I assume Linus is a pragmatist who doesn't want to torpedo his own product by putting a slash and abbreviation in its name and forcing the whole world to only call it that. I think accusing him of not caring about freedom because he balances pragmatism and ideology differently is throwing out the proverbial baby with the bath water.

I don't think it's nice to spit in the face of a person that hands you half of the cake you wanted. The GNU project has the freedom to get their own HURD kernel into a sufficiently working state and compete, which does not seem to be that trivial a task for all the years I've been following this drama.