>>13237>Whats really fucked up is that people ationalise it.>"Thats the price you gotta pay for greatness."To some extend it's true tho, the time and effort expended on learning how to act "normal" isn't available for obsessing about philosophy, science and technology.
There are other factors.
Science for example has always been opposed by something like religion applying the label of bad person to anybody who believed things that contradict holy doctrine. Theocracy has been defeated, and scientific discovery doesn't lead to people being burned to death or drowned for sorcery. But there still are powerful forces leaning against scientific discovery. Not giving a shit what others think is very helpful in overcoming that, but it also comes with the downside that you're more likely to act like an asshole.
Stallman was able to endure all the abuse he was subjected to because he cared about being correct a lot more than how others viewed him. The flip-side of that is he also would go on stage and do things like remove his socks to clip his toenails while he waited for his turn to give a speech, because he couldn't give a shit.
FOSS is still being attacked by the monopoly-mafia that wants to suffocate all technological innovation with patents and so called copy"rights". FOSS is necessary to maintain a technology stack that is open and accessible in order to prevent total technological stagnation. Otherwise you get the situation where you can't build a machine without having to wait for a 1000 IP-lawyers to bless your design. In that situation you can't build new stuff because by the time you have overcome all the IP-obstacles, it's obsolete tech that was rendered too expensive by IP-overhead costs, to be worthwhile anymore.
Unless we have political progress that liberates people from the reign of terror that is copy"right", patents and so on, we're going to need callous assholes that can build a FOSS technology stack while not giving a shit about all the crap that gets hurled at them.
Eventually copy-right will mean the right to make copies, instead of the current reality-inversion-speak where copy-"right" means you do not have the right to copy. (should've called it copy-prohibition). And when that time arrives "generic people" will no longer be put at such a disadvantage.
Also the mechanically minded rigid thinking patterns of techies that will not tolerate illogical arguments, that might be a virtue in disguise. Debates would be a lot more pleasant if that was the norm. So don't be too harsh on them.