RMS could have taken a photo of his screen, or done something cheeky like dump his screen to a padded ASCII text file and submitted that. Stick in the mud.
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I walked up and introduced myself and said that I was a big fan, appreciated his hard work, etc. He looked at me coldly and just said "so are you going to buy something?" and motioned toward the booklets. I didn't need a printed copy of the `sed` man page so I shrugged and he seemed quite annoyed, turned to his assistant with a notebook computer and started dictating something to them, as almost to make it clear that our interaction was over.
I'm not sure what the point of posting this is, but that's my RMS story - it was my first "never meet your heroes" moment, I guess.
If at least he was actually doing what he preaches, one could be charitable. But actually he is just a goddamn activist, endlessly arguing about why the work of others should be free while he does zero work of value himself.
Every far-left friend I have had, who always touts some form of communism or sharing of resources, has been the one who systematically shares the least. And that is true both from a material point of view and effort/labor perspective as well. Hence my conclusion that they are assholes.
It seems to have hurt the sensibilities of his followers, but that was expected, and since they are assholes, you cannot expect them to be truthful.
By the way, political ideology is identifiable in genetics, so yes, it is absolutely certain that your political ideas correlate with how you interact with peoples.
2. There are psychological traits that can influence on a statistical level (very high numbers) political views. But this is just tendencies, it's not determinism.
Openness to new experiences correlates often with openness to change and experimentation on social matters. Neuroticism often correlates with sensitivity on safety matters. Agreeableness with tendencies towards egalitarian views. And all of that still matters way less than cultural background and many other things.
But extraversion or social skills, like in Stallman's case have 0 relationship with political views. In fact, by your logic and his traits, he should fall on the other end of the political spectrum.
The argument against appliances isn't any good. You are not entitled to getting access to the schematic and inner workings of things you buy. By this logic, everything should come with the full blueprint and documentation on the production process. You are free to choose to buy things that are more open, and it is indeed a desirable quality for the consumer, but definitely not a right. Without closed-source software, ubiquitous computing would not exist. When you buy a printer, it is working as is, as described with the limitations that are laid out. You are free to keep using it as long as it is functional with the computer/OS it was designed for. You are free to make your own printer or select a brand that offers full firmware access if this is important to you.
As for the psych thing, I never said it was full determinism, and I really don't want to argue about it with you. The point I am making has nothing to do with social skills. In the story of the OP, Stallman gave zero shits about him unless he wanted to buy some of his manuals. This is both hilarious and hypocritical for a dude who spends all day arguing about making “free” software. It maps perfectly to the experience of anyone who has to deal with people who are communist in spirit. They'll argue about sharing everything to never contribute anything or the minimum they can get away with. It is not a subtle effect, and the more communist they are, the worse it is.
In fact, the thing I get out of this is that my first statement was perfectly accurate. Predictably, you got worked up about it because Stallman is an idol, and you are some sort of Marxist-derived ideologue, and your feelings got hurt. It seems very likely that you are also yourself an asshole. Not that I wouldn't buy you a beer to listen to your comrade fantasies (they're very entertaining, like fantasy novels), I don't strongly discriminate against assholery, but if it walks like a duck, I call it a duck. In French the word I would use is “enfoiré", the literal translation is indeed “asshole” or “bastard,” but the meaning I'm trying to convey is "personne malfaisante, déloyale" which roughly translates to "deleterious and dishonest person." And this is a perfect description for Stallman's behavior as well as the vast majority of communists. It's not like there wasn't extensive literature/proofs on the subject…
1. Stallman is not my idol, I don't like the guy at all and I find him disgusting from many points of view, but I see his point of why access to information and software is important to humanity. I am surrounded by appliances I don't really own and control, from printers to TVs and it's disgusting, I absolutely understand his points. I should be able to modify and repair stuff I buy with my money, it's mine. This has been normal for 99.99% of human history by the way.
2. I don't really like left vs right labels, I find them asinine. Politics are complex, there's countless topics on which one could be leaning in one or another end. Moreover I don't like anything that ends with "ism" it's never brought anything good to the world. I'm more right-leaning if you care to know. Yet I know people and have family members that have the most diverse view, and I respect those. I judge people for how they behave and act to others and the ideals they fight for.
3. Since you keep judging me (wrongly, you miss on everything, like you did on Stallman), I'll judge you. You sound like a loser mixup between a 4chan incel on those boards like /pol/ and a 60 years old bigot on facebook.
4. Psychological and social studies demonstrate that the qualities you find in Stallman are more common among the people on the other end of the political spectrum.