A Healed Reputation of a Movement's Leader and His Robust Message
They incite people against Richard Stallman because he uses the "F" word, Freedom - a forbidden, taboo concept in the age of DRM, TPM, and online disservices where people own and control nothing
The message of Free software is a clear and important one. It resonates with many people, who otherwise don't quite understand why they lose control of their computers, data, even their "content" online (a certain Louis - the famous one of the Rossmann Group - has just had his video removed due to "libel"; he does not control his own videos!).
Richard Stallman is about to give a big public talk about a number of points including the above. He won't just focus on how he started GNU/Linux and what Free software is or what it means. He'll explain why it's important. Some people advised the organisers to share the talk in PeerTube, but we see no evidence that this will happen. It's important that his talks aren't shared only in Google's YouTube.
I myself understand the "risks" of talking about Software Freedom. Since 2012 I've spoken against secure boot [sic] and for that I've been subjected to a campaign of harassment and slander online.
What is this "secure boot" thing anyway? In simple and very fundamental terms, when a person uses a computer device he or she needs to power it on and then there's typically a bootstrapping process wherein some key hardware components are probed and may signal issues (hence particular patterns of beeps). Then, a process kicks off a sequence of instructions that occupy registers and memory on the machine (not ROM but RAM, then a non-volatile storage devices like a hard-drive, SD card etc.) and a consortium of very untrustworthy companies (known for their blind obedience to spy agencies) wish to add an attestation-like process to verify the system is a "known" or "trusted" one; this isn't about security, it's about control. It is about those companies - with Microsoft as a principal one - controlling what the user can and cannot run on the physical machine, even if that machine doesn't have Windows on it and never had Windows on it.
To people who wish to control their computing (not just enthusiasts and hackers but also states that know of some security flaws and wish to correct/close them) this poses a major barrier and an obstacle to security.
This is the sort of message Dr. Stallman and others have spread for a long time. Last year he complained in a public talk that the term "security" had lost its meaning. People who actively work to undermine security like to claim that they do so for "security".
For Software Freedom ideals to spread and for Free software to be fully understood and appreciated we need to protect the bearers of the message. If that means suing bullies and serial defamers [1, 2], then so be it. 12 years is far too long to tolerate online abuse from Microsofters and their allies at Microsoft, whose "hired guns" in London appear to be vanishing their tweets this morning (unless it's a technical problem in MElon's "X").
The more or the harder you try to silence the message of Software Freedom, the more popular or ubiquitous it'll become, more so when Software Freedom is based on a culture of resistance. The more aggressively you push against resistors, the more credibility they will gain. █