If RMS made a choice to use proprietary software, with the only alternative being his dead, there is absolutely no moral conflict, or even anything against his principle. The only issue could only ever arises if he claimed "Free Software is more important than human lives", which I am pretty sure not a claim he, or anyone, has ever made.
It's basically the same principle as if you point a gun to my head and tell me to kill a puppy or get shot (and I'm certain you would shoot me). It's obvious which choice I would make, and I hardly see that as an evidence of my hatred for puppy.
That said - RMS has iirc said in the past that for medical emergencies he's willing to make a personal exception on this stance.
[0]: Medical devices can't be GPL compliant due to the anti-Tivo clause combined with regulations of the FDA that demand that a medical device will always behave the exact same way in the exact same situation. This is also extended to the software, meaning that not being allowed to reflash the software if you're not the manufacturer is a requirement.
That article was written before the finished GPLv3 was published, they had only published a stricter draft.
Therefore; I'm not wrong.
What is the anti-tivo clause?
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Anyway, TiVo wanted to get onto the GPLv2 train like a lot of companies, but they also wanted people owning their devices to be unable to partially modify their firmware even as they distributed their copies of the firmware onto TiVo boxes. They enforced this by having a digital signature check that only allowed TiVos own software to run if the software stack was entirely TiVo. It would also work if the stack was entirely FOSS because only TiVo checked it.
For the sake of clarity; Bradley Kuhn of the SFC iirc investigated the TiVo boxes at the time, the signature checks only were an issue if you partially replaced TiVos software, not if you went the whole hog on replacing it; excercising GPLv2 rights was completely possible and you could turn a TiVo box into a XBMC (these days that's Kodi) box. You just couldn't run TiVos software ever again if you did that thanks to a hardware check.
The FSF took personal offense to this practice and dubbed it "Tivoization", which is a shorthand for "attempting to restrict the ability to install or link with Free Software via hardware DRM". (Which yes, is a modification of what TiVo actually did but really that part is just par for the course with the FSF.)
As a result, the GPLv3 includes an explicit clause that if your software is distributed in a non-code form, that you also must distribute all the information required to be able to modify that distributed software, if there's parts on the device that prevent you from doing so. (Or in plain terms: on restricted hardware, you must give up the signing keys if you preload the hardware with FOSS software.)
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This clause is usually just called the anti-Tivo(ization) clause and it's... pretty damn controversial. It's the main reason why the Kernel is still GPLv2 and not GPLv3; Linus Torvalds personally considers this clause to be a significant enough alteration of the "deal" that FOSS provides for the kernel, so he didn't upgrade (which to be clear would've also been very difficult since the kernel is 2.0-only, not or-later, so he'd require approval from all significant contributors at that point). It's also often cited as the main reason why the GPLv2 has/had strong corporate backing but software licensed under the GPLv3 has always kinda had issues with that; the v2 was seen as more "fair" in that companies were willing to work with its terms, while the v3 was seen as basically forcing them to give up important parts of their trade secrets and made them antsy of working with the FSF in general.
And as mentioned before, in some fields (medical is the one I know of, but I'm pretty sure there's a few others), regulatory compliance is impossible with v3 while very much possible with v2 because of this clause.
Valuing freedom (even in limited spheres) more than human lives is a pretty familiar American idea. For example, recall Patrick Henry's "give me liberty or give me death" and consider that he was talking about the prospect of being taxed without his consent, not enslavement. Also, recall Private Eightball from Full Metal Jacket:
"Personally, I think, uh... they don't really want to be involved in this war. You know, I mean... they sort of took away our freedom and gave it to the, to the gookers, you know. But they don't want it. They'd rather be alive than free, I guess. Poor dumb bastards."
That does not answer your question though. It goes both ways: if the doctor recognises that a firmware tweak may save your life, then she should be able to do so.
The answer is obvious based on your own personal principles, or based on RMS's stated principles?
>The only issue could only ever arises if he claimed "Free Software is more important than human lives"
He claimed that it is categorically not good to use non-Free software, with one exception for using non-Free software to develop a replacement for that software; and that "we must resist stretching [that exception] any further": https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/is-ever-good-use-nonfree-prog...
