It's more likely that we'd have the situation we had with UNIX; incompatible forks tied to incrutable hardware drivers that no one can fix with a zillion different combinations so that when you sat down at a terminal you had no idea what to do -thanks to people being able to take the BSD/MIT software and create their own contrarian forks.
GNU wasn't innovative because it was free, or even because it's source was free. It was innovative because it forced people to play nice.
The UNIX Wars demonstrated how well people play with others when left to their own desires (not at all).
And again, helpful to whom? Yes. Stallman's no diplomat or ambassador, but that's not the job he's trying to do.
With that said, I appreciate what Stallman has done, if nothing else, to shine light on what freedoms we're giving up, and on the contrasts between the different free and non-free models that are in use today.
With Microsoft and Apple the software is commercial and not free, but they do a good job of handholding the customer and working through bugs and technical issues over the phone.