[IgorPartola]

There may have been someone else to do all the work that RMS and GNU did, but the reality is that while everyone else was too busy or too fatalist about the situation in the late 1980s, only RMS et al stood up and took on the responsibility for everyone else.

Also, note that Alexander Graham Bell invented the first practical telephone. RMS is an advocate. Much of his software work is specifically not original: he was trying to emulate UNIX. He and GNU are more of a founding fathers to the US than inventors of a device. Yes, eventually someone else might have declared independence in the western colonies and went to war with Great Britain, but we admit that it was GW and company.

[IdeaHamster]

I'm fairly sure the parent's reference to Bell is with respect to details that have recently come to light that Bell may have "stolen" all or most of the technology behind the first phone. That is, Bell's importance has less to do with his ability to create the technology and more to do with packaging and popularizing it.

[IgorPartola]

I was not aware of that. Nonetheless, it seemed to me that the parent post implied that if RMS and GNU didn't come to be, then someone else would have come up and done the same thing, and thus what they did is somewhat less of an achievement. My post was mostly in disagreement with that idea.