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Stallman Selling Autographs

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the happy-hacking-should-be-trademarked dept.

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."

3 of 335 comments (clear)

  1. Actually from the FA by Andy+Gardner · · Score: 5, Informative
    It doesn't look like he was directly profiting from the autographs, rather he was autographing "in exchange for a contribution of 10 reais (5 dollars) for the Free Software Foundation."

    Not quite Microsoft evil.

  2. Re:Neither fun nor protest by tomhudson · · Score: 4, Informative

    Poster sayeth:

    yet charging for software is wrong, wrong, wrong.

    You ought to read the GPL. You can charge whatever price you want for any GPL'd software. That's one of the freedoms. You're also free to dual-license it if you're the creator - another freedom. It works for Trolltech (Qt), MySQL, etc.

    GPL:

    When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish)

  3. TFA is a little different then original text by TropicalCoder · · Score: 5, Informative

    Complete translation of the original article in the Business Journal Baguete

    FISL: Stallman's autograph auctioned for R$ 22 (~US $10) 22/04/2006

    An autograph from Free Software guru Richard Stallman was auctioned for R $23 (~US $11) at FISL 7.0 (International Free Software Forum) this Saturday, the 22nd. The initiative by gaucho Leonardo Vaz (Open BSB - RS) [Ed: Residents of the state of Rio Grande do Sul are called "gauchos".] caused a joyful uproar on this last day of the event when he went to personally deliver the money collected to Stallman, accompanied by about a hundred people.

    Vaz bought Stallman's signature during the first edition of the Forum, six years ago. To charge contributions for the Free Software Foundation in trade for autographs or photo ops is only one of the eccentric habits of the American, who accepted the money gratefully and affirmed that it would be delivered to the recently founded Free Software Foundation of Latin America.

    The auction concept summarizes the distracted atmosphere of this last day of FISL 7.0. The launch of GULA (Alcoholic Linux Users Group) is scheduled for 4:00 pm, which promises to shake up the final hours of the meeting.

    [Obs. Apesar de ser canadense, moro em Brasil há seis anos agora.]