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.
replies(9):
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.
Here is a paste of a previous reply.
I strongly disagree. I don't know whether he would identify himself as a communist politically, but it doesn't matter. Furthermore, I am entitled to analyze his ideas and classify them as I please. And as far as I'm concerned, he is arguing about fruits of labor being free in the typical “comrade” idealization from communism.
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.