>GNU Emacs alone is sufficient to earn RMS a place in history.
Stallman did not write what is currently GNU Emacs. Many people did. His
contribution is tiny.
It is a common mistake to give most of the credit of a project to the first
person who participated. When projects become big enough to be noteworthy,
any individual contributor has only done a small part (in proportion).
> Let alone his other projects/initiatives, GNU and GPL.
Just as a above, GNU is not Stallman work. It is the work of many people and
he is just one of the many contributors.
It is worth noting that the FSF requires Copyright assignment for the most
important GNU software (GCC, coreutils, etc.), but the FSF does not pay for
this development.
> What did Jesus ever do but die on the cross?
If the fictitious personage of Jesus (the superhero/supervillain from the
Christian tale) is based on a historical (real) person, and this person died
crucified, then he is just another victim of the brutality of the Romans; he
would be far from the only one and his death does not benefit us in any way.
For that matter, the Roman Marcus Licinius Crassus crucified thousands of
slaves for rebelling, which is by far a much greater tragedy.
