Stallmann has, as far as I can tell, been sitting on his hands for the past 15 years. In that time period it does not seem that has accomplished anything of consequence except drama, pissing off many of his remaining allies with powertrips [0], and crippling GCC relative to LLVM. I cannot remember the last time a new piece of software came out of the GNU organization which was actually relevant to users or developers - they and the FSF seem stuck in the 1990s and have done little to attempt to address the general trend towards SaaS / web.
Even if "Stallmann was right", that doesn't mean he's the right person to lead the FSF. Because the increasing irrelevance of the FSF isn't just our fault for not caring enough, but his also, through inaction, poor decisionmaking, unprofessional behavior and terrible PR.
Although it's the statement of the title, it's not really what the article was about. The title is clickbaity, it should really say "Richard Stallman Was Right" or something. This is explained in the disclaimer above the article, and the article itself.
Stallman and the FSF are solely focused on the ideology and not on how to create a practical economy based on the ideology. RMS has not advocated and materially supported software, such as GCC, that implements Free Software principles while he is eager to take credit for and fundraise on the success of those communities.
RMS specifically has prevented GCC from being innovative in ways that would complicate the enforcement of the GPL until the new feature is required to be competitive. First, that is not freedom. Second, that policy may have been viable when GCC was the only viable challenger to proprietary compilers, but not when Open Source compilers with more commercially friendly licenses exist.
The FSF is fighting the last war and believes that corporations are trying to tear down the FSF and the GNU Project software. It's a fantasy to convince themselves that they are relevant.
Richard was a great visionary and is useful to expand the Overton window, but the FSF has not evolved to advocate for a pragmatic approach. If RMS and the FSF wishes to advocate for a purist ideology, that's fine, but they need to accept that it severely limits their appeal and ability to shape policy, even if they are "right".
Stallman is huge. Practically you cannot appoint someone to his position. FSF is meaningless without him. If you could, this would have happened when they fired him.
That's a huge problem for the FSF then, which it should be urgently looking to solve.
He's 70 years old, which means he will need a successor fairly soon in one way or another. If the mission is that important, it shouldn't die with him.
Yes, this is the most important point from an organizational point of view. If only for that, accepting to be so tied to a single individual is a concern.
I 100% agree with you. The inflexibility of the FSF as to adapt to platform capitalism (e.g., address licensing issues of Uber-like platforms and clients) is also a serious concern. When I see the debacle that the coopyleft (with two o, not a typo) licencing of the CoopCycle software platform and client has been, I'm left wondering if the discussion on human users vs software freedom (which is more or less supposed to be the philosophical difference between free and open source) isn't just a hypocritical argument.
Even if "Stallmann was right", that doesn't mean he's the right person to lead the FSF. Because the increasing irrelevance of the FSF isn't just our fault for not caring enough, but his also, through inaction, poor decisionmaking, unprofessional behavior and terrible PR.
[0] https://lwn.net/Articles/802985/