I'm not sure I would consider RMS a "marketing team"... he would be an evangelist at best. And as far as a mission statement he's probably thinking of something people can understand and relate to. Say something like "a PC in every desk" and not a spiel about how you should prefer inferior software just because it gives you the option of looking at/modifying the code... when 90% of the users would never do that.
An analogy I've heard used several times. Proprietary software is like a tea set. There are differences in quality and features and it's limited in its use (you probably don't want to use your tea set to cook rice). FLOSS is like a piece of clay... sure, you can use it to build a better tea set, and it can even come already shaped like one that you just have to cook, but most of the times you're buying a tea set because you just want to drink tea.
An analogy I've heard used several times. Proprietary software is like a tea set. There are differences in quality and features and it's limited in its use (you probably don't want to use your tea set to cook rice). FLOSS is like a piece of clay... sure, you can use it to build a better tea set, and it can even come already shaped like one that you just have to cook, but most of the times you're buying a tea set because you just want to drink tea.
heh... just $.02 on it.