This.

That's a question I often ask. From what I know, RMS got some money in the bank that allows him to live the way he chooses. That is : spare some of its time advocating and building the free software movement. He's also very charismatic (well, in its very own way, I must admit).

He basically incarnates one thing : there's no compromise. He proves his position by shutting him off the proprietary world. And that's super tough to do. If he ever used non free software, his uncompromising position would be weakened.

So, FSF needs to be able to replace that sort of, non compromising, super talented and really smart person.

Has anybody ever seen someone close to that ? Then only one I see is Eben Moglen (although its technical talent is not in IT)

Eben has recently argued for combining code under GPL and GPL incompatible licenses, which could lead to the combination of code under GPL and proprietary licenses. I regard him as compromised by his corporate clients.

ouch, didn't know that... Would you care to give a link where this is explained ?

Here's some background: http://info9.net/wiki/tmarble/posts/is-slfc-shooting-open-so...

And a statement last week from the former Debian Project Leader: http://gensho.acc.umu.se/pub/debian-meetings/2016/debconf16/...