I don't think just anyone could have done the same, but supposing for the sake of argument that it's true, I think not many people would have done the same, which is what compels me to respect rms in the same way as I would respect William Wallace as portrayed in the movie Braveheart. Sacrificing your life for the freedom of others takes no great feat of intellect or even physical skill, but in some ways, I think being willing to do such a thing deserves more respect than, say, proving P=NP.

>> "Sacrificing your life for the freedom of others"

Are we still talking about the guy who wrote some software and made it open source?

Do you not think Linus would have just made his own compiler+toolchain?