I grew up at a time when people felt very strongly about Windows versus Linux. People would fight amongst themselves on Slashdot and elsewhere about whether it was OK to use Windows, or whether it was possible to do [whatever] on Linux.

I guess what I'm wondering is: is OSX/iOS versus Linux/Android the operating system flame war of our time? In this thread, I see almost entirely ad hominem attacks on Stallman. (Not unlike a Daring Fireball thread in reverse.) Is he Glenn Beck or is he Rush Limbaugh? Is he just slightly impractical or is he extremely impractical?

What I don't see is any substantial discussion of the OP. At the moment, there are 2/72 comments that mention the iOS App Store at all, which is a major point that Stallman seems to be making here.

More generally, is no one worried about what Stallman is worried about? Jobs' explicit stated goal was to destroy the only Linux mobile platform (through patents), and his policies on the App Store and elsewhere were explicitly hostile to Free Software. Had Jobs been successful and perhaps lived another ten years, we might be living in a world with no Free Software on our personal devices at all. Apple laptops with software installed from the Mac App Store to develop iOS apps for the iOS App Store (with both App Stores of course rejecting GPL code).

Given that almost all startups rely heavily on Free Software, from emacs to gcc to Xen to Ruby to every poorly constructed library on Github, that would be tremendously negative for the startup ecosystem, no?