But even there there was a bit of a break when Stallman insisted (does he still?) that Linux be referred to as GNU/Linux as its kernel would be worthless without the GNU userland. People in classic Slashdot were fans of Free/Open source, but in conflicts between Linus and others, Linus came first.
And Stallman is wrong in his GNU/Linux naming crusade, because it ignores a whole lot of non-GNU components in any modern Linux distro, even the fully-Free ones like gNewSense. X, for example, has never been a GNU project.
This was probably because slashdot used to be very intertwined with the rise of open source and Linux. People were altruistic in discussions of these things. It's a big contrast here to see, for example, that references to someone like Stallman are usually mocking or prefaced with the idea that he's a nut.