> Despite his controversial views on a variety of topics, his evangelism work all over the world is a true inspiration for countless people
I disagree, I think his evangelism is dangerous and offensive. He goes around telling programmers that they should give their code for free and he belittles anyone who doesn't follow his advice.
Except he doesn't actually care if you charge for your code. All he cares about are the rights of the consumer. Now, supporting these rights does make it somewhat more difficult to charge for your software, but it clearly isn't impossible: there are companies built around free software. Moreover, if everyone provided free software, it would actually be easier to charge money for it because you wouldn't have to compete with proprietary software and drm.
Even then, RMS has no problem people selling and buying software, he only cares that, once a user has acquired the software product, he can alter it (that's the "free as in freedom" part, as opposed to "free as in beer" which RMS — as far as I know — doesn't really care for).
Now building a business with these constraint is not — as far as I know — a solved business model in the general case, but saying that RMS wants developers to "give their product for free" is a complete and absolute misrepresentation of his position.
> I disagree, I think his evangelism is dangerous and offensive.
Which is completely irrelevant to what you quoted.
> He goes around telling programmers that they should give their code for free
So I take it you have never looked at his writing or heart him speak, and only repeat fifth-hand earsay? Because if there's one thing RMS does not do it's tell people they should "give their code for free". RMS has (and talks about) issues with freedom-less software, not with paid software.
> and he belittles anyone who doesn't follow his advice.
Meanwhile you call him and his ideals "dangerous" and "offensive" for what you imagine are disagreements with your position?
I think you are wrong. Convincing people to freely give is nothing dangerous and actually it is a proven fact that it is beneficial both economically and societally - many people now have their bills paid by jobs enabled by free software and while it may be that RMS might like it, commercial software is not dead either and won't be anytime soon. If anything, free software made more people able to sell their services as programmers.
My option is that RMS is going to far in his opposition to commercial software and in his zeal for freedom he sometimes promotes choices which I (and many others) disagree with. But his contributions are still great, despite all the disagreement.
How is that dangerous or offensive? You don't have to agree with his hardfast approach on all Free Software, all the time, but I think software freedom in general is incredibly important to society and I'm glad we have someone like RMS who believes so strongly in it. Being uncompromising can be both a vice and a virtue.
Let's not rehash that discussion in this thread. Let's imagine the article did not contain the line you quoted, but was neutral about the views of RMS.
I disagree, I think his evangelism is dangerous and offensive. He goes around telling programmers that they should give their code for free and he belittles anyone who doesn't follow his advice.