[navait]

I don't know if Mr. Stallman is exactly a socialist, but he's not pro-capitalism either. So I don't think he really concerns himself with actually getting people to pay software developers. To him, that's an afterthought.

This makes him a revolutionary. Unfortunately, when the mainstream absorbs the revolution, what does the revolutionary do? Basically try to get them to adopt the ideas that aren't very good because all the good ones have been taken.

The best thing we could do is just say he was a great contributor to software, and ignore whatever drivel he writes now, much like we do with ESR.

[hga]

As of the mid-1980s or so he believed that the government should pay programmers to do their thing.

I seem to remember he supported Hugo Chávez.

[vipstarry]

>So I don't think he really concerns himself with actually getting people to pay software developers. To him, that's an afterthought.

This is a strawman argument as Stallman does not advocate this at all. Stallman encourages for programmers to get paid for programming work and to sell software at any price that the customer will burden. Stallman is happy for everybody to do business and profit when the business does not hurt people. In the business model of selling proprietary software and selling SAAS, users are harmed of four specific freedoms of free software so Stallman will condemn any business (or any other non-business organization) that does this.