this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2024
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His view did evolve after being talked to later about it. On the grounds that power dynamics involved in age differences create a coercive effect of even someone who could be mature enough to logically and emotionally grasp the concepts.
He is also deeply in the libertarian mind set that illegal means enforced with guns and batons and restrictions of rights, and that puts a higher bar to what should be legal.
Though I do totally agree with you on hero worship. Nobody is perfect and that impossibility is expontetially more true if want them to have been, to be and continue to be perfect forever.
Thing is, do we believe his sudden change of heart? It only happened once his job was on the line. He U-turned on his views that sex with children is fine just 2 days before he was forced out of his role.
To me, that reads as a last-ditch attempt to save his job, as opposed to a genuine sudden change in worldview for an opinion he held and championed for decades.
You know, like when a questionable politician has racist twitter posts from 5 years ago brought up in an election campaign and they're like *"Whaaaat? No no no I don't believe that anymore. I'm a changed man! Vote for me pls."
But maybe he really did change his mind 2 days before he was forced out of the FSF/MIT, and I'm just being pessimistic.
I think that it was a few months or so before the resignation, but I can't find his post about it to really give the exact date.
Nope. 2 days.
Announcement that having sex with children is bad, actually: 14th September 2019
Resignation: 16th September 2019
E: not really sure why you'd downvote a factual statement. Go look at his blog (stallman.org) for those dates.
Please stop defending this. Raping children is a bad thing. He's not a deity figure to be worshipped. He is human and he is fallible. Having excellent ideas when it comes to software does not mean he has excellent ideas in every aspect of his life. You don't need to defend him on this.
People are too quick to downvote for sure