I particularly like that RMS quote

Sadly, I agree: it probably was impossible. But it sure seemed like it could happen at the time. The desire and volunteers are there, and there was visible progress every month. In a decade or two the result seemed all but inevitable.

But the nay sayers were right: when everyone scratches their own itch, you end up with a bunch of buggy, poorly thought out barely-working environments. For me, Gnome 3 and KDE 4 were the final nail in the Linux Desktop coffin. The dream is dead. Open source developers (desktop anyway) will only work on shiny fadware (hey, tablet!) and love to break things. Even when paid by Red Hat.

What kind of aggressive tactics are you thinking of? Putting out a better system in every way, and charging nothing for it, is pretty darned aggressive right there.