>It's a shame that RMS has to spout forth on every issue, and in the current climate of outrage, science may have lost an important transformational voice.
The four freedoms are truly revolutionary and have grown on me over the years. If he had been a bit more focussed and perhaps even a little pragmatic it wouldn't be hard to view him as a Steve Jobs or Bill Gates like figure. At the very least we would be having conversations about software in terms of non-free and free versus proprietary and open source.
> The four freedoms are truly revolutionary and have grown on me over the years. If he had been a bit more focussed and perhaps even a little pragmatic it wouldn't be hard to view him as a Steve Jobs or Bill Gates like figure.
If he had been a lot more pragmatic, he probably could have put the whole free software thing on hold for 20 years, and been one of the early microcomputer billionaires either alongside Jobs and Gates, or even instead of one (or both!) of them.
Then go back to free software--except now it would be backed by the several tens of billions of dollars of the Stallman Foundation, which would generate enough annual investment income forever to easily afford to award tens of thousands of $100k grants for free software development each year.
A decade of that, and there would be GPL replacements for pretty much everything.
> If he had been a lot more pragmatic, he probably could have put the whole free software thing on hold for 20 years, and been one of the early microcomputer billionaires
I think you're mistaken about the chances of becoming that wealthy. If anything, I'd guess it's more likely now than decades ago. Planning what to do after becoming a billionaire is akin to spending your lottery jackpot before winning it.
I don't think you really understand him. What you are suggesting is akin to saying to someone deeply religious "If you spend 20 years making a fortune from drugs and prostitution you will have loads of money to spread your religious message." To do what you say he would have had to go against his most fervent and deeply held beliefs.
In the intervening years somebody else would have done substantially what RMS did: it's not like he's the only hacker of his era who believes software should be free.
There's no guarantee he would have been successful in business and, even if he was, he would have undermined his moral authority on free software. People don't in general have serious doubts about RMS's motivations even if they don't agree with him - he's a true believer - but they can be much more cynical about Google or Facebook and their open source efforts.
The four freedoms are truly revolutionary and have grown on me over the years. If he had been a bit more focussed and perhaps even a little pragmatic it wouldn't be hard to view him as a Steve Jobs or Bill Gates like figure. At the very least we would be having conversations about software in terms of non-free and free versus proprietary and open source.