Slashdot Mirror
Stallman Attacked by Ninjas
vivIsel writes "When RMS took the stage to address the Yale Political Union, Yale's venerable parliamentary debate society, it was already an unusual speech: instead of the jacket and tie customary there, he sported a T shirt, and no shoes. But then he was attacked by ninjas. Apparently some students took it into their head to duplicate an XKCD webcomic before a live audience — luckily, though, Stallman didn't resort to violence. Instead, he delivered an excellent speech about DRM."
Uh, are t-shirts considered "dirty", "commie", or "hippie"? Whatever.
... I can never figure out the singular fascination that people have for what fibers other people wrap around their bodies. It gives small minds something to gossip about, and provides endless simple fun in tweaking them."
John Gilmore has been known to wear interesting clothing, too, but I don't think anybody would claim he's any of the above.
Q: "Do people have a hard time paying attention when you are not in a suit and tie?"
JG: "... At an international conference, I would not expect cultured people to stare at unfamiliar costumes.
"The saddening truth is that dress code pettiness is to be obeyed when you want to address people that count (their money)."
Stallman pays not only a financial price, but a social price, also. He probably does not accurately evaluate the social cost of acting differently, otherwise he would not want to pay such a high social price.
In some ways he is extremely intelligent, but socially he is a lost puppy.
who are you to say what is appropriate? fuck, i feel a suit is completely inappropriate for this kind of thing and all those fuckwads dressed in suits are disrespecting the whole thing
I went to see him in Quito, Ecuador, at a local university. I was thinking the same thing. He was picking at his messy hair and scratching (I think) his nose. It was a pretty conservative looking crowd (especially for mainly computer science students). He delivered the whole speech in quite fluent Spanish, and the audience loved him. I got especially concerned when he went into the whole Church of Emacs thing. They are extremely Catholic down there and I half-expected someone to get offended. But they were slapping their knees laughing. I dunno, he seems to be doing an OK job to me.
Maybe that was a few years ago but when I consult I rarely wear a suit or tie although I normally wear comfortable and neat cloths. In many cases CEO's are normally suspicious of technical consultants if they wear suits although it is expected that the sales people wear suits. The main rules in the meetings I attend have nothing to do with dress code but to make sure everyone turns off their mobile and unless there are special reasons, typing on your PC or PDA is the hight of bad manners. In fact most of the consulting meetings I attend pen and paper are the preferred data entry medium.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
The "symbolic wearing of a suit"? Surely, as he is taking a diametrically opposed viewpoint to "the suits" it's entirely appropriate for him to shun what must seem to him to be yet another stupid little restriction.
By NOT wearing a suit he's had more of an impact on the people he was addressing. By NOT wearing a suit, and presenting his arguments so well that the house sided with him will have had far more of an impact than if he'd toed the line and arrived in top-hat and tails.
There are people like Linus who represent the world of Open Source, and who are quite happy to hack the kernel and have that be the end to it. They are not overly concerned with licensing or copyright, or even Freedom. People like that don't effect global change. You need firebrands like rms to stand up in tatty clothing and say, "You are all wrong, here is my reasoning. Do you understand now?" to shake things up and get people excited, for better or worse. Bob Geldof doesn't fit into your little toe-the-line and you might do better plan either, why does he litter his rants about world-poverty with expletives? In a corporate world he'd get nowhere, but, like rms, he doesn't care what people think about him. He knows that his message is absolutely correct, and he doesn't need to fit in to make people see that.