1) So what ?
2) He did few things. He launched Free Software Movement, started Free Software Foundation, and GNU project. He is main author of GPL :)
3) So what ?
4) So what ?
"How can someone hear him when he says something like this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3083349 "
Because he's not hypocrite.
Yes, imho the GPL (and the idea of viral copyleft that it inspired) deserves to be treated as one of the greatest legal inventions of our time. Given the ongoing reduction of just about everything to information, the ascendancy of code and data among the human race, and the extent to which it will shape our future history, a viable, effective, encompassing legal framework to ensure its freedom is one of the most valuable contributions to computing that anyone has made.