Oh don't be silly, "real people"? Richard Stallman is as real as it gets. He's a decent programmer from what I can tell from emacs.<p>Note that there is a distinction between open source and free software. I think it's important to not conflate the two, which I see a lot these days (in the real world :)<p>I predict 500 years from now people will remember him. They won't remember Bill Gates. Without googling try to recall who was the richest man in Rome?<p>All the best