> an uncompromising idealist

That's what I respect most about him. His message has never changed. He's truly a man of his convictions. Like him or not.

That's also what I respect most about Hitler. Like him or not.

I'm not really sure how you can compare someone who promotes Free/Open Source software to a murderer of millions, but anyways...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

Godwin aside, he makes a good point, which is that just being an uncompromising idealist is not always commendable. A person may stick with the same ideology or message for various reasons - maybe because the philosophy really is true/best, or maybe because the person is to egotistical to change, or for many other reasons. We shouldn't be respecting people solely because they are unwilling to change - instead respect should be based on the actual views and the merits thereof.

I wasn't comparing the men. I was comparing the arguments. Which means that Godwin's law doesn't apply. And all of the folks down voting me are Nazis.

Nah, they're the ones who also respect Hitler - they're up voting you. ;-)

One difference is that Stallman is a reasonable man. If you could put together a watertight argument that proprietary software is better than free software, I think Stallman would become a proprietary software advocate. Is Stallman being uncompromising by rejecting hand-waving arguments, or merely following a logical conclusion based on stronger evidence?

Torvalds uses the best tool for the job. The only reason git was even created was because some Linux developers refused to use BitKeeper.

The message of Torvalds is "use the best available to you" while the message of Stallman is "use the least restrictive available to you, and accept no substitutes"

No, although alot of kernel developers disliked the proprietary nature of Bitkeeper, the decision of making Git came when BitMover revoked the Linux developers right to use Bitkeeper for free. Good thing though, as Git turned out to be great as it's popularity shows.

Many times it doesn't matter if things are free or not. Even if thins block people doing things, after a short hiccup, people find a solution to their problems.

Stallman's ideology is, at the end, just about preventing hiccups...