Not that this is particularly relevant to anything, but AFAIK even back then Linus was using MicroEMACS, not gnu emacs.
Having said that, I agree that people are generally discounting rms' immense contributions* a bit too easily here.
* (both technical contributions and in terms of just the entire culture of open source, which he really helped shape in a very significant way, and I say that as someone who mostly dislikes the GPL and prefers MIT/BSD style licenses)
I was a student at the time, but it seemed like GCC was like the Linux of its day, causing a lot of upheavals in the compiler market. GCC code was so fast compared to what was out there.
My impression, as someone who had a used Sun 3/50 in the early 90s, who later used Linux a lot, and who used various Unix workstations (IBM, Sun, Next, SGI, HP) in college:
For the bulk of Unix user/developers, the big thing was that GCC reintroduced the idea that you should be able to get free dev tools for your Unix OS, during a time when some vendors had decided that you should pay more to get the dev tools in addition to the base OS.
I agree, though it's notable that open source is quite distinct from free software. I recall the beginning of the open source movement well. I would argue that the GPL is Stallman's greatest contribution to programming.
Having said that, I agree that people are generally discounting rms' immense contributions* a bit too easily here.
* (both technical contributions and in terms of just the entire culture of open source, which he really helped shape in a very significant way, and I say that as someone who mostly dislikes the GPL and prefers MIT/BSD style licenses)