You make it sound like it's required to have nice, free things.
Richard Stallman was a noted centrist for decades after all
"I dunno about this GNU project, man. They seem like a bunch of radicals. Why do they have to impugn all proprietary software like that?"
it absolutely is. appeasement never worked. i put my foot to the floor and that's it. without me, there would be no libreboot at all.