That's character assassination and it has nothing to do with Stallman's prescient warnings, which have proven more or less true. Also, Stallman != Linux.
Also also, his "rape" remarks have been mischaracterized but also came pretty late in the game, and had nothing to with with Linux's alleged lack of impact. Linux existed and was successfully deployed decades before any of these remarks.
I really expect better from comments on HN. This is tabloid level.
The statement was why Stallman specifically has not had much of an impact, not Linux writ large. and, you're right. The rape comments came late. But let me remind you that it's emblematic of a larger... issue with Stallman's ability to communicate effectively. If you don't think the way Stallman behaves is at least partly to blame for people's ability to take him seriously, I don't know what to tell you.
Not a fan at all of Gruber. But more importantly, Stallman's lack of hygiene is not terribly relevant to his points. We're not talking about being friends with Stallman, after all.
I also think when RMS made his more salient and prescient points, most people weren't familiar with him personally, just with his remarks. The world was less connected back then. So his personality flaws really didn't make a huge impact (nor should they have).
I think it's a pretty good explanation of why he didn't gain more traction than he had -- he's always been a zealot with a proclivity of misguided rants that he proclaims loud and far.
I don’t think it’s simple character assassination: the question isn’t just “did he have some good points?” but, critically, “why did those points not reach more people?” and that underscores the degree to which a leader for a movement needs social skills at least as much as technical. Having trouble connecting with people outside of a certain MIT CS bubble, making sexist jokes or - especially - being on the whisper list women use to protect themselves for 3+ decades, choosing not to participate online or in person in ways which are effective for getting favorable media coverage or direct reach, are (with the exception of the creeper allegations) personal choices anyone is free to make but not great for building a movement.
Even if all of the harassment claims are the social awkwardness his defenders claim, turning off that many people is a terrible way to build a movement. Maybe we say many open source developers are willing to overlook that, and there aren’t many developers deterred (citation needed, but let’s ignore that for now), but that’s still a problem if it means that reporters and people who are not developers say “this guy’s a weirdo” and that leads to skepticism or simply not investing energy promoting those ideas.
He is a character with certain arrogance and some of his jokes might not be too funny, but these are basically smears and his detractors don't seem convincing at all to be honest.
