I suggest your read his essays, I've never said he's a Marxist, but his creed to stick to his principles is very similar to some extreme left organizations.
And no sorry, but his views are not mainstream in Western Europe, I live in London, I've lived in Frankfurt and in Amsterdam, and I spend most of my summers in Iceland per the orders from my "female unit", while some of his views might be shared with more or less with main stream views in modern democracies including the US btw, the reasoning behind his views, and the vigilance and the veracity in which he practices them even if it hurts certain organizations (take a look at his protests against OLPC when they decided to look into Windows which actually resulted in them losing some funding), heck he and his marry band went to Peru to protest OLPC's being delivered with Windows in hoping to build up enough counter pressure to actually revert that decision.
Now being a vanguard for free software is one thing, but using your reputation to go and protest children in developing nations getting PC's because they've switched from GNU to Windows? That's some hard core vegan shit there like dying because you refuse to eat a burger..
So yep I do hold his views and actions as extremes, not all of them ofc, some i might even agree on in practice if not in justification.
The guy protests charity's that get money from Bill Gates, he actively attempted to prevent children from getting computers under the OLPC's program because they could run Windows with a 7$ extension card.
When Steve Jobs died he made this post on his site:
Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.
As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die - not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing.
Sorry but i don't need a hyperbole to relate my position that this guy has quite a few extreme views, and takes quite a few extreme actions.
P.S.
Wanting to cancel a program that was aimed at bringing computing to children in underdeveloped nations is actually worse than dying out of stubbornness for your beliefs, it's actively denying people who have very little just because you think that running Windows is a Sin, this is the equivalent of Christians evangelists holding out donations to African countries that do not institute anti-gay and anti-sodomy laws.
i think you've levelled some very hyperbolic accusations re his OLPC protests.
can you provide me with the source materials for these protests? i'm not really accepting them at face value, due to your previous hyperbole.
in many cases you can protest against behaviour whilst allowing that behaviour to continue. peaceful protest versus using violence for example.
thanks for the apology re the previous hyperbole.
here's links to the steve jobs statements that you find so extreme, in case anyone is particularly interested in them(rather than reading the shortened version you have presented)
Now being a vanguard for free software is one thing, but using your reputation to go and protest children in developing nations getting PC's because they've switched from GNU to Windows? That's some hard core vegan shit there like dying because you refuse to eat a burger.. So yep I do hold his views and actions as extremes, not all of them ofc, some i might even agree on in practice if not in justification.