"The open source path" includes many steps before you actually see any source from people. Once they've released source, it's a little late to go back. But they might be turned away from going through the trouble and risk of releasing source in the first place if they perceive that Richard Stallman is the type of person they'd be appeasing.

But more to the point, Stallman does not just want open-source software. He wants free software, and just based on my informal observations, his ideas of free software seem to be losing traction these days. Yeah, there's a lot of open-source software, but BSD, Apache, MIT and other open-source-but-not-free licenses are taking the lion's share.

Even among projects that do use GPL, they mostly seem to prefer v2 rather than the more-free GPL3 and AGPL.

BSD, Apache and MIT are all Free licenses, even by Stallman's viewpoint. They're just not copyleft.

He thinks the Open Source movement misses the point, but he has no problems accepting their software as Free.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think that keeping existing open source projects open source is all Stallman wants.

Do you honestly believe that his comments help push for more free software? I don’t.

I dont claim to know what Richard Stallman wants or what effects his words have.

What?! I think Stallman has always been pretty clear about what he wants. It’s not clarity that he lacks as a spokesperson.

Your original post had - "It’s impossible to ignore the effects he has in his role and they are terrible.". You failed to cite a single effect let alone it being terrible. I merely asked you to point out things that you think are hard to miss but that I dont know about at all.

I think that claiming to know what someone else wants falls in the same category as speaking on their behalf - something that should only be done in very limited circumstances.