One of the more interesting statements to come up in the course of the current fracas over Planet GNOME is Richard Stallman's declaration that he "would not encourage anyone to use proprietary software even to get money to give to a worthy cause".
Does the FSF put it's money where its mouth is, though? A glance at the FSF's "Corporate Patrons" page, which includes IBM, Intel, Nokia NEC, Cisco, Barracuda, and many other companies which derive significant amounts of their revenue from proprietary software, suggests that there's more hypocrisy than reality to Stallman's claim. In aggregate, these "Corporate Patron" organizations provide funding to the FSF in excess of a quarter-million dollars annually.
If Stallman is sincere in his beliefs that all proprietary software is "illegitimate", "unethical" and "antisocial", I would call on the Free Software Foundation to turn back any corporate funding which is not directly and completely derived from free software, without any taint of "illegitimacy", and start holding bake sales and putting up lemonade stands to make up for the lost income.
