Every so often an event will happen where an ideological purist's rhetoric is true, and this arms them for years of ideological advocacy and warfare...while day-to-day practicalities are dismissed and pass them by. Sure, one could spend 16 hours a day praying at the alter of a particular path, but then there's no time to eat.
Interestingly, highly intelligent ideologues often (not always) follow an interesting path of massive and early creativity and productivity, while trailing off quickly into years of chasing imaginary rabbits down imaginary holes -- when simply continuing to produce would have done a better job of getting their point across.
RMS is like this. Early on he produced absolutely amazing stuff at an astonishing rate -- pieces of software which are still being actively used and developed decades later. Many developers would give their left arm to have achieved this.
And then it suddenly stops. The creative outpouring and concrete contributions to the material world suddenly end and he focuses his energies almost entirely in ideological purity.
It's akin in some ways to Newton's deeper dive into Alchemy or Savonarola's switch from medical school to religion.
Don't forget, Savonarola, despite his desire to pitch the Western world back into the Dark Ages, also fought corruption and exploitation of the poor -- he was right some of the time.
The recent news of Stallman's laptop's theft makes me even sadder because of his ideological purity, the chances of him finding a replacement, and getting back to just making stuff are even further away.