The Shaggy God - Richard Stallman in Boston Magazine

"The most momentous product of Stallman's genius, Linux, was the first operating system to feature software that was entirely free."

I believe this is not entirely accurate - I seem to remember someone else being involved in creating linux...

"Strictly speaking, the complete operating system should have been called GNU/Linux, representing the combined contributions of Stallman and Torvalds. Stallman always insists on the term, pronouncing it "GNU slash Linux." But in the popular mind, it came to be known as only Linux. Stallman has never gotten over that."

The more I read about Stallman the more I find that his extreme stance is just who he is:

"He's entirely consistent and uncompromising and I think the world needs someone like that," Perens said.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/open_source/sho...

Well, that someone used GCC and the first thing they ran on their new kernel was Bash ;-)

Consistency in itself is not much of a virtue.

From the article:

"In 1991, all that was left was the kernel, the brain within the brain of the computer, and thus the most essential component of any operating system, and the hardest part to create. Before Stallman could finish building his, an ingenious young Finnish computer scientist named Linus Torvalds—who was initially inspired by a Stallman speech at the Polytechnic University in Helsinki the year before—played off a Unix-like operating system called Minix to develop a free software system of his own. Incomplete in other respects, it had the kernel that Stallman's lacked—one that meshed so beautifully with the GNU system that it seemed destined for it. Strictly speaking, the complete operating system should have been called GNU/Linux, representing the combined contributions of Stallman and Torvalds. Stallman always insists on the term, pronouncing it "GNU slash Linux." But in the popular mind, it came to be known as only Linux. Stallman has never gotten over that."