[0atman]

I sympathise with your position, but is rms all we've got?

No developers were persuaded to change their language from 'open source' to 'free software' that day in 2009, him shouting at us was utterly ineffective.

We need good communicators, not just passionate people. I'm not suggesting he shouldn't write his good ideas down, but keep him away from an AUDIENCE.

[sph]

Meanwhile everybody knows what GNU is, who Stallman is, what free software is, and what that "lunatic", to paraphrase you, is all about.

His methods might've been of a lunatic indeed, but it's on you to argue that Free Software would have grown further than what it is today with a more mild mannered person at the helm.

I disagree completely with this proposition. You need crazy zealots to change the world: no one will accept their extreme view of the world, but choose a more moderate version of their message. And so the zealot has succeeded in his mission. Examples in history abound, whereas mild-mannered people don't go very far in radically changing the status quo.