Lately, their message usually seems to be that some new product they've decided to pick on (say, an iOS device, or a new version of Windows, or what-have-you) is evil and will enslave your children, or something. I know their message is supposed to be about free software, but it tends to get lost under the ranting and smear campaigns.
Actually, their campaigns (BadVista, Windows 7 Sins and whatever the newest one is) do outline valid issues and try to offer more reasonable alternatives.
Yes, they are blunt and provocative, but that's how you incite debate and bring about more attention to your cause. The main problem is that they aren't getting much traction for various reasons. One is that end users aren't aware of free software and major vendors aim to keep it that way, and another is that the benefits of free software aren't immediately obvious to the end user.
> Yes, they are blunt and provocative, but that's how you incite debate and bring about more attention to your cause.
Only if it's a cause people have any reason to care about. Otherwise you look like a crank. The FSF's lack of understanding of people who are not obsessively like them has delivered them firmly to "crank" territory and they have been there for most of the time I've been aware of their existence (so 12-ish years at least?).
They make more reasonable people and more reasonable arguments seem less valid to most people through their existence. Which is fine to me, I find "free software" distasteful and preachy, but if they actually wanted to be successful, they'd turn down the steadfast unwillingness to understand normal people a whole lot.
As someone who's tried to explain this issue several times to laypeople, there's not much else that can be done. It really just does not resonate with anyone who isn't in the field and doesn't understand what software really is or how copyright works; most people not in the business just download everything on filesharing networks anyway, they couldn't care less about software licensing.
The only thing that really can be done is to fund and promote the development of free software replacements for software that everyone wants to use, which the FSF is already doing and has been doing for quite some time.
