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i who work as a sw developer find his very existence utterly embarrassing since stallman put me (and all those like me) in the same league as murderers and rapists, but to each his own opinion, i guess



moderate opinions does not seem such because they are "more moderate" than current extremists
they are moderate because they come from people who acts and reasons pragmatically (instead of dogmatically) and (more important) respects other's opinions and arguments even when they dissent - common traits of moderate people, the opposite of what an extremist or radical usually is and does


except that being a character trait, what makes someone an extremist (or moderate) person, isnt strictly tied to a specific topic but affects all aspects of public conduct as far as expressing opinions (and discussin them with others) is concerned, or applies to all kinds of public endeavours where people don't agree on something


current moderates have none of the traits (blind faith, leader's personality cult, "black or white" "with us or against us" attitude wrt others and so on) of other extremist social, religious, political fringes (namely communists, fascists, talibans), so it's not like they would be considered in the same league, if RMS and his followers (who on the contrary share the aforementioned traits) weren't there
just, the FOSS one would be described as a single, friendly, open and pragmatical community


that would be funny, since GNOME stands for GNU Network Object Model Environment, ie GNOME is supposed to be an integral part of the GNU - i'm somewhat inclined to think that if GNOME spins off, the whole GNU ecosystem will start to fall apart in some time..


of which GNOME was supposed to be what the WorkPlace Shell was for OS/2, the official GUI and graphical environment


but the point is: what are those values?
at the very beginning, free software was (or was depicted as being) about giving something (value, power, customizeability, assurance, at least choice) to the user - thus FOSS was user centric (by definition)
immediately after that came the vision of a world without proprietary software, thus a world without people like me and without professional applications ( since, you know, individual hobbysts hardly have the time, programming skills, and field knowledge to implement another AutoCAD or Photoshop), and the exploitation of half baked, perpetual beta software to push one man's agenda and values onto others (something that i'm personally disgusted by, and which has convinced me to quit touching linux or anything foss to even avoid dirtying myself with senseless idiocy)