The attempts to remove Stallman involved people bringing up stories and incidents of how awful he is to work with or even generally be nearby even beyond the most popular incidents. In turn, multiple open source and FSF organizations cut ties with him and the org when he came back to the FSF which is the whole 'you need people to defend the organization' problem comes from.
And so the FSF becomes more irrelevant because they're more interested in the cult of personality rather than the actual principals of free software.
Personally, i'd rather have RMS stay in place despite all of this than allowing a character assassination to work out. Because i consider the latter more awful.
Edit: First commit of the rms-open-letter is by Molly de Blanc. TIL she is an ethics moralist like Coraline Ada Ehmke, which paints the whole RMS controversy in a new light.
Then you have chosen for the FSF to die on the hill of the cult of RMS. You've clearly staked your ground and nothing can convince you otherwise, even though there are vast instances of the things RMS has said and done from people that have worked with him and around him.
And I hope you realize the deep irony in you complaining about character assassination while you set out to do the same thing to try and prove an irrelevant point.
> Richard M. Stallman, frequently known as RMS, has been a dangerous force in the free software community for a long time. He has shown himself to be misogynist, ableist, and transphobic, among other serious accusations of impropriety.
I think if someone wrote it themselves as a comment here on HN it would constitute flaming and would get flagged.
Given the last attempts to remove Stallman, I'm confident that he isn't alone in OSS having these traits.