Pretty true indeed - as long as the mad man DOES something. As far as Stallman goes, he coded emacs (along with other people, afaik), gave a name to a movement - and lived ever after on complaining, criticizing other people and complaining some more. If we'd depend on this crazy dude for progress, we'd all be using "fully open-source" inferior hardware produced by kids in China. Oh, and most of us would be jobless too, since NO ONE PAYS A DIME FOR FREE SOFTWARE! 
Talk about progress...