Honestly, GCC and the GPL are probably the largest contributions of all time to software development. Although GCC has waned in popularity of late, at the time it truly is what sparked the "Open Source" and "Free Software" movements.

Without those, I couldn't imagine the world progressing as fast as it did. Especially, without someone like Stallman behind it, almost completely devoid of social understanding, he was able to stand up to virtually unlimited pressure and keep to his values.

I agree some people on HN don't respect him, or just generally dislike him. They claim he hurt GCC or Emacs, and to an extent he did through the GPL and/or his lack of technical guidance. However, without him, they wouldn't have existed at all. GCC is still pretty competitive, and at one point was the most competitive free compiler - which is why both movements gained so much momentum.

RMS' fervent defense of freedom has been both his greatest asset, and his greatest weakness. I find it hard to criticize the man who literally dedicated (and in a sense sacrificed) his life to ensure humanity doesn't have to pay for every single piece of software.

Hell, would we still have to pay for web browsers?