Richard Stallman had extreme Cassandra Complex. Virtually everything he wrote 30 years ago came true (or will soon), but no one believed him.
I think the loss of freedoms Richard Stallman described were very much what was already happening around in with the Lisp environment. He was correct in saying this would be repeated as software ate the world.
So roughly the things he was right about were very hard to prevent. Which is partly why he was right.
His relevance now is because we too have shifted to mainframes, but we don't call it mainframe and dumb terminals anymore, we say 'cloud' and 'mobile'. We are rebuilding the future in effigy of our past because it's what we know. Stallman's critiques being relevant again are a testament to the cyclical nature of humanity, like bellbottoms, hightop fades, and vinyl records.
Now if you don't mind, I must iron these JNCO's, times-a-wasting!
(I think the reactions of ordinary people to Stallman's views are quite predictable, mention sex and they go bonkers. )
(I happen to agree with Stallman on his non-software views that I know about, so am a bit curious on what you disagree with)
Care to provide examples?
Look at FAANG and other companies' policy towards the GPL and their abuse of BSD, and I think it is pretty clear what's up.
It's perfect by legitimate to prefer copyleft, but I struggle to take seriously the idea that a license can be abused by following its terms, particularly when the reason people put stuff under permissive licenses is to let anyone do whatever they want with it without giving back.