Calling proprietary software evil is an opinion, and there are plenty of examples of evidence that proprietary software was created in ways that one could label as evil. Give it a while and there might be some revelation which will cause lots of people to go 'oh, that Stallman was such a visionary, calling proprietary software evil'.
Now on this particular aspect of Stallman's reasoning I find him hard to follow because that would mean a whole class of something is bad whereas I believe it should only apply to instances on a case-by-case basis. But I'm going to hedge my bets here and sit it out for the next decade or two (assuming I have that much time remaining) to see if he might not be on to something again that is still hard to see from where we are standing right now.
One way in which this could play out is that in order to avoid certain societal fates is to have nothing but open source for certain classes of application (for instance, voting computers, software in use by the government in general or software that is used to power network infrastructure).
Don't be too quick to judge, Stallman has been right more often than I'm comfortable with on some of his most 'extreme' views.
I've never heard Stallman be right about anything that wasn't blindingly obvious to anyone who was an open-minded observer of the same things at the same time.
He's not the only one that's been crowing about electronic surveillance. Ever since things like Carnivore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software)) were uncovered in the 1990s, it's been obvious that there's a lot going on we will never be fully informed about, that the internet is no longer a safe playground devoid of malevolent actors. Mailing lists and USENET groups at the same period of time were constantly aflame with these sorts of issues.
If you can cite an occasion where Stallman has had a unique insight into the situation, I'd be surprised.
Stallman, for all his posturing and relentless drum beating, which is at least admirable from the point of dedication, is still no Alan Kay, Marvin Minsky, Marshall McLuhan or Raymond Kurzweil.
Moral judgements are subjective opinion by nature, fair enough, but I bring the crackpot label in for exactly what you say, thinking in absolutes, in black and white, instead of nuance.
In the real world, that shows a distressing lack of critical thinking and a further distressing abundance of dogmatism.
"Proprietary software is bad" -- Subjective value judgement.
"Properitary software is evil" -- Subjective value judgement that shows a lack of thought.
"You should always use free software wherever possible." -- Subjective value judgement.
"You should use absolutely nothing but free software ever" -- Subjective value judgement that shows a lack of thought.
I mean, the FSF "disapproves" of software that is completely free on its own (Fedora, Firefox), merely because they point out nonfree things you can use. (Fedora's firmware bundles and some repos, and Firefox's addons site).
That's completely idiotic. Apparently the FSF's "freedoms" do not include the freedom to run whatever software you choose if it's "unfree".
The proprietary software as evil thing comes as a morality judgment, that the potential evils from such software/licensing far outway whatever positive nuance it could bring to the table. A nuanced reading of the past 75 years of copyright/patent law and judgments can come to the conclusion that such an ecosystem is detrimental to the rights and ability of end-users and developers.
Guess what the solution to the proprietary software problem is? Not using or promoting proprietary software or platforms that enable it.
You are getting upset that the Free Software Foundation has standards to be met to consider software as "free". To dismiss their agenda as existing in 'crackpot' territory is invalidating a legitimate argument to support your shaky conclusion.
