Sure, if I have to choose between hypocrisy and improvement, I'll take improvement. But I'd rather have both. And given the extent to which this is written as highfalutin moral principle, I don't think it's unreasonable to deal with it on its own terms. He could have just announced this as an improvement without taking slaps at political views he disagrees with.
Fair enough. But I don't think avoiding politics is possible when making a clear distinction between his and other approaches is important to the author.
It's a tricky communications problem to say "I think my approach is better" about a hot topic, explain why, and convince people it really is different, while not implying other ways are worse. I'm inclined to be forgiving, as long as there's an attempt at politeness.
He didn't have to say his approach is better. He could have thanked people for pointing out the problem and announced this as an important step forward for GNU. The announcement could have been half the length, which is always better from a communications perspective, while also removing a lot of the weakest parts and avoiding an unnecessarily confrontational approach.
Put differently, the adage "better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt" definitely applies here. For anybody who has been working on codes of conduct, Stallman's thinking here is at best preaching to the choir. It won't convince anyone he disagrees with that he even understands their perspective, let alone has taken it seriously in formulating this policy.
