Thinking of mutual colleagues of mine and how long this apparently has been happening (and to be clear, not about this or other victims) reminded me of something Larry Lessig wrote about his own abuse:
"The real evil isn’t the Hitler. The evil is the good German. The evil is all those people who could’ve just picked up the goddamn telephone and stopped it."[0]
And this doesn't apply to stopping a mob and a witch hunt, an endless, or rather open-ended, and mostly anonymous smear campaign, where "rapist", "sociopath", "jerk", and "plagiarist" all become mutually interchangeable?
This entire thing is absurd, childish, and evil, all at the same time.
If anyone believes that Jacob Appelbaum raped or sexually assaulted her, she should file criminal charges, and possibly a lawsuit.
All the rest of this is 'we don't like Jake, he's an asshole' high-school nonsense.
If you don't like him and think he's an asshole, fine - say so, if you want. But trying to smear him with unsubstantiated claims of rape and sexual assault is morally indefensible.
I'm still waiting for charges to be filed, and to see the outcome of a trial, before I buy into allegations of rape and/or sexual assault. But I have to tell you, this character assassination stuff is beyond the pale, and disinclines me to give any credence at all to the allegations.
It isn't illegal to be a boor and a cad. At least, not yet.
I agree he unlikely to be convicted in a court, but the huge number of well respected people supporting the allegations makes it pretty obvious that you do not want Jacob near anything, be it property, loved ones, or important projects like TOR.
This seems to happen with far too many leaders in the activist / open source communities where they become untouchable in their own minds and cross the line from being assertive, slowly pass the point of asshole and continue to on to criminal.
This happened with Hans Reiser. Its happened with Jacob, and there is every sign Lennart Poettering will be the same.
Thinking of mutual colleagues of mine and how long this apparently has been happening (and to be clear, not about this or other victims) reminded me of something Larry Lessig wrote about his own abuse:
"The real evil isn’t the Hitler. The evil is the good German. The evil is all those people who could’ve just picked up the goddamn telephone and stopped it."[0]
[0]http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/features/12061/index7.html