Wittgenstein, Popper, Russell, and Frege move over. Stallman
is blazing a path of enlightenment and freeing mens' souls
from the bonds of intellectual property and capitalism...
the bane the proprietary culture draws nigh. Can the Nobel
be far amiss? Yeah...

This post is really a plea for people to be a bit nicer to and about RMS. Take my word for it, in time he will come to be considered as one of the most important philosophers of the 20th and 21st centuries.

You can't blame someone for identifying problems and coming up with solutions just because most people don't understand their worth at the moment. Current womens/black/animal rights were won through slow, unpopular and sometimes illegal methods, and people criticized those at the time too. When people can't tape programmes off the tv or listen to music they've bought on CD (or wherever) in the car is when people will start to pay more attention to some of these issues.

If there's one thing I wish for RMS, it would be that he and his team finally wrap up and release the Hurd kernel. Maybe then he'll finally bugger off and leave Linux alone

There's nothing wrong with charging money for software to cover costs and run a business. Everyone is free to buy it or not. I worked for 12 years on a software package that assists and optimizes the manufacture of printed circuit boards. It has become very difficult to produce PCBs without this type of software. It would never have been developed as free software. Custom "one-off" solutions would force hardware manufacturers out of their expertise. Without charging for software I'm guessing there would be a lot fewer choice we'd be able to make.

Stallman constantly talks about the freedom of users. What about the freedom of programmers? By this I mean the freedom to decide whether to publish your source or not, to charge money for your work or not. That concept never enters his lexicon. Yes, he has made huge contributions to computing over the years. No, he is not always right.

I think Stallman is a bit eccentric about his ideas about freedom. I would venture to guess that he's wired a bit funny. His ideologies are are not practical nor are they rooted in reality. My freedom is not in jeopardy because I elected to use MacOS X on an Apple G5 (my wallet was but not not my freedom). Stallman presumes that his intelligence and knowledge give him the right to not respect the boundaries of others. When someone tells him that he can't have his way with their software (or if it isn't written by his own minions or philosophies), he cries foul and plays the freedom card. This isn't an ideology, this is arrogance and extreme anti-social behavior.

RMS has a million dollar grant from the MacArthur Foundation, and permanent facilities at his disposal at MIT, one of the best-equipped universities in the world. He is unmarried and has no children.

He can afford high-handed morals. Regular folks don't have that luxury. And it is a luxury; RMS has the money to live the lifestyle he wants to lead. Real people have real responsibilities.

RMS is one of the few extremists in this world that actually make this world a better place.

The GPL is one of the most dramatically practical licenses there is. Indeed, a project that standardizes upon the GPL is giving its contributors the most amount of freedom.