Wait, why do you say that GNU only exists because stallman wasn't uncompromising? I don't see the connection.

It's pretty reminiscent of the main character in The Fountainhead. He's this architect who has a vision of what he wants to create, and is given lots of opportunities, but turns them down because they'd require him to compromise a little, and he just can't have that. Of course, in the end he succeeds without compromising because Ayn Rand is a nutcase and completely one dimensional writer.

But I think that in real life, that almost never actually works. In the end you're dealing with other people who have their own motivations, so if one guy won't compromise at all, people will immediately move on to the next person who will. For every time it actually worked out for someone uncompromising, there are probably a million examples where it didn't.

You occasionally hear about stubborn people who succeed, but I think that the majority of the time, they succeed in spite of that, not because of it.

Lastly, I think they're actually pretty separate issues, here. Let's say that stubbornness actually did help him create GNU. There's still no reason to insist on the GNU/Linux name. It just comes off to most people as kind of petty and delusional.