As far as I understand, there's plenty of real-world horrible conduct he could have got fired for too, which has gone without consequence.

This isn't a one-time thing where he never did a bad thing in his life and now is suddenly attacked by a mob. He has been an awful person for a long, long time, and now he is suddenly facing actual consequences.

>Few years ago I had had a Junior engineer on my team begin telling me how he finds certain speech so intolerable that he feels he has the right to assault someone for saying it.

Most people feel this way. Not with nearly as much speech as your junior did, but there are certain forms of speech we are so against we have written exceptions into law and the Supreme Court even used concepts such as obscenity to empower these laws to ignore even the First Amendment.

Is it really surprising a generation or two later people are now seeking to have even more speech fall under such bans?

Divining intent isn’t the right threshold to judge speech. If it were then I can say whatever I want in whatever environment, because how would you prove my intent?

I yell fire in a crowded theatre, that’s ok it wasn’t my intent to cause panic.

The idea that speech is not "real-world conduct" is, in my considered opinion, not just wrong, but actively corrosive to the fabric of our civilization. Ideas are powerful, speeches can incite revolutions, send millions to their deaths, or be used to fight tyranny and oppression.

Should we highly value the idea of free speech? I believe we should. But we should also recognize that there's no such thing as "just speech". What we say matters, particularly if, like Dr. Stallman in this case, we are public figures speaking in what (given the number and types of people involved) is a semi-public forum.

There are two well know aphorisms: "the pen is mightier than the sword" and "he who lives by the sword dies by the sword". But if one recalls the last is derived from a line in the Bible that says in whole: “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword."

Sometimes, we should put the pen back in its place, lest we kill or die by it in our hubris.

Intent is irrelevant ... only the impact. One must always be ready to reckon with the impact of their actions and speech, regardless of what their intent was.

The statements I see stand on their own.

Supposing intent behind them isn't necessary.

What they say is damning regardless of intent.

And the intent was pretty obvious.

Dude, Stallman has been spitting his bullshit to the world and we had no way to stop the vomit, coming out of universities. How many young people have wasted their youth following his ideas, reading his stuff, until they finally realized it was all shit.

So, yeah, now it's catching up to him, for something nobody in his right mind every does in a corporate environment: giving his opinion on the moral definition of rape. Fucking come on man, how can you defend this moron, who does that ?

You see yourself tomorrow, in charge of the education of students, writing around to your colleagues about what is or is not a rape, for all to record and copy paste to newspapers ? At least do it on skype and add a smiley...