tl;dr: https://www.fsf.org/news/richard-m-stallman-resigns
In the wake of the Jeffrey Epstein matter, controvery arose about dealings between him and the (also now-late) MIT AI scientist Marvin Minsky, and about MIT administration actions related to Epstein.
Richard M. Stallman is intimately associated with not just the Free Software Foundation (that he created) but with MIT CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) operation. Fairly recently, there was a discussion on one of CSAIL's unadvertised and privately archived mailing lists, csail-related, where Stallman posted comments.[1] Those comments (mostly about matters peripheral to the late Dr. Minsky) became known to MIT alumna, grad student, and mechanical engineer Selam Jie Gano, who is said to have been sent them by a subscriber. Ms. Gano was very incensed by Stallman's views that she asserted were, among other things, 'defending Epstein'. She publishes an essay on Medium entitled 'Remove Richard Stallman. And everyone else horrible in tech': https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec210794
She also provided what is asserted to be the entire thread to Vice.com's regular 'Motherboard' feature, which published a rather inaccurate piece based largely on her allegations, though providing a curated copy of the mailing list thread with all participant names except Stallman's blacked out.
Article: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scientist-richard-s...
Direct link to Vice.com/Motherboard's curated thread copy: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-09132019142056-0001.html?emb...
Quite a number of other outfits have picked up the story in various ways. Stallman responded by objecting (with perfect justification, as far as I can see) that in no way was he defending Epstein; that this is just not at all what he said.
The persons now running Software Freedom Conservancy took advantage of this squalor by 'calling for' Richard to retire from the free software organisation & movement he created (unsigned because they have _that_ little moral backbone). https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/sep/16/rms-does-not-speak-for-us/
There was also pressure for Richard to resign from his position at CSAIL (where ISTR he's been Visiting Professor). He has now done so, citing 'pressure on MIT' -- along with resigning as President and Board of Directors member at Free Software Foundation.
IMO, this affair (e.g., things like the unsigned editorial from the jackals at Software Freedom Conservancy) has opportunism written all over it.
One of the less-sucky bits of news/analysis (apparently just before things came to a head) was here: https://fudzilla.com/news/49393-stallman-defends-himself-over-epstein-commen...
https://lwn.net/ have not yet caught up with events, and can be expected as usual to be guarded to a fault when they do.
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/ has some discussion, but likewise has not caught up with events.
[1] None of what I'm writing here imply endorsement of Richard's assertions in the mailing list thread, by the way. In fact, I very much do not concur with some, and would have, among other things, politely corrected his factually incorrect understanding of the legal concept of 'assault'.