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History has shown that he was correct (IMHO), but that was entirely uncertain eleven years ago when he kicked off Webscriptions and Baen's DRM-free policy. Back then, even I would have questioned the sanity of a major publishing house CEO who'd made a similar choice. Heck -- I thought Jim Baen was nuts!
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Baen may be future: or he may just be an outlier.
It may just be that a publisher of speculative fiction, with an emphasis on military sf, who spends time cultivating a following in the techno-geek community, can get away with going DRM free. I note some of the passionate anti DRMists are also devoted followers of Baen. They're kind of invested in Baen's success and they share the whole" everything should be TOTALLY open" ethos. I bet their Android and Linux enthusiasts as well
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A big publishing company, with many lines of books, has different interests and must take a different approach. I didn't think a single one of Elfmark and Xenophon's choices were for general nonfiction or general fiction-the two biggest categories of books published out there.