This is not a bad thing, nor a reflection that the FSF is doing it wrong. Indeed it is a sign they are doing it right.
Ultimately all open software exists _because_ of the FSF. They set the marker in the ground, they set the standard the rest if us don't quite live up to. Their role is not to produce all the code, their role is to explain the freedoms well enough so that enough other people believe in some, or all, of those freedoms.
The two main threads of the article are hardware, and emacs.
Depending on how far down the stack you want to go (open microcode in your CPU?) it's generally possible to get hardware open enough for you to do anything you like. Not all hardware is open, sure, but there are enough choices.
Yes there are still closed drivers (ironic given what kicked RMS off in the first place) but careful choices play a role here.
That said, keeping an eye in the hardware, and keeping open hardware in our minds, is an excellent reason for the FSF to exist. Their job is not to win the war, its to make us care about the war at all. We will win it, if we care about it.
Emacs is a very specific example of a program run by a person who has beliefs. He builds that program to conform to those beliefs, not the beliefs of his user base.
In this case he's the printer maker not wanting his printer to work on the new hardware. His goal is not to make "the world's best editor" - his goal us to "make the world's best editor that promotes free software ideals."
Ironically, if you don't like that, you can take his work and built on it however _you_ like. He not only represents the original problem, he presents the ongoing solution.
The Freedoms are explicit. They don't give the user rights over the developer. They give the user rights to add their own work to the equation. Emphasis on work.
The FSF is not fighting the wrong war. They are not fighting at all. They are setting a marker in the ground saying "this is what could be." Our job is to notice, and care.
Free Software is about owning your machine. It's not about being allowed to be installed, or even being easy to install on machines you don't own. It's not about being higher quality. The Free alternative maybe worse, but no one can take it away from you, and it won't spy on you if you don't want it to.
It is not about having free high quality software for everyone to use. That is a lucky consequence of giving people control over their own devices and the things that run on them. Things that enter Free Software never die. They grow, stop growing, then later grow again. They only die if people find something else better, and they always have a chance of rising from the dead. They're public property. Open Source, which is wonderful once you turn it into Free Software, is not immortal. All you have to do is embrace it, extend it, then kill interop, and it is gone.
edit: Open Source starts off as dead code. I can take it, extend it, and obfuscate it tomorrow, and it's mine. If I spend enough on marketing I can make the original look defective. I can make the Open Source version look dangerous and point out its bugs while hiding my own. I can make the vendors only accept the version signed with my key to provide something we decided to call "end-to-end verification."
Doesn't work with GPL software. They have to write their own.
Ubuntu is 96% built on unmodified Debian packages. Ubuntu's successes are Debian's successes.
Debian was never flexible enough of an OS to allow all the customization that Ubuntu needed to do to happen in Debian itself, thus it had to be forked. That to me is a failure, not a success. Forks should always be the absolute last resort, yet are common place with distributions, which creates a terrible situation for the user, has features they might want end up being spread across numerous different distributions.
The argument I and other people are making is that the FSF's goals are being achieved but not by the FSF.