Stallman Selling Autographs

UltimaGuy writes "Sports stars, musicians, and other celebrities have been charging for autographs for years, but who would have thought Richard Stallman would be doing the same? Is this just for fun, or a clever, highly effective protest? Hackers, geeks and nerds gathered together at the 7th FISL - Internacional Free Software Forum, in Porto Alegre (Brazil) last week, were astounded when they got word that Richard Stallman, the founding father of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the GPL, was charging R$ 10 (about US$ 3) for an autograph and R$ 5 (less than US$ 2) to get his picture taken by free software enthusiasts at the event floor."

Comments

Re:Hatchet piece - RTFA next time, stupid editors

[Tx]

Remember that you use his software every day.

Don't have to, he reminds us often enough ;)

Re:Hatchet piece - RTFA next time, stupid editors

[tomstdenis]

ARRG I hate comments like this.

There are thousands upon thousands of contributors to the OSS world. He may have been a significant figure at the debut but it's easy to see that many tools we take for granted [including the GCC toolset] are made usable by many others.

OSS exists today as more than a "emacs is good enough for anyone" attitude due to the contribution of many more people than RMS. If RMS had his way we'd all be in black and white X11 windows with emacs running in every xterm.

This may sound like player hater but look at the hundreds of packages in the average distro. Now look for his name in the authors list. How many packages have his name on them?

Now take all the packages without his name in it [including the Linux Kernel] and see how useful your distribution is.

Besides we know he does this because he can't hack it in the real world where he has to actually be productive and not just some press-whoring asshat with a beard.

Tom

Re:What's the big deal?

[fatphil]

Do us a favour -- either get a clue and RTFA, or don't spout crap. Preferably both.