> A wiser and less ego-centric Stallman would have stepped back decades ago.
I don't agree. For all his limits, Stallman maintained an ideological purity that is required to firmly signpost one end of the Overton window. Opensource licenses and projects can mix and match rights and regulations, but you will always have an unwatered GPL option, there to remind people of what the original ideal looked like.
Compare the trajectory of the GNU project with that of Mozilla, for example. Mozilla compromised ideals to gain popularity, and now that popularity is waning the compromise gets worse and worse (pocket, pop-unders...). GNU compromised nothing, ignored ebbs and flows in popularity, and will continue to do their thankless work for the good of the community at large.
I don't agree. For all his limits, Stallman maintained an ideological purity that is required to firmly signpost one end of the Overton window. Opensource licenses and projects can mix and match rights and regulations, but you will always have an unwatered GPL option, there to remind people of what the original ideal looked like.
Compare the trajectory of the GNU project with that of Mozilla, for example. Mozilla compromised ideals to gain popularity, and now that popularity is waning the compromise gets worse and worse (pocket, pop-unders...). GNU compromised nothing, ignored ebbs and flows in popularity, and will continue to do their thankless work for the good of the community at large.