richard "prioritization" stallman

Even if the guy has his weirdnesses (but which genious doesn't?), I've always admired Richard "rms" Stallman for his uncompromised integrity. As Gruber puts it, say what you want about him but he walks the walk.

But after watching [fr] the discussion RMS held about [fr] his biography, I find myself reconsidering the reasons of my admiration. For integrity is not a quality, it is one of the perceived results of intrinsical qualities.
Seth Godin has integrity because of his constancy in delivering insightful thoughts. Barack Obama's comes from his ambitious vision. 37signals owe it to their attitude and impeccable execution.

To me, RMS integrity comes as a result of a mix of rigour, stubbornness, but above all, prioritization.

• The available free UNIX toolkits suck but UNIX licensing sucks harder, so he'll create his own implementation under free licenses.
• Computers with free BIOS suck, but proprietary BIOS suck harder, so he'll settle with a weird netbook equipped with low-end hardware till better free alternatives emerge.
• Etc.

No wonder why it is so difficult for the press to discuss with him: in a world full of compromises, workarounds and half-solutions, the guy makes none. Don't even expect the glimpse of a reasoning about a subject high on his priority table, you'll get the most terse answer of your journalist life and your question will be instantly moved to /dev/null. All this with a fresh smile from within a huge beard.

Have an enemy; make no compromises. So far, it seems to have worked pretty well for him.