Sorry, but you have to be explicit with your accusations. Call me naive, but if you say 'mattress and all the implications that went with it' in the context of hacker culture : the obvious implication is that he is a hacker, who likes to immerse himself in his work, pulls all-nighters. At worse it implies a lack of hygiene and a healthy separation between life and work. Okay a mattress might be taking to the concept a bit far but bean-bag culture is rooted in the earliest days of Xerox PARC, Microsoft, Apple (both Steve Jobs and Bill gates have talked about a lifestyle of sleeping in their office and not going home for days on end), Homebrew club, etc.

I read the medium article and its accompanying appendix, and imo, its scant on facts, and filled with weasel-wording, political posturing and self-obsession.

There is mention of a report of sexism in AI labs. But what are the facts of the report. Was Stallman implicated in this report? The article doesn't say so. It looks like the author ju just put it out there to make a association between RMS and sexism in the minds of the readers.

The only real factual account( by 'factual' account i mean explicit about the alleged details and facts of events) is the one where the management undergrad was hit on in the restaurant.

We can mostly defend against men that give out creepy social cues. Guys that are not creepy are far harder to defend against or get justice against: a guy that knows how to present himself understands social signals (almost self defining) and they can often get away with a lot because of that.

Plenty of guys hit on young women (I saw a study that showed that men of any age say they want a 21 year old). Are we surprised to find out "teen" is a major keyword on porn sites? Many men with a social standing (or money) use that to their sexual advantage. Go to the pub and listen to some drunk bro's: there is a large number what a lot of men say is extremely disturbing. I think they are highly immoral; but the attitudes are common and we usually avoid the moral argument and simplify it with a legal argument (statutory rape laws which rightly protect our weak and vulnerable).

I don't doubt that RMS has been an arsehole, and his workplace, voluntary workplaces, friends, family and acquaintances should definitely make him accountable, and take action against arseholery.

However, what seems to be happening here is that Richard is getting publicly shamed and publicly tried and judged guilty for being creepy - no accountability required.

By exchanging clearly visible markers against which action can be easily taken for unaccountable bullying and mob "justice" (which tends to unfairly advantage women in the same way you level your accusations)?

All you want is to give a different group the right to bully and oppress others rather than actually solving the problem. This isn't making things "better"; it's typically considered rather harmful, unless you're a sexist, racist, or both.

I wasn't trying to say his behaviour is acceptable. It seems he needs to work on his social interactions (most of us need to work on that, and we should all fight for better).

The only reason for this brouhaha is that the media has attacked him. He wrote that she was coerced. The media has said he said she was willing.

Now plenty of words are being used to picture him as immoral.

What seems weird is that Richard comes across to me as idealistically moral, almost religiously moral: with the misfortune to have a popular wave crashing into his philosophical castle.

    Case  Singular  Plural
    Nominative  homō  hominēs
    Genitive  hominis  hominum
    Dative  hominī  hominibus
    Accusative  hominem  hominēs
    Ablative  homine  hominibus
    Vocative  homō  hominēs

Yeah. This is true.

He was intermittently homeless while developing the free software stuff. It was kind of homeless lite because he was a hacker and often slept at work.

He was unable to register to vote at one point because he listed his work address and described himself as a squatter. He got his right to vote when some interview in some national publication came out stating the same thing. At that point, the registrar of voters accepted his work address on his application.

Coming from someone who admits to have written out of anger accumulated from different personal experience, admitting she iss after someone she had no idea who he is, who misrepresented what was said to fit her views and narrative, I would not give much credit to anything that was added afterwards in this appendix.

I'm pretty sure we could assassinate the character of anyone that started writing on the internet before we knew it was going on your permanent record.

Perhaps Richard is a heel, but he doesn't deserve unaccountable bullying and mob justice.

Where is the accountability for the publications and bloggers portraying him to be a rapist apologist?

Or, newly reformed pedophilia apologist given the latest developments?

> In the days of the PDP-1 only one person could use the machine, at the beginning at least. Several years later they wrote a timesharing system, and they added lots of hardware for it. But in the beginning you just had to sign up for some time. Now of course the professors and the students working on official projects would always come in during the day. So, the people who wanted to get lots of time would sign up for time at night when there were less competition, and this created the custom of hackers working at night. Even when there was timesharing it would still be easier to get time, you could get more cycles at night, because there were fewer users. So people who wanted to get lots of work done, would still come in at night. But by then it began to be something else because you weren't alone, there were a few other hackers there too, and so it became a social phenomenon. During the daytime if you came in, you could expect to find professors and students who didn't really love the machine, whereas if during the night you came in you would find hackers. Therefore hackers came in at night to be with their culture. And they developed other traditions such as getting Chinese food at three in the morning. And I remember many sunrises seen from a car coming back from Chinatown. It was actually a very beautiful thing to see a sunrise, cause' that's such a calm time of day. It's a wonderful time of day to get ready to go to bed. It's so nice to walk home with the light just brightening and the birds starting to chirp, you can get a real feeling of gentle satisfaction, of tranquility about the work that you have done that night.

> Another tradition that we began was that of having places to sleep at the lab. Ever since I first was there, there was always at least one bed at the lab. And I may have done a little bit more living at the lab than most people because every year of two for some reason or other I'd have no apartment and I would spend a few months living at the lab. And I've always found it very comfortable, as well as nice and cool in the summer. But it was not at all uncommon to find people falling asleep at the lab, again because of their enthusiasm; you stay up as long as you possibly can hacking, because you just don't want to stop. And then when you're completely exhausted, you climb over to the nearest soft horizontal surface. A very informal atmosphere.

RMS lecture at KTH (Sweden), 30 October 1986 https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/stallman-kth.en.html