One of the heros of the modern computing world
Amazing how much damage dishonest media coverage can do, even though it’s both trivial to prove their misquotes false and we now have an witness further supporting Stallman’s original argument. Summary of events:
In a recently unsealed deposition a woman testified that, at the age of 17, Epstein told her to have sex with Marvin Minsky. Minsky was a co-founder of the MIT Media Lab and pioneer in A.I. who died in 2016. Stallman argued on a mailing list (in response to a statement from a protest organizer accusing Minsky of sexual assault) that, while he condemned Epstein, Minsky likely did not know she was being coerced:
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.
Someone wrote a Medium blogpost called “Remove Richard Stallman” quoting the argument. From there it was further picked up by Vice and Ars Techina then escalated to the point of his resignation.
Richard Stallman while at times an eccentric, opinionated, and outspoken man has been a hero to the open source movement and pivotal to the success of linux and free software world wide. If Steve Jobs was the face of commercial hardware; Stallman is the face of Open Source and Free Software itself. In a time of -aaS tax being dominate and no one owning code we need people like him to step up and fight the good fight.
After all software wants to be free