Unrelated but, I'm curious: how does RMS pay the bills? The FSF board seat is a volunteer position and he no longer works for MIT. Is he paid as a consultant or something?
Considering he was sleeping on a mattress in a MIT office, hopefully he saved a good portion of that in a bank account. He will also be eligible for social security and Medicare at his age, assuming he had enough working years in the social security system to qualify.
There are a lot of people with significant contributions without which the world wouldn't be in its current state.
For example, Linux depends on gcc and binutils and other GNU software, and many other software does.