The Stallman Report

If there was criminal conduct, someone should file a criminal complaint and have it adjudicated in a court of law with evidence, a jury and witness testimony and once convicted the accused should be appropriately punished.

Otherwise, how is anyone going to determine the truth of the allegations?

If the behavior was non-criminal then the decision should be made through normal non-profit governance mechanisms. We have due process of law for a reason which is that people are innocent until proven guilty and there are the proper protections to make sure a fair trial occurs.

Another well known non-profit in the biotech space received a 20 million donation and right after that a group of people kicked out the founder citing perceived sexual innuendo in old emails that did not risen to the level of a criminal offense. The donor wanted their money back, because they had given it to support the founder and his mission, but it was too late.

Having read this, I don't think there is any accusation of criminal behavior in this report.

The accusation is that he made people uncomfortable, didn't do enough to change that when it was raised, and defended criminal behavior by insisting on distinctions that the authors of the report consider immaterial or harmful.

I worked for RMS/FSF briefly and I think there is something about his radical refusal to compromise on anything conceptual (to avoid conflict or misunderstanding, e.g.) that is fundamentally incompatible with running an organization. This is on display here.

So I think it's probably right for FSF and RMS to part ways, but I also think it's positive for the world for him to keep on insisting on moral clarity in his terms.

At the same time, everybody should read the whole report and decide whether they think RMS's insistence on the distinctions rejected by the authors is helpful or unhelpful. I think some of RMS's distinctions could be helpful to the cause of reducing the incidence of sexual abuse.