I thought about that too, so I had checked what ACM said: "It is given to an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing

I thought about that too, so I had checked what ACM said: "It is given to an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. The contributions should be of lasting and major technical importance to the computer field" I think his work with GNU has been one of the most important technical contributions to the community we've seen. On a non-technical note, his push for free software has also been incredibly influential for the community. While I disagree with a lot of ideology and in particular the ideology behind the GPL personally, I think the world is generally better for it.