I don’t completely agree with many of RMS’ stances on sexual abuse. It often feels like he is a bit tone deaf in that regard. However, the cancel campaign against him was very much motivated and they twisted his words completely out of context in several cases. I’m not going to get into the tiresome argument of if he was right or not. But one thing I noticed back then was that many involved in the campaign had clear vested and conflicting interests with undisclosed financial motives. Watching it live, it was pretty clear that the campaign was sponsored by certain big names in the industry.

The anti-FSF campaign you mentioned and the anti-copyleft propaganda I mentioned shouldn’t be seen in isolation. It might sound like a conspiracy theory, but there were clear indications of a long term corporate-funded smear campaign to attack the foundations of FOSS - a hit job, if you will. Too bad I didn’t bother to save those back then. A lot of illuminating messages were forcefully deleted.

They really took advantage of the outrage mentality of common people. Meanwhile, people took the bait and went after the small fish while being completely oblivious to the big sharks feeding the outrage.