[filoleg]

Nope, I always knew it was a thing. Just like there are some people who go full-on FreeBSD or categorically refuse to use non-free software. Richard Stallman exists, after all, and is a celebrity.

And I also knew, for quite a while, that positions analogous to that of Stallman should never be taken at face value as something that the general public would care to even know about, let alone support or follow through. And it isn't because I am jaded or don't have faith in people, quite the opposite. It is because average people as a group tend to be pretty good at (perhaps blindly) filtering things into the "practically matters" and "doesn't ultimately matter" buckets.

In relation to this specific scenario, despite the negative reaction to my initial comment on HN and Elon's public perception trending increasingly negative, recent Tesla car sales numbers (which keep increasing) seem to only support my point. People online might loudly say XYZ, but once you look at the numbers that matter, the reality looks a bit differently.