Looking back, this is probably one of the most important initiatives in the last 30 years, though I don't usually like Stallman. I've personally found more utility in the BSD and MIT licenses, but the GNU initiative really spawned the free software movement as a whole. It's interesting to think where we would be today if Linux and the GNU userland tools were never created. Would it have been possible to build something like Google without free software, or would it have gotten killed by licensing and vendor fees? In any case, Stallman really did change everything.
Stallman made free Emacs, then free GCC. He hasn't managed to make the widely usable free kernel at the time, but he prepared everything but that, which made possible for GNU licensed Linux kernel to become the part of the whole free system. It's an immense feat.
I wonder how many people who read this at the time wrote it off as unrealistic. Although there are several stated goals that have still not been reached, the difference between the goals and reality are small in the scheme of things. (Much like the difference between any original plan and the outcome -- just usually plans are not of this scale!)
You have to hand it to the few that believed, and put in the work to reach critical mass...
