I don't think Stallman cares about convincing -- his role is to be an uncompromising extremist, which he does quite well.
In any movement, you need people to set the goalpost so far away that others can seem reasonable by comparison. They serve a purpose to the movement, but they themselves risk being ostracized and marginalized.
On the facts, I think he's wrong about Jobs -- Apple has done a lot to make it possible for free alternatives of some important software to exist. What they are doing to make the web (HTML5) a reasonable alternative to Flash is almost enough. In fact, closing iOS to Flash is the main reason that it's happening.
Why is convincing people the be-all and end-all of communication? Doesn't just being right count for something?
Obviously you need a lot of people who are willing to do the work of convincing folks, but you also need other people who are willing to be right whether it's popular or not. Every book I have ever read on selling change within organizations says that you need to start by talking with the people who are the most receptive to new ideas, regardless of where they are in the hierarchy.
I personally don't think Stallman is entirely right, but I think he articulates his ideas quite clearly. Anyone who doesn't listen to him because he has a beard or whatever clearly doesn't care about the truth in the first place.
That's not to say that it's not worth convincing people who don't care about the truth, but rather that you need different kinds of people willing to play different kinds of roles in order to create social change. Just because Stallman isn't going to be the guy who convinces the masses doesn't mean that what he's doing (in general) isn't vital to the movement.
Stallman has never been able to convince people. In fact I've argued his cause is worse off because of him. For as good of a programmer he may be, he seems just as bad at human interaction.
I consider this another fitting tribute. To be despised by Stallman in this way is something to be proud of -- IMO, it means you probably did something right.
