I think reading about the early history of the MIT AI labs and the history of LISP machines really helps to put RMS in context. Before reading about how that all played out, I was one of the ones who respected RMS's broad goals, but decried his almost radical attitude.
I don't think like that any longer. Instead, I now see RMS as a sort of holocaust survivor warning against complacency when dealing with dictators. If RMS seems overly concerned with corporations co-opting free software, it's only because he's been there!
(P.S. Sorry for not providing links to the LISP machine history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machine and http://funcall.blogspot.com are probably a good jumping-off points. The tl;dr of it is: MIT AI labs developed LISP, Symbolics took MIT's work and commercialized it without giving back, the MIT AI lab guys responded by going off and forming their own LISP machine company, and that left RMS all alone at MIT and hating commercial software)
I don't think like that any longer. Instead, I now see RMS as a sort of holocaust survivor warning against complacency when dealing with dictators. If RMS seems overly concerned with corporations co-opting free software, it's only because he's been there!
(P.S. Sorry for not providing links to the LISP machine history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machine and http://funcall.blogspot.com are probably a good jumping-off points. The tl;dr of it is: MIT AI labs developed LISP, Symbolics took MIT's work and commercialized it without giving back, the MIT AI lab guys responded by going off and forming their own LISP machine company, and that left RMS all alone at MIT and hating commercial software)