That's a stretch. If he's allowed to post his opinions, we're allowed to post ours. The strength of HN is in the dialectic. He has some clearly strange habits

That's a stretch. If he's allowed to post his opinions, we're allowed to post ours. The strength of HN is in the dialectic. He has some clearly strange habits - I wouldn't call him extreme, radical or militant per se, but he obviously doesn't carry himself like most people. I don't think the majority of us are trying to diminish his contributions to the internet community. Rather, we're commenting on how odd he is. That's okay, it's just humorous in a nutty way. RMS takes the cynical beliefs people often think when they hear Christmas music and hate it, and takes it to actually doing it (to provide one example). "Ugh, fuck the holidays. I hate always having to spend money on people I pretend to like." ^Most of us get over it. RMS has the anti-social (I don't mean that in a DSM or pejorative sense) solidarity to actually stop celebrating holidays. It's admirable, just weird.