Correct me if I'm wrong, but if Emacs was licensed under a more liberal license (MIT, BSD) such forks would still be possible. (Non-free forks would also be possible)
I think software like LLVM, PostgreSQL, Xorg, Hadoop, etc have shown that you don't need a radical copyleft to push forward free software. You need something better than exists elsewhere, and this kind of behavior from Stallman holds back free software out of fear of bogeymen.