RFC soon on essay "Does Free Software Production in a Bazaarobey the Law of Diminishing Returns?"

[Richard Stallman]

    A complete free operating system *of sufficiently high quality*
    (not the highest possible quality, but better than Windows, anyway).
    Otherwise, any old hack would have done the job.

I agree it helps a lot to have high-quality software.
But even a somewhat unreliable operating system is a lot better
than no operating system.  In 1984, there was no operating system
which respected our freedom.  To have at least one which does
is a big step forward for freedom.

The fact that it has pretty good quality is a nice bonus ;-).