> It's easy to drive people apart in the name of some ideal. It takes actual leadership to drive otherwise separate people together to actually accomplish somet

> It's easy to drive people apart in the name of some ideal. It takes actual leadership to drive otherwise separate people together to actually accomplish something. Right there is the crux of the matter. RMS is only focused on the ideal. To him, "accomplishing something" is only relevant when the accomplishment is free software that can't be locked away in proprietary codebases. Viewed through that lens, his actions and beliefs have been remarkably consistent for the past 30 years. He really grates on people who don't share his idealism, and he's looked up to by people who do. He can be quite polarizing, to say the least.