It's not really something you can observe well from the outside, but in working with Richard on many things, I was surprised early on how much respect he gives to those he trusts, and how appreciative he is of help.

So "servants" is far from how he views volunteers. And after working closely with him for a few years within GNU, I don't feel at all like a servant---there is mutual respect, and we're not afraid to state our opinions or disagree with one-another. Much of the time he makes me feel like I work beside him, not below him. It's quite constructive.

And this is typical with others as well.

Surely he takes care of his own parrots.

He's intimately aware of the problems real people face and spends lots of his time discussing them. If he's a king with servants, he's one who knows the value he receives and thinks constantly about how to achieve a world in which everyone can easily get the results he has (e.g. not worry about installing their OS but still having fully-free/libre software)

This phenomenon was described beautifully by Czechoslovakia President Václav Havel in 1991; he called it “power unto death”:

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/vl/notes/havel.html

I imagine he is deeply knowledgeable.

My criticism of him is a separate, but similar, issue. I believe that he misses some of the social aspects of modern life, and that's why he views certain innocuous proprietary behaviors as totally damning. Based on his occasional emails to other members of the MIT community, he also seems to have a lack of empathy for people (not just organizations) who don't share his disdain for non-free things.

Not to mention that I find it difficult to see eye to eye with any man who would use a public urinal without shoes on.

I think I agree with you, buuuut "rand98765" is your current username.

Fair point - perhaps it was his comment that everyday users could just go along to a user group to get Linux installed, and needn't worry about doing it themselves. This seemed painfully out of touch to me, as if he were talking about finding someone to solder your Altair together or something.

Probably because the process is at best dull and at worst, a massive PITA; either way it has little to no relevance to his actual work. If I had the chance, I'd avoid any kind of software installation/maintainence as well...

I'm still struggling to understand, what exactly Stallman's social acheivements are. It's not like he is the reason people care about proprietary software and surveillance. No, the real reasons are these things themselves, because — I won't say "all people", but many people understand the dangers and inconveniences of it pretty damn well. I myself perfectly agree with Stallman on many (if not all) of his convictions, but so what? I still use Android phone and many other nasty things, because it's convenient and actually less harmful than making "normal people" around you too dismiss you as some "conspiracy freak". I hate it, but I use it. Not using Facebook alone is pretty troublesome in my social life.

And GNU project software (with a few important exceptions, of course) now feels more like a legacy, than a salvation. It has it's own statute of limitations, so to say.

So I don't see how complaining without actually making a difference helps someone.

"A beginner shouldn't be installing operating systems"?

If a moderately-intelligent, moderately-literate beginner can't install your operating system, then your operating system (or at least, its user interface) is crap.

Edit: Just to be clear, I'm responding to the quote, not calling Linux crap. I run a combination of Linux and Windows machines and VMs and they're both very straightforward to install, a complete beginner can just click next / next / next and still get it working.