And both of those posters made thoroughly emotive based arguments which boiled down to difference of opinion. Differences of opinion are not justification for ousting.

Stallman was more concerned with preservation of a historical record of hacker culture (The abort joke). Karen (was that her name? I think I may have forgotten) wanted it rewritten, along with other instances of "90's hacker detritus". Stallman refused. Coding is as much artform as it is engineering, and in that sense, a relic of the times. To wipe it out is to assault our very shared hacker culture's. It was against a wave of PC inclusiveness oriented imperialism that Stallman remained opposed to. The other fellow, Brad got frustrated because Stallman is a stickler for internal consistency of principle and adherence of the meaning of language to the form of life it is a nominative signpost for; which is something I personally find to be one of the best qualities in him.

You've posted something in your link that raises the question of whether any of these complaints should be considered valid.

>No one is indespensable, no one is disposable.

This is equality. The GNU maintainers raised their concern to the Board, the Board made their decision, the Maintainers don't like the outcome, even though the Board lived up to the very principles that Stallman's detractors would leverage to oust the board. As I've mentioned to user geofft elsewhere, you don't get to claim favoritism when your problem was raised and considered, but it just didn't go your way. You also don't get to trash someone just because they chafe with you when they aren't actively detracting from the mission. Now; if you want to challenge his fitness based on forwarding the mission based on objective results, that's one thing, but you have to make a dang good case given he bloody started the entire movement, and plays a significant part in codifying and acting as an arbiter of it's principle direction.

I won't even go into the whole "non-adherence to Safe-Space Policies", as I see those as a fundamental impediment to the pursuit of truth and intellectual advancement. Furthermore, after going through the profferred librePlanet recording, there is no interjection by Stallman that I can find inappropriate, even what I'm guessing is the alleged outburst at the end where Stallman asserts that as the President of the FSF, he is not bound by rules, as to me, it is clear that it precipitated out of a procedural question of the event in that room being at "time". Others were free to leave, and he was exercising perogative after the presentation had officially come to a close. He clarified his stance as the author of the GNU manifesto, and there is nothing controversial to doing so. Everyone had seen what they had come to see.

This is exactly the character of the ridicule and bad faith that seems endemic to this controversy. There isn't anything to it on further examination. If you only read and accept at the surface level, or ascribe to the notion that it is somehow inappropriate to engage in a deeper dive or clarification of something you yourself are the progenitor of or ceremonially highest authority on is wrong, do any of these accusations this seem to hold water. If that is truly the issue that the GNU maintainers are in a tizzy about, then it does not at all seem like Stallman is the one in error, and it is, in fact, those accusing him, that are. Every time I look into something offered as a datapoint in support of his dismissal, I see a human being acting in good faith. There is nothing wrong there.

Just to prove that I'm not cherry picking in Stallman's case, I've had a similar event back in my college days when I was specifically asked to not give feedback or ask questions with regard to someone's presentation. I had to respectfully decline, on the principle that in the event they (the asker) or someone in the audience were to continue working on the subject matter at hand, it would only detract from the pursuit and furthering of the state of the art down the road to not in good faith ask additional questions where their material raised them, or had holes. It's a question of integrity, and I cannot begrudge someone for doing so. It can be uncomfortable. Remaining calm and defending one's thesis is not a natural skill, but nevertheless critical in the pursuit of the truth, and nothing but it. If we don't subject that which is before us to the acid of a contrasting or different viewpoint, we really don't get the most out of any intellectual encounter.

My moral compass is not skewed that hard (at least I like to think it isn't, but then again, no one does), and I'm probably in possession of much rounder edges than I was 5 or 10 years ago, but I can't accept that half of these complaints are well founded or anything else than "how dare they not capitulate". It's rather the point that they don't. If they were that easy to get to roll over, I wager they shouldn't be stewards of Free Software.

I want to get behimd it; but... I'm just not seeing FSF or Stallman as having done anything wrong, all things considered.