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."

Comments

T-shirts are communist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, are t-shirts considered "dirty", "commie", or "hippie"? Whatever.

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. ... 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."

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[adamofgreyskull]

It might not be perfect, but as a "willingness to do what others want" indicator and visual shortcut, it does have some functionality. Now, Stallman doesn't work for these people, that's true. But if he wants to influence them, to make them think he's got their own interests at heart, the symbolic wearing of a suit, or something similar may go a long way.

Everything you say is right, but I don't think you get it. He doesn't want to express his willingness to do what others want. The people wearing the suits want him to do things that he knows to be morally wrong.

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.