Richard Stallman is nuts. Here's why.

But what I meant to imply was that for some, freedoms are important enough that they're a part of their lives, and RMS is one of those sorts. It DOES permeate almost everything that he does, and I respect him for being, if nothing else, more of a sentinel than the average person about what impacts our freedoms and what doesn't.

I'll be the first to concede that I am not nearly as vigilant and RMS is, and often participate in things that I don't morally agree with, but here's the real question, I guess... why shouldn't you be able to freely develop software on all the CPUs you own? For what reasons do you allow those constraints?

He shouldn't use a mobile phone, there are reasons why he would get tracked.

>> 4) He doesn't use a browser; rather, he uses wget and reads the fetched pages from his e-mail mailbox;

He needs privacy more than anyone else.

You see as a political activist/famous person he should be more careful with these things.

Yes, imho the GPL (and the idea of viral copyleft that it inspired) deserves to be treated as one of the greatest legal inventions of our time. Given the ongoing reduction of just about everything to information, the ascendancy of code and data among the human race, and the extent to which it will shape our future history, a viable, effective, encompassing legal framework to ensure its freedom is one of the most valuable contributions to computing that anyone has made.