[speedplane]

> Thomas Bushnell was the chief architect of the HURD from its founding in 1990 until 2003. He understands the FSF and Richard Stallman as well as anyone does.

I invited Stallman to speak at my law school, along with other high ranking FSF members. I may have worshiped him at the time, but many of the tight-laced budding lawyers in attendance thought he was weird, mildly anti-social, and did not understand his relevance. Developers "got it", but most law students didn't connect. The traits that endeared him to the software community cut against him when trying to reach a broader audience.

Even though "open source" is everywhere right now, the GPL and true sharing of code is not. The Apache license, which allows you to do what you want and not share any changes, rules the day. I wonder if a more mainstream leader, who was just as committed to copyleft software would have been more effective.