I saw Richard Stallman preach... er... speak at UCLA today. The topic was copyright, and the general feeling amongst the people I went with was that you spend your time alternating between agreeing with him and wanting to hit him.
It is very difficult to pin him down to specific points because he's likely to chew you up on semantics before the meat of your argument comes to the fore[0].
However, I did find his arguments on publishing technical books to be particularly persuasive[1] and I wouldn't mind seeing them go forward. I also agree that copyright law has gotten completely out of hand and that the "perpetual copyright through installments" is morally reprehensible.
If only I didn't want to beat the crap out of him every 15 minutes...
Ah well.
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[0] I don't care if it's correct or not, saying GNU/Linux is damned inconvenient and goes against the natural human tendency to shorten names.
[1] I won't attempt to restate or summarize the arguments as I'd probably be flamed out of existence by zealots.
Well, I think by virtue of founding the FSF and writing that little emacs prorgram (among other things) that you can't really sum him up as being "just a manipulator". Someone's being an unbeleivably bombastic jackass doesn't alter their contributions to society, and those contributions don't excuse them from being a jackass.
Step back and see the whole picture, then damn the parts of the picture that need damning and praise the parts that need praising. But don't dismiss the picture with a simple label. It's dangerous to do so.