Drew DeVault Can Still Redeem His Reputation. Revisiting His Attacks (and Attack Site) on Richard Stallman Might be a Good Start.
Drew DeVault does not deny that he has a hidden fetish/desire for loli stuff (which he was also sharing). He openly admits this while resorting to some 'straw men'.
To his credit, DeVault has done a lot more than this whole 'loligate' would have us believe; he created a lot of very useful software (we used to use his Gemini server, for instance), he has rightly spoken out against the 'crypto' (or similar, e.g. NFTs) Ponzi scheme, and nowadays he consistently and unequivocally blasts the slop-mania. The main issue with slop is not whether it has a business model or not but.... DOES IT WORK? (No. Hype.)
Set aside the plagiarism (legal issues), environmental concerns, impact on hardware prices, circular financing (accounting fraud) and so on.
DeVault, as part of his stance against slop, tries to salvage or save Vim from slop 'code'. This week he made a release of a slop-free Vim, which seems a bit like a power grab (leveraging rejection of slop to absorb many Vim users):
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Vim Classic 8.3 released
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Vim Classic is a Vim Fork for People Who Want Their Editor AI-Free
Drew DeVault of SourceHut fame has shipped the first release of his Vim 8.2-based fork.
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Vim Classic 8.3 released
Version 8.3 of Vim Classic has been released. This is the first release of the Vim fork since the project was announced in March.
Aside from 'loligate' and the attack site on RMS (which shows DeVault's utter hypocrisy; he did worse than RMS), we cannot think of anything sinister done by DeVault.
He can redeem his damaged name by revisiting his view on RMS in light of verifiable facts. As it stands right now, his attacks on RMS looks like the same opportunistic posturing we see in the SFC. Perhaps DeVault was attacking RMS to 'wash off' his own guilt (about his deviant sexual interests/intrigue).
DeVault has openly apologised (this past spring) about some things, but he can take it a step further and re-attain acceptability. From what we've seen online, there is still a "stench" surrounding his name and projects that he touches; Brodie Robertson has had similar problems (for similar reasons) and criticisms; nevertheless, he carries on making videos and DistroTube (Derek Taylor) did this long video about it. In a nutshell, DistroTube explains it's not a problem that is unique to "FOSS" and - put in perspective - we can find ways to get along. █
Image source: Drew DeVault