It's not a good idea to start the website with a mischaracterization of what happened: "False accusations were made against Richard Stallman in September 2019."

I'm going to default to good faith, and assume that everyone who continues to defend him is not being malicious, but truly doesn't understand what happened. Ironically, the misunderstanding is of EXACTLY the same type of nature as Stallman himself made when defending Minsky that kicked all this off.

The issue can be summarized simply: "The problem isn't the specific incident. The problem is the overall pattern of behaviour".

Stallman didn't get "cancelled" (I hate this term but it will be useful as a shorthand) because he defended Minsky. Defending Minsky was the last straw for a lot of people who have been observing DECADES of shitty behaviour from Stallman that in the AGGREGATE resulted in a characterization of a person that should not be the public face of a movement that depends heavily on good public relations and goodwill. Stallman got "cancelled" because he's spent years being an absolute asshole to individuals in the community but especially women.

No one individual instance of it was indictable. He never sexually assaulted anyone. He never commited an individual fireable offense. But you have to be able to see the forest for the individual trees. And this forest was a problem. Worse, Stallman has shown himself to be completely incapable, and worse disinterested in learning or growing from past mistakes, or adjust his behaviour with the changing times.

With the sheer number of women and people reporting unacceptable unprofessional behaviour over decades, him unnecessarily finding a petty hill to pedantically defend Minsky for having consensual sex with a sexually-trafficked underage woman ("he didn't know any of this!") was the last straw for a lot of people.

That's it.

All the other websites, and blog posts and hackernews comment that get upset about the press's mischaracterization of the Stallman/Minsky exchange miss the point. And it's okay to want to correct the record. But don't misunderstand - Stallman isn't facing consequences for defending Minsky. He's facing consequences for decades of myopic behaviour that prioritized his principles of software freedom over the principles of human rights or basic human decency/respect in communication.

Start over from scratch. Throw away the Minsky thing. Throw away every piece of problematic writing that Stallman corrected or adjusted over the years. The end result is still a person who was a genius, who made tremendous contributions to the industry and should be lauded and thanked for his efforts. But also a person who should not be the public face of any institution any longer, and who probably should take this opportunity to retire and let a new generation pick up the torch and push through his good ideas without them being tainted by all of his bad ones.

P.S. We as a society have not yet learned how to reconcile brilliant useful people who have made incredible contributions to the advancement of humanity with their OTHER opinions that may be deeply problematic and out of touch even in their day (never mind through the lens of history).

If someone cures cancer but is a raging homophobe, should we not use their cure?

If someone invents FTL space travel but believes no woman is equal to any man, should we not give them the nobel prize?

Genius in one area does not transfer over to Genius in all areas. But just the same blindness in one does not negate genius.

We must be able to laud individual people's accomplishments while also not tolerating their prejudices.

We must be able to call a specific word, sentence, paragraph, or opinion "racist" without deeming the entire PERSON racist.

We must be able to acknowledge someone's accomplishments while also acknowledging those that they have harmed.