As a product manager he has done a poor job. For years he prevented GCC from moving to a simpler more modular architecture because he said that would make it easier to build non-free software on top of it. In the meantime Clang implemented this modular architecture and started taking market share from GCC. Years later GCC moved to a modular architecture anyway because Stallman finally blessed it. At the same time he prevented emacs from officially embracing better integration with Clang and Clang style compilers that provide a richer debugging and syntax checking experience. He did this because GCC didn't support the same experience. Eventually (after years) emacs did integrate with Clang and GCC style syntax facilities.
He made similar stalling moves preventing the adoption of git for emacs (and other FSF projects). First he pushed Arch, the he forced repositories to migrate to BZR after git had clearly won the version control battle (I'm fuzzy, but emacs moved to BZR around 2009-2011). Finally he conceded and emacs moved to git in 2014. After emacs migrated to git he used the emacs mailing list asking for simple git support that he would have understood if he hadn't remained purposefully ignorant about the VCS.
The FSF still revolves around Stallman and he hasn't done much work to find and promote a successor to himself to lead the organization. He is a poor steward of his own movement.
There were also his comments about Minsky and Epstein. He is entitled to his opinions, but as a leader of an important org with such stringent beliefs, delving into other topics was a distraction for the org. Being a leader requires focus and direction, inviting controversy with comments on unrelated current events is the opposite of focus.
In total I think that a lot of Stallman's actions have more to do with his ego and self importance than advancing the free software movement.
You're likely aware, but I wanted to take this opportunity to surface that a lot of the coverage of his comments on Minsky and Epstein was misleading if not malicious.
Notably, articles from Vice and The Daily Beast accused him of defending Epstein and asserting that victims were willing, and both of those accusations are false, as can be reasonably discerned from careful reading of the quotes that appear in the articles themselves. Rather, Stallman defended Minsky and said that victims probably appeared to Minsky to be willing even if they were being coerced out of his sight.
In addition to any judgement we're applying over his choice of whether to talk about it in the first place, we should be sure we're judging him for what he said (which I do believe deserves criticism) and not for what some people want to pretend he said.
Talking to gamers about the evils of paid proprietary software and hardware should be relatively easy. But because Stallman is so fundamentally incapable of reading the room, and so exceptionally talented at alienating people, he manages to put out something that gamers look at, laugh, maybe make a meme or two out of, and then forget about.
> but the problem is that Richard Stallman is one of the most influential and respected members of the movement
Stallman hasn't been influential in at least two decades. He's so extremist that anyone actually interested in getting shit done has ignored him. He is completely lacking in perspective-taking, empathy, viewing anyone as anything approaching a peer, or even managing just to not talk at/down to them. He openly pities everyone, thinks us all stupid fools.
I think there was limited respect for Stallman's original concepts and his vision. But in the decades since, he's generated little to no work product, and mostly come off as jealous and bitter.
Any mainstream-open-source-community respect he had, he lost much of when all the stories about him being a serial sexual harasser (if not borderline predator) came out, and then his comments about underage sex...which to make the matter even worse, he's been nothing but petulant and defensive about.
Stallman is not a statesman, a diplomat, ambassador, or a leader. He's just an ideological zealot who has held back the open software movement by refusing to acknowledge his skill set, demeanor, and behavior are not suitable for representing and advancing the open source movement, and that if he truly cared about said movement, he would have long since changed his methods or let someone else take a whirl.
Some folks see him as a genius, but all I see is man who has spent over four decades yelling (largely) the same thing from the top of a mountain, thinking that one day everyone will suddenly see the genius and wisdom of his grand plan. Who lacks the self-awareness to recognize his lack of effectiveness, and the selflessness to step aside and let someone else try carrying the mantle.