His concerns are about law and policies constraining freedom, not about building things from scratch. You need not write your own compiler to be consistent with

His concerns are about law and policies constraining freedom, not about building things from scratch. You need not write your own compiler to be consistent with the principles he advocates - Stallman would say you're fine using gcc, because it is legally open for the "four freedoms". Yes, that's right. But what about, say, an electric drill with proprietary schematics? While I may be free to modify the drill as I see fit, it wasn't necessary built for that purpose. Additionally, I can't modify the drill a little bit, and then start producing them myself (I suspect the original manufacturer might have something to say about that). Perhaps I'm splitting hairs a bit, or thinking too deeply about it, but the topic of tools interests me.