I actually just emailed RMS about this and I’m genuinely curious what he says. If anyone else is interested, I’ll ask if he’s fine with me sharing some of the response.
Just what we need. The opinions of someone who thinks having sex with children is a good thing.
He never said that. I agree he was more skeptical than I’d like, but he eventually was informed and apologized.
You are mistaken:
“The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, ‘prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia’ also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally–but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.”
RMS on June 28th, 2003
"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren’t voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing. "
RMS on June 5th, 2006
"There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.
RMS on Jan 4th, 2013
Oh yes, an update would be really interesting! (Even though I agree with @sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works in all points.)
My opinion on this whole topic: I don’t like the decision, a Free Software project should only prevent people from contributing in very rare occasions (e.g. having actively tried to sabotage the project). I don’t think this was the case, because I presume that the Linux Foundation was forced by the U.S. government to kick the maintainers out. The should’ve also communicated more clearly to prevent the confusion. (Russian trolls will cry out no matter how they phrased that.)
Edit: Depending on their power as a maintainer, they might be hired by intelligence and forced to just wave a backdoor through. With the Russian government waging a hybrid war against the U.S. and Europe, this poses a real problem.
Another Edit: @Allero@lemmy.today mentioned that apart from Russia, the U.S., Israel and China also have a very well funded intelligence service. So banning Russian maintainers because of a potential backdoor when there are American maintainers (which could be agents) as well? I don’t think it makes sense, but unfortunately the Linux Foundation won’t be able to resist the “complience requirements”.