"Extremism" describes the position of holding radical views that you push
very hard in ways that would be considered immoral. For example, detonating
bombs could perhaps be considered "extremist", and protesting funerals of
people who are gay can be considered "extremist". I don't think refusing to
run proprietary software and talking about your position regarding the ethics
of computing can ever be fairly considered to be "extremism". I also wouldn't
say that people saying that they hate America or that they hate gay people is
"extremist"; radical, sure, but I don't think it crosses the line to
"extremism" until they do something immoral in the name of that radical view.
A free software advocate might potentially be a fanatic, I suppose, and maybe
that's what was meant, but fanaticism is an irrational enthusiasm, and I'm
not aware of anyone whose level of enthusiasm is irrational. Not even Richard
Stallman; he is extremely strict about his hardware choices, but that's
pretty clearly because he is well-known and needs to set an example
(evidenced by a comment of his regarding the OLPC), which makes perfect
sense. Fanaticism would be, for example, going into bankruptcy to hunt down
the perfect laptop, then insisting on personally compiling every single
program you use (including the compiler) yourself, which is a ridiculously
huge task.
By the way, I think it's unfortunate that expecting total freedom in
computing is considered to be radical by so many people today. In any case, I
disagree with them. There are legitimately radical positions; for example,
the position that DRM should be illegal is maybe a little radical, and I have
considered the radical idea of implementing copyleft into the law. I don't
hold any of these radical views myself.
I do have radical views, but they're not directly related to software
freedom, and I don't think I behave like an extremist.
