Stallman Report

Life is not all roses and rainbows, so today – a link to the Stallman Report. Yeas, the same Stallman who is the founder of the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project.

Even though we don’t see there the worst of the worst, it’s still a pretty damning report, detailing the history of Stallman’s abuse, victim blaming, gymnastics to excuse child abuse (!), and so on.

What’s worse, it’s not something unique to Stallman – in my experience, I can replace his name with several others and the report would be 90+% accurate, save for the direct quotes and RMS’s particular fixation on defending child abuse.

It’s a grim reminder that tech is still a very toxic and unsafe place for many people. And that we are waaaay to easy to turn a blind eye to the abuse, as long as the abuser is someone prominent and can be excused by combination of “genius” and “weirdness”.

Please, remember – sexual harassment isn’t a quirk, it’s a crime. Victim blaming isn’t a quirk, it’s a way to enable abusers.

And no, 14-year-olds still can’t consent, dammit!