People who care that much about the FSF either feel their business models being threatened or, far more likely, are being grumpy because they're not being allowed to rip off someone else's code. I seem to remember you whiningly falling into the latter camp on more than one occasion. The fact that it's GPL'd doesn't make it any less someone else's code than if it came under the MS EULA.

I used to agree with you on the definition of "free"; something which severely restricts your rights (relative to a default state of "do anything") can hardly be called "freedom" with a straight face. A friend of mine argued the flip side, though. Developers only see things with developer eyes. As such, they look at the GPL, see a catalogue of impositions, responsibilities and restrictions and balk at the use of the word "free". Users, however, are another matter; users get far more rights and freedoms from the GPL than either the original developers do, or than they would normally get from traditionally-licensed software. The fact that users may be devs themselves doesn't change this point. When you look at it in this light, all the FSF interpretation of the word "free" implies is that they consider the users' freedom to be of greater significance than the developers'. You can also argue this on weight-of-numbers. You might not agree with it (I'm not sure I do), but it is a logically consistent use of the word when considered as stemming from a certain axiomatic basis — whethr you like it or not.