Is there anything more to this than: Eric Raymond says that someone told him, apparently with no substantiation, that "multiple runs" of this sort of bizarre entrapment had occurred? It looks more than a bit paranoid to me, and such allegations seem to demand a serious burden of proof.
EDIT: I won't complain about the downvote, but I assume it indicates that the answer is: yes, there's something more to it. I didn't mean to seem snarky (and I have removed editorialising about esr that might have given that effect), and would really appreciate an explanation of why this deserves to be regarded as more than 3rd-hand hearsay.
There are some number of people who admire the good things ESR has done in a narrow specialization, and carry that over to granting him some authority in areas like conspiracy theorizing where he has not accomplished anything of note.
There are some number of people predisposed to believe these things regardless of who says them, because, well, they already believe this happens, so it's just confirmation of their world-view.
There isn't anything more presented to us than "Eric Raymond says that someone told him, apparently with no substantiation, that 'multiple runs' of this sort of bizarre entrapment had occurred," but that doesn't mean that members of either of those sets of people will dismiss it outright.
Meanwhile, Mr. Raymond's track record on non-Unix subjects like race, guns, foreign policy, and white identity politics are on the Internet for everyone to review and either applaud or boo as they see fit.
I'm pretty willing to trust ESR on both the content of his correspondence and the general trustworthiness of his counterpart. It is, as you say, unsubstantiated, but reputation still counts for something.
It's not possible to have decent discussion about this. ESR has made a weird claim, has not provided anything at all to back it up, and has made very many weird comments in the past.
If we're going to talk about this we may as well just talk about chem-trails or how the moon landings were hoaxed or other stuff that's equally bollocks.
This really shows how bad this is if true. Feminists creating an environment in STEM where men in power will be actively discouraged from mentoring or offering opportunities to women out of fear of being framed for sexual assault.
I am all about gender equality, but it seems that the Feminist lobby is working against itself more than anything lately. It's sad, because it's a problem that needs to be solved, but not through these vitriolic means...
In this case, the only source for their article is the ESR blog post. We came very close to the amusing spectacle of ESR blog commenters claiming that the Breitbart post was confirmation of the blog post, but the dude pulled back at the last minute.
EDIT: I won't complain about the downvote, but I assume it indicates that the answer is: yes, there's something more to it. I didn't mean to seem snarky (and I have removed editorialising about esr that might have given that effect), and would really appreciate an explanation of why this deserves to be regarded as more than 3rd-hand hearsay.