Empathizing, no - through 4+ years of Donald Trump I am able to empathize quite well with abusers justifying their actions. I can imagine the sort of mental uni

Empathizing, no - through 4+ years of Donald Trump I am able to empathize quite well with abusers justifying their actions. I can imagine the sort of mental universe, of checks and balances, of personal expectations, which RMS's mind clearly does. The letter informs me more clearly of his aloofness and care-free attitude towards solving this dear problem. I'll tell you what it does keep me from, accepting him as a leader. The letter is evidence that the abuse will continue, amplified by the visibility and power of a leadership position. > "I've learned something from this about how to be kind to people who have been hurt." Implying that he will continue to hurt people. Of course all of us will ... however his kind of Hurt is the issue. He takes no responsibility for doing the hurting. He provides no reason to this behavior stopping here and now, in this letter. He admits to having difficulty with social interaction, and yet he provides no remedy, no, "Here is how I will fix this going forward." E.g. to solve this, he could use words which have first been edited by an assistant: he could only continue to talk publicly / talk with those whom he "leads" (which is a lot of people given his high-level role) through a filter. This is just an example, however it is unrealistic. It's his job as an adult to lay out a plan to remedy this. Linus had a turnaround moment, and wrote a convincing letter. Compare the two. His remedy seems to suggest that he might manage to grow his empathetic skills, while retaining his boss-level. That is irresponsible, IMO. This whole issue carries an insulting undertone, as the FSF Board deemed RMS worthy of being leader, when the (former!) supporters disagreed with that value-statement, given his insufficient skills.