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French PM Unreceptive To RMS
An anonymous reader writes "Six month after the publication of very bad amendments to French DRM law proposal, Richard Stallman has been pushed back by the chief of security team of French Prime minister.
On Friday 9th of June 2006 at 3.30pm, Richard Stallman, president of Free Software Foundation, led a delegation composed by Frédéric Couchet (Free Software Foundation France) and Christophe Espern (EUCD.INFO initiative) to meet the French Prime minister in order to talk about the French DRM law proposal and to deliver the EUCD.INFO petition signed by more than 165,000 French residents. Richard Stallman and his friends were pushed back by the chief of security team. "
You show up at a major countries statehouse and demand entry and some security guard tells you to get an appointment, no big surprises here.
Then the problem may be that he was denied an appointment in the first place don't you think ?
For they are not just "someone" but 3 individuals quite involved into this DRM saga, thus having points and a petition to be discussed.
Bill Gates is received with all the honors by the President and RMS & Co can't even reach the prime minister or even some random official guy ?
A letter was send 15 days before, and no one answered.
When they get there, an official said "the decision of not meeting with RMS had been maturely considered".
Actually many associations (APRIL, FSF France, EUCD.INFO) wrote many letters to ask for an interview between the prime minister and RMS. Actually none of them was answered.
Letters were sent a few days ago to tell the day and hour of his coming (he flew from Boston especially for this occasion), so he wasn't exactly "forcing his way" and the guards said that de decision to refuse him was "maturely decided"... This is a political decision of not receiving him, and nothing else.
Since there were so little signatures, this could mean three things: a) there's and evil scheme to supress free speech and petition signing, b) people are not well educated on the subject or c) people simply don't agree with the petition. Choose one.
-- Sig down
According to the CIA World Factbook, the population of France is 61,000,000, of which 18.3% are 14 or under, so the over-14 population is about 50,020,000. 165,000 is 0.33% of this. A petition signed by 0.33% of the population probably "represents" a significantly larger fraction of the population if you consider the difficulties of getting people to sign things and the fact that this is not the kind of issue that is constantly on most people's minds.
According to Wikipedia, he's GNU/53. And ego-mania aside, he's a moderately intelligent individual. So why the hell is he involved in a stupid stunt worthy of an adolescent who just discovered girls are nice and wants to impress them?
I can understand wanting to see a head of state. But what kind of self-centered lack-a-wit, KNOWING he doesn't have an appointment, having gotten ZERO feedback from the official's office, decides he's just gonna barge on in and get an audience? I mean COME ON! Use some common effin' sense!
Just my GNU/Cents.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
This is Bull Shit (TM).
RMS went to Brasil and talked to our Minister of Culture (which happens to be a musician, and happens to have released some of his works under Creative Commons license recently). The minister was using business attire, black suit, dark gray shirt, darker tie; RMS was in his usual khakhis-and-t-shirt. It is an honour for a head of any branch of the government, not an imposition, to receive a person who -- although I do not agree with many of his practices and/or views -- embodies and started the Free Software movement, and keeps on pushing its agenda. The internet would be a very different beast -- if it existed at all -- if Stallmann hadn't written the GNU manifesto in the 80's.
People who judge a person by his attire are hopefully an endangered species. People's actions define their responsibility, not their clothing. And again, I don't agree or condone many of RMS's/FSF's actions and positions, but I respect them for their work in furthering the Right to Read. Remember that Mohandas Ghandi used, for a long time, only clothes that he had made himself.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Oh fucking please. Why would the PM meet with anyone at anytime with any amount of notice about DRM. It's a non-issue to him and the majority of the people of earth. Meeting with the PM is the last thing you do, after you've gotten the world on your side. Now if he'd tried to meet with a MP that has a private member's bill coming up and isn't sure what issue he should address, that'd be sensible. The FSF are fuckin' morons, don't even know how to work the political process.
How we know is more important than what we know.