Indeed, you are right when affirming that free/libre software existed long before RMS, GNU and FSF... However, these key people/projects/organizations were the first ones to actually document the philosophy (before that, there were free/libre software, but they didn't exactly prove persistence/"stubbornness" towards the goal that we free/libre software activists seek nowadays, back then, it was a situation like the one we have with most projects that are "open source"-only, where while they might be free/libre, they might not have strong driving force to keep them that way).
Also, the documentation provided in the GNU project's website does support your point, see the history of the GNU project.
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