During the controversy I described in Condemning Censorship, Even of Werewolves one of the parties characterized me as “nuts and in decline.”.
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Here is part of what I learned: There comes a point in the development of every reform movement at which it has to kill the founder.
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Yes, this means that more than a decade ago I knew that the day would likely come when significant portions of the movement would dismiss me as a loon, or worse. I accepted that consequence with my eyes open. I view it as normal, healthy, and even necessary that this be so.
Lordy mama, you sure are wise. Wise and also high above the twists and turns of history, thanks to your wide reading.
I would dismiss this as more nuttiness and declension, except for two salient (if mostly unrelated) points:
1. No one said you were crazy because of your views about Free Software. They said you were crazy because you were defending the speech of a programmer who actively promoted misogyny in his source code. (You didn't defend the 'speech' at all, but you weren't defending it against censorship, either.)
2. You are not a founder of anything except your gun collection. Rather, you played the leading role in killing the actual founder (RMS). You sly little agent-of-history, you. And poor crazy RMS, you put him "on a pedestal so high that he can’t actually influence events on the ground". (Except for maintaining GCC and Emacs, of course.)
I did not do what I did for anyone’s approval; I did it because it was right.
The millions you got from the Red Hat IPO was a nice bonus, though, right?
