[boulos]

Hmm. I think RMS’s anti-establishment push was so much earlier (mostly against Bell Labs, etc.) that “the 90s” don’t really apply.

If anything, it’s just his personality: he takes hardline positions and holds onto them. You might be right about hardliners being the only folks who have enough persistence to come through (vis a vis survivorship bias), but then you’re also just including the leaders of those companies you mentioned: Bill Gates and Larry Ellison were famously combative, competitive, and all sorts of other words.

[r3trohack3r]

“What was left” certainly applies. These are predominantly the personality types, and socio-economic groups, that made it through this time period in open source.

It isn’t easy being on the receiving end of this: http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/Comes-3096.pdf