Irrational as it might be, appearance matters when someone becomes the public face for a group.
This topic inevitably comes up when RMS is the subject of a thread. It's easy to dismiss that as maliciousness or trolling, but I think it's at least partially a reflection of the image RMS is projecting for the FSF.
It’s not irrational to accept that appearance matters to many if not most people or almost every person. And when choosing someone to be a spokesperson for FSF, that’s a valid consideration.
That being said, my observation is that if Mr. Stallman says X or Y or Z and we are discussing what he said, we are not choosing a spokesperson, nor are we any of “those” people. We are free to choose to evaluate what he said in a vacuum, just as if it were posted by an AnonymousCoward. We are perfectly free to debate X or Y or Z on their own terms.
If you or that person over there or this person over here would rather segue into repeating the exact same conversation we had last week and the week before that, and the month before that about how off-putting the man’s behaviour can be at times, well, that is your privilege. It’s not irrational to discuss it, just as it’s not irrational to discuss the fact that Apple’s first president reportedly didn’t like Steve’s body odour stinking up his office.
I remember when Steve’s star wasn’t quite so high in the public perception, and people did call out his eccentricities. When his products and ideas weren’t home runs, people complained about his autocratic ways and accused him of being a fanatic, explaining how his lack of appreciation for the “real world” and for “compromise” were costing Apple and NeXT. They harangued him for his abrasive manners and habit of screaming at employees.
In the end, I see the two men as having some great similarities.
This topic inevitably comes up when RMS is the subject of a thread. It's easy to dismiss that as maliciousness or trolling, but I think it's at least partially a reflection of the image RMS is projecting for the FSF.