The Impetus for the GPL: Gosling Emacs

Thank you for posting this, it was well worth a read.

While few of us can manage to be as dedicated to an ideal as RMS is, having an icon who is genuinely committed around helps keep us moving in the right direction.

Certainly the web startup world owes a huge amount to the man (and every other programmer who writes open code) - how many startups would be where they are now without the boost that open source software provides?

In years when I don't make an OSS code donation I try and make a cash donation to the EFF instead. It's not so much giving to charity as making an important investment in my next independant project that would never exist if step one was paying $$$ for an IDE/compiler subscription.