Complaining that the iPad is "unethical" is like offering to replace my "unethical" Subaru with an "ethical" Model T. At the foot of the Rockies. In a snowstorm. While grizzly bears close in. I'm gonna worry about the unhackability of my transmission with the sun shining. Yeah, the Model T might be fundamentally the same, but the differences in execution make for entirely different tools.
Now, I would rather deal with the grizzlies than belong to the guys making the Subarus. I don't want to belong to anyone. But the open source stacks and market competition will catch up. Free enterprise and free people won't let Apple keep those margins and powers for itself. I don't see why I shouldn't leave the grizzlies behind today, while starting work on building my FOSS Four Wheeler. Why not use the closed capabilities today while extending open to meet them tomorrow?
I do respect RMS, and I'm grateful for and dependent on free software. But the RMS posting lacked generosity. He and his would be much better off recognizing the enormous utility gains provided by a great many closed systems. I find it hard to imagine that Jobs' focus on the user's needs and perspective isn't a crucial contribution to the development of technology. It wouldn't kill people to recognize that some of this stuff has shown the way to new visions. And it wouldn't kill RMS to notice that Jobs had a passion and vision for technology as _human_ tools.
So if RMS is showing us the moon, he should probably notice that Jobs et al have put a couple of satellites into orbit.
We must not allow cult leaders and their status in judging value added to the world with their work. Come to think of it, what is the new thing that Steve Jobs bought to the world. Surely he bought the iPhone/iPad or the iPod. But none of that was something that didn't exist before. Phones, music players et al have been there for a century now. If the gloss and entertainment value of Apple products is the measure of Steve Jobs's success. The status of iPhone in this world is nothing bigger than video games. Those are just cool-to-have gadgets of our time. iPhone hasn't changed anything in the primary paradigm. People used still send emails, communicate and get entertained in the same ways they did before iPhone. iPhone just enabled that to happen in a easier way. But we have other things to learn from Steve Jobs, which have little to do with larger implications on Software on the longer run. He is role model for totally different set of tasks.
On the other hand, here we have RMS. Who has a proven record for fighting for something that will decide how we will use and control what we buy or build over the foreseeable future. He is also a giant who has enabled, developed and helped developed FOSS software that is helping running thousands of dollars of business today.
Richard Matthew Stallman is trying to show us the moon, but some of us are busy pointing mistakes in his finger