Pragmatism will always gravitate towards the “middle”. But the middle can never be truly found by pragmatism unless it can see either extreme.
Without Stallman, the closed software extreme has a ton of supporters (Microsoft, Apple, etc) but the free software extreme has almost none.
What Stallman does is define the free software extreme which allows the pragmatists to find a much better middle than if he wasn’t pushing that boundary.
Pragmatism will always gravitate towards the “middle”. But the middle can never be truly found by pragmatism unless it can see either extreme.
Without Stallman, the closed software extreme has a ton of supporters (Microsoft, Apple, etc) but the free software extreme has almost none.
What Stallman does is define the free software extreme which allows the pragmatists to find a much better middle than if he wasn’t pushing that boundary.