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Sure, let's talk about Bushnell, @migueldeicaza. For context, let's begin here: a variety of powerful people at MIT - none of them RMS - knowingly and enthusiastically sold out the institution to a millionaire pedophile and eugenicist, and attempted to cover it up.
As news of the depth of depravity at MIT broke, an alum engaged in a media campaign against RMS. In this campaign, she directly, objectively lied about what RMS said. She succeeded in shifting media attention away from the depraved MIT leadership that aided Epstein.
Bushnell has now jumped out in front of that parade to declare it virtuous, overdue, and furthermore yet another validation of his own high morals. He even acknowledged that this campaign against RMS is based on a lie -- but claims to retroactively see that RMS deserves such.
Astonishingly, at a time when attention is being drawn away from deep corruption at MIT - by the spectacle of harming RMS - Bushnell has the gall to declare RMS' concern about the facts "untimely". Again, Bushnell is silent about the actual service and aid MIT gave Epstein.
Bushnell, in the course of aiding the MIT cover-up and self-promoting on the lie-based media campaign against RMS, claims the authority to psychoanalyze RMS' defense of Minsky. So let's begin by looking at what RMS' take on Minsky was:
RMS takes as a given that Guiffre was coerced. He believes here statement that she was directed to have sex with Minsky. The deposition doesn't say so but he takes as an assumption that Minsky did have sex with her. And he argues Minsky was likely a dupe.
He did not say that Minsky was innocent or did nothing wrong - quite the opposite. He argued - plausibly, I think - that Minsky probably didn't understand just how depraved the situation with Epstein was. And RMS didn't make this observations just to be contrarian.
A righteous protest against the corruption at MIT was being organized. RMS, a political organizer with decades of positive track record, suggested that the organizers against MIT would be better being more precise with their language.
That - the plain text of RMS' emails - Bushnell "authoritatively" dismisses as RMS' loyalty to a supposed "protector". Bushnell uses his essay to claim to spill the tea on how RMS was supposedly coddled over the years. Well. Bushnell and I overlapped in our employment at FSF.
One remarkable thing about the FSF at that time, when we worked out of dinky spare offices on the campus of MIT, was the degree of participation by women. In the tiny society that was then the FSF, women were more prominent than I had seen in Silicon Valley, or acadamia prior.
The general culture of inclusiveness and tolerance that RMS fostered meant that, at least when I was there alongside Bushnell, that social circle in and around the organization was feminized and all the stronger for it.
This does not mean, of course, that RMS (or any of us) never gave offense or acted stupidly. But Bushnell's portrait showing a depraved sexist coddled by this or that MIT prof. is simply bullshit, and Bushnell probably knows or should know that in his heart.
p.s.: In the closet-sized "office" Bushnell, McGrath, and I shared for a time we did have some spider plants as part of a running silly joke. They did not actually scare RMS away OF COURSE and he usually had helpful criticism and advice of our efforts, from my point of view.
