Stallman is to Open Source what Ralph Nader is to Liberals or Ron Paul is to Conservatives/Libertarians. He has a well-formed, strongly held but atypical opinion aimed at solving a particular problem, often at great cost in other areas.
In other words, he's the kook that says stuff that blows our credibility with moderates leaning the other way, but does so with good intentions and a kernel of truth that would go a lot farther if posed more pleasantly.
Likewise, he provides good food for thought and frames the situation clearly for people who agree or want to incorporate more of that line of thinking.
He's a monumental figure, working for something extremely important, and surrounded by people who are very wrong. While Nader is much less respected than Stallman, the magnitude to which their respective fields are ungrateful for their respective contributions is about the same. Stallman's contributions I would argue are much bigger than Nader's. Come on he invented the OS that is now the basis of the majority of internet business. I think he deserves a little more respect for that contribution. If Nader had done something equally big in his work of keeping rogue corporations in check, we would have gone on a more Canada-like path than the Reagan-led path of decline that we did go down. Free Software has become a major force that continues to grow and improve our lives. Nader's contributions were not lasting, and have mostly been reversed by decades of corporate think tank astroturfing and lobbying that has whittled away the rights and protections of individuals.
You contend that the creation of the GNU utilities -- differently licensed but by and large feature clones of an existing software package was a more important contribution to society than the American automobile safety regulation changes brought about by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed ? Don't forget that BSD was already walking a similar course by that time. Emacs is pretty important, as well, but I think it ranks behind the GNU utilities, as well.
I haven't really tried to contrast them before, honestly, but I don't think it's quite that cut and dry.
I must say Richard lost my respect due to his extreme black&white opinions. What I don't get is his irrational fear of proprietary software. For example, I work for a very large (proprietary) software product for healthcare industry. The amount of work is huge, due to technical challenges as well as FDA regulations we must comply with. So what, are we evil now since the software is not open source are our company charges for it?
I am a fan of open source software, but his fighting against other alternatives is at least strange and not good for our industry, IMHO.
Stallman's point is not that working on proprietary software is evil, but that imposing it on others is. If giving your friend a copy of some software is a crime, then the law is an ass.
This article would have been better if it actually addressed the "very real" concerns Stallman raises instead of babbling about a bunch of things that don't.
In other words, he's the kook that says stuff that blows our credibility with moderates leaning the other way, but does so with good intentions and a kernel of truth that would go a lot farther if posed more pleasantly.
Likewise, he provides good food for thought and frames the situation clearly for people who agree or want to incorporate more of that line of thinking.