Stallman said he didn't like having to tell users that they need to install a package in order to have the kind of functionality that Magit provides.
It's because the FSF doesn't have assignment of the copyright to the code and there's no signed contributor agreements. The insane part of this isn't wanting it to be FOSS (it is!!), it's insisting it to be a part of the core project.
Note that the GNU ELPA is considered to be part of Emacs, whereas MELPA is not. MELPA may also contain unlicensed software or otherwise non-free software.
Some statistics on that: https://emacsmirror.net/stats/licenses.html.
> The Emacs maintainers would not have to maintain Magit
That's not true. They would have to maintain it: deal with bug reports, deal with breakage due to upstream API changes in Emacs core. They wouldn't do feature development.
I used to contribute code to org-mode, so I know how this works. The magit team will make periodic releases, at which point the magit code will be copied over into the emacs code base. From that point on, the emacs maintainers are on the hook for any bugs or other problems occurring with the version of magit that they have included into Emacs. They'll have to deal with/triage magit bug reports received via the Emacs bug tracker.
RMS' opinion is taken very seriously in emacs development community.
Honest question, because from the outside he seems like an absolute grognard whose computing habits are so far removed from those of everyone else that he is incapable of relating to how the modern world does its computing.
Perhaps if he wants a good git interface in emacs, RMS should sling some code instead of giving the same entry-level ethics talk ad nauseam.
Why would that even matter? I find this attitude very puzzling and extremely worrying.
Of all the arbitrary metrics to decide whether to listen to and consider somebody's position "lines of code written" seems like an exceptionally poor choice.
I find your comment to be a good example of what is wrong in circles that like to consider themselves part of hacker culture.
It's not a matter of lines of code, but of contribution at all.
What does RMS enable the emacs project to do that they couldn't do without him?
What does he bring to the table?
I'm not being rhetorical, I mean it: why do people care what he thinks?