limit searches of laptops at the US border. The same should be done for police when they stop drivers. The article falls into a common kind of error when it says that possession of child pornography is a heinous offense . It is the error of rhetorically legitimizing the previous attack against our rights in arguing against the next one. This child pornography might be a photo of yourself or your lover that the two of you shared. It might be an image of a sexually mature teenager that any normal adult would find attractive. What's heinous about having such a photo? But even when it is uncontroversial to call the subject depicted a child , that is no excuse for censorship. Having a photo or drawing does not hurt anyone, so and if you or I think it is disgusting, that is no excuse for censorship. The government will invent an unlimited number of opportunities to censor us and search us if we grant the legitimacy of its all-purpose excuses for doing so.

It seems that the general points are two.

The search of laptops should have a probable cause and not be preemptive: the error of rhetorically legitimizing the previous attack against our rights in arguing against the next one. And that, depending on the context, what is technically child pornography didn't cause anyone harm. This child pornography might be a photo of yourself or your lover that the two of you shared.

Think of a couple in which one is 19 years old and the other is 17.

He then says that the mere possession of child pornography does not harm anyone. I assume he is implying that only the production of child pornography harms people.

But even when it is uncontroversial to call the subject depicted a child , that is no excuse for censorship. Having a photo or drawing does not hurt anyone, so and if you or I think it is disgusting, that is no excuse for censorship.

I would disagree with that, but it's his personal blog. He is not speaking for MIT or the free software foundation.

Also note that he says if you or I think it is disgusting .

Now to the second questionable quote. It very conveniently does not have a link but it can be found here. The renowned news source writes:

I disagree with some of what the article says about Epstein. Epstein is not, apparently, a pedophile, since the people he raped seem to have all been postpuberal. He preferred to call Epstein a serial rapist.

And the writing in its entirety is here:

(Now) Labor Secretary Acosta's plea deal for Jeffrey Epstein was not only extremely lenient, it was so lenient that it was illegal. I wonder whether this makes it possible to resentence him to a longer prison term. I disagree with some of what the article says about Epstein. Epstein is not, apparently, a pedophile, since the people he raped seem to have all been postpuberal. By contrast, calling him a sex offender tends to minimize his crimes, since it groups him with people who committed a spectrum of acts of varying levels of gravity. Some of them were not crimes. Some of these people didn't actually do anything to anyone. I think the right term for a person such as Epstein is serial rapist .

So Stallman actually held the opinion that Epstein should have gotten a longer sentence and that sex offender was too light of a term.

Maybe we could say the way the renowned news source quoted Stallman is questionable.

To the third questionable quote. This time at least they provided the source (No direct link, search for the quotes, https://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html) but the choice of what sentences to include in the article could be called questionable.

The Daily Beast writes:

In 2003, he said, I think that everyone age 14 or above ought to take part in sex, though not indiscriminately. (Some people are ready earlier.) Alan Dershowitz, one of the lawyers who helped broker Epstein's 2008 sweetheart plea deal, has also argued against age of consent laws, calling statutory rape an outdated concept in a 1997 op-ed and suggesting on Twitter in July that a 16-year-old should have the constitutional right to consensual sex.

The original reads:

The UK is planning a censorship law that would prohibit giving a (so-called) child anything that relates to sexual activity or contains a reference to such activity . This clearly includes most novels that you can buy in an ordinary book store. As usual, the term child is used as a form of deception, since it includes teenagers of an age at which a large fraction of people are sexually active nowadays. People we would not normally call children. The law would also prohibit encouraging a (so-called) child to take part in sexual activity. I think that everyone age 14 or above ought to take part in sex, though not indiscriminately. (Some people are ready earlier.) It is unnatural for humans to abstain from sex past puberty, and while I wouldn't try to pressure anyone to participate, I certainly encourage everyone to do so. This web site is currently hosted in the UK. If the law is adopted, will my web site be a crime? I will have to talk with the people who host the site about whether I should move it to another country. (The hosting company responded that I don't need to move.)

If you read the article he links to, you will notice that the other people concerned with the bill are the editors of a teen magazine that fear they won't be able to offer advice on contraceptives to girls that are mostly between the ages of 15 and 16 years old.

I wonder if The Daily Beast is against such a thing. It would be a very questionable position for such a renowned news source.

Now let's pay attention to the wording on the renowned news source:

also argued against age of consent laws

Implying that Stallman argued against age of consent laws. I read this blog post many times and I find this claim to be questionable. I'm not a lawyer, I do not know whether such accusation is a crime.

The fourth quote is:

Stallman was apparently also quite open about his ideas not only on age of consent laws, but also pedophilia. In 2006, he wrote, I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing. The law does not allow for voluntary pedophilia.

Dutch pedophiles have formed a political party to campaign for legalization. [Reference updated on 2018-04-25 because the old link was broken.] I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.

This time the only thing that was missing was the link to what exactly he was talking about. If you follow it, you will see:

Amsterdam - Dutch paedophiles are launching a political party to push for a cut in the legal age for sexual relations to 12 from 16 and the legalisation of child pornography and sex with animals.

When people talk about pedophilia, what usually comes to mind is prepubescent children. Not what Stallman was referring to.

The fifth quote is:

In 2006, he said it wouldn't so bad for an adult man who worked for the Department of Homeland Security to have sex with a 14-year-old, as one government employee had allegedly[…]

The post in its entirety is here:

Many Americans would see a scandal in the DHS spokesman who has been arrested for proposing sex to a 14-year-old girl through the Internet. I too see a scandal, but not the same one. I think the scandal is that this man is going to face a prison sentence when he has not done wrong to anyone. Sometimes adults are in a position of power over teenagers (or even children) and use that power to pressure them into sex. That is wrong because it is coercion. Sometimes they manipulate or trick inexperienced people into sex they didn't want. That's not right because it is not honest. But this man seems to have done none of those things. He was chatting with a stranger, clearly not dependent on him in any way. The report gives no reason to think he was pressuring or tricking her. For all we can tell, he was making an honest request. Supposing his interlocutor had been a real girl, if she had not wanted to have sex with him, she would have had no trouble saying "no thanks". And supposing she had voluntarily had sex with him, presuming that they used a condom and suitable contraception, it would have done no harm to either of them.

The sixth questionable quote:

He reiterated his point in 2013: There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children .

Let's see the original:

There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children. Granted, children may not dare say no to an older relative, or may not realize they could say no; in that case, even if they do not overtly object, the relationship may still feel imposed to them. That's not willing participation, its imposed participation, a different issue.

Who could have guessed that context matters. The integrity of this renowned journalist is beginning to look very questionable.

There is more:

People within the tech industry knew of Stallman's remarks, chattering about his controversial claims in social networking sites and forums at least since last year, but his remarks about Epstein's victims reignited the debate Friday. The digital trail of Stallman's remarks and the whisper network surrounding them raise the question of whether MIT and the Free Software Foundation knew of his controversial statements.

The people on the industry are two users of YCombiantor talking about the fourth quote and a woman on Twitter posting the day before, talking about the exact same things written by The Daily Beast and Ms. Selam, with the exact same arguments.

The seventh questionable quote:

In 2003, he wrote a post about a judge who argued that repealing an Alabama anti-sodomy law would lead to the legalization of prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia. The computer scientist responded, All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.

The original(no direct link, search for the quotes) reads:

Dubya has nominated another caveman for a federal appeals court. Refreshingly, the Democratic Party is organizing opposition. [Reference updated on 2018-05-10 because the old link was broken.] The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia" also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally--but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness. Some rules might be called for when these acts directly affect other people's interests. For incest, contraception could be mandatory to avoid risk of inbreeding. For prostitution, a license should be required to ensure prostitutes get regular medical check-ups, and they should have training and support in insisting on use of condoms. This will be an advance in public health, compared with the situation today. For necrophilia, it might be necessary to ask the next of kin for permission if the decedent's will did not authorize it. Necrophilia would be my second choice for what should be done with my corpse, the first being scientific or medical use. Once my dead body is no longer of any use to me, it may as well be of some use to someone. Besides, I often enjoy rhinophytonecrophilia (nasal sex with dead plants).

All those questionable quotes seem very reasonable when put in context. I wonder if The Daily Beast finds questionable that sex workers should get training, medical check-ups and use condoms.

He talks about bestiality here. This one is a famous Stallman meme so the "journalist" not mentioning it is understandable, he would have to have done reaserch to find it. It reads:

Then there is the prohibition of realistically depicting sex with an animal. The law does not care whether the animal wanted sex. I've read that male dolphins try to have sex with humans, and female apes solicit sex from humans. What is wrong with giving them what they want, if that's what turns you on, or even just to gratify them? But this law is not concerned with protecting animals, since it does not care whether the animal really had sex, or really existed at all. It only panders to the prejudice of censors. A parrot once had sex with me. I did not recognize the act as sex until it was explained to me afterward, but being stroked on the hand by his soft belly feathers was so pleasurable that I yearn for another chance. I have a photo of that act; should I go to prison for it?

The eighth one, this one is kinda funny. The renowned news source writes:

Stallman extended his argument to say that internet censorship is worse than child pornography: The term child pornography is dishonest. The censorship of it puts young lovers in direct danger of prosecution. Many published works are disgusting, but censorship is more so.

The original reads:

"Child" pornography is being used as an excuse to threaten all American internet users' privacy. The term "child pornography" is dishonest. The censorship of it puts young lovers in direct danger of prosecution. Many published works are disgusting, but censorship is more so. In the Internet, enforcement of censorship puts other rights in danger. Please support demandprogress.org's campaign against this bill.

When Stallman says that child pornography is being used to threaten internet users he is linking to a bill that would force ISPs to save IP address logs for at least one year.

When he says that "child pornography" is dishonest he is linking to another of his posts where he opposes the search of laptops at borders without plausible cause.

Wait a second, this is the very first post the "journalist" talked about, that one he didn't provide source for.

I wonder if he read the originals before quoting them. I think he didn't, otherwise he would have been able to provide the source to that other "questionable" quote.

Paid to write, not to read, I gues?

The funny part is now. When he says direct danger of prosecution , he is linking to this other post of his:

The child pornography witch-hunt has made a possession of this high-school yearbook a crime — because of what two students in the background of a photo are doing. Imagine if the photo had been published in a newspaper. That could turn thousands of people into criminals. Doing foreplay in a dance is a little daring — it must have been fun. It suggests those two students are normal teenagers with a normal interest in sex. If there was anything harmful, wrong, or shameful about this photo, it wasn't them. Yet (according to an article on a site not suitable to link to) they might face prosecution, with the danger of being listed as sex offenders , effectively perverts , for being normal and hurting nobody. These laws are the perverted intersection of two irrational hot buttons: sex is dirty and we must protect the children . Remember this when Internet filtering is imposed in order to block child pornography .

I wonder if the renowned news source thinks teenagers should abstain from sex until marriage. Their readers might find such a position to be questionable.

The ninth quote is actually from the same post as the first one but this time it does have a link. Apparently the author didn't read the sources or even what he wrote. Guess he is really being paid to write, not read. Renowned journalism at its best.

Stallman changes his mind about some of the views.

On September 14, 2019 (one day after The Daily Beast published this article) Stallman made a post on his blog stating that he has changed his mind. It reads:

Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it. 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. I am grateful for the conversations that enabled me to understand why.

He doesn't link to the previous posts he is talking about but it seems reasonable to assume they are the fourth, fifth and sixth quotes we just saw.

Back to the beginning.

On September 16, 2019 Ms. Selam, the one from the first blog post, wrote again. On the third paragraph we read:

I had no idea that Richard Stallman has been so problematic, in so many different ways, for so long. I did not know that Richard Stallman has been making MIT a worse learning environment for decades, and that somehow, that behavior went on completely unchecked.

As we've seen he has not been problematic . Incompetent journalists have been problematic .

A few paragraphs below, we have:

I hope this gets through to everyone who has responded saying we should not jump to conclusions or be less punitive . We have been lenient — in fact, we have been negligent — for decades. Others have already dug up a good chunk of Stallman's public history. This Daily Beast article does a great job covering his long history of problematic views on child pornography and statutory rape:

Want to guess what article of The Daily Beast, the renowned news source, is linked just below that quote? That's right, the very questionable one that we just read above.

It goes on:

Some people have described Stallman as controversial — this could mean a few different things, but I do not think that Stallman's opinions are controversial. Controversial implies that 40% of the public thinks one way and another 40% the other, and some 20% are in-between.

I think Mr. Merrian-Webster would disagree with that:

Controversial according to Merrian-Webster:

… of, relating to, or arousing controversy

In turn, the definition of controversy is:

a discussion marked especially by the expression of opposing views

Interesting, this says nothing about percentages. I wonder if this very odd definition will prove useful later in the text.

Let's read the rest of the paragraph:

If there are a large number of people in the United States who think that child pornography and sexual intercourse with minors should be legalized, this is the first I'm hearing of it, and please show me the evidence.

I don't think there is a large number of people in the United States who think that child pornography and sexual intercourse with minors should be legalized and if there are, as we saw, Stallman is not one of them. The paragraph goes on:

Since it is not controversial, I'm not going to argue why these opinions are problematic. Having to prove this would give legitimacy to Stallman's ideas.

But you already did argue. Not arguing would be to take Stallmans opinions are problematic as an axiom(something that does not need explanation, it's a truth in itself). But as you said:

The opinions are not controversial (by your weird definition). ⇒ The opinions are problematic.

The opinions are not controversial (by your weird definition) and I don't like them. ⇒ The opinions are problematic.

The bright side is that now we know what problematic means.

Not that any of this matters. This is all, as we've seen, a big strawman (pun intended). You are attacking the lies written (and not read, he is not being paid for that) of a sub-par journalist . That journalist is in turn only writing such lies because he saw(not read, he is not being paid for that) your last blog post.

Kinda sounds like an echo chamber.

A few more gaffes before we go to the next section of the article:

MIT, by endorsing Stallman, also gives legitimacy to these ideas.

No. It does not. As stated in his blog, his opinions are his own. Not that it matters, since you are not attacking his opinions, you are attacking the delusions of an illiterate journalist .

I would also like to clarify that in some headlines, including this Daily Beast one, Stallman is said to have defended Epstein, which is not technically true.Rather, Stallman was defending Marvin Minsky. I directly emailed and corrected reporters who used that language if I myself had given them any comments or information. I say this to show that I never intended to inflate anything, because there was absolutely no need to.

Excellent, but unfortunately those reporters are not being paid to read, only to write. The headlines and disinformation are all still there.

The truth by itself was far, far more than enough.

The truth that you got from the journalists that can't even write a correct headline or check the facts of his half-page article?

To the second section of the article now. You might have already noticed but it has nothing to do with the initial matter anymore. Someone hit a target and now wants to make sure it's a bullseye.

In this section, I acknowledge that I do not have as many photos, emails, or written records as evidence. I do, however, have witnesses.

The author then provides the personal experience of a few alumni as far back as 1980. The first 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.

This seems to be a joke from one student to another, not something Stallman did. The joke seems also to be about the fact that Stallman is an avid advocate of Emacs and that there is a very famous internet flame war between Emacs and Vi users. It doesn't say anything about Stallman's behavior towards women. The same joke could have been made about a serial rapist, a noun or anyone that prefers one text editor over another.

To the second of the horrifying stories :

He literally used to have a mattress on the floor of his office. He kept the door to his office open, to proudly showcase that mattress and all the implications that went with it. Many female students avoided the corridor with his office for that reason … I was one of the course 6 undergrads who avoided that part of NE43 precisely for that reason. (the mattress was also known to have shirtless people lounging on it …) Bachelor's in Computer Science, '99

Let's take a look at this page from Stallman's personal website, section Home :

Until around 1998, my office at MIT was also my residence. I was even registered to vote from there. Nowadays I have a separate residence in Cambridge not far from MIT. However, I am rarely there, since I am nearly always travelling out of town.

I wonder what that dirty mattress was used for. Maybe sleeping?

The next story does sound inappropriate by today stardards but something that is unacceptable today could have been perfectly fine in 1985 (when it happened). Even if it had happened today, I don't think this alone could justify everything that is being done to Stallman. I say this alone because, as we've seen, the rest are lies and mis-characterizations.

When I was a teen freshman, I went to a buffet lunch at an Indian restaurant in Central Square with a graduate student friend and others from the AI lab. I don't know if he and I were the last two left, but at a table with only the two of us, Richard Stallman told me of his misery and that he'd kill himself if I didn't go out with him. I felt bad for him and also uncomfortable and manipulated. I did not like being put in that position — suddenly responsible for an important man. What had I done to get into this situation? I decided I could not be responsible for his living or dying, and would have to accept him killing himself. I declined further contact. He was not a man of his word or he'd be long dead. Betsy S., Bachelor's in Management Science, '85

The stories end here. The author then gives her opinion:

But MIT is a privileged place. We have the right to choose who we admit, hire, or endorse. We do not let just anyone on our campus; we demand high standards of achievement. We should demand high ethical standards equal to our high standards for achievement. I do not think Richard Stallman ever met even a low ethical standard for being at any university, and I am questioning mostly why this was allowed to continue for so, so long.

I also think the MIT should demand higher ethical standards.

The section ends with a link to a report written by women of the CSAIL in 1980 (the one Stallman worked at) about equality in academia. It might be a bit culturally dated but it's interesting and still have good ideas that could be implemented.

The fact that the women of the CSAIL wrote a report might indicate that the environment was not very women friendly or it might indicate that it was so friendly(for the time's standard) that they were able to write it.

Nevertheless, it doesn't say anything about Stallman's conduct, since there is not any previous evidence for it to corroborate. As we've seen all those questionable opinions and behaviors were indeed mis-characterizations.

The author now goes to the third section, titled: Going Forward, be proactive instead of reactive. , and gives some genuinely good suggestions to improve an academic environment. Unfortunately, her actions were not so good.

The article ends with:

Today, I found out that Stallman had issued a rather weak and confusing apology to the CSAIL mailing list: I want to respond to the misleading media coverage of messages I posted about Marvin Minsky's association with Jeffrey Epstein. The coverage totally mischaracterised my statements. Headlines say that I defended Epstein. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've called him a serial rapist, and said he deserved to be imprisoned. But many people now believe I defended him — and other inaccurate claims — and feel a real hurt because of what they believe I said. I'm sorry for that hurt. I wish I could have prevented the misunderstanding.

Which doesn't seem like an apology, but like someone that is feeling guilt for being caught in a situation they had no real way to avoid and for which they can't be blamed. Victim self blaming.

Maybe we should end with a quote from someone on the mailing list where it all started:

The job of scientists is to evaluate evidence and seek truth. We have a social responsibility to do that as well. I hope that we scientists will never evade our social responsibility to seek and defend the truth out of fear that the press will misconstrue our search.

Note: People on the internet often talk about his past "problematic" behavior, when doing so they usually link you, directly or indirectly, to one of the articles reviewed here.

Appendix: A short overview of references in chronological order

September 12

Selam G.'s Medium article Remove Richard Stallman

September 13

September 14

Stallman's post Statements about Epstein .

September 16

Other References