Without sounding too sacrilegious, Dr. Stallman is the Free Software Jesus--he preaches the gospel of Free Software to the whole world and associates with "sinners" calling them to repentance. If he can bring "the truth" of Free Software to Microsoft employees and help them "see the light", why wouldn't he?
Stallman is very much like the saints of old: striving at all times to be coherent with his beliefs, walking the walk, preaching - and getting publicly celebrated and then mostly ignored or selectively quoted by “followers”.
Like with saints, we often need extremists like him to keep the Overton pushed wide towards the needs of humanity at large, as opposed to private profit. We can’t all wear sackcloth and give our life to $divinity to translate Arabic copies of Greek manuscripts, but we’ll always need someone who will.
Many of the early philosophers operated in this way. They followed new ideas/paradigms to an impossible extreme, but it's under the name of progress. How does one get to understand the true limits of an idea if no one tries pushing it to the absolute max logical conclusion? How do you ensure that the new idea stays in culture if you do not actively promote it?
We all take open-source for granted today, but it was the early pioneers that made a lot of noise and ruckus that got the movement slowing going on its way.
The thing that surprises people is not that Stallman went to Microsoft but that Microsoft invited him to talk. Back in the day Bill Gates would make signs to ward against evil if Richard "communist cancer" Stallman was anywhere near Redmond.
I am bit more cynical about this. Google and others have simply shown Microsoft how to make loads of money by opensourcing the project, while still keeping the upper hand on it. How to "opensource-but-not-quite-opensource" (Chrome/Chromium, Android/AOSP,...) the projects. Even Amazon didn't succeed in prying away Android from Google (Fire). So in my mind it's actually surprising that it took them so long to join the party. After all, what do they care if Linux is running as part of Windows, as long as they can sell the Windows licenses? It's not like "the year of Linux desktop" is coming anytime soon... :)
I think the real danger to these companies are less-than-free licenses (think Commons Clause) which give most of the freedoms to the user, but still allow the original creators to retain some of the rights, making it possible for them to have a business model behind it (such business model that AWS^Wbigtech can't take away so easily). And in this case RMS is doing more harm than good by preaching about "pure freedom". Of course Microsoft is on the same side as he is. "Write the code, but give it away". What's not to like?
> Even Amazon didn't succeed in prying away Android from Google (Fire).
They didn't? Amazon's phone failed because it had no reason to exist—it was a new product in a crowded market and offered nothing unique. Nothing to do with Google or Android. Amazon's tablet line still uses their Android fork, and seems to be doing fine.
As do many of their echo devices, fireTV devices, etc. They absolutely "pried it away" if you can call it that? Obviously nobody can force Google to stop using Android themselves, but given the success of Amazon's many devices I'd say they accomplished exactly what they set out to accomplish.
While I'm sure he "enjoys" some of it, current-Bill seems to be putting most of his billions towards the greater-good, in lieu of profit. RMS sacrificed potential billions to server the greater-good.
> Sainthood in the Church of Emacs requires living a life of purity—but in the Church of Emacs, this does not require celibacy (a sigh of relief is heard).
Now there's a quote that didn't age well... That whole page is just... strange...
There was a time when open source software wasn't so intermingled with commercial interests and people's professional lives that it was ok to make jokes.
Also, people didn't get offended so easily, which seems like a sport these days to see who can be more offended. I really miss those days.
He certainly looks the part of Free Software prophet when dressed as Saint Ignuicius: https://stallman.org/saint.html
Having met him in person, he is extremely sincere about his beliefs and practices and really does "practice what he preaches".