don't really agree. RMS has his quirks, sure. but he also has balls, and strong morals. and he's a brilliant hacker. i find him a nice relief from the passive aggressive personalities in the hacker mainstream... not to put myself too much in zed or giles' camp...
Hey guys, thanks for discussing this. I meant the original post in a positive way. RMS lost something he loved: the hacker community around free software. He re-started it with GNU and later assured it's further survival with the GPL. I find this is a good reaction to a catastrophic event. To be more aware of this possibility is what I learned.
uh... might be more interesting to know from which RMS you learned this. (lots of conceivable possibilities to choose from on the wikiped disambiguation page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS)
as terse and glib as this post is... i think it should be obvious he means Richard M. Stallman... given the context, and that this is hacker news...
Thanks for contributing to my continuing education. I just don't much follow personalities behind the projects much and so didn't even get down to the people disambiguation, "Richard M. Stallman (often abbreviated in lowercase, "rms"), veteran software developer and founder of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation".