That's where I both am, and am not, driving to work, right?

for IBM to lay off another couple hundred thousand.

Actually, on 2015-03-16 he said he's been using a web browser and Tor. I don't know if the two are related and I don't know when he started using a common browser in a typical fashion.

Looking at the kerfuffle around LLVM/Clang you can find more of the same attitude from RMS—he doesn't have the ego invested in the work as his detractors claim he does (often without examples cited at all, sometimes as with the grandparent poster with wrong examples cited):

For GCC to be replaced by another technically superior compiler that defended freedom equally well would cause me some personal regret, but I would rejoice for the community's advance. The existence of LLVM is a terrible setback for our community precisely because it is not copylefted and can be used as the basis for nonfree compilers -- so that all contribution to LLVM directly helps proprietary software as much as it helps us.

Those aren't the words of someone who places ego above the good of the project or the public. For software freedom seekers, software freedom and defense of software freedom is the goal and good for the public.

Firmware is software and computer users still need software freedom for all published software. This hasn't changed since Richard Stallman reached conclusions about the ethics of software over 30 years ago. Changing what device the software is loaded into or the form it takes when loaded doesn't change any of the underlying issues that all have to do with how people treat each other. This is also not an issue to be properly understood by "open source" focus on convenience, caving into business desires, or developmental methodology.

If you want to say that RMS's position is pedantic, that's fine. Just understand that RMS has slightly different values than open source advocates and he works to keep those values. RMS views open source as dangerous to the freedom to have all changes made available because open source does not make any guarantee about it. Others, like ESR, aren't quite as concerned about that as long as some version of the source is available. Thus, you get open source. Free and open source software are not exactly the same thing though.

Open source advocates think that proprietary software is acceptable and free software advocates don't think proprietary software is ever acceptable, as RMS points out in his essays and talks dating back many years (1, 2). I'd hardly call that difference pedantic—being overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning like a pedant. And the preservation of software freedom copyleft makes real can sometimes be okay to forgo but only after careful consideration. But the open source movement doesn't distinguish among licenses based on copyleft because that would draw attention to the very thing that movement was designed to silence and distract discussion away from talk of—software freedom.

Glenn Greenwald asks a more interesting and important question than /. encourages its readers to consider when Greenwald asks "What's Scarier: Terrorism, or Governments Blocking Websites in its Name?" and then he answers it, "More damage has been inflicted historically by censorship than by the "terrorism" used to justify it.". Considering how little of a threat terrorism is in the US relative to other known dangers ('Terrorism Still Less Deadly in US Than Lack of Health Insurance, Salmonella', 'Gun Murders vs. Terrorism by the Numbers') one has to wonder about other western countries such as France.

First thing I check is cables.

What could possibly go wrong?

Don't worry, he won't. And this story (like so much of /.) is "hyping empty garbage" (what Glenn Greenwald called Politicoâ(TM)s digital editorial director Blake Hounshell, but applies quite well here). Greenwald explains it all excellently, as per usual.

I think I've seen this movie before. It doesn't end well.

The same one the Mac OS got hit with in the most recent release.

I'm uninterested in DRM'd e-readers or any e-reader that reveals my location, refuses to let me copy, quote, print, and do other things I do with books. I'm unwilling to sacrifice my rights because some publisher wants a rent scheme on books or wants me to constantly feed them information on my whereabouts, what I'm reading, logging my name with what I read (which even my local library only does as long as the loan), and other privacy violations that simply aren't possible with books. Calling DRM "digital restrictions management" is right and proper because that frames the debate where it belongs—around user's rights.

I'm not so sure that's true because the relevant laws are set such that the penalties are so light for the wealthy violators and virtually non-existant for the most powerful participants in the system. First, the organization with the most patents is not in a position to "feel pain" as you say; IBM's power is (as they've said long ago) in cross-licensing. They said they get an order of magnitude more benefit by leveraging the power the patent scheme was built to exert (which is also part of the problem of calling organizations "patent trolls" as if leveraging that power is somehow not to be expected, or an abuse of an otherwise upright system, when in fact that power is just part of the system operating as designed). As a result, losing patent infringement lawsuits is not common for IBM. Richard Stallman laid out how this works in his patent talks many years ago:

IBM got two kinds of benefit from its 9000 US patents. I believe the number is larger today. These were first, collecting royalties and second, getting access to the patents of others. They said that the latter benefit is an order of magnitude greater. So the benefit that IBM got from being allowed to use the ideas that were patented by others was 10 times the direct benefit IBM could get from licensing patents. What does this really mean?

What is the benefit that IBM gets from this access to the patents of others? It is basically the benefit of being excused from the trouble that the patent system can cause you. The patent system is like a lottery. What happens with any given patent could be nothing, could be a windfall for some patent holder or a disaster for everyone else. But IBM being so big, for them, it averages out. They get to measure the average harm and good of the patent system. For them, the trouble of the patent system would have been 10 times the good. I say would have been because IBM through cross-licensing avoids experiencing that trouble. That trouble is only potential. It doesn't really happen to them. But when they measure the benefits of avoiding that trouble, they estimate it as 10 times the value of the money they collect from their patents.

With regard to Apple specifically, it's not that difficult to see that they get by in part by violating government-granted monopoly and they're wealthy enough to be able to afford to do it repeatedly. The people who run Apple now ran NeXT years ago. NeXT infringed the FSF's license (GPLv2) in NeXT's initially unauthorized GCC derivative in which NeXT added Objective-C support. NeXT and the FSF settled out of court when the FSF got them to comply with the terms of the GPL (lesson learned here: stand up for your strong copylefted free software licenses and the bullies will meet your terms). Apple would again violate the GPLv2 later by distributing an infringing copy of VideoLAN Client. VLC co-author Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote critically of Apple's choice to let the program through it's app store saying "Those terms are contradicted by the products usage rules of the AppStore through which Apple delivers applications to users of its mobile devices." Apple infringed upon 3 Chinese writer's copyrights and were ordered to pay 730,000 yuan ($118,000), hardly a sum that would stop Apple from doing this again. But the pattern seems clear: Apple violates laws it doesn't like and never really meets a punishment that will make the leaders of the organization question whether to do it again. Apple isn't unique in this but that is a detail; we need punishments for the wealthy and powerful that make them take the law more seriously. But most importantly for endeavors practiced by the general public, such as computer programming, we need to fight in an organized and political way to end software idea patents. Mere patent reform is a delaying tactic that benefits the powerful.

What stands out to me about your post and the grandparent post is how both of you malign someone with no evidence. I'm certainly not taking you seriously about speaking for "many people [in Seattle]" either.