The controversy surrounding Richard Stallman has raised questions about the Free Software Foundation's relevance.
Richard M. Stallman (RMS) has been known for years as the founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) -- in fact, of the free software community itself. Ironically, with his recent reappointment to the FSF’s board of directors, he also risks becoming known as the man who threw the FSF into disarray, losing it the authority it has gained over the decades.
The story dates back to September 2019, when Stallman commented on an MIT email thread about sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Specifically, Stallman defended AI pioneer Marvin Minsky against allegations of sexually assaulting an underage girl who had been one of Epstein’s victims. Stallman wrote, “We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing.” The insensitivity of Stallman’s comments, which were focused on his personal definition of the word “assault” and did nothing to acknowledge the complexities of sex trafficking or the disturbing power relationships at the heart of the Epstein story, caused a shock wave through the free software community. Although Stallman described the reaction to his comments as “a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations,” the comments were widely interpreted as implying that the victim was to blame for the incident, an interpretation that seems supported by the fact that Stallman also described statutory rape laws as “morally absurd.”