[pessimizer]

His social skills are fine, and he has been immensely successful and changed the entire face of computing. I find it strange that people condescend about his appearance and manner because he has as of yet failed to transform the entire technological world to his vision.

The reason FOSS exists is because of how charming and convincing RMS was and is.

[wizzwizz4]

I condescend about his manner because when he slipped up, he slipped up big-time. Not just a single-word blunder, but entire paragraphs. (He does this less nowadays, from what I can tell.)

He was charming and convincing within the environments in which he needed to charm and convince people. I reckon those were largely informal settings, in what I've heard referred to as "tech-bro" cultures. Those skills don't generalise.

The easiest way for eccentric people to gain social acceptance is to fit in. That was never an option for Richard Stallman, so he must've been charming and convincing. I couldn't have done what he's done. That doesn't automatically mean he's good at every kind of social interaction – and he most certainly wasn't, in the early 2000s. He made enough public slip-ups that I might need two hands to count them!

He's a political activist. One slip-up is enough for your enemies to discredit you. He can't afford as many as he's made, and certainly not any more. That's why I say he needs to focus on social skills; there's still work to do, and he's still one of the few people doing it, and he needs social credibility to be able to do so.

(I suppose his biggest mistake was spreading himself across so many causes, and hence making himself a lot of enemies… But I'm not going to criticise him for that; it's better than I've ever done.)

[roenxi]

> I condescend about his manner because when he slipped up, he slipped up big-time

In his failure he seems to have achieved success greater than pretty much anyone else in the tech industry. The GPL and the laughably successful strategy behind it is one of the main planks underpinning the modern tech industry, and Stallman was one of the key characters to set in motion that agglomerative process that is the modern OSS stack.

Stallman has arguably had a more transformative impact on the software industry than any CEO in recent history. It is a weak argument, because any one man can only do so much, but it is there. More than can be said about most people.

If that is his contribution with slip-ups you must have high expectations for him.

[wizzwizz4]

I do. He's Richard Stallman.

The slip-ups I'm referring to were largely spur-of-the-moment social blunders; there's only one general principle I know he has that I think is wrong. If he hadn't made those, there'd be less fodder against him, so he could do more. I'm glad he's not making them as much, but he's still doing it enough that he had to resign from the FSF to prevent it from being dragged down by association with him.