A few points of reference:

• For some years, Richard Stallman was something of a hero to my young techie self.
• After a while, however, Richard Stallman seemed at best cuckoo and at worst not very good at what he thinks he’s good at anymore.
• Then I learned that Richard Stallman may well be a pedophile. If nothing else, he is on record questioning whether “voluntary pedophilia” should be illegal. (As well as offering guidelines for best practices in incest (use a condom) and necrophilia (get permission from next-of-kin), among others.)

So, my esteem of him has been in pretty much steady decline since the early 90s.

However, his legacy to the world may well be his transformation of contract law to support intellectual property protection for open source software. Thus, this account of Richard Stallman actually asking to see the privacy notice in a doctor’s office is pretty funny. It always bugs me when I am asked to sign that I accept a privacy policy or other form of license without actually being provided with the appropriate document. To learn that said document may not even exist and/or be available is almost laughably unsurprising.

I don’t want to do it, but I love the idea that there is someone going through life calling bullshit on these guys. I may not love much else about Stallman any more, but for a minute, he’s my hero again.