> about which he's pretty much the only person with any visibility or credibility at all to say something But the only people he has any visibility or credibil

> about which he's pretty much the only person with any visibility or credibility at all to say something But the only people he has any visibility or credibility to are people who a) know who he is, and b) agree with him. I can't imagine any situation in which his arguments would sway someone who currently disagrees with him. I'm willing to bet that if you talked to the majority of geeks these days who weren't already using linux in 1998, most either wouldn't have heard of him, or would have heard of him in the same vein as Eric Raymond, Dennis Ritchie, or Donald Knuth: people who have done great things in computing, in times long since past, and who have no relevance to what's happening in computing today beyond those legacies. So imagine Stallman showing up to a CS class, looking and behaving like a bushman who'd been lost in the wilds of Alaska for 40 years, insinuating that the US government was responsible for 9/11 and telling them to stop using Facebook and Google Docs and cell phones. What possible credibility could he ever have? The FSF, with him at the helm, is going to continue to remain a valuable organization, but the FSF without him at the helm would be a valuable organization that would finally have a real chance at being taken seriously. Side note: I spoke to my 25-year-old coworker, and he had only the vaguest idea of who Stallman was, proving my point that, to this generation of programmers, he's almost completely irrelevant except in a historical context.