RMS has called himself "borderline autistic". His socially clueless black and white thinking makes it look like he is far in the spectrum. RMS is anal about meanings of terms and their use. That's not working well in the current climate where words carry perceived intent. I find myself agreeing with RMS with most of the terminology and its use in this case. Women who tell stories about him paint a picture of lonely socially incompetent man who makes super creepy attempts to connect opposite sex.
I have worked in jobs where there have been very strange creepy people, both women and men. Some are angry and tense. Some are odd and talk restless or slightly disturbing stuff that make everyone uncomfortable. But if they do their work well they can stay. Others give them some room. It's called tolerance.
If RMS was just random superhacker doing his thing. I would defend him. His boss should find a position for him where he can contribute and other people should feel free to feel uncomfortable and avoid him.
But RMS is de facto leader and public figure in movement that is also political. He does not deserve the same level of consideration as normal HR headache would. Even if everything against him would be completely unjust, there is no requirement for just treatment for top leaders. They can be sacked for any reason whatsoever.
Can we please stop excusing bad behavior with some form of "oh because autism"? It's an insult to the many, many neuro-atypical people who don't say shitty, stupid things online, who don't act creepy around women, who don't have a sign on their MIT office that says "Knight for Justice (Also: Hot Ladies)", who don't have a gross mattress in their office where they encourage people to lie topless, who don't try to pressure women into dating them by saying they'll kill themselves otherwise. All of those things describe RMS, things that have been mostly quietly ignored and hand-waved away for decades.
We don't have to tolerate people who make women feel unsafe and unwelcome in our (or any) industry.
You seem to be arguing the usual tired old thing: "but he's a genius and does such great work that we should tolerate the bad things he does". I really thought we'd started to move past that over the last few years.
Attributing all his behavior to his autism is wrong, you're right, but autistic people do have social problems that can influence some behavior, like the ability to pick up social cues and learn something is wrong before hearing others say it.
Also, you're doing a bait and switch, neuro-atypical covers a large swathe of people including autistic people. May be you're using it here as a mere synonym for "autistic" for lingual flare, but it includes people who are generally typical in social settings.
I agree with both of you, and I think stallman also had the misfortune here to be so beloved that people are willing to give him a pass on a lot of the things he's said.
It's absolutely true that neuro-atypical people can learn from others, even if they can't pick up on social cues the way neurotypical people can. I'm guessing stallman just goes unchallenged on much of this stuff because of the lingering effects of the rockstar syndrome in tech, where "great men," geniuses, whatever, get cut a lot of slack because of their position in the industry.
It's only recently that I've seen a shift away from prizing our jerk 10x rockstars ("hey, he's so smart he can keep the whole codebase in his head!") to valuing better-behaved people. stallman seems like he'd be even more isolated than the typical one of those, with less chance to have the rough edges smoothed off in the rock tumbler of social interaction.
Again, not an excuse, but I'm more interested in, "how did we get here?" (where "here" is a decades-long public figure questioning the wrongness of pedophilia and making jokes like the "emacs virgin" thing well into the 2000s).
My daughter who has autism constantly says things that could be considered offensive because she's not aware of sensitivities around race, gender, orientation, etc. It certainly can explain it for certain individuals. You can't say many neuro-atypical people don't say bad things so it can't be an excuse for him. "Neuro-atypical" is a huge, huge group of people who are very different.
The ultimate thing is though that as the leader of the FSF foundation his actions have broader consequences and demand a stricter scrutiny. He was given a loooong time to learn and improve, people have been talking about how he's actually kind of sexist and problematic for years.
Stallman's job as head of FSF wasn't just to be technically competent, which he has in spades, but to forward the mission of the foundation and a certain level of social acuity is a necessary part of that.
Can you link to sources regarding Stallmans behavior towards women? It’s not that I don’t believe you but because I tried to google “Richard Stallman suicide threat” and couldn’t come up with anything... I do want to believe you, but I can’t propagate information without evidence.
So far as I can tell the name "Stallman" appears nowhere in that document. (I'm not 100% sure because it seems to be a scanned PDF -- but searching for some other words I can see on the page appears to work OK.)
> Can we please stop excusing bad behavior with some form of "oh because autism"? It's an insult to the many, many neuro-atypical people who don't say shitty, stupid things online.
No it's not an insult to anyone. It's an attemoted explanation of why some neuro-atypical people behave in atypical fashion.
Are you, or the parent, a mental health professional? If not, then I'd suggest you aren't qualified to tell if he's even autistic at all, or, if he is, that his autism is what's causing the problems here, not terrible beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes. In that light, using autism as an excuse for Stallman's behavior is just an unfounded theory by an armchair psychiatrist with no business making diagnoses.
The wisdom of attempting to diagnose someone without a formal diagnosis is an entirely different issue, and I agree it is unwise.
The original claim was that saying that someone's anti-social behaviour was due to being neurological atypical, was an insult to everyone who is neurological atypical. This is clearly nonsense.
OK. Let's take an analogy. Do you believe that saying that a history of parental violence contributed to the boy to be violent in his own turn is an insult to everyone who was beaten up by their father?
I didn't read the parent's post as "excusing" Stallman at all.
I certainly would not excuse him! Nor should anybody else!
But given his stature, it's surely worth discussing and understanding him. And any attempt to do that would certainly have to include his famously black-and-white and self-described borderline autistic thinking.
Pointing out that somebody is austistic (or left-handed, or that they have psoriasis, or dyslexic, or seven feet tall, or...) and thinking about how that may affect their actions isn't excuse-making. It is empathy. It is critical thinking.
> I didn't read the parent's post as "excusing" Stallman at all.
I did. To me, it says "I've known a lot of creepy people; as long as they get their work done, it's ok". And I don't agree with that.
> self-described borderline autistic thinking.
That's another thing: has he actually been diagnosed? If not, well, he may still be autistic, but that just sounds like RMS himself hiding behind a shield of autism that he's crafted himself, which is pretty low.
> Pointing out that somebody is austistic and thinking about how that may affect their actions isn't excuse-making. It is empathy. It is critical thinking.
Maybe, maybe not. It depends on what was written. The parent even said "if RMS was some random superhacker doing his thing" he'd defend him. To me, that's excuse-making, not empathy or critical thinking.
But I do agree that autism can certainly explain some behaviors, and it's worth trying to understand people, even though the explanations may not excuse the behavior. The parent's post just did not strike me as that.
> "but he's a genius and does such great work that we should tolerate the bad things he does". I really thought we'd started to move past that over the last few years.
Nobody thinks this of RMS. He's a competent developer who was in the right place at the right time to found a new ideology: The idea that software should work for the user, the only way for software to do so is to empower the user to also be a developer themselves. That's all.
Being competent himself wasn't a sufficient condition for anyone to listen to him, but it was necessary.
This isn't about disagreement; it's about creating a hostile environment for women at MIT and continuing to do so for years. I'm not prepared to tolerate things like that.
If we want to talk about disagreement...
He only recently recanted (with quite suspicious timing) his view that pedophilia is fine if the child gives consent. No, I'm not going to tolerate that view. I wouldn't want to work for someone that had that view.
In the email thread under discussion, he wanted to redefine "sexual assault" and "child rape" to something that agrees more with his sense of linguistic purity. No, that's not ok.
At some point, when people keep having disgusting views, and won't change them, you give up on them entirely. It's just not worth the effort anymore.
It seems to me that nobody who remains within the bounds of the law, but consistently flirts with the bounds of polite society deserves no respect from polite society but every bit of due process in a nation of laws. So the only matter that seems of any value is constraining the scope of 'bad behavior' within the context of polite society.
Hand waving and quietly ignoring is the mark of tolerance. But one wonders exactly how polite society is. One certainly presumes the existence of both knights for justice and hot ladies in a nation of millions. What society are we talking about?
I don't expect MIT to be any more representative of society than the NFL. It is a magnet for extreme people who defer common sense and common acceptance in search of very particular goals. I wonder if we were to get rid of Stallman and replace him, deserving as he must be, for a bust in our Hall of Fame if our society could resist defaming his very image and existence.
It is you and those like you that make people feel unsafe and unwelcome. RMS is quirky and weird and he says what many don't feel safe to talk about. The recent assault based not on fact or principle but rather implied (assumed)intent is a farce and wont lead to good things. Tech is dead and RMS is a fallen king. Take your PC bullying and wreck havoc over everything the geeks or "autists" created. I'm moving on but the industry is no longer a place of inclusion and all of the safe guards put in place were not enough to stop societies wicked. Enjoy eating each other in your Brave New World.
And yet, women have been driven out of CSAIL for years by RMS's (and others') behavior (I know several, personally). And he's only being driven out now.
>But RMS is de facto leader and public figure in movement that is also political
What does this mean ? He is a leader of an organisation related to software freedom (or more pedantically, the choice of licences used for software). How is it relevant ? All you are saying is, "Famous people can't talk like that".
* General principle that people in influential positions have less protections and should have more scrutiny than average John Doe. Celebrities and influential people have less legal privacy protections.
* People are free to speak as individuals, but they may not be free to speak while they have public position in the organization. Elected members of the organization like FSF don't have the same protections as employers have. They represent the organization even outside the work. Their public position gives them a platform where what they say goes trough bullhorn and private becomes public and reflects the organization. If something they say harms the organization they should go even if they are right.
There's plenty of ground between "Stallman shouldn't get a pass for years of varying grades of crappy remarks and opinions as a public leader of the FSF" and "the PyCon dongle thing got way out of hand..."
I agree that they are very different. The GP said that the famous people should be very careful about what they say or have the risk of being fired. I only wanted to notice that everyone should be very careful about what they say or have the risk of being fired.
Celebrities do have protection from any injustice, and mob rule is unjust. They can't demand punishment for other people for mild disturbance, but that's all, they have all other rights and protections.
If you are the leader for an organisation focused on advocacy (i.e. raising awareness and communicating), then your words become de facto the words of the organisation, even with comments not related to your organisations purpose.
If your leader appears to advocate pedophilia, then your organisation no longer becomes "that organisation that advocates for free software", but "that organisation run by a pedophile apologist".
He doesn't advocate pedophilia. Nothing has changed for years. Are you advocating it?
He has just been completely misrepresented by some popular media as supporting statutory rape, and you are fueling the fire.
It is pure bullshit - the journalists that write (or publications that publish) headlines that completely reverse meaning should be held accountable for their lies.
It is libel: make it appear Richard said she was willing when he definitely said she was coerced (within the exact same paragraph as the "quote"). Seems she was 18 too - any organisation publishing clearly slanderous headings designed for sensation and payment for eyeballs should be punished.
I disagree with Stallman's skepticism (I do think it harms children and I don't think children can make that choice). But that one liner does not make him a pedophilia advocate. That makes him someone who is wrong on that topic.
He didn't know what he was talking about, but felt it was okay to use his public platform to say it anyway. That's not scepticism. It's laziness. We have reams of evidence to show that paedophilia is harmful to children, and a 5 minute web search would have returned some of it.
> He didn't know what he was talking about, but felt it was okay to use his public platform to say it anyway.
You've described basically every single human being in tech I've ever met, they just don't have as big a platform. See: Musk's twitter feed, for instance.
If this is so easy, please provide links to research, preferably not done by a clearly biased organization. (E.g. not IICSA) Books are acceptable too, as long as they're research.
There are only a handful of case studies of really bad cases I'm aware of. And they're not that exacting in follow-up.
Note research, not opinion pieces.
Good quality papers. I found just a handful. I'm having trouble fishing then out from the thousands of opinion pieces.
Edit: I found one credible meta-analysis so far, and the results are not good. Most of abuse is not reported. Impact is not known, how handling of it is done is unknown to affect severity.
It took him a decade to retract that statement, said retraction conveniently occurring when this shitstorm about Epstein is reaching a crescendo. Retractions and apologies with such timing appear awfully convenient and insincere.
The point is it doesn't really matter what he advocates. He's using his position of power (given to him to promote Free Software) to push his controversial political opinions instead. It doesn't matter if those opinions are right or wrong. What matters is they are controversial and that he's using his platform to express those opinions.
If he said this anonymously or in private it would've been fine. The problem is him using his platform for stuff that it's not meant to be used for. So now they're taking away his platform. Seems fair to me.
Just picking away at the 'what matters is that they are controversial' statement - that isn't in Stallman's control and it relies on 'everyone knowing' something and evidently without people ever being able to discuss it or test out ideas once they have reached a certain level of respectability. Stallman wasn't trying to make this an international topic of discussion. Important people are going to be wrong about things and calling for resignations is not a sustainable solution if it isn't directly in their line of expertise.
Everyone bar nobody has formed an opinion on an important topic that is completely wrong at some point in their life. To correct their opinion, they will need to talk to somebody who will explain why it is wrong.
This wasn't Stallman trying to use his position on the FSF to spread his opinions, he was using his position at MIT to try and defend a colleague to other academics. And what you are describing is an unreasonable standard to hold anyone to if a topic isn't supposed to be their central area of expertise.
It does matter what he advocates and it does matter whether his opinions are technically correct and incorrect. The 5-days-comment-to-resignation mob are doing damage here; and setting up terrifying dynamics. They aren't going to stop at Stallman.
The point is that it doesn't really matter what anyone actually says or thinks. If they are in the public sphere and holds power they will be got at for some hurt.
Truth doesn't count if the thing hurts someone. Intent doesn't count if harm was caused. This is a view that many here would seem absurd but which many here would also agree with.
Does this still seem fair? Is truth and intent not that important when it comes to tricky issues?
"The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia" also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally--but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness."
RMS on June 28th, 2003 https://stallman.org/archives/2003-mar-jun.html
--------------------------
"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing. "
RMS on June 5th, 2006) https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%202006%20(Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party
--------------------------
" There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.
Granted, children may not dare say no to an older relative, or may not realize they could say no; in that case, even if they do not overtly object, the relationship may still feel imposed to them. That's not willing participation, it's imposed participation, a different issue. "
RMS on Jan 4th, 2013) https://stallman.org/archives/2013-jan-apr.html#04_January_2013_(Pedophilia
Well, he started the movement and got it very far, with the dominant OS using his foundation's license. Despite his limitations. There is no one in the movement who should have the authority to sack him.
He said things as a certain role model or in a setup where he shouldn't.
It's just reasonable to remove him from those positions.
Independly I find it very weird what he was saying nonetheless and for this he falls under a category of humans which I don't think are worth it to give such amount of support.
There are other people out there which are worth it more.
I stopped working with people who might be technical good or very good but dicks. I hate working with dicks. There is no amount of brilliance which justifice being a dick.
So the lesson is: Don't selflessly give your work away for nothing out of idealism lest it improve the world in some fashion all out of proportion to the budget involved because, if you do, we shall surely expect your head on a pike at some point for some wholly unrelated personal gaff.
Rather than, you know, finding some humane, compassionate approach to dealing with the personal shortcomings of someone who has done so very much for the world.
No, the lesson is: don't treat women poorly, period. And if you happen to be a notable public figure and treat women poorly, it'll be that much worse for you. Giving your work away for free and being idealistic doesn't give you a pass on bad behavior.
I would agree that the severity of RMS's remarks regarding Epstein/Minsky is lower than the press is making it out to be. But Stallman's bad behavior stretches back decades, and this oddly-shaped, not-entirely-correct straw happened to finally break the camel's back. Good riddance.
The thing is, people told him about his behavior for years, and he never changed his ways. When conferences added that speakers were not supposed to flirt or give sexually suggestive comments to attendants, he circumvented that by asking women to go across the street and gave them his "pleasure cards" [1].
After almost 30 years of people giving him a pass and trying to make him understand, I am glad that he is getting some reckoning. His views are abhorrent and he gives no indication he is willing to change them.
He gave men his "pleasure card", too. [1]
He put in books he signed (for a man in this example.) [2]
The text is:
sharing good books, good food and exotic music and dance
tender embraces
unusual sense of humor
[contact details]
There is perfectly benign interpretation of this expressing the things from which he derives pleasure. The most plausible and available interpretation of "pleasure card" is a dad joke level word play on "business card", especially when considering his role in de-commercializing software.
Talking to women isn't a crime. If he didn't take no for an answer or asked women out in inappropriate circumstances, that's a problem; but we have no accounts of him doing that. All we have here is an Nth hand story [3] in which he supposedly left a conference with a woman (singular, you made it plural.) and then gave her his card. If we choose to imagine there was romantic intent, a) there's no suggestion he coerced her into leaving and b) he took pains to respect the conference's CoC. Even this extremely reaching accusation has zero implication that he disrespected an individual's volition. Sage Sharp's indictment that he "skirted around the conference's CoC" is bizarre unless the real intent is that men like Stallman should be closeted heterosexuals.
There are numerous aspects to all this hand wringing about his cards and interest in meeting women that one has to choose to view through a prurient lens to make it sexual. Even then, it's only problematic to a puritanical world view in which it's wrong for people to be sexual beings and individuals are dispossessed of their self-determination.
Who says his head got lopped off? He was forced to resign his position at MIT, which seems fair given past bad behavior there (plus he really has no useful relevance there anyway), and he was forced to resign as head of the FSF, which is perhaps debatable, but not the end of the world.
This just happened. Let's check in with him in six months, and see if he's still breathing. If his experience is like many of the shitty men whose misbehavior has been unmasked as part of the MeToo movement, I'm sure he'll end up back on his feet at some point, whether he deserves to or not.
Because college is where women are driven out of computer science, by behavior from professors and peers. If you want to talk about fields where men are driven out (and they do exist: primary school teaching and nursing come to mind) go to a thread about those. But either way, derailing this discussion doesn't help.
The men interviewed for the paper disagreed that discrimination, social barriers, stereotypes, or other forms of injustice play a role. ("I don’t feel that there is any injustice… men who want to teach, are able to. It’s not like we’re being held down.")
It also points out that a greater number of men than women choose to go into primary education during college, which is the opposite of what we'd expect if they were being driven out by professors and peers.
"The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution,
"prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest
and pedophilia" also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally--but that is unfortunate. All of these
acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness."
RMS on June 28th, 2003 https://stallman.org/archives/2003-mar-jun.html
--------------------------
"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm
seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by
the idea that their little baby is maturing. "
RMS on June 5th, 2006) https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%202006%20(Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party
--------------------------
" There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.
Granted, children may not dare say no to an older relative, or may not realize they could say no; in that case, even if they do
not overtly object, the relationship may still feel imposed to them. That's not willing participation, it's imposed participation, a different issue. "
RMS on Jan 4th, 2013) https://stallman.org/archives/2013-jan-apr.html#04_January_2013_(Pedophilia
Yes, precisely this. It's a controversial opinion, certainly that makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but it also seems to be a considered one. Notably absent from posts where people pasting these quotes is any argument against the claims made by RMS. We are apparently meant to assume he is both wrong and malevolent merely for holding an opinion we find uncomfortable.
Who owns a corpse? If the former inhabitant of the then-living body had designated a particular heir via a will or similar legal instrument, one might acquire consent from that heir?
Yes. That's that's my point. You seem to think that I'm contradicting myself. Either I'm expressing myself badly or you are misunderstanding my argument.
You write this like it's an insult, but with a dozen stuff and million dollar budget he's done more for the world than most of us could do with 1000 staff and a billion dollar budget.
I wrote it as a poke at the parent poster who suggested that top leaders should expect to be held to different standards than the rest of us when speaking of a man who enjoyed none of the perks of being a "top leader" while contributing a lot.
> That's not working well in the current climate where words carry perceived intent.
I agree that there's a current climate that's even less amenable to open discussion than at other times. However, I disagree that words carrying perceived intent is something new. Any time you make an assertion about individual facts of a particular situation, people's first assumption is going to be that you're pushing the narrative best supported by that assertion. Telling people what you're not saying will continue to be important even if the current climate improves.
EDIT: To clarify, I'm stating a general principle, not saying anything about what RMS did or didn't say, or did or didn't intend to say. I don't have time to dig into all that.
> But RMS is de facto leader and public figure in movement that is also political. He does not deserve the same level of consideration as normal HR headache would. Even if everything against him would be completely unjust, there is no requirement for just treatment for top leaders. They can be sacked for any reason whatsoever.
If his past behavior was sufficient justification for his sacking, then that should be enough. However, that is not why he was sacked. He was sacked on the basis of false allegations, and as an attempt by MIT to deflect from their own complicity in the Epstein scandal.
This is not (only) about finding a place for weirdo super-hackers to contribute to society (without bothering people too much) but about the truth dammit.
> He does not deserve the same level of consideration as normal HR headache would. Even if everything against him would be completely unjust, there is no requirement for just treatment for top leaders. They can be sacked for any reason whatsoever.
The only people who deserve less consideration are those that pick and choose who to treat justly.
"When I was a teen freshman, I went to a buffet lunch at an Indian restaurant in Central Square with a graduate student friend and others from the AI lab. I don’t know if he and I were the last two left, but at a table with only the two of us, Richard Stallman told me of his misery and that he’d kill himself if I didn’t go out with him."
As someone actually autistic, he doesn't get to blame being a douchecanoe on being autistic.
> His socially clueless black and white thinking makes it look like he is far in the spectrum.
Then _learn_. Also, we're not talking about not getting social cues about when it's okay to start talking, we're talking his considered and repeated position on issues such as sexual assault, and his _actual actions_ towards teenagers.
> But if they do their work well they can stay. Others give them some room. It's called tolerance.
Great tolerance for the people your creeps chase out or abuse, thanks. You actually do have to pick, and if you pick people like RMS, you pick against all the people that can't - and shouldn't have to - deal with an environment people like RMS create.
Sad to see that you're being downvoted. Richard Stallman's insane statements about child abuse have nothing to do with autism. The man has defended pedophilia and apparently also harassed women throughout his career. Absolutely disgusting behaviour that has nothing to do with being neuro-atypical.
> As someone actually autistic, he doesn't get to blame being a douchecanoe on being autistic.
Was he a douchecanoe? Is that even a helpful label for you to apply to him? Was he claiming he behaved / behaves the way you think he does solely because he's borderline autistic, or are you extrapolating?
The President "should" also be forced to resign, but the power politics does not support that for a whole host of reasons. It's extraordinary to watch "Christian" evangelical moralists defend him, but in some ways that's the logical conclusion of their moral contortions.
Then again, if someone believes a man in the sky created the world in 6 days, claims the earth is 6000 years old, ... , what stops them from defending the POTUS? Why expect logic where no other logic seems to apply?
It doesn't really matter for most decision wether the universe came to being 6e3, 6e9 or 12e9 years ago, or always has been ... unless you are a geologist.
That’s the standard for being “canceled” now? An accusation? Anybody can accuse people of things. We have courts and the presumption of innocence for a reason.
The courts are for determining whether someone should go to jail. But anyone can draw conclusions about whether or not they want to deal with someone who is accused of a crime.
Someone might be accused of child molestation, but never stood trial. Would a parent then be obligated to be ok with the accused being alone with their children since 'hey he's innocent until proven guilty'? Should someone who had been credibly accused of many instances of sexual misconduct be trusted as if they are a model citizen?
The presumption of innocence is there to ensure someone gets a fair trial in court. It doesn't mean everyone else has to ignore evidence of criminal conduct until a conviction comes down. It also doesn't always mean that someone who was found not guilty by a criminal court, didn't actually do what they were accused of. It just means the court didn't find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
By evicting him, and finding someone who's better, making the parameters more clear each time.
Who can say what would have been in place if a particular leader hadn't? They take oxygen. Some would even say we should move away from the model of a few leaders representing many.
A nomination to one of the two major political parties says plenty enough about the culture that allows this while targeting people like Stallman who haven't actually hurt anyone for their unusual opinions.
I have worked in jobs where there have been very strange creepy people, both women and men. Some are angry and tense. Some are odd and talk restless or slightly disturbing stuff that make everyone uncomfortable. But if they do their work well they can stay. Others give them some room. It's called tolerance.
If RMS was just random superhacker doing his thing. I would defend him. His boss should find a position for him where he can contribute and other people should feel free to feel uncomfortable and avoid him.
But RMS is de facto leader and public figure in movement that is also political. He does not deserve the same level of consideration as normal HR headache would. Even if everything against him would be completely unjust, there is no requirement for just treatment for top leaders. They can be sacked for any reason whatsoever.