It isn’t freedom to have to choose for Richard Stallman’s world view. It isn’t ‘freedom’ to be called immoral just because you choose another ethic. It isn’t freedom when a single person or group with a single view on morality tries to forbid you something based on just their point of view.
For example, Stallman has repeatedly said about Trusted Computing (which he in a childish way apparently calls Treacherous Computing) that it ‘should be illegal’ (that’s a quote from official FSF and GNU pages). I also recall Stallman trying to forbid blog posts about proprietary software (it was about VMWare) on planet-gnome (original thread here).
Richard Stallman and some of his followers don’t seem to understand that it isn’t necessarily moral to impose your world view, about morality, on everybody else by claiming, for example, that the other’s view ‘should be illegal’ or ‘is immoral’ (these are terms that he and some of his followers frequently use).
Firstly something should be only illegal when all procedures for making a new law in a country have been followed. In most democratic countries that means getting a majority in parliament but also getting advise from your country’s judges and from experts in the field who’ll be affected by your new law. So not just by listening and following a guy like Richard Stallman blindly. This is why I was very much against a rule for planet-gnome to forbid posts about proprietary software that uses GNOME: nor the majority of GNOME foundation members nor all experts in the field who’d be affected by that new law nor all the maintainers of planet-gnome (its judges) followed Richard’s opinion.
In this new situation it also isn’t only Richard Stallman who should be blindly followed. Ubuntu needs to take into account all stakeholders and not just Stallman and his followers.
Secondly is morality defined by a person’s own views and for a huge part by that person’s culture. ‘How we ought to live’ is (also) a question at the individual level. Not per definition answered by Richard Stallman alone. Although, sure, it can be one’s choice to strictly copy Richard’s morals. Morality is not necessarily a single option nor is it necessarily written in a single book.
For me it’s not fine when your morality includes enforcing others to copy exactly your morals. To put it in a way that Richard’s strict followers might understand: for me morality isn’t like the GPL; agreeing to some of Stallman’s morals does not mean having to puristic copy them all.