linuxmemes

Exactly. There have been things that I had believed for most of my life that were false. If we punish people for being wrong, then nobody will ever change their mind. The cost of doing so will be just too big.

Richard also doesn't care if some subject seems disgusting or if his ideas seem radical to most people. He will talk about the ethics anyway, without any emotions attached. That's what philosophers do.

They have to make it look like some conspiracy, a "cult", etc., since they have nothing else that they could use. There are always people attracted by that sort of thinking and for them it will be enough. In 2019 we saw multiple Free Software projects joining a hate campaign against Stallman based on a blog post that misquoted him and another blog post with fake rumours. The second one was linked by the Software Freedom Conservancy (https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/sep/16/rms-does-not-speak-for-us) and it contained stories like these:

I recall being told early in my freshman year “If RMS hits on you, just say ‘I’m a vi user’ even if it’s not true.”

I think all of those people are either blinded by hatred or have some other motive (in this case it's hard for me to believe they are all this stupid and can't recognise obvious trolling). Maybe some of them want proprietary software to exist and Richard's ideas are too radical for them. But the only way they can fight him or the FSF is with lies.