We're not talking about Minsky; we're talking about a hit piece on Richard Stallman, which brings up his opinion on the morality of sleeping with 17-year-olds a

We're not talking about Minsky; we're talking about a hit piece on Richard Stallman, which brings up his opinion on the morality of sleeping with 17-year-olds as a reason to revile him. The age of consent in Finland is apparently 16. Should we ask Linus Torvalds what his opinions on the matter are, and force him to step down if he disagrees? The age of consent in Italy is apparently 14 (!). I know a number of Italians prominently involved in the kernel community; shall we ask them what their opinions are? It's important that we distinguish exactly what it is that we're accusing someone of, and make sure that each individual element is true, for two reasons. One is just plain justice sake: it's not right to railroad someone and force them to step down from the organization they founded based on bad logic and twisted facts. The second is, Stallman is not the only target here: everyone else is looking at this and deciding how they need to act in response. If what the average guy sees is "he expressed a minority viewpoint and he was lynched", then they'll learn to simply not express minority viewpoints; they won't see what was really problematic about either the current behavior, or Stallman's history. His "but is it really assault" defense of Minsky is definitely problematic given his position and the situation. And apparently he's had a long history of "creepy" behavior, along with a long history of people telling him he needs to change. Those are good reasons to ask him to step down. But it is not true that Richard Stallman said the girl was "entirely willing"; that is just a lie, and covers up the real problems Stallman had. And regarding his question about whether a 17-year-old can give consent -- be consistent: either drop this issue, or take it up with every European in our community.