linuxmemes

He probably talked about age of consent in most of European countries. As mentioned by CrypticCoffee above even in UK it is 16.

He was not friends with Epstein and never met him. He called him a serial rapist.

beat me to it… yeah, he said that weird shit about ‘consenting’ underage children not being traumatized or some shit… or there was no evidence they were… later apologized and said he was shown evidence but, nah… plus the whole Epstein friendship thing…(maybe he was just naively getting fsf donations? ) dude did some fantastic things for computers and humanity overall with gnu… but he’s definitely not cool

That's not exactly what happened.

1. In 2019 he was misquoted by a blogger and then by the press:

Famed Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As 'Entirely Willing'

Source: https://www.vice.com/en/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-described-epstein-victims-as-entirely-willing

What he really said was:

The injustice is in the word "assaulting". The term "sexual assault" is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation: taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y, which is much worse than X.

The accusation quoted is a clear example of inflation. The reference reports the claim that Minsky had sex with one of Epstein's harem. (See https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jeffrey-epstein-sex-trafficking-island-court-records-unsealed.) Let's presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it).

The word "assaulting" presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex.

We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.

I've concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term "sexual assault" in an accusation.

Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism.

Source: https://stallmansupport.org/explaining-events-that-led-to-stallman-resignation-csail-emails.html

There is no "Epstein friendship" that I know of. He called him a "serial rapist" before that (source).

This is what he was criticized for at the time + unconfirmed rumors (some of them debunked now) of allegedly creepy behavior around women. You can read more on https://stallmansupport.org.

2. Some people dug up his old blog posts.

later apologized and said he was shown evidence but, nah…

Between 2003 and 2013 a few times he expressed his views on pedophilia. It was literally a few times, but yes this is something he actually said and used to believe. He hadn't mentioned that topic again until it was brought up in 2019. That's when he said that he had changed his mind since then and that he was wrong. You can read about it on Wikipedia (can't find the link to the original quote at the moment): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Controversies

As far as I know that was the last time he mentioned this topic.

So now that we got the facts right, the question is if he should be punished for having a wrong/stupid opinion on something 10 years ago. I think no, but apparently some people disagree.