The rise of the new inquisition as a respondent has aptly described is
worrying. A person loses all their merits as a consequence of one
error, controversial opinion or belief. An intellectually brilliant
person like Stallman is more than one opinion or belief. The several
decades they have lived for and the work they did to improve software
accessibility to lower social classes can never be denied: this is a
fact. Free open source software is more financially accessible to the
lower classes. Besides that, software lock-ins are quite rare if not
completely not present. I can only write about my particular case, in
which free software has increased my ability to experience different
types of applications without spending thousands of Euros.

The new trend to discredit completely anyone who makes such
controversial claims, is more like a modern socially accepted way of
humiliation of anyone not adhering to what must be 'obvious'. There
are other ways of admonishing anyone besides 'accepted' character
assassinations. In my opinion, this is a move towards the past when
beliefs challenging the accepted status quo were publicly chastised.

The proper reaction should not be one of a complete character
devaluation and assassination, but one which points out any possible
problematic scenarios as a direct consequence of such an opinion or
belief.