I know that it doesn't necessarily sit well with the libertarian streak in most technical people, but political organization is the only way that change can be made in the systems that are actually threatening democracy and personal liberty.

He may think that he isn't participating, but he is. GCC is used by every major vendor to both Wall St and the DOD. IF we are only talking about the freedom of people who purchase expensive consumer items to use them as they see fit...and that includes, let's say, a data mining company that produces metadata that is used for targeting drone strikes WHO USE GCC...then we are talking about a very narrowly focused issue...and yeah, he's probably right that it's bullshit that I can't get the source code to the OS that runs my TV...but I don't think that it's necessarily as important as he does. That is, if its even actually important at all.

He's pretty politically active, just look at his homepage.

You're right. I should have looked into that first. My bad.

i think free software is one of the greatest tools to protect civilization against the rapidly growing 'techno' totalitarian state. and also in providing education.

you are still critiquing his behaviour and not saying what he should be doing instead.

consider that gnu, fsf and eff are related organisations.