Contrary to the representations of Bruce "What's the problem?" Perens and others, it seems that Richard Stallman is indeed capable of issuing (or perhaps, being made to issue) an apology!
Unfortunately, in this case, the apology is to Apple, Inc. It seems that Mr. Stallman has been repeatedly making the claim—based on something he "heard", i.e. hearsay and rumor—that there is a secret "back door" in OS X which Apple takes advantage of to victimize its users.
We have no way to verify that there is no backdoor in Mac OS X that could install changes without permission, but that is no basis to claim there is one. I apologize for repeating a criticism of Mac OS which I cannot substantiate and must presume is false.
Hm. Seems pretty heart-felt to me.
I'm guessing that someone in Apple Legal felt obliged to take issue with this ongoing maligning of its products and sent over a nice "cease and desist or else" note to Mr. Stallman's attention.
Some, like Bradley Kuhn, have attempted to paint this capitulation on Stallman's part as some sort of virtuous act or show of integrity. It would have showed integrity to have avoided maligning Apple based on nothing more than unsupported claims. And providing an obviously foot-shuffling "I just can't prove it!" apology that—judging from the grudging tone, and the substantial portion devoted to why one still shouldn't use OS X—seems to have been obtained under some level of persuasion isn't much of a virtue.
What's a real shame here is that Stallman can't find it in himself to apologize to the women who were in the audience at GCDS, and to the women in the community for his insensitivity. Clearly, there's no neurological condition hindering him from doing so, as Mr. Perens claims.
Maybe the shame is that the women in the open source community don't have a legal department.
