Freedom of association has its limits, and this case is clearly one of them. It's bad for society if minor transgressions lose people their livelihood.
You don’t have privy to his HR record at MIT and neither do I. But I’ll bet it looks closer in size and volume to Bart Simpson’s file than it does Lisa Simpson.
It is hard to fire people in academia. They found a legit, lawsuit-proof excuse to can him and took it.
In the hours I've spent reading this story, all I've seen is hearsay about women feeling uncomfortable about him having a mattress in his office; criminally stupid misreadings of his writings regarding Minsky; and of course various accounts him being a terribly unpleasant person, which we already knew.
It's obvious what ways the winds are blowing. There's no place for misfits like RMS in today's world. (But I guess there never really was.) That doesn't mean I have to like it.