It's fine for rms to be the extremist and zealot. I feel like the problem is that the Free software/copyleft movement is missing strong pragmatic realist leaders and organizations, so the situation is that either you are on the crazy train helmed by rms, or you fall back to the more relaxed open-source world.
> is missing strong pragmatic realist leaders and organizations
As far as I'm concerned, that is by design. Even though he is fairly well known, rms is not the pope of Free Software as some seem to think. He's just a guy. You can email him if you want to, if you have questions.
He has some very specific ideas about software. He writes essays about that and tries to explain the thought process behind his ideas. You can read those and agree or disagree with these thoughts or not.
I think "strong pragmatic realist leaders and organizations" would be harmful to Free Software, because people swayed by such things can ultimately be swayed in the opposite direction once even stronger leaders and organisations with even better marketing pop up.
So no, there is no "crazy train helmed by rms" as you, and a lot of others, like to believe. rms is not the one standing in the way of the global victory of "open source." What does stand in the way is dilution and corruption from within. And I think, in that regard, rms could be considered a "leader", and the Free Software movement, and even Open Source by proxy, is lucky to have him.
