The problem is that ESR and the "open source" people have a fundamentally different understanding of software freedom than do the FSF. I'm not judging one over the other, but I think it's a mistake to conflate the two. It's not simply the narcissism of small differences; they have fundamentally incompatible motives, even if their means can be seem as congruent.
> The problem is that ESR and the "open source" people have a fundamentally different understanding of software freedom than do the FSF.
No, if you read the Open Source Definition and the Free Software Definition, you'll find that there understanding of software freedom is pretty much identical.
Their ideas of the moral purpose of advocating for software freedom and/or the most effective tactics of advocating for software freedom differ, certainly.
