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

this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

he sported a T shirt, and no shoes.

Way to go, Stallman. Way to show respect for your audience.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[dreddnott]

Like it or not, that's just one of the man's idiosyncracies. I think he just likes to project the "dirty commie hippie" aura wherever he goes.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[sqrt(2)]

Too bad he doesn't care about his cause enough to project an aura of professionalism and courtesy. There are certain expectations when you're a GUEST speaker in a professional setting, an academic setting.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[glwtta]

If he didn't have the annoying tendency to be right all the damn time, I think I might care about his footwear.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[mikkelm]

One would think that any assembly styling themselves as being open-minded and advocating open debate would be above something as petty as a dress code.

Dress codes anywhere but where the dressing is essential to the event is pointless. How is a uniform going to inspire creative thought? If what matters is what people have on their minds, why care about what they have on their bodies?

"You're infinitely more insightful than me, but you aren't wearing the special clothes, so you can't join my discussion group."

Sounds like something straight out of an elementary school playground.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Epsillon]

Therein lies another insight into the self-effacing brilliance of RMS. He doesn't need a suit. He's proved his worth by making his vision work, not by using the usual tricks of the trade and flim-flamming with long words, suits and "presence". Actually, that last he has in spades but it's a natural thing, not a put-on to cover up cluelessness. Whilst I don't fully agree with all of his ideals, I can't help admiring the man for his principles and ability to make things work against all odds.

It's just another part of his character: "Here I am, as asked. I'm not going to lie to you or try to make my ideals look appealing. I won't dress up the message or myself to try to divert your attention from the downsides of the issue. I'll just tell it like it is." He's 100% consistent in this and it's one of the reasons people respect the man. In my opinion this does more to help the movement than hinder it.

As for XKCD, how long until some misguided lawyer (yes, Thompson, I'm looking at you) starts to spout off about webcomics encouraging ninja attacks?

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[fgaliegue]

> One would think that any assembly styling themselves as being open-minded and advocating open debate would be
> above something as petty as a dress code.

The saddening truth is that dress code pettiness is to be obeyed when you want to address people that count (their money).

Free software wouldn't be anywhere close to where it is today if its only promoters wore only jeans and T-shirts.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Craig Davison]

I don't care about this either way, but here's an explanation for you:

It's impolite, just like picking his nose is impolite even though it doesn't detract from his message. Dressing appropriately is so easy to do, people are going to assume that if you don't, you're disrespecting them. He's not some kid with little control over his wardrobe, he's an adult dressing in the laziest way possible.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

You're infinitely more insightful than me, but you aren't wearing the special clothes, so you can't join my discussion group.

But you're already a 5 dude. That's like the highest number!

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[kestasjk]

Seems like by not dressing as other people do he's just adding more nonsense to the mix. Instead of delivering his message by speaking he's causing other people to focus on what he's wearing; generating controversy or trying to give himself a "look", instead of just giving a speech he's giving everyone other things to focus on.

e.g. Here we are, talking about his stupid dress choice, and not about his speech. If he just dressed like everyone else we would be talking about what he said, not how he dressed, but he's taking away from what he said by dressing inappropriately.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[PietjeJantje]

I don't think you're right. Everyone who has met Stallman seems to have to write something about being impressed by his physical appearance. This article is no exception. He is not wearing the uniform of others, but he is trying to intimidate people with his own styled appearance. If you have this hairstyle and are wearing these colors, then this somewhat reminds me of Dirk Gently, self-styled holostic detective, sporting an utterly unfashionably collection of garbs, but still, self-styled and cultivated and consciously so because of the effect it creates and has on people.
But I like Stallman for being self-styled and his own man. It's much better than a lot of nerds who are just wearing another uniform, the carefully cultivated nerd look. Yet they're dressing as they think they're supposed to, conforming to how others look. As someone who likes to think he's self-styled, all I've left to say is: 1) be your -own- man, 2) for the love of god, it is OK to have some style and class. Really! I won't condemn you as a lousy programmer for wearing good shoes.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[gravyface]

Unfortunately, there are people who matter in life that care about your appearance. Why not put on a suit and a pair of shoes and get that out of the way so you can focus on the harder things?

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Bert64]

Yes, lazy is the point...
He's spending his time and effort on things that do matter ie his talk, and doing the bare minimum on things that don't matter (ie clothes).

Suits and ties are uncomfortable...
The shoes that go with them are uncomfortable and bad for your feet
Such clothes are overpriced and a horrendous waste of money

Not only that, but dressing in a suit and tie strongly suggests you need to try and use your appearance to give some credibility to what your saying because it can't stand on it's own.

How you dress usually has no effect on your ability to complete a task, and as such you should be evaluated based on that. Obviously there are some tasks where what you wear actually has an impact, like diving.

As for "impoliteness" and "disrespect" there is nothing impolite or disrespectful about wearing a tshirt and shorts, not unless the tshirt sports an insulting slogan anyway. The idea that you need to wear particular clothes to show respect is completely contrived and totally ridiculous. It is purely down to conditioning and sheep-like herd behavior... People don't know *why* its supposed to be polite to wear a suit, they just think that it is because thats what they've been told. It's a meme that does more harm than good.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Osty]

Dress codes anywhere but where the dressing is essential to the event is pointless. How is a uniform going to inspire creative thought? If what matters is what people have on their minds, why care about what they have on their bodies?

Nobody's saying he should put on a suit and tie or anything. Jeans and a t-shirt would be perfectly acceptable. However if he wants to be taken seriously, he needs to do a couple things:

• Take a bath! A shower would suffice, but he probably needs hours of soaking to remove the years of neglected hygiene.
• Shave and a haircut. Or at least a trim of each. If he wants to wear a full beard and long hair, good for him. At least keep them neat.
• Use a brush or comb. Having long hair doesn't mean it has to be a rat's nest. Brush it out. This goes well with the first two (bathing will make the hair more manageable, as will trimming it).
• Put on some damn shoes. If you don't want to wear socks, that's your choice. Even flip-flops would be better than nothing. We're not hobbits, it's no longer the 15th century, and he can afford $5 for some Wal*Mart shoes.

Sounds like something straight out of an elementary school playground.

Would you say the same thing if he showed up to a presentation naked, or covered in feces? If you're incapable of managing your own persona hygiene, how in the hell are you going to manage something global? RMS can be as much of a hippy as he likes, but unless he cleans himself up at least a little bit nobody's going to take him seriously besides other hippies. There's a reason why RMS is a laughing stock, and it's partly due to his insistence on "Free Software" above anything else. For every one person who is actually interested in hearing RMS speak at a presentation like this, there are 50 who are there to laugh at the smelly, delusional hippy.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Bert64]

The point is, he's not getting all worked up about ridiculous things like what people wear...

You may be blindly following a herd of sheep who believe (but don`t know why) that wearing a suit and tie makes you respectable... And your therefore willing to sacrifice comfort, practicality and money to conform to that ridiculous expectation.

RMS on the other hand will wear what he finds comfortable, because he isn't willing to sacrifice anything for a ridiculous social meme.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Plutonite]

Sure, ditch the suit and tie. After all, it's not like Steve Jobs wears them to special events. But why go barefoot? The guy probably wears shoes outside his home, so why take them off to get on stage and deliver a speech to respected academics?

Respectable/serious attire are necessary not to convince your audience that you are right, but to convince them that you are "normal" by everybody else's standards. It's a big part of the fight right now.. to show that crippled, proprietary code is not the norm and that it is possible to have a system based on free - or at least open - code in the "real world". To show that it's not an outrageous idea. And it doesn't help when your leaders are barefoot lunatics who dislike shampoo and don't cut their hair.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[cammoblammo]

Fair enough, but this particular forum doesn't seem to mind a bit of informality creeping in. I mean, what sort of professional, academic settings have ninjas attacking their guests?

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[cammoblammo]

Further to that, if you look at this picture you get the impression that RMS was the best dressed person in the place.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[xiang shui]

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.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[vidarh]

There are places, such as fancy dress parties or parties where the dress code is specifically part of creating an athmosphere for the sake of it, where I would consider it rude of people to show up in jeans and a t-shirt.

But as guest speaker in a student union? If they seriously expect suit and tie for something like that and are the slightest bit offended at someone who show up without it, then they are too far up their asses to be worthy of respect.

If you invite Stallmann you know what you get.

As you said, there are certain expectations when you are a GUEST speaker. Amongst them that YOU get shown respect for the message you are there to convey and for your personal beliefs and principles. Noone forced anyone to invite Stallmann.

As it is, you are showing far more disrespect than what Stallmann does - he's just sticking to his principles while you're just being an ass.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[argiedot]

Here's an interesting article: http://www.unshod.org/pfbc/pfrossi2.htm I wear sandals myself, because I learnt my lesson the hard way a couple of years ago. It's easy to get a cut in the skin and then that can get infected. I got leptospirosis like that, sort of. Ah well.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a reason why RMS is a laughing stock, and it's partly due to his insistence on "Free Software" above anything else. He's been far far more successful in bringing his philosophy to the world than most of us believed he would be. He's also the one who's addressing Yale, not me and probably not me. I doubt he cares whether you're laughing.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

When you invite a speaker, that is on rather different terms to the situation when a person is there as a guest. If you would like the speaker to wear a particular uniform which he doesn't have then you should a) check that it's okay with him (you cannot expect a Rabbi to come without a hat) b) if they don't have the uniform then you should provide a loan for them for free. It seems to me that both of these things were failed in this case. RMS lives somewhat "ascetically" and criticising him for failing to join in your materialism and pomposity is equivalent to criticising St Anthony, Ghandi or even Jesus for their poverty or criticising Mohammad for not eating often enough. If this were a representative of RedHat, you might have a point. If you can't take the use of ideas from those who "think differently" may I suggest you look up some of the lives of the Greek philosophers and then stop using any products based on mathematics.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

e.g. Here we are, talking about his stupid dress choice, and not about his speech. Yep, some people on Slashdot are whining about how he dressed instead of paying attention to the content. But then people on Slashdot are going to come across his message anyway. Meanwhile, he not only got invited to debate at Yale, but he also won that debate.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[suv4x4]

Therein lies another insight into the self-effacing brilliance of RMS. He doesn't need a suit. He's proved his worth by making his vision work, not by using the usual tricks of the trade and flim-flamming with long words, suits and "presence".

Imagine I have a solution to global warming. So we meet to talk about this epic problem, but I have a little deformed third hand sticking out my neck.

You know I may have something important to say, and you know the number of my hands isn't related to it, but you keep staring uneasily at the third arm sticking out my neck, waving at your general direction.

You go home and need to start planning how to implement my solution to global warming, but all you can remember is "what the hack was that thing on his neck?!" and don't remember anything else.

Well, culture is like that, if Stallman wanted people to concentrate on his speech, he'd dress appropriately, even if cheap. I doubt pair of socks and trousers are something excessive to put on.

He's just plain weird, let's face it. Part trying to make us feel pitty about him and donate to his organisation, part "look me, I'm so unconventional, I'll shock you by coming bare footer, boooyaa!"

At least, that's all I'd remember.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[suv4x4]

If he didn't have the annoying tendency to be right all the damn time, I think I might care about his footwear.

You may not, but you'll be surprised how odd certain other people (with power nonetheless) may see his behavior.

It's the world we live in. If you're sexy, you have a better chance at becoming the president of the USA.

I'm not saying Stallman should be sexy, but if he'll be pulling off such tricks, many people who could make a difference will just see him for the hippy he is and dismiss what he has to say and his entire movement.

I, at least, have to do presentations here and there to be moving my business, and realize that if you want people to figure out your message, you don't want to distract them with your odd persona, and follow basic etiquette, unless your odd persona is part of your product. And I'm not sure being barefooted is requirement for being against DRM.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[sqrt(2)]

While his appearance doesn't invalidate or cheapen in ANY way the work he has done in his long career, it doesn't help the image of his movement as viewed by people outside of it. Like it or not, the reality of the world we live in is, people who get to make policy decisions and distribute the money and resources do judge you partly on your appearance. Stallmann has been successful in spite of his unconventional attitude to social norms by the power and merits of his vision and principles, but you have to wonder if things might have been different--maybe in just a few instances--if he met the rest of the world somewhere in the middle on the other stuff.

I meant no disrespect to the man, but that doesn't mean I agree with all the decisions he's made.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[hitmark]

that reminded me of the arstechnica articles on the development of the amiga.

there they didnt have a dresscode, and the article stated that at one time someone showed up at work wearing purple spandex pants and pink fluffy slippers. and yes, that person was a man.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Mike1024]

How is a uniform going to inspire creative thought? If what matters is what people have on their minds, why care about what they have on their bodies?

I agree that it's unwise to ignore RMS due to his clothes. However, dressing eccentrically may distract people from your core message - as this very conversation shows. We aren't talking about software patents - we're talking about no shoes? Doesn't he hurt his feet?

In other words, he might think that wearing a suit could help advance his (anti-software-patent) cause, and do it for this reason.

Just my $0.02

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you say the same thing if he showed up to a presentation naked, or covered in feces?

you are a douchebag.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Klaidas]

It's interesting how something worth +5, Insightful gets -1, Flamebait just because FOSS zealots don't like any critic against Stallman, isn't it?

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[The -e**(i*pi)]

I thought suits were for retards. (yes I said retards)

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Angostura]

Apparently they were - since he spoke and did not follow the dress code.

However it is extremely naive to believe that the choice of a person's clothes has nothing to do with communication. Aside from protection from the elements, the style of clothing a person chooses is entirely about communication. RMS and everyone else chooses their clothing to send a message, even if that message is 'I can't be bothered about clothes'. It is left to the reader to decide whether his message was a an intentionally rude one. I don't think it was. But he was certainly saying 'I don;t care about societal norms or the rules of your little club'.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Splab]

We do know why. An expensive suit tells a tale of success, a pair of unwashed jeans and a torn T-shirt tells a tale of failure. This of course might not be the truth, first one could be someone trying to trick you out of your money, the second one could be protecting your freedom. But clothes are such a deep part of our nature - if you want people to listen to you you need to look like a success.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Woy]

Exactly. In my opinion, the clothes are irrelevant and basically a filter: if you are the sort of person that will judge Stallman by his clothes, then the wisdom he has to offer is lightyears beyond your reach. It is better that you just dismiss it rather than polluting the discussion.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

For some reason, this reminds me of someone I know... He worked at AT&T, and when they tried applying a dress code at the site he worked at, he protested by wearing a dress to work. When his boss asked him about it, he said he identified himself as female and threatened to sue them for discrimination because what he had on fit the dress code for women. I think he kept that up for a year or two, with his boss and the higher ups afraid to say anything, before he quit.

A strange way to protest, I admit. But his actions got at least that one location to think about their dress code. They may have only thought twice about it because they were afraid of being sued, and it was cheaper to let some guy come to work wearing a dress (this was in the late 70s if I remember right), but at least they thought twice.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[donaldm]

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.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, there are people who matter in life that care about your appearance.

These entities are 1) not people, 2) do not matter, and 3) barely qualify as alive.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[YutakaFrog]

You're absolutely right, there are certain expectations, but they're not only one-way. When you invite Richard M. Stallman to your campus, you can expect a number of things that you wouldn't expect from very many people, including but not limited to wearing a t-shirt and no shoes. If the person who invited him to speak there in the first place expected him to show up clean-cut, well combed, and wearing a suit coat and tie, then either (a) he was wildly disillusioned or (b) had no idea who RMS was. "Oh, hey, when I google 'anti drm' this RMS guy shows up a whole bunch. Let's invite him!"

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Beale]

Um, actually I find that a suit that's actually your size and that isn't made of plastic (and even some that are) can be exceptionally comfortable. Hell, I buy cheap suit trousers just to wear around. With you on the shoes, though.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[nilbud]

It's time for your shift, don't forget to wipe your countertop and say "Have a nice day" lickspittle.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[markdavis]

"Here I am, as asked. I'm not going to lie to you or try to make my ideals look appealing. I won't dress up the message or myself to try to divert your attention from the downsides of the issue.

By down-dressing below the level of just about anyone who would speak at a college, he *IS* diverting people's attention to what he is or isn't wearing.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Dogtanian]

I'm not sure how much of my response is playing devil's advocate and how much is my personal views, but anyway:-

How you dress usually has no effect on your ability to complete a task, and as such you should be evaluated based on that. Yes, but dressing to please another person's expectations can indicate a willingness to do things their way.

The idea that you need to wear particular clothes to show respect is completely contrived and totally ridiculous. It is purely down to conditioning and sheep-like herd behavior... True, but those in charge of companies could justifiably argue that they need people to behave in a reasonably team-like manner (whether this represents "sheep-like" behaviour may be a matter of opinion, and will vary from company to company anyway). It's all very well having people who *could* do the job, the question is whether they are *willing* to do the job in the manner most beneficial to the company, or will be more likely to scratch their intellectual itch and/or do things the way *they* want to.

This isn't necessarily saying that the way every company does things is the most sensible way. And great things have come from people scratching their intellectual itches, or- to put it more flatteringly- doing what really enthuses them. But the other side of the coin is that many companies would argue that they require more coherence from staff behaviour.

Your typical Slashdotter might not like this, and I'm not going to demean their choice. I'm not sure that I personally like it either. But you have to realise that this is a reflection of our underlying personalities, that we like to do things our own way. I'm a great believer in diversity of personality types, and that there is no "right" or "wrong" one.

What does this have to do with such clothes? It's that they *are* a symbolic gesture- that you're willing to do things the way others want, even if it doesn't suit you. You might argue that this is stupid and illogical, that it doesn't change your ability to do the job. But human beings aren't that "logical" in that sense anyway.

And such visual symbolism does make sense- after all, the types of people who are most unwilling to wear suits may well be the types who (though brilliant) are like herding cats when it comes to managing them. And that's not going to suit every position in every company.

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.

I'm well aware that people may perceive this in a knee-jerk manner as an attack on non-conformism, or consider me an apologist for the suit-wearing culture. It isn't, and I'm not. But it does grate that some people use superficial "logic" and "common sense" to justify one side of the argument, when considering the matter makes it evident that suits and similar workwear do serve a "logical" purpose. I dislike selective and superficial application of logic for purposes of self-justification. Personally, I'm not a great fit into the "suit wearing culture", but that reflects my underlying personality that I'm really not that great a team player anyway. So...

You may consider these people "sheep" or those that require such clothes stupid, but as I said before, consider that this may reflect your underlying personality- so in a way, such suits make logical sense.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

oh yeaaaah baby, mod him down too. and then go to work without shoes and boot up that freebsd version 2. freedom baby!!

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[pla]

Too bad he doesn't care about his cause enough to project an aura of professionalism and courtesy. There are certain expectations when you're a GUEST speaker in a professional setting, an academic setting.

Right - Because nothing says "I believe in this" like selling out to your audience before you even start.

Then again... Yale? Perhaps he should save his energy for people who haven't already sold their souls to big business. Though I suppose I can see the benefit in getting to the minds of the Oligarchy's children during their suggestible stoner years...

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.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a Hobit, just like Peter Jackson

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're sexy, you have a better chance at becoming the president of the USA.

Have you SEEN your president?!

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[skoaldipper]

After 100+ comments, discussing ONLY the merits of RMS presentation attire, truly, the messenger has been shot. Does the importance of presentation make more sense now?

When's the last time anyone bought a life insurance policy from a guy dressed up like a graveyard digger? We can all battle against conformance, yes. But overcoming the inherit biological prejudices of the mind in matters of perception is losing the war entirely. I don't' think it is respect, nor even appreciation. Maybe just common sense. Which seems to be lost on most brilliant minds, like RMS.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Dogtanian]

I don't think you get it. He doesn't want to express his willingness to do what others want. Well, I didn't express myself too well (too longwinded for a start), and as I said, there was an element of playing devil's advocate. However, in this case he wanted to influence a group of people- and dressing in an unconventional manner makes it more likely that they'll subconsciously (or consciously!) dismiss him as someone who isn't one of them, who has his own agenda. Or maybe not- you could be right.

However, I still maintain that in general, the wearing of a suit does have a logical purpose, contrary to what *many* people here are arguing. It might not be a purpose that suits them (or you or me), or is to everyone's taste, but it's there. The suit basically symbolises some form of conformity, and although it's not likely to get me much credibility saying this, there are cases where conformity is necessary and beneficial. And there are other cases (such as the ones you give) where it arguably isnt.

That's not to cast judgement either way on conformism or non-conformism.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh gimmie a break, your probably sitting in front of the computer in your underwear right now.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Aerion]

But why go barefoot? The guy probably wears shoes outside his home, so why take them off to get on stage and deliver a speech to respected academics?

What home? No, seriously.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Gibbs-Duhem]

No, that's not distracting. Biting off his toenail while one of the other speakers was talking... that was distracting.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Draek]

no, if he just dressed like everyone else we would be talking about how nutjobs like him don't deserve to be part of the F/OSS community, or about how the GPL3 is so bad it makes baby Jesus cry. Don't think Stallman's clothes are the only thing standing between us and a good argument, the trolls will find even the smallest flaw and make a big fuss about it, or if they can't find one they'll make one up.

but hey! we bit the troll, but it still isn't too late, why don't we just stop talking about his clothes, and start discussing his speech now?

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[buleriando]

He won the debate. Seems like someone was listening.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[jnelson4765]

As for XKCD, how long until some misguided lawyer (yes, Thompson, I'm looking at you) starts to spout off about webcomics encouraging ninja attacks? Please - let that happen. I want to see a lawyer trying to explain a ninja attack to a civil judge.

Maybe he'll finally get the I-love-me jacket he's needed for so long.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[coolGuyZak]

And your therefore willing to sacrifice comfort, practicality and money to conform to that ridiculous expectation.

I don't know what suits you've been wearing, but mine is damn comfortable. I don't find many opportunities to wear it, unfortunately.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Ant P.]

The reason we're not talking about what he said here is that /.'s covered it a thousand times already.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

> > he sported a T shirt, and no shoes.
>
> Way to go, Stallman. Way to show respect for your audience.

WTF, man! He was wearing pants, what more do you want from him?

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[msormune]

Maybe his open source shoes are still in alpha stage, and not to be trusted in a real environment. Still improving, though.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Hope Thelps]

if you want people to listen to you you need to look like a success. The article certainly makes it sound like he was listened to. As far as I can tell they went out of their way to invite him there so that they could listen to him, and then they listened to him, and then voted in favor of his position. So I think your theory is at best incomplete.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[spacebird]

Did you see the alternative?

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[kestasjk]

You may be blindly following a herd of sheep who believe (but don`t know why) that wearing a suit and tie makes you respectable... It's not about wearing a suit or tie, there's nothing inherently respectable about suits or ties, it's about following the convention.

It's just a simple mark of respect for the audience, showing that the event is something special that is worth preparing for.. This is why people don't go to weddings, funerals, graduations, etc, in dressing gowns (I know I find dressing gowns more comfortable, but I know the father in law would be a little annoyed)

You could say "omg you sheeple if I want to wear rainbow suspenders to your mom's funeral I will, you moron, because I don't follow arbitrary conventions like "wear black". I'm too cool and ironic to show respect and unity."

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[tom's a-cold]

By down-dressing below the level of just about anyone who would speak at a college, he *IS* diverting people's attention to what he is or isn't wearing.

By complying with the country-club dress code of a bunch of arrogant, privileged trust-fund parasites (leavened with the occasional poor person recruited on the basis of merit) he would be reinforcing a set of social norms that should be stamped out for any number of good reasons and which are in particular antithetical to the meritocratic ethos of coding.

I respect RMS because of his uncompromising nature. After all, if compromise worked, we'd all be happy with Shared Source serfdom and people like RMS would be irrelevant. But with respect to code, he has correctly identified the matters of principle that cannot be compromised, and has thought through the set of licensing conditions that protect those principles. Whether they're an optimal set or not is a matter for debate, but he's been directionally correct in approach, and the warnings he has made about how weaker conditions can be subverted have been proven by experience. In a hostage swap, I'd trade him for any number of Yalies, whether barefoot or in overpriced footwear. It saddens me that I'm unlikely ever to be given such a choice.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[kid_izzy]

Oh thanks for the wonderful comment about my school political union? Why don't you continue with the next cheap shot? Trust me, the majority of us have not sold our soul to big business. On the contrary, most people want to help make the world a better place. Luckily, we're at Yale...we've got that kind of influence :)

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[chris_eineke]

to show that crippled, proprietary code is not the norm

This is madness!

And it doesn't help when your leaders are barefoot lunatics who dislike shampoo and don't cut their hair.

This is Sparta!

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[WilliamSChips]

nowadays those suits from those mens clothing places are about as cheap as a generic t-shirt.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[WilliamSChips]

So I should have to cut off my hand if I want my message to be remembered? Fuck you.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[WilliamSChips]

What I wanna know is, why are they making you pay tuition at all? They have that huge ass-endowment that would allow them to pay off every single student's tuition just off the interest.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[WilliamSChips]

I'd like you to know that there is a presenter dress code but it was waived specifically so that they could have RMS speak. Only Slashdot trolls care about RMS's appearance.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Epsillon]

These entities are 1) not people, 2) do not matter, and 3) barely qualify as alive.

Ah yes, middle management. Gotta love 'em.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[kid_izzy]

Eh, that I question. I know I go to school here for free :)

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[MythMoth]

Exactly. In my opinion, the clothes are irrelevant and basically a filter: if you are the sort of person that will judge Stallman by his clothes, then the wisdom he has to offer is lightyears beyond your reach. It is better that you just dismiss it rather than polluting the discussion. The problem with preaching to the choir is that you don't make any new converts.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[squelchtoad]

Then again... Yale? Perhaps he should save his energy for people who haven't already sold their souls to big business. Though I suppose I can see the benefit in getting to the minds of the Oligarchy's children during their suggestible stoner years... And once again I am reminded (to my embarrassment) that my side of the political spectrum has as many under-informed, stereotype-spewing fools as the right wing... the Oligarchy's children? I suppose you mean the 63% of Yale students who attend on some form of scholarship (and remember that Ivies give no "merit" or "athletic" scholarships). Perhaps you mean the 49% of students who do work-study programs. Seriously, this isn't the 1930s. What's more, I was at the debate in question and didn't encounter any student who minded Stallman's choice of clothing. I don't know if the people on this thread criticizing Stallman are from Yale, but as someone pointed out, his dress certainly didn't affect the way his speech was received...his side won the debate. By the way, my understanding of the Political Union's dress code is that its stated goal precisely to ensure that speakers will be judged not on their looks but on the quality of their ideas...

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[glwtta]

First of all, this is obvious and doesn't need to be restated every five minutes (with weird smug superiority, no less). It's not that we don't get how the "real world" works.

Point is, he's one of the most influential people in the world when it comes to Free Software and he's more than earned the right to dress however he damn pleases without people whining about how he represents "their" community all the damn time.

I mean seriously, the man basically created the Free Software movement from scratch, but every random dipshit on Slashdot feels the need to give him pointers on etiquette. Way to contribute there: "I know that some people like it if you wear shoes when you evangelize to them." Yeah, no shit Sherlock.

Sorry, rant over (it's a pet peeve: useless whining about people who actually do things)

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[jgrahn]

This article is no exception. He is not wearing the uniform of others, but he is trying to intimidate people with his own styled appearance. If you have this hairstyle and are wearing these colors, then this somewhat reminds me of Dirk Gently, self-styled holostic detective, sporting an utterly unfashionably collection of garbs, but still, self-styled and cultivated and consciously so because of the effect it creates and has on people.

This discussion is silly. I saw RMS speak a few months back. There was nothing wrong or exhibitionistic with the way he dressed. His hair and beard were reasonably trimmed. He wasn't even unusually fat.

Anyway, what will annoy the Suits is what he says and how he says it. As soon as he opens his mouth, it doesn't matter if he wears Armani or a purple Barney suit.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is that Stallman is the whole package. Do you honestly think if he dressed nice and was well groomed that he would have the same notoriety? Remember any publicity is good publicity.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[FishWithAHammer]

If he didn't have the annoying tendency to be right all the damn time, GNU/Linux says hi.

RMS has his moments of toolage just like everyone else.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[ShakaUVM]

He's playing to the image of the barefoot, overweight UNIX nerd. Technical crowds will recognize his street cred when he looks like that. If he looked like a politician, people wouldn't pay very much attention to his message -- he'd look like yet another hair-slicked marketing type in corporate.

IMO, he just needed a pair of suspenders and a quarter.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Deliveranc3]

Well since no one seems to have come close a reasoned response to his arguments and there really isn't anyone (Except perhaps Balmer, Gates, Jobs and a few content industry execs with equal clout) to stand against him he's repeating himself and we'd be better served by reading his book than by reading a debate he has with the clueless.

If he wants to add an element of his idology that he thinks will attract people to his real goal then that's fine.

Blah blah blah GPL3vs2...
Blah blah blah FSF's newest suit against software theives.
Blah blah blah hardware DRM...

Now let's talk about the NINJA!

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

I have never heard of Stallman being considered "normal."

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course being barefoot is a requirement for being against DRM. The man didn't want his digits restricted.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

matter ie his talk, and

"matter, i.e., his talk, and", "matter - i.e., his talk - and", or "matter (i.e., his talk), and". The last choice is the best choice to make it consistent with the end of the sentence.

matter (ie clothes)

"matter (i.e., clothes)".

Also, "i.e." == "that is", whereas "e.g." == "for example", so the latter may have been more appropriate if the sentence was supposed to mean what I think that it does.

for your feet
waste of money

".".

suggests you need to try and use

"suggests that you need to try to use".

to what your saying

"you're".

on it's own

"its".

"disrespect" there

",".

*why* its supposed

"it's".

because thats what

"that's".

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[mrchaotica]

An expensive suit tells a tale of success, a pair of unwashed jeans and a torn T-shirt tells a tale of failure.

Obviously, RMS ought to be wearing well-maintained jeans and T-shirts, then.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Almahtar]

I imagine the dress code is vestigal. It's a very old organization, after all. Heck, in my state they still have laws against spitting in the company of women or children.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Almahtar]

why take them off to get on stage and deliver a speech to respected academics To draw stark attention to the separation between appearance and substance by committing appearance suicide. Intelligent audience members will recognize immediately that he's making a point(he had to take his shoes off) to give no credit to appearance in a very intentional way. The natural assumption, then, is that it's his belief that appearance is immaterial and should not enter into judgment.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, I wore sweat pants and a sweat shirt during my wedding.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Almahtar]

Is it so unlikely that he was intentionally drawing contrast? Perhaps instead of assuming that he's so incapable of normal social interaction that he didn't realize what he was doing we should first explore the idea that it may have been an intentional symbol/example of non-conformance to traditions and rules that have no practical or technical application.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[MissingRainbow]

Sure, ditch the suit and tie. After all, it's not like Steve Jobs wears them to special events. But why go barefoot? The guy probably wears shoes outside his home, so why take them off to get on stage and deliver a speech to respected academics?

In my country (India), it is respectful to remove shoes while entering house or temple or a memorial.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[loop362]

Aloha,
That is OK. The Hawaiians still appreciate him because he live ALOHA!

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

And your therefore willing to

"you're".

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Bert64]

Or perhaps people would be more successful if they didn't waste so much money on expensive clothes...

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Ilgaz]

Sure, ditch the suit and tie. After all, it's not like Steve Jobs wears them to special events. But why go barefoot? The guy probably wears shoes outside his home, so why take them off to get on stage and deliver a speech to respected academics?

Respectable/serious attire are necessary not to convince your audience that you are right, but to convince them that you are "normal" by everybody else's standards. It's a big part of the fight right now.. to show that crippled, proprietary code is not the norm and that it is possible to have a system based on free - or at least open - code in the "real world". To show that it's not an outrageous idea. And it doesn't help when your leaders are barefoot lunatics who dislike shampoo and don't cut their hair. That is how a Yale Academic speech makes into major Tech sites. Publicity.

The idea he started has made into billion dollar companies run by suits wearing $10k Italian stuff. They RELY on his idea. It doesn't matter if he wears shoes or not. They are running GNU software on their $100m server farms.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent point. Sums up this thread entirely. You made me smile and do a little nod toward the screen student to kung fu master styles the instant I read it.

ty for your contribution.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[everphilski]

They RELY on his idea. It doesn't matter if he wears shoes or not. They are running GNU software on their $100m server farms.

They use his software, but they don't give a FUCK about his ideology. (Exemplified by many companies who use GNU and/or Linux software, yet try to subvert the GPL) Which one do you think RMS really cares about? I'd argue the latter. Therefore, if he really cared about getting through, he'd see them eye to eye and dress with a modicum of respect.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

You win.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

>I'm not saying Stallman should be sexy

so your saying Stallman isn't sexy?

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

"Too bad he doesn't care about his cause enough to project an aura of professionalism and courtesy. There are certain expectations when you're a GUEST speaker in a professional setting, an academic setting.

So you're saying a guy famous for that certain type of dress (such as never owning a suit), should come present his ideas at a lecture he's been invited to speak at.. while wearing a suit?

If I was in the audience and he had done that.. I would be disappointed.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[ccp]

It's just a simple mark of respect for the audience, showing that the event is something special that is worth preparing for..

Have you considered that speaking at Yale would be something special for you but just routine for him?

And maybe he's a little less conformist than you appear to be?

Cheers,
CC

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[kestasjk]

There's "conformist" and there's "polite".

A handshake is an arbitrary convention, but who says "no I don't shake hands you sheep, what exactly is the purpose of a handshake?"

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll be surprised how many people don't care about his looks, and instead care about the message.

Are you proud of being superficial? (Not directed at you personally. If you feel offended, so be it.)

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[ccp]

I, at least, have to do presentations here and there to be moving my business,

I guess this makes you play in Stallman's league?
And people are as interested in hearing you as in hearing him?

Unless you're that other guy with the black turtleneck...

Cheers,
CC

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[ccp]

No.

Re:this guy is a liability to the community

[ccp]

There's "conformist" and there's "polite".

Indeed, and there's also "eager to please" and "insecure". Just a matter of nuance.

But back to RMS... By his dress code he establishes a hyerarchical relationship with his audience. He's telling them who's top dog.
It's a very old trick, but deliberate and effective. And, like his writing, wonderfully succint.

Cheers,
CC

Wow

[Naelok]

This is perhaps the greatest thing anyone has ever done, ever. Though it would've been better if they'd come down from the ceiling.

Re:Wow

[arivanov]

Have you seen the comic. I would suggest nobody to do the next steps.

A raid on ESR is likely to have look like a gameplay video from "Soldier of Fortune 2" (with the Ninjas being used for target practice).

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, puhleeze.

Have you ever seen ESR? He's just a pitiful loudmouth.

Re:Wow

[arivanov]

And a big gun nut: http://www.catb.org/~esr/geeks-with-guns/

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

How are the XKCD comics funny? I've looked at all of them, and they just plain aren't good at all. Referring to "ninjas" or some other Internet meme shouldn't bring out the laughs, and often it doesn't.

Now take The Perry Bible Fellowship comics, they're funny. They clearly have wit and intelligence behind them. They make the XKCD comics look like the complete crap that they are.

Re:Wow

[g253]

I don't know if it's the greatest thing anyone ever did, but it is definitely the best headline ever in 10 years of slashdot!

Next week : "XKCD sues RMS for copyright infringement" ?

Re:Wow

[RealGrouchy]

How are the XKCD comics funny? I've looked at all of them, and they just plain aren't good at all. Referring to "ninjas" or some other Internet meme shouldn't bring out the laughs, and often it doesn't. Oh, go fly a kite.

- RG>

Re:Wow

[RealGrouchy]

Next week : "XKCD sues RMS for copyright infringement" ? xkcd has a noncommercial Creative Commons license.

- RG>

Re:Wow

[RDW]

'A raid on ESR is likely to have look like a gameplay video from "Soldier of Fortune 2" (with the Ninjas being used for target practice).'

Nah, Ninjas have Real Ultimate Power and would cut his head off long before he could even reach for the .357 magnum under his pillow. His only effective defence would be start reading from this:

http://catb.org/~esr/writings/sextips/bedplay.html

and watch them run away with their hands over their ears, silently screaming.

Re:Wow

[Eunuchswear]

I wish you hadn't posted that link. I've never read it, but even being reminded of it's existence makes me feel ill.

Re:Wow

[iow]

I love XKCD, check out http://xkcd.com/327/ :-).

Re:Wow

[LrdDimwit]

Not only that. If you listen to MS talk, RMS goes way back with the pirates. If the ninjas got too close, he'd just release the parrots. And (because this is according to MS), as everyone MS knows knows, anyone who gets hit by a parrot becomes one! It's a virus, just like the zombies!

Re:Wow

[nomadic]

And a big gun nut

Well, a big nut at least.

Re:Wow

[WilliamSChips]

How is xkcd not funny? Also: I remember PBF being funny but when I reread it it stopped being funny.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

How are the XKCD comics funny? I've looked at all of them,

Let me get this straight. You don't like XKCD, so you went ahead and read all of them. That is 331 web comics to date.

Re:Wow

[Eli_Courtwright]

Not only that, but it'd also be a horrible idea to pull the prank from the comic on Linus Torvalds, since his wife won the karate champion of Finland for several years.

Well

[Anonymous Coward]

If Richard Stallman wants everything to be free, maybe he should create a whole bunch of decent stuff and give it away. Without license. Without license. Without license.

Re: Well

[Dolda2000]

Without license. Without license. Without license. Ballmer? Is that you?

Re:Well

[haraldm]

If Richard Stallman wants everything to be free, maybe he should create a whole bunch of decent stuff and give it away. Without license. Without license. Without license.

He did that, remember? And not without license, this is not what he's working for in the past 25 years, but with a public license. Understand?

But you may stick to your proprietary stuff if you like.

Re:Well

[Workaphobia]

Without a license, the recipient would not have the right to redistribute the work to friends. I think you mean public domain.

why can't he just die already?

[Anonymous Coward]

fucking useless twat, way to make everyone think hackers are unkempt, unprofessional hippies

Ninjas...

[Tuoqui]

But where were the pirates? Clearly someone has to defend RMS against the ninjas...

Re:Ninjas...

[Spy der Mann]

But where were the pirates?

They're too busy downloading stuff :P

Re:Ninjas...

[Anonymous Coward]

But where were the pirates?

They are working to fight global warming.

Re:Ninjas...

[Antique Geekmeister]

No, no, Comcast kept sending fake messages to the pirates to say their packets had never arrived, so the pirates would think their packets had never arrived and be afraid to take on the Ninjas without their cutlasses and cannons. For more details, check out old Slashdot articles or some notes from the EFF at http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/10/eff-tests-agree-ap-comcast-forging-packets-to-interfere.

Re:Ninjas...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we sure RMS isn't secretly a pirate? The beard is a bit suspicious. For all we know, he might wear a modern foot-shaped peg leg, own a parrot, and have an eyepatch ready for action. Notice also how the XKCD comic clearly shows RMS wielding a cutlass.

Re:Ninjas...

[mppm]

Probably as close as a fat guy who looks like he just woke up after 40 years of suspended animation will ever get to a hot Asian chick.

Re:Ninjas...

[teslar]

Some of the ninjas were female with at least one definitely promising to be on the attractive end of the scale - would you have wanted rescuing from them? ;) Unless of course the rescuing were to be done by attractive female pirates... mmmyeah, I can see the attraction there... ;)

Re:Ninjas...

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone tell me why pirates/ninjas are automatically funny. OMG PIRATE NINJAS!!! LOL ARRRRR

Re:Ninjas...

[WilliamSChips]

http://xkcd.com/225/

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:T-shirts are communist?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can never figure out the singular fascination that people have for what fibers other people wrap around their bodies.

Either he is a retard, or he is mimicking one. It's just a matter of common respect for your audience. Yeah, you can dress like a jackass, but all that says is either 1) you don't give a fuck about the people you are speaking to or 2) you are, on purpose, dressing like a fool in order to be somehow "outrageous".

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dunno why, but an image of a retard in a glasshouse just popped into my head.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you've illustrated JG's point nicely.

Does wearing a suit and tie make what you have to say more important?

Also, if we judge our fellow humans respect for us on the quality of clothing they wear, would you then fault him for wearing a suit from a mass retailer instead of a custom tailored one? Or is it merely that the configuration of his clothing isn't to your liking?

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[Anonymous Coward]

The flip side of the coin - if you wear a suit, lots of engineers won't trust you. And why should they? You're telling them you hope they'll respect you because of what you wear, instead of what you say.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, are t-shirts considered "dirty", "commie", or "hippie"? All of the above. Or is that not shaded enough between black and white for you?

At an international conference, I would not expect cultured people to stare at unfamiliar costumes. ... I wiggle my dick at your female leader conference attendees.

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. If it was singular, it wouldn't be all that fascinating, now would it?

Just to confirm that *you're* a script, my verification word is "minimize".

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[l33t_f33t]

And its that exact attitude which projects the smelly hippy feel about Open-Sourcerers. It is a sign of respect to conform to this one little request of the hosts.

While the medium does not affect the message it affects the impact. Not conforming to a dress code, that I'm sure they informed him about makes him just seem rude. Can you honestly say that you are just as receptive to someone who is rude as to somebody who is polite, and listens to you?

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Be careful doing what others expect of you. It's habit forming.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[ozmanjusri]

image of a retard in a glasshouse

Compared to the competition, Stallman seems relatively sane...

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[Hope Thelps]

Not conforming to a dress code, that I'm sure they informed him about makes him just seem rude. Why do you feel that there was a dress code, and why are you sure that they informed him about it? As far as I can tell it's just as plausible that they invited him to speak and he asked them if his planned gear was okay and they said "sure". If you have reason to suppose otherwise then it would be interesting to hear it.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Either he is a retard, or he is mimicking one.

If you'd ever met him, you'd know neither is true. So much for your "respect", huh?

It's just a matter of common respect for your audience. Yeah, you can dress like a jackass, but all that says is either 1) you don't give a fuck about the people you are speaking to or 2) you are, on purpose, dressing like a fool in order to be somehow "outrageous".

When it comes to "common respect", I thought "not cursing like a sailor" carries even more weight than what kind of shirt you wear.

But anyway, why should I listen to anything you have to say? You're naked.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[dargaud]

you don't give a fuck about the people you are speaking to It's funny, nowadays I see it as exactly the opposite. I work in scientific engineering. When I see a scientist or an engineer dressed in expensive and ridiculously serious attire, a bell goes of in mind mind: watch out, this guy's an inept fool trying to project an aura of professionalism and physical superiority. Spray painting bullshit doesn't make it any less bullshit.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[The -e**(i*pi)]

odd you mention him mimicking retards because all the retards I know wear a suit.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[giarcgood]

Either he is a retard, or he is mimicking one. It's just a matter of common respect for your audience. Yeah, you can dress like a jackass, but all that says

Let me imagine for a minute.

You: Why is this retard wearing a nappy? Doesn't he understand that India will never be free until he puts a suit and tie on.
You: Why is this retard wearing a Springboks jumper? How will anyone take him seriously?
You: Why is this African-American shaking that torch like that? Can't he just put it straight in? Doesn't he understand what a mockery this is?

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[l33t_f33t]

I assume this, because it is the implication of the statement. And even if it was okayed beforehand It gives him an overall unprofessional air.

His cause is too important to trivialise by making himself look unprofessional and rude, even if he is trying to make a point by it. It's simple etiquette to dress formal for a formal occasion.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[nilbud]

A "matter of common respect" a phrase which doesn't mean a thing. All your statement means is you'll use any petty tiny excuse to be rude to people. You'd diss someone because they had a hangnail or didn't comb their hair just so. It's funny because as a nomark you'll never be in a position to exercise your silly rules.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[nilbud]

That's the attitude that has you parking cars for minimum wage.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny, nowadays I see it as exactly the opposite. I work in scientific engineering. When I see a scientist or an engineer dressed in expensive and ridiculously serious attire, a bell goes of in mind mind: watch out, this guy's an inept fool trying to project an aura of professionalism and physical superiority.

Believe it or not, that's exactly the point the parent is trying to make. If you're going to talk to an audience of scientific engineers, then dressing in a suit puts the audience on edge because their uniform is casual. If you're talking to an audience of suits, then a T-shirt is going to put them on edge.

We're all adult enough to set those biases aside, but if you're really interested in communicating with your audience, then it's in the interest of your message if you speak the language of the audience and follow (or at least don't offend) the social customs of the audience.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a dress code for speakers on the Union floor. (as opposed to audience members, although many, particularly those on the Right, dress up whether or not they're speaking) I'm told that we knew Stallman wouldn't follow it, and that (obviously) we invited him anyway. I think the Union blog remarks on it not so much out of any anger at RMS, but more out of surprise--the Union is a pretty old organization, I'd be willing to bet that this was our first-ever barefoot guest.

So: those of you who are accusing the Political Union of some kind of sartorial elitism; fine, fine. We have a dress code. But, clearly, we didn't let it get in the way of good debate. (Actually, we have it because we *want* good debate.)

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[smittyoneeach]

Demonstrating stability can also be relationship-forming.
There is a vast difference between erratic and erotic.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Demonstrating stability can also be relationship-forming.

So is cock sucking.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[Anonymous Coward]

or 3) You're assuming your audience is there to hear your wisdom, not for the latest stuffed-suit wank-fest.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[Disfnord]

we have it because we *want* good debate Right, because we all know those poor plebeians don't have the high breeding required to have a good, civil debate.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[LarsWestergren]

We have a dress code. But, clearly, we didn't let it get in the way of good debate. (Actually, we have it because we *want* good debate.)

I'm confused, how does a dresscode help getting a good debate? Do the fancier clothes speak up with insightful comments more often, or...?

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[c_forq]

I wouldn't say it is quality if clothing that shows respect as much as kind of clothing. If a speaker had on a $200 t-shirt of the highest quality I would still feel he wasn't concerned with respect. I had a professor that wore a suit to every class he taught, and explained he did so for the same reason he wears a suit when meeting with the University President: to show respect to those who he is addressing. I don't think it matters if it is a K-Mart, Armani, or custom tailored, as much as it matters that you showed effort to dress up. I wonder if people would think his choice in attire would be appropriate for a wedding or a funeral.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm telling them that I work with people more important than they are in the organization and that I'm not going to change my clothing to placate employees that are less important to the people that make decisions than the idiots in marketing. That my mathematics classes were more rigorous and that I took all of the hard science classes of any random structural or computer engineer is more than enough fuel for my ego to discount entirely any intellectual snobbery from people that aren't smart enough to manipulate vapid assholes for their own benefit, when those assholes use them like the supplicating beta males they are before shopping their jobs off to Asia the first opportunity they get.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[zippthorne]

He dresses funny (according to you), advocates marijuana use, rails against his imagined definition of terrorism by the US government, rants a bit about censorship, specifically uses Senator McCarthy as a bogeyman, and has a remarkably similar position on intellectual property as Stallman.

How are those positions that hippies and commies wouldn't take?

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[JohnBailey]

I'm telling them that I work with people more important than they are in the organization and that I'm not going to change my clothing to placate employees that are less important to the people that make decisions than the idiots in marketing. That my mathematics classes were more rigorous and that I took all of the hard science classes of any random structural or computer engineer is more than enough fuel for my ego to discount entirely any intellectual snobbery from people that aren't smart enough to manipulate vapid assholes for their own benefit, when those assholes use them like the supplicating beta males they are before shopping their jobs off to Asia the first opportunity they get. So basically, you don't have the personal confidence and authority to get your point across, so you power dress to intimidate. How is that working out for you?

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[TooMuchToDo]

I would rather have a professor redirect his energy from dressing in a suit to teaching more thoroughly.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Grand-parent is stating that the dress code is so that everyone is on the same page for debate. If you say things like "There is a dress code and it is the following:" then people don't show up to a debate with the following shirt on:
"Clinton lied about sex"
"Bush lied and now thousands of innocent Americans are dead"

Preventing people from wearing the above shirt or the "The Left/Right side lies!", or a shirt covered in the blood of laboratory animals actually helps to foster debate rather than cheap political stunts.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[c_forq]

Does it really take energy to dress in a suit? An amount that would actually lessen his teaching ability? Seriously? Since you brought it up I will flesh out a little more. The professor in question is a University Distinguished Professor in the biology/agricultural science department. In addition to his work in the lab and the agricultural field (literally and figuratively) he has also been a speaker and leader at teaching conferences around the world. This is a man who no longer has to work (has been eligible and capable of retirement for over a decade) that insists on teaching entry-level undergraduate classes he doesn't have to teach, and who has been recognized as an authority in the fields of education and plant and soil sciences. I've heard criticism of him, but not teaching thoroughly is one thing I've never heard regarding him.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[A nonymous Coward]

That professor's "respect" could just as easily be written as that professor's "fawning" or "showing off". he does it for HIS benefit, not theirs. If it makes him listen to the dean or teach the students better to wear a suit, then good for him, but to pretend he does it for them is to pretend he knows what they want or respect. That may be the case for the dean, but students are too varied to make a blanket case. You could just as easily say what his wearing of a suit is intended to show disprespect for those students who would rather he dressed casually, or those students who would rather he spent the time it takes to dress in a suit on preparing for class or grading homework. His suit is for himself, not for the students.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[Anonymous Coward]

students who would rather he spent the time it takes to dress in a suit on preparing for class or grading homework

How big of an ass-hat are you? Yes, I would also rather have him not spend any time with his wife or family, and put that energy into teaching. What the hell is he doing vacationing, he should be grading my paper! What kind of jerk-off is disrespected when someone dresses up? And without knowing the school and size of class how can you say students are too varied, there are some schools with VERY limited cross sections of students (see Brigham Young or Concordia).

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[XdevXnull]

I would wear a suit just because I look damn good in it. Honestly, I think I would tend to trust a science or engineering professor that looked just a little off, over a straight-laced type.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[WilliamSChips]

It used to be that fancier clothes implied that you had the resources that you could read things like Aristotle's works on debate.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing you don't get out much. I see many , many scientists dressed in expensive attire when out at conferences (and even around the workplace) - they tend to be women though. I guess if you don't have many women around, you might not see it, but scientists are starting to spend more and more time on their image.

It's a simple consequence of the growing number of scientists (and engineers) in the marketplace - they aren't all the classical nerds or geeks anymore. More and more of them are average people who just chose these fields as their career.
(And that's a good thing).

Judging someone by their dress sense rather than their ability to work is just silly. (I say that as a t-shirt and jeans wearing academic :)

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not at all how I read it. One tends to think of a person as more believable if they're dressing naturally rather than trying to dress to impress their audience, in either direction.

If you're an engineer giving a talk -- to anybody -- then dressing in a suit puts the audience on edge because they know your normal uniform is casual. If the CEO of a large company (who I'd only ever seen in a suit) showed up at a meeting in board shorts and talking surfer-dude slang, it would put everybody on edge because they know his normal uniform is not surfer attire.

People are suspicious whenever somebody dresses in a way that appears to be unnatural for that person, and designed merely to fit in.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Your logic is backwards in some situations, depending on who the audience is and who the speaker is - if the audience is there to see the speaker (think "invited guest"), then audience should dress so not to offend the speaker.

2) You respect people by - wait for it - RESPECTING them. Clothing is for function - you wear a jacket to keep you warm, and you should wear clothing to your job that suits your work. Ties have only even existed for the past 150 years or so and serve no actual purpose, and never have.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[c_forq]

I think that since all the students are part of the same society that you can, to some degree, regard them as a blanket case. As to the idea that time dressing in a suit takes time away from grading or preparation, I would ask than would you prefer a professor to not shower or dress at all, as both take time away from his work? I have never heard of someone being disrespected by someone wearing a suit, I think that is pure nonsense. As for judging that he wears the suit for himself, without personally knowing the person, I would say you are judging another by how you would act. Just because you would only wear a suit for yourself does not mean someone else has the same views and reasons.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[cecil_turtle]

First of all, as near as I can tell he is wearing a "polo" style shirt - collared, buttons - not a T-shirt. See this picture. Secondly, if you examine this picture, you'll see that there are three audience members wearing T-shirts, two of them with logo/graphics on them, and a fourth audience member in an un-tucked flanel shirt. Stallman wasn't exactly the one lowering the standards here, so I don't even understand the root of this discussion.

If you're hung up on him being barefoot, remember he was standing behind a podium so I doubt anybody could see. Also I've worked in a number of "professional" offices where "professional/business" attire has been required and it's not uncommon for people (normally females) to remove their shoes and spend part/most of the day barefoot or in socks. I'd be surprised if you haven't seen this as well.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[kocsonya]

I thought you wore the suit to show that *you* respected the audience...

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[Architect_sasyr]

Personally I probably learnt more from the ones who didn't wear the suits, but if I ever have to deal with body odour like that again I will probably go postal. I now work with a bunch of 'arty' designers and Mac users, and definitely prefer the one's who take a moment longer to dress appropriately (two sales men and all the girls) as opposed to the smell and look of the others, who are generally smarter.

My $0.02 AU

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[mikael]

I thought tie-dyed T-shirts were associated with the 60's, Beatles, Grateful Dead etc...

The traditional image for the british left-winger is the tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, thought I can't seem to find any pictures. A few MP's were known to wear donkey jackets.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[fractoid]

rails against his imagined definition of terrorism by the US government Sorry, but what part of 'shock and awe' does not involve instilling fear into large numbers of people for the furthering of a political goal? That's not some imagined definition, it's pretty much by the book.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[mrchaotica]

If you're going to talk to an audience of scientific engineers, then dressing in a suit puts the audience on edge because their uniform is casual.

Surely, the kind of suit (or approximation thereof) makes a difference. I could see engineers distrusting some schmuck in an Armani, but what about a guy who dressed like he'd just walked out of Apollo Mission Control (i.e., short-sleeve dress shirt, narrow tie, pocket protector, black plastic-frame glasses, etc.)?

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[cgenman]

Respect, in the grand scheme of things, is a red herring. You wear clothes in order to get cultural associations. You wouldn't want a doctor performing surgery wearing a suit, no matter how much "respect" it is supposed to show.

Similarly, showing up to a group of engineers wearing a western suit just shows that you're not an engineer. You're an executive and probably have little or no engineering training. You could also show up to a business meeting as an executive wearing the finest suit from the confuscious dynasty, and you'd never land the deal. If you wore a suit to a party thrown by a group of construction workers it might even be considred an offence. It's all about making cultural associations.

Stallman is in ridiculously high demand as a speaker. By showing up he shows that you're more important than the other dozen of speaking engagements available that day. But even if you're not in demand as a speaker, doing your job and doing it well is really all that is required to show respect. It's curteous to try to look nice (and can be enjoyable too), but it is by no means necessary. Frequently, a suit is just used to cover up for incompentence.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[Almahtar]

At my funeral, I hope everyone is naked. That would rule.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[Anonymous Coward]

It gives small minds something to gossip about, and provides endless simple fun in tweaking them."

That guy sounds like a grade-A, world-class douche.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[H0ek]

Mmm, nice tag.

Frequently, a suit is just used to cover up for incompentence.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[oliverthered]

as a dirty commie hippie I take great disrespect in your shunning of dirty commie hippie wear. The real question is, did his cloths have any logos? that's the true sign of a dirty commie hippie.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[zippthorne]

Nice twist there, but that's not the definition of 'terrorism' that he rails against That's the one he waxes nostalgic for. He assumes based on government action that there must be some new, double-standard which he then rails against.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Meh, Armani is like dressing up in sex. I'm not wearing it to make you like me. It's for me. Of course, I usually do the tshirt and jeans thing.

Re:T-shirts are communist?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Tshirts are unprofessional? Anyway, it's Stallman - if he wore a suit, I'd be suspicious.

Yale Political Union web design

[colourmyeyes]

Apparently no one told web designers at Yale how to resize photos so they don't have to use a full size, 1.6 Meg picture that's scaled down in the HTML.

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[The New Andy]

They also provide the minutes as a word document.

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you expect from a bunch of spoiled rich kids? Talent? Skill?

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[Plutonite]

Their web page is also incorrectly rendered in firefox - check out the google search button that gets hidden behind the banner.

A webpage made only for internet explorer showing a talk by RMS. Why is he even trying.

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[PopeRatzo]

A webpage made only for internet explorer showing a talk by RMS. Why is he even trying.

He's trying because he believes. You'd be surprised at the strength that gives him, dirty t-shirt or not.

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Wow, the full-size images are nasty. It's 3.6 Megapixels and the picture really doesn't start to look good until it's scaled down to about a tenth of that.

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, the full-size images are nasty. It's 3.6 Megapixels and the picture really doesn't start to look good until it's scaled down to about a tenth of that. You try taking a good picture of RMS!

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[antdude]

Yeah, I e-mailed the Webmaster about this.

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[Erpo]

In higher education web sites, this kind of error is endemic. On both occasions I needed a higher resolution picture of one of my professors, I right clicked on the tiny thumbnails on their web sites and clicked "View Image." It nearly always works.

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[kid_izzy]

Actually, the page renders just fine in Firefox. I should know, I make sure of it every day. It actually doesn't function in IE6 or below, and we actually had a redirect for awhile, because it was just a bitch to get it to work correctly. If you want, I can prove this with screenshots. It works fine with Firefox.

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[kid_izzy]

Spoiled rich kids? Jesus Christ, talk about stereotyping Yale kids without even talking to them. Look, it's kid on slashdot! They must all live in their mother's basement! [/ fallacy]

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[Plutonite]

I'm sorry to say, it doesn't. Firefox 2.0, latest updates. Check out the google search form you have on the top. The button appears behind the banner, so only part of the button shows. I too can prove this with screenshots ;)

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[kid_izzy]

Strange, because it's working on my screen. Might be a resolution problem? I don't know how to explain that, because it works fine on Firefox. I'll check it out and see if I can replicate the error, then try to take steps to correct it.

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine on my system. 2.0.0.6, Debian Etch

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[Mr2cents]

Huh? Does emacs export to .doc?

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[oddfox]

This is what it looks like in Firefox 2.0.0.8 on my XP SP2 system. Just in case you haven't been able to duplicate it yet and are trying to figure out what some people are seeing. Hope you get down to the problem soon and fix it if that is indeed your responsibility!

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[ChromeAeonium]

Only 9% were even eligible for a Pell Grant. They're not all spoiled rich kids, but I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority are. It's pretty sad how unimportant the mental aspects of students are in higher education highest colleges, but in the battle between brains and blood, education and plutocracy, bet on the bad guys :(

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[Zwaxy]

I too see the textarea partially hidden.

Also, the text is cut off, in the top navigation, and also in the menus. Seems like you're defining the space available for text in pixels rather than taking the font height into account. Finally, the 'miscellane...' menu is truncated, even though my screen is plenty wide enough for it.

Here's a screenshot:

http://dooglus.rincevent.net/random/yale.png

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Har, that's true to a different dimension. The image problems were there even in the photo that doesn't feature RMS.

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[greatcelerystalk]

I've got the same issue. 15.4" display with 1280x800 resolution.

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[squelchtoad]

Only 9% were even eligible for a Pell Grant. They're not all spoiled rich kids, but I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority are. It's pretty sad how unimportant the mental aspects of students are in higher education highest colleges, but in the battle between brains and blood, education and plutocracy, bet on the bad guys :(

Full disclosure: Like kid_izzy, I go to Yale. My family is paying some (although not all) of my tuition, but I'm still kind of insulted by the "spoiled rich kid" label. From the quoted source:

Pell grants...are most often given to undergrads with family incomes under $20,000

I don't know about you, but I don't think students with, say $20,000-$50,000 of family income qualify as spoiled rich kids. Furthermore, these students could well have siblings who are also in college. If you think their families are going to be able to pay full freight for one kid, let alone 2 or 3, you're sorely mistaken. 9% of Yale students may come from families with incomes of under $20,000, but it does not follow that the other 91% must be "spoiled rich kids." As long as we're bandying about statistics, I'd like to point out that 63% of Yale students receive some financial aid, and 49% do work-study (source)

Moreover, it's not as if every Yale student from a rich family is an idiot. SAT scores are a shitty metric, but they're an available one (and yes, I know the SAT is coachable, but there's a major-league law of diminishing returns with SAT coaching, which in practice means that you can coach a raw 500 kid to a 600, but it's a lot harder to coach a raw 600 kid to a 700, and no one ever coached a rich kid of average ability from a 500 to an 800):

Test score ranges (25th to 75th percentiles) for enrolled freshmen:
o SAT-Verbal: 700-790
o SAT-Math: 690-790
o SAT-Writing: 690-790

Perhaps you still believe that there's a "spoiled rich majority," at Yale, but this majority (spoiled and rich or not) certainly doesn't lack for brains (unless blue blood can get you 2400 on the SAT...I suppose you could bribe the college board). I would hope, though, that you're now willing to admit that no student body is a stereotype. One Yale student (who is apparently on a full scholarship) may have designed a website that does not render perfectly in Firefox, but that does not make all Yale students spoiled rich kids.

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[ChromeAeonium]

Well, no, I'd say that the other 91% aren't spoiled rich kids in their entirety, but your own source says that 46% came from 'independent, parochial, and other schools,' again not indicating that they all came from elite prep schools, but I'd be willing to bet that a lot of that 46% did. That, to me, doesn't indicate that there were too many more people in the 20-50 grand range as are in the >$20,000 range. Most likely the vast majority of those who attended public schools were economically similar, and few went to 'bad neighborhood' schools. I will make note that I'm not accusing these people of being millionaires or anything; I consider anyone with an income over 75 grand to be quitee privileged.

While I do realize that Yale will financially help students who need it (and at their prices, most do), the barrier for many is still admission. Is it still a meritocracy if someone coming from a crappy school with apathetic, incompetent teachers is ranked against someone coming from an elite prep school, or even a significantly better public one? No, it remains, for the most part at least, an educational plutocracy. Have you met anyone at Yale who appeared to have been average at best in high shcool, but still got in by logically explaining the hindrances that few meet up with that they were fated to encounter, and were granted admission, not by achieving the near perfection of their fortunate peers, but by doing extremely well with what fate had dealt them and still retaining the will to succeed, lacking only the proper conditions to do so? I highly, highly doubt it.

there's a major-league law of diminishing returns with SAT coaching, which in practice means that you can coach a raw 500 kid to a 600, but it's a lot harder to coach a raw 600 kid to a 700, and no one ever coached a rich kid of average ability from a 500 to an 800 Source please. That sounds pretty unlikely to me. Besides, most of them where likely got highr scores before the SAT prep. The right schooling tends to produce high scorers, and even if they didn't get those scores, I don't find it plausible to believe that a good SAT tutor couldn't raise their score a very significant amount.. I'm not saying that the rich kids of Yale are necessarily idiots (although I won't refrain from calling them such), merely average and lucky to have had the right conditions to succeed.

So, yes, I still do believe that most of Yale's (or any Ivy, for that matter) students are 'idiots' who got in because they were born in to the right people. I would like to believe otherwise, but will not do so until the facts say otherwise.

And by the way, your source also makes no mention of work study.

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[squelchtoad]

Well, no, I'd say that the other 91% aren't spoiled rich kids in their entirety, but your own source says that 46% came from 'independent, parochial, and other schools,' again not indicating that they all came from elite prep schools, but I'd be willing to bet that a lot of that 46% did.

I hope you realize that prep schools give financial aid (particularly the "elite prep schools"). Not every prep school student here pays his or her own way, or did in high school. In fact, prep school scholarship programs like A Better Chance create many inspiring stories "success in spite of adversity" every year.

Have you met anyone at Yale who appeared to have been average at best in high shcool, but still got in by logically explaining the hindrances that few meet up with that they were fated to encounter, and were granted admission, not by achieving the near perfection of their fortunate peers, but by doing extremely well with what fate had dealt them and still retaining the will to succeed, lacking only the proper conditions to do so? I highly, highly doubt it.

No, I haven't met "average" people who've had to deal with adversity...I've met amazing, stunningly impressive, and yes, highly intelligent people who excelled in spite of adversity. I've met people met people from poor single-parent homes who went to crappy schools and excelled there. I've met people from disadvantaged backgrounds who tested into magnet schools or won scholarships to prep schools and excelled there.

Is it still a meritocracy if someone coming from a crappy school with apathetic, incompetent teachers is ranked against someone coming from an elite prep school, or even a significantly better public one? No, it remains, for the most part at least, an educational plutocracy.

Do you think that admissions officers are so stupid as to think that a 2300 on the SAT coming out of Exeter is as impressive as a 2300 coming out of an under-funded inner-city school? A student from a disadvantaged background who is applying to Yale (or any college) doesn't have to "explain" what they've had to face; the admissions office takes it into account from the get-go. Evaluation of students in college admissions is very much contextual (see the excellent book The Gatekeepers if you're interested). The Exeter applicant will need to have excellent grades and scores just to get his foot in the door, and then will need something to make him stand out from the large crowd of over-polished prep school applicants. Conversely, the admissions office will not penalize the inner city kid if she does not have an absolutely impeccable transcript or for wasn't involved in "extracurricular activities" during high school (especially since the high school may not have offered such activities or the student may have needed to work).

Look, I don't try to pretend that the system is perfect. Colleges still recruit for sports. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds have a harder time even graduating from high school, let alone getting into college, than their privileged peers. Yet this does make the majority of Yale students (or college students generally) "spoiled rich kids" or "idiots."

I will make note that I'm not accusing these people of being millionaires or anything; I consider anyone with an income over 75 grand to be quitee privileged.

It is one thing to be privileged. It is another to be a "spoiled rich kids." Yes, the majority of college students (at Yale and in America) probably come from above average family circumstances. The majority of Americans are "privileged" by comparison to their peers in the developing world. So yes, perhaps the majority of Yale students are "privileged." It does not follow that they are
a) spoiled
b) "rich"
or c) idiots

So, yes, I still do believe that m

Re:Yale Political Union web design

[squelchtoad]

I've been waiting for a response to my last post for a day. Since there hasn't been one, I've decided to leave/stop watching the discussion. I'm not a regular slashdot poster (I found this discussion while looking for a link to send someone about the ninja incident). I am posting this so that people (including the original poster) won't expect that me to reply to any more posts on the issue.

In a perfect world...

[Eco-Mono]

I've always thought of the GPL as an overlay network... sort of a "we don't like having any license at all, so we'll pretend there's no need for it if you do too". If Stallman wasn't worried about other people taking his decent stuff and doing what he thinks are wrong things with it, I'm sure he wouldn't need copyleft in the first place.

Then again, I've charitably misinterpreted the man before. *shrug*

Re:In a perfect world...

[JoshJ]

This is, as far as I can tell, a reasonably accurate interpretation. His exact words are:
The simplest way to make a program free software is to put it in the public domain, uncopyrighted. This allows people to share the program and their improvements, if they are so minded. But it also allows uncooperative people to convert the program into proprietary software. They can make changes, many or few, and distribute the result as a proprietary product. People who receive the program in that modified form do not have the freedom that the original author gave them; the middleman has stripped it away.

Re:In a perfect world...

[HBI]

No, his purpose is to make it so all software has its source code available for modification. That's what he's here for. Think what you like of the guy, he's never veered from that purpose.

Re:In a perfect world...

[91degrees]

But that's not true. They still have the freedom the original author gave them. They can easily modify the orginal public domain piece of code. The fact that someone else has a copy doesn't detract from this ability.

Re:In a perfect world...

[Kadin2048]

But that's not true. They still have the freedom the original author gave them. They can easily modify the orginal public domain piece of code. The fact that someone else has a copy doesn't detract from this ability. Not necessarily. In many cases, one version of a piece of software (or anything else, for that matter, you see it with books, pieces of music, lots of things) will become popular and drive previous versions into obscurity until they're nearly impossible to find.

E.g., if I created a little piece of software and dumped it into the public domain, and someone picked it up, made a slight improved version, and marketed it widely, it might eventually take over, to the point where people forgot about its origin. (Which the 'improved' version's author might not even need to disclose.) Or something could happen by random chance to knock that one source for the original version offline. From that point on, users would have lost the freedom to look at the original version.

Think of how hard it can be to find very old versions of common software projects (or old/first editions of a book) -- sometimes they're nearly impossible to find, because they're buried in references to newer versions. Newer versions tend to subsume the old. (And this ignores the rather obvious case where a party making use of some public domain code might try intentionally to expunge the original from public sources, to protect their proprietized version.)

You can't simply assume that once information is made available, it will always be available. If not maintained and copied and actively disseminated, information dies; it fades away, for a myriad of reasons. The GPL prevents this from happening by making sure that the freedom in the original version is carried forward to all downstream variants and copies.

Re:In a perfect world...

[gomiam]

As I see it, having no copyright (as in copyright law not existing) allows tinkering with the software legally, never mind whether the author likes it or not. Since there is copyright, the only way to have something like no copyright is to make sure no one can decide what software uses are acceptable. Of course, such a thing can't be imposed on everyone just because, but authors can decide to make sure that their software stays available for all to tinker with (whether in original or modified form).

It's counterintuitive: copyleft requires restricting the ability of people to hide their modifications, which sounds bad (I said restricting, didn't I? I must be agains all that is free:-). But that restriction is a countermeasure against the real restriction (the real bad idea according free software advocates), the restriction of the ability of people to learn and better themselves through culture. It's up to each one to decide whether restricting this common good is a good measure in the long run. I think it isn't.

Re:In a perfect world...

[muuh-gnu]

> But that's not true. They still have the freedom the original author gave them.

But only if they got the work _directly_ from the original author. In a worst case scanario the original author may have given up distributing his own work, and only proprietary middlemen left, so a new user has no way to obtain the original free code but only the proprietary modifications. It might be possible that someone will keep on distributing the original or modified code under the same free licence, but you have depend upon their good will. He doesnt even have to disappear, it suffices that users get proprietarized code from middlemen and do not know that there is equivalent free code out there. Either through distributory circumstances or by his own ignorance, this user suddendly would have to play by proprietary, profit maximizing rules for code that once was free and unencumbered. The GPL ensures that, if anybody is distributing the work at all, it will be under a free licence, and that the code will remain free as long as there is _any_ interest in it, not only proprietary.

> The fact that someone else has a copy doesn't detract from this ability.

The one who _denies_ someone else a right, isnt "playing nice", so shouldnt have gotten this right in the first place.

I doubt that providing an ability is the major imperative of the GPL. It does accomplish this, but I think only as a secondary effect. The primary one is to create, by locking out proprietary predators, some kind of a secure GPL subspace, where in effect you dont have to care about copyrights at all, since everyone else also uses the GPL. And the more this space grows, the less dependant its inhabitants are on the "outer space", and the less they have to care about some licencing and copyright bullshit and can breathe completely freely. The only reason they would have to get out of the GPL space from time to time is to prevent outside hyenas to grab code from the prescious GPL space and proprietarize it, making it unavailable to the inhabitants of the GPL space and any other people. A self defending ecosystem.

Re:In a perfect world...

[Antique Geekmeister]

Good analysis. One has to keep in mind that, when predators are blocked from prey, they try to find another way to get that prey. So we've seen Tivo-ization, the Microsoft/Novell patent deal, and companies like Linksys modifying glibc in secret and refusing to admit they use glibc, Theo de Raadt throwing a hissy fit when an OpenBSD author got caught lifting a GPL driver from the Linux kernel. It's about to get profoundly worse if the mis-named "Trusted Computing" tools become widespread, since they rely on hardware specific and software specific tools to access individual components, signed by a central authority (usually Microsoft). Richard is correctly deeply concerned about this: it could block open source tools from even being able to read filesystems, provide valid boot loaders, or even read CD's or DVD's.

And while your analysis is good, it would help if you'd run a spellchecker on it. It's spelled "precious", and "proprietize". "shouldn't" instead of "shouldnt", etc. It hurts your credibility to have so many spelling errors.

Re:In a perfect world...

[Antique Geekmeister]

You wrote:

> E.g., if I created a little piece of software and dumped it into the public domain, and someone picked it up, made a slight improved version, and marketed it widely, it might eventually take over, to the point where people forgot about its origin. (Which the 'improved' version's author might not even need to disclose.) Or something could happen by random chance to knock that one source for the original version offline. From that point on, users would have lost the freedom to look at the original version.

We nearly saw this with Samba! When Novell and Microsoft made their patent deal, Jeremy Allison (one of the core Samba maintainers) worked for Novell. They could have proprietized Samba on a patent basis, after their years of competition with it. Fortunately, Jeremy immediately resigned, with a quite publicized note that the new patent deal violates the GPL on software from Novell. But it could have been extremely nasty if Samba wound up with uncontested and unpublicized Microsoft patents embedded in it.

Re:In a perfect world...

[tkinnun0]

All it would is one person with "Public Domain" in their Google Alerts who uploads all new projects to SourceForge and the code would be available for perpetuity. Hell, Google has a source code repository of their own, they could automate the whole process!

Re:In a perfect world...

[dangitman]

No, his purpose is to make it so all software has its source code available for modification.

Not all software, only software that is distributed.

Re:In a perfect world...

[dangitman]

It's spelled "precious", and "proprietize"

I don't think "proprietize" is an actual word (as in officially recognized) yet, so how could it be spelled incorrectly?

Re:In a perfect world...

[giarcgood]

I've charitably misinterpreted the man before.

Misinterpreted man? Most of the time I can't even read it enough to misinterpret it.

Re:In a perfect world...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear hear. Many people think that the idealism that rms displays is somehow harmful to a greater cause because he does not make compromises. But that no-compromise policy has alledgly kept free software alive. And no matter what some open source fanboys think, rms displays incredible integrity - he has never ever strayed from his way of promoting free software. Such integrity is incredibly rare.

He also dares point out mistakes that some commercial companies make with custom open source licenses, and withstands the
flak that people like esr give him for it. I remember the days of Apple releasing their apple public license or whatever,
esr and the open source camp spouted at that time that we should collectively give Apple a blow job - Perens and Stallman disagreed. Correctly.

Re:In a perfect world...

[Antique Geekmeister]

Because the political philosophy it's based on is "proprietism", not "proprietarism".

Re:In a perfect world...

[Teckla]

No, his purpose is to make it so all software has its source code available for modification. That's what he's here for. Think what you like of the guy, he's never veered from that purpose.

Neither has Osama bin Laden.

Forgive me if I continue to be skeptical of RMS's extremism...

Re:In a perfect world...

[bigstrat2003]

> The fact that someone else has a copy doesn't detract from this ability.

The one who _denies_ someone else a right, isnt "playing nice", so shouldnt have gotten this right in the first place.

Not true. It is, in the end, not a fundamental right, whether or not you can look at source code. It's a good thing to be altruistic, and want other people to benefit from your work, but to not have that desire does not mean that you aren't "playing nice". In fact, as long as we've started the debate on the merits of the GPL, I contend that giving licensing terms as a condition of releasing your work isn't "playing nice": you have no damn right whatsoever to try to dictate how other people should act. Oh, yes, they can just not use your code, but that doesn't mean that you aren't wrong for laying down terms like that for the use of your code.

All I care about, when I release code, is that no one comes along and tries to relicense it (which, as I understand it, isn't legal, but IANAL). Beyond that, I consider it highly important that absolutely anyone has the freedom to do whatever they want with my code. No one has any right to dictate terms for what happens to anyone's work but their own, and the fact that Stallman does so, whilst simultaneously talking about freedom, irritates me to no end. Props to the man for wanting to promote free software, but his methods are poor.

Re:In a perfect world...

[dangitman]

Because the political philosophy it's based on is "proprietism", not "proprietarism".

But the English language has never been particularly logical or consistent. I'd ask why use that root word anyway? Why not look for a more elegant word, or use a simple word like "close"?

Re:In a perfect world...

[dangitman]

By the way, "proprietism" is not a recognized word, either. Nor it is a political philosophy that I know of. And if it is based on "proprietism", then shouldn't it be spelled "proprietise"? Why change the "s" to a "z"?

Re:In a perfect world...

[maxume]

How does GPL do anything more than BSD to create the idealistic 'subspace' you are talking about? Anybody interested in playing there for idealistic reasons would do so under BSD. All GPL does is add quid quo pro to BSD; if I can't play with your toys, you can't play with mine. The GPL is about making sure other people share, not sharing itself.

(this is fine, but the notion that a license with more restrictions(for good reasons or not) is more about sharing than one with fewer restrictions is irritating. GPL is about sharing with people who share your ethical/moral views, not sharing in general)

Re:In a perfect world...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Neither has Osama bin Laden.
Forgive me if I continue to be skeptical of RMS's extremism... So, you think Bill Gates is some kind of George Bush, and Redmond is a Gitmo for programmers?

Get fucking sense of proportion already.

Re:In a perfect world...

[ultranova]

No one has any right to dictate terms for what happens to anyone's work but their own, and the fact that Stallman does so, whilst simultaneously talking about freedom, irritates me to no end.

Interesting. When and for what work did this happen ? And, for that matter, how did Stallman enforce this dication on code he didn't own the copyrights to ?

I hope you aren't referring to him arguing for the GPL, as persuasion and dictation are hardly the same thing; and I hope you aren't referring to the viral nature of GPL either, as that merely means that GPL'd code cannot be combined with GPL-incombatible code, which is merely the author of the GPL'd code deciding terms for what happens to his work and no one else's.

Re:In a perfect world...

[bigstrat2003]

I am referring to the GPL. The terms of the GPL *do* dictate terms for other people's work. If you're going to put your code out there to the benefit of others, do so, but saying that if they want to benefit from your work, they have to meet your ideals IS dictating terms. Thus, by advocating the GPL, Stallman advocates restriction of freedom (yes, yes, inflammatory term, but it's the most concise way to put it), while CLAIMING to promote freedom.

Re:In a perfect world...

[Anonymous Coward]

If they modified it well enough that the original was completely forgotten, the original must not have been that good, or the person must have done extensive work modifying it, so much so that it would almost be a completely original work.

Re:In a perfect world...

[ILongForDarkness]

Hmm, I don't know if that makes any sense. It would be analogous to forcing car companies to release the engineering drawings of all the parts in your car. They aren't going to do that, some of the stuff is trade secret.

I've been doing IT/programming for the last 8 years. It never ceases to amaze me how many intelligent people, in computer science at university or already in the field are such activists for such nonsense. I love conversations with them like:

Me: Why are you in computer science?

Them: Because I really like computers, and and there is a lot of demand for it, and I'll get a good job.

Later on they rant about how all software should be free, and everyone should see the source code. Well how is anyone going to pay you for it then? Duh. SaaS or something can sort of work, we'll make the program, and you'll pay for service. But then people get bitchy when you try to bill them 600/hr for the service (not realizing there is 10hrs of programming for every hour of tech support). The company ends up getting a bad reputation, because either they are too expensive, or users try to figure it out themselves and can't, then whine when they break it.

Where are the free food advocates? How about the free house advocates?

Bottom line software is expensive, because it requires a lot of knowledge to make, lots of smart, long educated people go into making it. As well it is a high risk business, if your 6mths late with your implementation of your idea, you might not recoup your costs, or worse get sued.

Versus a lower percentage into say a house. You have a couple dozen architects hours (usually spread over a dozen or so cookie cutter houses), and the rest are skilled yes, but not necessarily demaining of someone in say the top 10% of the world for IQ, or physical dextarity, or strength. There are more people capable of learning the skill, where as I'd put forth, that this isn't the case with engineering and programming. And, you know you'll get paid, because you have the costumer up front that picked your drawing and said, yes, build me 12 of these on this property.

If you disagree that software is hard, do you really think that the 90% or so end users that give you a blank stare when you explain a simple trouble shooting problem to them (like my computers froze, did you try to reboot it?), could start hacking together a CMS system in C++? The rarer the raw materials the more something is worth.

Re:In a perfect world...

[Antique Geekmeister]

Because English, and language, are not solely based on elegance or simplicity. I don't think any language is. They're based to a huge extent on history. A simple word like "close" would carry many of the implications involving intellectual property that "proprietize" does.

Re:In a perfect world...

[mdwh2]

You know, I suspect that RMS has an idea of how hard it is to write software...

By all means, disagree with his views, but I don't think it's helpful to portray people with those views as clueless people who know nothing about programming or even computers at all.

Re:In a perfect world...

[Unnngh!]

Well, it is a trade off of sorts. I think that uncopyrighted, public domain release, is basically as free as it gets, the problem being that the software is only truly free until someone else comes along and makes it not free. I understand Stallman's desire to try to ensure the openness of the code, but it does impose a limitation on the source code, and I understand why he often comes off being pretty far out. It smacks of socialism, for the good of the many from the work of the few, but it's a voluntary socialism. I think it's a good balance right now, with the need for more of Stallman's type of work. Without GNU, the market would be in a complete corporate stranglehold. Without Microsoft et al., I think that would stifle creativity at the same time, people holding out their best works from the public in any form, or being coerced into giving away something they want to keep closed. The field is still skewed a bit far in the direction of closed-source software, but that seems to be changing.

Re:In a perfect world...

[synthespian]

You can't simply assume that once information is made available, it will always be available. If not maintained and copied and actively disseminated, information dies; it fades away, for a myriad of reasons.

I'll just call this the "GNU zealot paranoid outlook." How typical. The Church of Stallman creed.
The same argument could be made wrt GPLed software if you think about it, e.g., unless some replicates GPL code it dies too. For instance, AFAIK, I'm the only one to keep a public TISL (Tokohoku ISLisp) GPLed code around.
This isn't DNA, dude. This is computer code. Computer code is not free. Freedom is a category that belongs to people. You get that wrong every time.
Once the code is out there, it's out there. Nobody can take that away.

Re:In a perfect world...

[nick.ian.k]

Later on they rant about how all software should be free, and everyone should see the source code. Well how is anyone going to pay you for it then? Duh. SaaS or something can sort of work, we'll make the program, and you'll pay for service. But then people get bitchy when you try to bill them 600/hr for the service (not realizing there is 10hrs of programming for every hour of tech support). The company ends up getting a bad reputation, because either they are too expensive, or users try to figure it out themselves and can't, then whine when they break it.

What the hell are you talking about? If someone objects to the fee you charge for software development, they generally don't wind up contracting with you in the first place. I find that most of my company's clients, while frequently bewildered by some of the seemingly intangible (to them, anyway) steps in the process, understand that the reason they've hired us on to do a given job is because they themselves are incapable of doing it themselves from a practical perspective - that is, they can't learn how to do it themselves quickly enough to get whatever it is they need up and running by a given a deadline. Beyond "in principle" diatribes, it's tough to make a valid complaint about expense when you haven't actually bled the funds. Then the only point of real, valid criticism that figures in is when you *have* paid for something, and that something has been late, or incomplete, or otherwise doesn't match the specification, in which case you stand a fair chance of deserving a bad reputation because you've either done sloppy work or have done a piss-poor job of project management (or both).

Re:In a perfect world...

[Workaphobia]

Strange thing about public domain: there's no explicit copyright concept of putting a work in the public domain by choice. It can get in there if it's a government work, or if it expires (Ha!), but there's nothing in the law that specifically gives a holder the right to manually place it in there (source: Luis Ibáñez; neither of us are lawyers). This is a technicality, of course, and probably resulted from the fact that when copyright law was changed in the 70s to take affect without registration, nobody thought of an instance where copyright would be undesirable, given the choice. The prevailing model then was still creating a real work worthy of protection, and filing paperwork so you could sue the pants off people and get statutory damages; that copyright could extend its reach so far into the daily activities of individuals was probably unforeseen. And really, it wouldn't be half the problem it is today if it weren't for the fact that the internet blurs the line between written reproduction and free dialogue.

Re:In a perfect world...

[WilliamSChips]

BSD is about sharing. GPL is about increasing the amount of sharing in the world.

Re:In a perfect world...

[cHiphead]

You can thank software patents for making Stallman's 'conspiracy' seeming arguments come true.. BSD and public domain software are now a just another great source of 'welfare' for software development companies. Take some bsd/public domain code, slap some spaghetti code on top that makes it appear useful but really does the same thing that everyone else that touches the code will do with it, submit a patent covering said inane, obvious use of the software to the overburdened USPTO, and get your patent that covers the very function the original code provided, approved. Sue the balls out of any one that uses said BSD/public domain code that might somehow compete with you.

And yes, that does cover Microsoft's practices over the years in a loosely defined nutshell.

Re:In a perfect world...

[ClosedSource]

"But only if they got the work _directly_ from the original author. In a worst case scanario the original author may have given up distributing his own work, and only proprietary middlemen left, so a new user has no way to obtain the original free code but only the proprietary modifications"

This is a very contrived scenario. What if it were released under the GPL and only non-distributing parties had a copy? Or what if nobody ever bothered to pick up the GPL'd code in the first place and the original author no longer distributed it? I don't think there's really any difference here between BSD and GPL with respect to the ability to get a copy of the original work.

Re:In a perfect world...

[ultranova]

I am referring to the GPL. The terms of the GPL *do* dictate terms for other people's work. If you're going to put your code out there to the benefit of others, do so, but saying that if they want to benefit from your work, they have to meet your ideals IS dictating terms. Thus, by advocating the GPL, Stallman advocates restriction of freedom (yes, yes, inflammatory term, but it's the most concise way to put it), while CLAIMING to promote freedom.

Incorrect. If I publish my code under the GPL, I do not and can not dictate terms for any code not copyrighted by me. I am merely dictating the terms about how my code may be used: specifically, I am stating that it may only be used in a work with GPL-compatible license.

Does that dictate how you may use your work ? No, of course not. You are perfectly free to publish your code (or a compiled version of it) under any terms you wish; the only thing you cannot do is take my code and use it in a manner incompatible with the GPL.

By your argument abolishing slavery restricts freedom.

Re:In a perfect world...

[russotto]

Where are the free food advocates? How about the free house advocates?

In the US, the Democratic party, last time I looked.

Re:In a perfect world...

[innerweb]

Not true. It is, in the end, not a fundamental right,

Ok. Bad news, Good news. First, the bad news. There are no fundamental rights. There is no right to life, happiness, medicine, food, sleep, shelter, or anything. There is not even a right to a planet to live on.

Now for the good news. We get to define our rights as a society. We get to decide that life should be cherished or not. We decide that health care is a right or not. We get to decide how long a copyright lasts or not. We also get to abdicate those choices to those who are willing to put forth the effort to trump our desired rights with their desired rights.

A classic case is medicine. Certain countries have legislatively decided that a certain minimal amount of care is a fundamental right for their citizens. Other countries have decided it is only a right for those whom they feel can not afford it and yet other countries don't seem to think that health care is at all a right.

If we, the people, were as a majority serious enough about copyright and patent problems, they would go away as we would choose that path. As it is a few of us are aware of the serious problems with our current system and the extreme abusiveness many of the users of it. The average person has not been impacted yet or in other ways made aware enough as of yet to think about this before Monday Night Football. That is the way many of the rich and powerful want it. A docile flock of sheep to work and buy. This can be very profitable and easy for those already there. Almost like serfs who think they are free.

I believe that copyright and patents have their place, but the current system is so abusive that the risk of writing potentially conflicting code makes the entry into the market prohibitively expensive (if you are truly managing risk), or highly speculative if you are not. Who knows what legal minefield you might trip over reinventing some obvious software method.

The real answer to most of our problems is for the general electorate to stand up and demand proper actions. It probably will not happen, as the current leadership has enough understanding of how to keep people just pacified enough to maintain the status quo. But, given how much new technology is coming out designed solely to control the masses (not necessarily the belligerent and dangerous ones only), I expect that the current equilibrium will become much more strained as a more unbalanced socio-economic situation develops in the next 20 to 30 years.

InnerWeb

Re:In a perfect world...

[Xtifr]

No, his purpose is to make it so all software has its source code available for modification. Not all software, only software that is distributed. If it's not distributed, then the source code must be available unless you accidentally lost it or deleted it or something (and a license can't protect against programmer error/stupidity).

Of course "available for modification" can be a complex situation when the "you" that has the code (and hasn't distributed it) is a large organization--but that's life in the large organization food chain! :)

Re:In a perfect world...

[Anonymous Coward]

Example: One apon a time, there was a GPL version of Xopus, the in-browser XML editor. The original authors (quite legally, since they hold the copyright) decided to relicence it some time ago so that it is no longer GPL. The GPL version has been long-since obscured by the proprietary version and the only mention you can generally find of it is mailing list posts circa 2000-2002 discussing it.

Re:In a perfect world...

[ILongForDarkness]

Thats not what I was getting at. The clueless people you describe,your words, were the average user. What I was getting at is the average user is unable (or unwilling) to code their own software. Thus the skills to program are rare and deserve greater than average reimbursement. We don't expect physicians to give their skills away, so why should software engineers? RMS is a good programmer, as are many if not most FOSS developers. My arguement is with the philosophy that because some people donate time to a project, and the project has a bunch of benifits because of the transparency OSS licences enforce, thus everything should be free and open to gain the same benifits.

IMO if software was free by law, virtually no one would go into computer science (think philosophy, when was the last time you saw 2k+ philosophy students at one school). People need to be paid for the majority of their work. They might give some time away, as I do, to something they would like to work on, but they will be damned if they'd make less then they could at an easier line of work.

Re:In a perfect world...

[ILongForDarkness]

How about stuff like Sun. Sure you can have the OS for free. But if you can't figure out a problem with the OS (we had an issue with a SAN configuration for example that required hex level coding of device configuration parameters), they come in and charge you 600/hr. What I was getting at is with SaaS most people will be concerned with the upfront cost, say $10/month/PC for an office suite. Then they find something doesn't work on their new thin client, or they are missing a feature, and get nailed by the vendor. SLA's will only protect you so far, in my experience something always comes up that causes the SLA to not be in place. Example: you pushed senior management for a 24/7 SLA so you could do afterhours maintanence, they declined, now an upgrade needs to be done, and they insist it be done after hours. You then ask them for 6k extra to cover vendor costs, and they are like, our SLA was only 1k per year, and I say yeah, that is why we should have gone with the better agreement :)

Anyways, the vendor will want to recoop the employees salary + travel expenses, plus a portion of his training costs, plus their profit, and the end user will be shocked that in one days work they burn through more money than the cost of the hardware (as was the case with our SAN configuration issue). I agree sometimes you are willing to burn through some money to get things done. As is the case sometimes with us, we have internal resources, but if they are all busy with equally important things, the next important thing gets contracted out.

Re:In a perfect world...

[ILongForDarkness]

Hehe. One good thing about Canada is that we have a moderate party. Although pretty much all of them are moderate compared to the US. What if you are pro-choice, but not a tree hugger? What if you are pro gun control, but don't want to legalize what is by definition illegal-immigrants? I guess you can vote for Giuliani if he gets the GOP nomination :) (I think he is as close to a moderate as you'll get)

Re:In a perfect world...

[galoise]

It's very funny how people, specially Americans, often show a very shallow comprehension of what "rights" and "liberties" are. Every rigth, whatevere it is about, *implies* restrictions on freedom: it restricts my freedom to do whatever i would do to violate your rights. Right to life means "rigth to be not murdered", eg, a prohibition on me to murder you. This is specially obvious regarding proprerty. Declaring that someone has a "right" to property is EXACTLY the same as saying that that person has the right to restrict the uses of others of whatever she is a proprietor of. So, as a corollary, to defend any right, whatever its nature, we must impose restrictions on other people's freedom. Thinking otherwise is either naive (like thinking that there "natural" rights, or "divine" rights), or wicked: you *say* you believe in peoples right, but you don't take any action tyo make them materially relevant, eg, neglecting the critical freedom-restricting process each right implies.

Re:In a perfect world...

[galoise]

Where are the free food advocates? How about the free house advocates? where have you been for the last hundred and fifty years!?

Re:In a perfect world...

[xappax]

IMO if software was free by law, virtually no one would go into computer science

First of all, even if it would be nice idealistically to have a law making all software free, I don't think anybody's realistically trying to make that happen. That's not what the GPL is about.

Secondly, you may be interested to know that many, many programmers write code for free already, therefore a law would not deter them from writing code. You assume that a law requiring code to be free would make programming unprofitable, but that's not necessarily the case. One of the primary advantages of open source code is that it can be modified and expanded to meet the user's custom needs. Who's going to do that? Lots and lots of programmers. And it doesn't matter that the code they write becomes free, because it's really only of use to the people who commissioned it.

You assume that freeing code by law would make computer programs no longer a scare commodity, because everyone could get the programs they wanted for free. But that's not true. There are a virtually infinite number of features and pieces of software that have not yet been written that many people want really badly. People would pay to have this code written, and it'd be created faster and better because it would be able to draw without restriction from the pool of all existing source code.

I personally don't think code should be free by law, but if it was, it'd mean that rather than making money from holding copyrights, programmers could only make money from writing new, useful code that has inherent value to people.

Re:In a perfect world...

[Maxo-Texas]

However it is a bit of a hole in his thinking.

He wants it to be free, but he also wants to be able to still "own" it and restrict how it is used.

When I give a free hammer to someone, I don't say they can only build free houses with it.

When I put code in the public domain- there it is- everyone can use it. Both people who will improve it and keep free versions of it out in the wild and businesses that will compile it and charge for it.

Re:In a perfect world...

[ILongForDarkness]

Sure people will pay for new features (if they are important enough to them). However, I don't know of many companies that would want everyone to see the modifications they paid for. Talk a CMS for example, you pay for feature X. Now all your competitors have access to it for free, or your devulging the inner workings of your business processes, which could be copied, or in some cases offend your customers (seeing something like if customer == YourCompetitor { discount += 50% } ) would really piss you off I bet :) In the article linked to from a slashdot post last week (nobel laurate in economics), the paper:

SEQUENTIAL INNOVATION, PATENTS, AND IMITATION

James Bessen Eric Maskin

Mentions that the vast majority of software companies rank software patents or copyrights as a low priority in controlling the market, they attribute a much greater wait to lead time, and the difficulty a competitor will have catching up. Essentially what happens, is you can't code the whole product, and the new features as quick as the first company can modify the existing product to have those new features so you are excluded from the market.

To quote RMS himself, speaking for the philosophy behind the GPL, http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html he does believe all software should be free. His arguement why people would continue to program in his Utopia is that 1)programming is fun, and 2) there are other sources of funds to get paid to program such as universities. Here's what I think about both of those

1) Sure programming is fun. But can you do it full time without getting paid for it? How many people would know it is fun if their was no financial insentive to learn? Think of all the open source projects on say, Sourceforge. Only what maybe 10% of them actually get fully developed. It either a) becomes not fun, or b) the developer losses interest/doesn't have time. How many OSS programs have crappy documentation, or a critical feature that never gets implemented because it is inherently a boring/"unfun" job?

2) Really, RMS? Universities? How big a budget do they have? How many graduating undergrads get full time jobs at the university, what maybe one per year per school? What will everyone else do, get advanced degrees and try to find a faculty position? First off only about 20% of students are considered good enough for grad school, are we going to lower the standard? Who's going to fund the faculty positions? Corporations I suppose because their going to be really gratful for all the free software. Well OSS has been huge for the last 12 years or so (gcc is the first thing to come to mind for truely widespread adoption), how many OSS projects are actually rewarding their developers comparibly to corporate jobs? IMHO we need both OSS and proprietary software, the proprietary stuff pays for the education and living expenses of people, who may choose to donate some time to a OSS project.

Re:In a perfect world...

[dangitman]

If it's not distributed, then the source code must be available unless you accidentally lost it or deleted it or something

Why? What if it's a binary algorith created by an Artificial Intelligence engine? Software can be created without any human ever even seeing the source code.

Ninjas?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't call Muslim women ninjas!

Re:Ninjas?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh. My 8 yr old son did just this last time we went to Bradford. "Hey dad, theres a Ninja!" he said excitedly, filling me with typical middleclass anxiety that we might deeply offend the muslim lady in question. Still. Wierd outfit for shopping IMHO, and you've got to wonder how many have to wear it not out of fear of offending whatever diety they believe in, but out of fear of a getting a good hiding if they don't.

Re:Ninjas?

[Bert64]

It also serves as a great disguise for someone wishing to commit a crime, especially in today's world of CCTV everywhere.
A man in a balaclava would get arrested immediately, but muslims can walk around equally hidden and cry foul if anyone says anything.

Re:Ninjas?

[doombringerltx]

Exactly. The powers that be defiantly don't keep a closer eye on Muslims. Not at all

Re:Ninjas?

[mdwh2]

And getting this back on topic, I remember the story of police stopping ninjas in Cambridge.

Still, that doesn't make it right though. I equally defend people being allowed to wear hijabs and ninja outfits.

Re:Ninjas?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather than dressing like a bitch to please surrounding eyeballs?

Re:Ninjas?

[lawnsprinkler]

Why so insistent on not pleasing people? Especially while sacrificing your own comfort for it.

I see, I see, I get the picture ...

[udippel]

If you ever go to the link pointed out (I know, we are in /., and RTFS is for weaklings only) ...
Instead, he delivered an excellent speech about DRM
you'll find a beautiful Minutes of the Debate in WORD.

Richard, your message was lost !

Re:I see, I see, I get the picture ...

[onion2k]

As horrible as Word's proprietary format is, there isn't any DRM involved in it. A closed format* that lets you do what the heck you like with it contains no DRM; it's plain irritating for people who prefer openness but it exerts no control over the data contained within. It would be preferable for Yale to release the minutes in plain text, or nicely formated HTML, or something.

DRM is much more evil. DRM tries to control how you use your data. Or, if you believe the vitriol spewed forth from Microsoft, Sony, Apple etc, DRM tries to control how you use their data that they've only issued you a license to use within certain limited parameters.

* Closed in terms of free-as-in-speech. Anyone can use the format in a free-as-in-beer sense under a covenant which Microsoft promise not to sue ... http://support.microsoft.com/kb/840817/en-us# ... If you believe them. ;)

Re:I see, I see, I get the picture ...

[Neoncow]

Click.

Open in Microsoft Word.

Plink!

"Could not open 'Steve:Applications:Microsoft Office 2004:Templates:My Templates:ypu minutes.dot'."

Pure fucking genius. WTG Steve.

Re:I see, I see, I get the picture ...

[Firehed]

Well technically speaking, not using open standards isn't a DRM issue (especially seeing that non-MS software such as OpenOffice and Pages can open most Word docs fine), but I share your sentiment.

Re:I see, I see, I get the picture ...

[jkrise]

As horrible as Word's proprietary format is, there isn't any DRM involved in it.

Try out this simple exercise. Type a paragraph using Word; now copy it to clipboard and paste it into an email... oops! you get a message: "Are you sure you want to 'display' insecure content?" Of course, use all Microsoft components.. you still get this error: Word, IE, Exchange and Windows.

What can be insecure in a piece of formatted text; and why should there be a restriction on 'displaying' it?

The only logical conclusion I can come to, relates to DRM. Word seems to have separate permissions for reading, copying, printing or sharing textual content therein. The very definition of Digital Restrictions Management.

Re:I see, I see, I get the picture ...

[Antique Geekmeister]

That's because it's not just text. It's Word formatting information, potentially including macros and other tools that may reach *outside* of the original document.

Re:I see, I see, I get the picture ...

[NoOneInParticular]

Or the clipboard copy function can not distinguish between plain text, pictures, or embedded documents with macros. It simply pastes content, anything that can be put on the clipboard. If this is the case, then your complaint is more about the laziness of the MS developers that failed to create a waterproof detection algorithm for innocent content on the clipboard, then about any form of DRM.

So, there is more than one logical conclusion for this situation, and I think mine is better.

Re:I see, I see, I get the picture ...

[aneeshm]

It opens fine in OO.org

Re:I see, I see, I get the picture ...

[aneeshm]

It opens fine in OO.org on the latest Ubuntu (Gutsy, 7.10).

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Re:I see, I see, I get the picture ...

[jkrise]

your complaint is more about the laziness of the MS developers that failed to create a waterproof detection algorithm for innocent content on the clipboard, then about any form of DRM.

So, there is more than one logical conclusion for this situation, and I think mine is better.

I don't think so, and I explained it in my initial post as well. Please note that EVERY SINGLE COMPONENT of this interaction is controlled by Microsoft - so there is no excuse for their innocence or ignorance of the exact nature of the underlying content.

It is a mix of DRM and non-standards-compliant proprietary junk that causes this behaviour.

Re:I see, I see, I get the picture ...

[fotbr]

Word, Outlook, and XP. No error. Sent to another of my accounts, opened on a different XP machine in outlook. Still no error.

Re:I see, I see, I get the picture ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Like anyone would care anyway.

Re:I see, I see, I get the picture ...

[00lmz]

Or the clipboard copy function can not distinguish between plain text, pictures, or embedded documents with macros. It simply pastes content, anything that can be put on the clipboard.

Ah, but it can distinguish between formats. Windows is not that stupid, actually... See Clipboard Formats on MSDN.

From that article:

A window can place more than one object on the clipboard, each representing the same information in a different clipboard format.

The problem is probably not DRM. Maybe the e-mail composing application wants to get text in the "best format" that it can handle --- which happens to be Word's format with all the probable embedded macros --- so it displays a warning. Probably it should opt for the second-best format that is provided by Word but has no executable content (probably RTF).

Re:I see, I see, I get the picture ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know that there is a difference between document formats and DRM, right?

tshirt and no shoes?

[timmarhy]

I've always wondered about the mans professionalism. now it's confirmed.

the only thing you'd buy from a guy like that is weed.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[Fizzl]

Good thing he's not selling anything.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[Antique Geekmeister]

And gcc. And Emacs. And the GPL.

Have you ever read his code? It's fascinating stuff, and quite brilliant.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[mikkelm]

Considering how much more successful than yours his career has undoubtably been, without having had to conform to arbitrary standards of professionalism, I think it's safe to say that denouncing his work because of what he wears constitutes an almost criminal ineptitude on your part.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[jake_fehr]

Well, what bugs me about Stallman's professionalism is his insistance on other people using his terms (ie. using the terms "free software" instead of "open-source software" and not using the term "intellectual property"), while he insists DRM stands for "digital restrictions management."

I think Stallman's done some great things for the computer world, but I wish he wasn't such a hypocrite in matters like this.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[timmarhy]

he is selling ideals. much more dangerous then anything you exchange money for....

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[timmarhy]

Without knowing a single thing about me, denouncing how successful i am constitutes almost criminal ineptitude on your part.

If you judge success by money, happiness and respect among peers then i'm very successful.

The man doesn't wear shoes, fuck even the crazy homeless meth addict down town knows shoes are a good thing. what happens when he stands on a boondie or kicks his toe?

his constant grandstanding and absurd demands of the rest of the software industry detract from the good work he has done.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[sg_oneill]

He's just trying to make a point. And I think he makes a great one with DRM.

Keep in mind, Stallman comes from a generational philosophy that , following Wittgenstein, notes that words have the ability to confuse, so precise language ensures your being understood. (Wittgenstein famously argued that all problems in philosophy are problems of language. Ambiguous language makes logical problems where in reality none exist. I think he backed away from the strong form of that position later on however.)

Stallman, DOESNT argue for opening up source for the utility of it, he argues for what he believes is the freedom dividend of it. Consequently, he'd like people to keep talking about freedom, and not be so distracted by the marketing.

I personally think that this tactic hasn't helped his cause an awful lot, but I certainly understand why he does it.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Free weed?... Forget about this software thing, I want Free Weed!

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[timmarhy]

the problem with stallman, is he tries to argue that everyone should be free, free as long as they embrace the GPL.

That's not actually freedom. People should be free to choose their license of choice, but in a stallman world that's not an option.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[FunWithKnives]

Stallman does not obsess over what he wears. Obviously, you have a problem with that. Feel free to wear your collared shirts and brown loafers, but please, spare the rest of us from your moronic ideal of what a "normal person" should be.

... The man doesn't wear shoes ...

And so we should all ridicule him. Fuck his message (which you either don't understand or just hate), he doesn't wear shoes on occasion.

Excuse me, I think that the sky may be falling.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[Bert64]

In a Stallman world the GPL wouldn't be required, you could release your code into the public domain and people wouldn't rip it off and sell you back proprietary versions of it.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[timmarhy]

I understand his ideals perfectly well.

your the moronic one if you think running around in a formal setting without shoes doesn't speak volumes about him.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[dbIII]

Considering how much more successful than yours his career has undoubtably been

You really know nothing about the parent poster - a lot of people have had success and have never had to pretend that the work of others is their own when it looks like things are flagging a bit. The "advertising" prefix of gnu on linux is well described in several of the old gnu newsletters. It may all be in a good cause but it really looks to me like MIT staffroom oneupmanship escaped to where we can see it in response to some jab about how the hurd is going.

That aside, from what I've heard (feel free to contradict), RMS is not the sort of person you would want to invite to your conference unless it is very informal and certainly does not have the much hated name tags (it's an old hate that predates RFID). It would be best if the people on the door can identify him by sight if there is any form of restricted entry (eg. if people have to pay to attend) in case he decides to put on a bit of a show to make a possibly valid point and that those asking questions know his personal interpretations of "free" and "open" beforehand and avoid the linux naming question at all costs.

The licence is good, the gnu tools are good, he's put a lot of personal work into emacs and gcc at times and done a lot of good with the FSF but we really do not need a hero to follow blindly. He's a human being with good things to say - listen to those but do not worship.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[timmarhy]

if you couldn't make a living selling your code, what incentive is there to write it. People should be able to choose their own licenses.

if you want to write code and give it away fine, but why does he have a problem with what the rest of us do with our own work?

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[FunWithKnives]

Here we go with the Ayn Rand objectivist point of view, as always.

"Everyone should be free, as long as they embrace the tenet that their freedom ends where another person's freedom begins.."

"No, wait! That's not actually freedom, you see. People should be free to choose whether or not to allow someone else their freedom.. But in Stallman's world, that's not an option, which means that he's one of those horrible socialists. We don't want socialists in good old reactionary America, now do we?"

Please come to terms with your own argument. It is one thing to critique the GPL. It is quite another to imply that the software movement would be better off without it.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Without knowing a single thing about me...

Well, we can tell by reading your posts that you're a douchebag, and not nearly as smart as you think you are. But other than that, we know nothing about you. Yes, I think we can safely say that we know nothing about you except that you're a stupid pompous douchebag.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[Firehed]

Keep in mind, Stallman comes from a generational philosophy that , following Wittgenstein, notes that words have the ability to confuse, so precise language ensures your being understood.

So basically, he's against corporate double-speak. I too refer to DRM as "digital restrictions management", as the typically-used word "rights" implies that it's there to protect mine - which, as we all know, is most certainly not the case. Truth be told, I usually just call it copy protection, seeing that's the most frequent way it'll cause something to stop functioning as you'd think (the notable major exception of late being that thing where Google shut down their video store and killed all of people's purchases).

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[FunWithKnives]

Your idea of "formal settings" is humorous to me. I think that anyone should feel quite justified in wearing whatever the hell they feel like wearing to absolutely -any- function or "setting" that they want. Clothes have become some sort of weird gauge for the fundamentalists, both socially and economically, and it's simply an extrapolation of racism and classism. You can wear what you want to wear, my friend, but that doesn't mean that you are rich or successful, nor does it mean that you are poor or stupid. Please understand that.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[dbIII]

It seems a lot of US academics use this sort of technique of redefining words to personal meanings or for emotional manipulation. One radio interview recently with a US academic talking about the harmful effects of pornography had them reveal ten minutes in after much confusion that they had redefined the word pornography to mean only images that showed harm or led to harm - makes it a bit difficult to have a conversation that can be followed when the dictionary definitions no longer apply.

RMS changes meaning for emotional effect - the "free" redefinition, inventing "copyleft", adopting the silly redefinition of "operating system" proposed by Microsoft in the antitrust trial that we all laughed about but is convenient if you want to redefine a gnu operating system, talking about "treacherous computing" - bad certainly but nothing less than high treason is it Mr Stallman!

This sort of thing is probably quite common but in a global context it looks petty, silly and is bound to confuse both those with english as a second language and those of us unfamiliar with whatever US slang is fashionable.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[timmarhy]

holy fuck cut the dose of what ever your on.

i never suggested the world was better off without GPL, i said CHOOSE YOUR OWN LICENSE.

if that means GPL that's fine. my point, was that stallman doesn't want that kind of freedom.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[Osty]

And gcc. And Emacs. And the GPL.

That's nice, and 20+ years old. What has he done lately to keep himself relevant? His personal web page is full of political propaganda and tripe (figures RMS would support the Green Party). It doesn't even have a section on software he's written, outside of the "Serious Bio" portion. His blog is nothing more than a listing of speaking engagements. And doesn't he have some sort of RSI that prevents him from actually typing (using speech commands instead)? As a developer, he's notoriously difficult to work with (why emacs has forked so much, for example). He's pretty much marginalized when it comes to code, and is nothing more than a figurehead for the FSF. A statue of a hippy would work just about as well.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[dbIII]

The earlier troll said "buy". There was a fork in the C code version of emacs that was based on Stallman's earlier emacs writen in the form of macros on exactly this point - a commercial version even under the GPL created pretty bad feeling due to loss of control so RMS appointed a different developer of emacs. He's done a lot of stuff but the legend is bigger than the man - computer magazines are calling him "the co-author of the linux kernel" when the tech journalist hasn't looked deeply enough.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

the only thing you'd buy from a guy like that is weed.

Luckily, he's not selling weed, but freely giving away his enormously valuable copyright.

(You fucking idiot)

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[argiedot]

Indeed, all those formal settings where he gets attacked by sunglasses ninjas being an example of how he doesn't care for being professionalism.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[argiedot]

You misunderstand Free Software. Look it up.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[vidarh]

By far the most code is NOT written to be sold, but are written by engineers working for companies that need custom software, or "to scratch an itch". Only a small minority of software engineers work in software houses that ever release software for sale.

The argument falls apart just based on the sheer amount of code that IS available that was written by people that didn't make a living selling it.

I find it bizarre that this argument pops up time and time again on a site like Slashdot where most people should know this. Look at the typical software jobs available. Hardly any of them are for companies that make a living selling software.

And far fewer software houses would be around if even a small fraction of the companies not selling code started opening up the source for projects that don't have a major competitive impact, as the incremental costs for everyone involved would drop as the amount of stuff that has to be written from scratch by everyone would drop.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[Anonymous Coward]

if you couldn't make a living selling your code, what incentive is there to write it.

You'd still be able to make a living coding. Code is a means to an end, you either write it because you want to (i.e. it is a hobby) or because someone needs the end result, in which case they can employ you or sponsor you to write the code. So you could still make a living coding even if you couldn't from selling the code directly.

Other than that I do agree that people should still be able to choose their own licence.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Look again at my list. It included the GPL itself, and he's been spending huge amounts of time on that.

He's had serious wrist issues, and hired students to help record dictation for him. (I actually blame Emacs for that somewhat, with its excessive use of Escape and Control keys in conjunction.) But so have a lot of programmers, and I understand his wrists are much better now.

He still pokes his head into gcc code and Emacs now and then, but it's true he's been politically too busy to keep deeply involved in it. And for a big open source project, that's what he wanted! Features and bigfixes are occurring that he would never have imagined, or pursued.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[Technician]

Well, what bugs me about Stallman's professionalism is his insistance on other people using his terms (ie. using the terms "free software" instead of "open-source software" and not using the term "intellectual property"), while he insists DRM stands for "digital restrictions management."

What also bugged me is he stopped short of telling what can be better in DVD players. He was correct in stating all legal DVD players are limited and limit the consumer. He should have elaborated. The big reason I like Linux with the right codecs, is the player just plays the movie. No legal player can make that claim. Instead of playing the movie, you are required to sit through the FBI warning every time, maybe some previews, and the DON'T STEAL THIS FILM short. Pardon me, I just want to put in the movie and watch the movie. If I want to watch that other stuff, I can always find it in the menu.

I would buy a DVD player that would start the movie first or could be configured to play the movie first, but due to the consipiracy, it is illegal to own one. The restrictions are preventing the manufactures from making and selling a better player.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[Antique Geekmeister]

You're referring to what became Xemacs? There was a lot more going on than a "bad feeling about loss of control", believe me. The Wikipedia article matches my recollections of the time, and is surprisingly good. (I wasn't directly involved, but I did meet some of the folks involved professionally.)

I'm concerned that your "co-author of the Linux kernel" memory is equally glossed over: do you have a reference for it? Because I've seen him his role in creating gcc, used to compile Linux, as a core component of the Linux kernel, but I've never seen him described as a co-author.

It's easy for little skewings of the events like that to mislead people who haven't invested the time to know better. The devil is in the details.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. It's very much an american thing. It happens in the military, on TV and in the softer sciences - basically all over american society; people have this uncommon need to invent jargon, where there is no need for one. 'Verbing', using acronyms as words, silly things like 'herstory', 'a reveal', the list is endless. Basically, the kind of words that in conversation would get you laughed out of the room, becomes A-Ok when you your instructor, your book, or the presenter says it. Weird.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[dbIII]

I thought "bad feeling" was a way to express it without upsetting those that hero worship the guy and thought he had the time to actually maintain the emacs code himself at the time. As for the silly tech journo - it was in an Australian PC magazine from May (I think) last year with "PC" as the first two letters of the title - bad citation so assume I'm making it up if you really wish but I don't care.

As for the "gcc, used to compile Linux, as a core component of the Linux kernel" - no it is something obviously very important but completely different. Gcc is not part of the kernel, neither is something it is linked to - it is itself.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[dbIII]

silly things like 'herstory'

That one made it as far as Australia before hitting up against people that knew that the word "history" apparently comes from histos in greek meaning to write which has nothing to do with gender. It is worth having those migrants to help understand your own language.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[dangitman]

The big reason I like Linux with the right codecs, is the player just plays the movie. No legal player can make that claim.

Sure they can. It's pretty much only in the USA that such players are considered "illegal". And by your logic, wouldn't that make Linux "an illegal player"?

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[Antique Geekmeister]

This is amazing, sir or madam!! You just skewed it again! You turned your own quote about "bad feeling about loss of control", which I cited carefully, into "bad feeling". It's misleading.

Do you have any other details for that Australian PC magazine? Did anyone write and explain the facts of life to the author.

You've a valid point about gcc: gcc is "merely" a vital part of the toolchain to build Linux kernels, especially for cross-compilation. That's why the kernels are so careful to state which gcc and glibc are needed in the requirements. I have seen it referred to as a component, probably the same way you've seen Mr. Stallman as a co-author of the Linux kernel: as a mistake.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[dbIII]

Hang on - I said something about a silly tech journo making a mistake and wrote it as such and now that is is supposed to be my view?

The gcc is part of the kernel weirdness really needs some work if you want to convice anybody with a clue - apples and aardvarks are not identical.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[bigstrat2003]

This is quite true, but as has already been pointed out earlier in the discussion, Stallman is a fool for choosing to dress in such a way that people may be inspired not to take him seriously. He obviously likes to dress casually, and I'm ok with that... but it could potentially hurt his agenda, and so I think it's extremely stupid to not just avoid the difficulty altogether.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiots like this always crack me up, poor folk who cannot separate things. (Probably this is a youngling with very strict conservative parents.) People like this is exactly why RMS is acting the way he does. Wearing shoes doesn't make you a professional. No, it does take a bit more than that. He doesn't give a flying fuck about you and your little silly rules. He cares about things that really matter. He can think outside the box and dares to act outside the box. A very rare combination. And a _very_ respectable man. He talks the talk and walks the walk.

Forget the looks kiddo. Listen to what he says.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[Antique Geekmeister]

And once again, you've skewed your own words. You said, and I quote:

>> computer magazines are calling him "the co-author of the linux kernel"

And now you're saying:

> I said something about a silly tech journo making a mistake

You didn't say "a silly tech journo", you said "computer magazines". That implies that such statements are widespread. And given how you re-interpret your own words, how can we have confidence that you haven't misremembered or misquoted the magazine? Those little details really matter. This is especially the case when Richard himself does call Linux, the operating systems, "GNU/Linux", and you could apparently easily be misquoting or misremembering that.

Much like copyright law and comparisons between open source licenses, the devils are in the detailss, and you have to pay attention to them. One of Richard's great gifts is noticing the details before they create problems and making sure things are ready later on, for the edge cases: it's in his code, and it's in the GPL itself.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[coolGuyZak]

Stallman does not obsess over what he wears.

I'd say that he does obsess to an extent. He made a conscious decision to ignore dress code and for hippie wear (granted that was years--decades?--ago). If he truly didn't care, he'd show up in what they expected.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[WilliamSChips]

Go take a look at the pictures. The audience isn't well-dressed either. There's a dress code for the speakers, but it was waived so they could have RMS speak.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those were the dress code police. I doubt they wuld have shown up if he'd dressed right.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[dbIII]

It appears it is difficult to write about somebodies hero without reading comprehension problems creeping in.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[Technician]

And by your logic, wouldn't that make Linux "an illegal player"?


Linux does not ship with illegal code. Just like DECSS and copyrighted MP3's for Windows, this illegal software is downloaded later.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[Technician]

If you want to try an alternative DVD player, you can download one here;
http://geexbox.org/en/downloads.html
It installs nothing on your computer. Just boot the CD. After booting, it gives you the CD back. Now put in a DVD.. Enjoy. It has no tools for copying a DVD. Why is this player illegal? It breaks encryption to play the movie that you physicaly have, just like a legal player.

In their about page, they don't bother to mention that this player is illegal to use in the USA due to the inclusion of software to decode the Content Scrambling System CSS used on commercial DVD's. They also don't mention the legal problmes with the software as it skips playing the mandatory FBI warning as required by all licensed leagal players.
http://geexbox.org/en/start.html
In rebellion against the control, try an alternative player. You may like it.

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[Anonymous Coward]

your the moronic one

"You're".

Re:tshirt and no shoes?

[Ilgaz]

Considering how much more successful than yours his career has undoubtably been, without having had to conform to arbitrary standards of professionalism, I think it's safe to say that denouncing his work because of what he wears constitutes an almost criminal ineptitude on your part. Funny is, nobody changed the IT scene are considered very normal with formal suits. Apple boss wonders around with T-Shirts, BillG dressed awfully cheap and didn't change his eyeglasses until he got married, Woz can be easily turned down in any high end restaurant.

I have seen some article (I guess Forbes or CNET) showing 100 important figures in IT scene. It was like eccentric dressing show. There were even a cowboy guy.

Funny is someone made a career or wage with these peoples work/ideas sits in some office 9 to 5 sits there with his suit and critiques GNU Founder. A completely bureaucrat way of thinking.

Irony...

[CaPn Corelian]

Because the minutes of the debate are in .DOC format.

Re:Irony...

[AHuxley]

But you have the spec:-) http://www.donationcoder.com/Reviews/Archive/WordProcs/Screenshots/06-word07-spec.jpg

Metabolic syndrome

[messner_007]

This Stallman guy clearly has a metabolic syndrome.

Re:Metabolic syndrome

[messner_007]

Half of the posts is about Stallman's T-shirt and my post should be offtopic ??? It think that it is more important if the person involved is sick than if he wears a T -shirt or not ...

I 7hank you for your time

[Anonymous Coward]

Discuusion I'm are incoMpatible than this BSD box, More stable they started to violated. In the STANDARDS SHOULD case you want to NIGGER ASSOCIATION At my freelance

Perhaps Stallman should have asked....... A NINJA.

[Anonymous Coward]

Was he hiding any pancakes in his beard?

Mistakes in article

[paulproteus]

I just sent in this note to the author (using the Contact the author form; who knows if that gets bitbucketed or what):

Possible mistakes in article

At http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/21889 , the photo caption reads, 'Political activist Richard Stallman spoke against the resolution "Digital Restrictions Management should be illegal" at a Yale Political Union debate Wednesday night.'

Yet from reading http://www.yale.edu/ypu/blog.html , it appears that he spoke in *favor* of the resolution.

Also, you wrote at the end, "comic depicting a failed assassination attempt on Stallman by four masked men from Microsoft". According to http://xkcd.com/225/ , there are only *two* masked men, and they are not necessarily from Microsoft.

Honestly, this is extremely sloppy.

Re:Mistakes in article

[Anonymous Coward]

According to http://xkcd.com/225/ , there are only *two* masked men, and they are not necessarily from Microsoft. Also the attack doesn't "fail" in the comic; they get their lulz and leave.

Re:Mistakes in article

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's student journalism. At the end of the day, the YDN does a pretty darn good job for a daily newspaper run by people who, to a man, all have another 'day job'--being students.

Re:Mistakes in article

[WilliamSChips]

xkcd isn't 4chan, only 4channers try to get lulz

Ask a Ninja?

[FoolsGold]

Ninja: Thanks for the speech Dick - I look forward to killing you soon!

/disappears

Stallman: WTF?

Re:Ask a Ninja?

[Icegryphon]

oh the lulz that would create.

Where is the video of the talk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello Yale University

Where is the video of the talk?

Btw, it's a real shame to offer the minutes of the RMS's talk in the Microsoft Word format. If the that is the level of the Yale students, I'm not sure they understood what RMS said.

Re:Where is the video of the talk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush went to Yale...

Re:Where is the video of the talk?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Union does film its debates; I believe Stallman requested that the cameras start rolling only after he spoke.

Re:Where is the video of the talk?

[kid_izzy]

Hi, I'm the Union Webmaster and Tech guy. We were going go film him, however, given that the purpose of the film is to also be able to make a video montage of speakers and a video of the union later on, we could not film him while guaranteeing that his words/image would never be in a non-proprietary format. Thus, I made the decision not to film him.

Re:Where is the video of the talk?

[kid_izzy]

We put our minutes on .doc because it's the easiest format for Yale students to open files, as well as the one that allows us to most easily put the minutes from the laptop of our secretary to the web. Also, for the last 4 years, we've done this. I'm not willing to go back and re-do all the old minutes just to fight a battle I'm quite frankly, content on supporting Microsoft. Office O7 FTW.

Re:Where is the video of the talk?

[Anonymous Coward]

The easiest? I'm writing this in ASCII text, and if I need any unusual diacritical marks I can use unicode or the extended Latin character set. Everybody can read and write "Plain Old Text".

Re:Where is the video of the talk?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the that is the level of the Yale students, I'm not sure they understood what RMS said. They're all* idiots who bought their way in, what did you expect?

*All but a very small number. They let in a couple non-plutocrats just to look good.

He's used to it. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

He used to get beat up in Central Square every other month so I'm sure the ninjas were no big deal. . .

He pays both a financial price and a social price.

[Futurepower(R)]

"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.

Please confirm

[beders]

Please tell me that wasn't all that he was wearing

Re:Please confirm

[aliquis]

He let it all free ;)

It's the new open! You are allowed to use it aslong as you share!

Re:Please confirm

[aliquis]

... enough of this DRM bullshit, let my media flow thru any hardware! Let's share it with everyone in the world!

Re:Please confirm

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparantly one of the *gasp* female ninjas in the second picture was wearing a bit more *ahem* under her arms. Being a ninja must be sweaty work!

Re:Please confirm

[vishbar]

If there was ever a better argument for censorship and DRM......

Re:Please confirm

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, does anyone have a picture of him from this speech that includes his feet?

Who knew?

[Kadin2048]

But where were the pirates? Clearly someone has to defend RMS against the ninjas... Unfortunately, global warming wiped them out last year.

Re:Who knew?

[mikesd81]

Wouldn't there be more of them with melting ice caps?

Re:Who knew?

[Photar]

I'd think that with global warming and the rising of the worlds oceans that pretty soon Pirates are going to have much more territory to plunder.

"His" terms?

[uuxququex]

The fact that the unwashed masses are clueless about the terms is not his fault. You can blame the industry spindoctors for that. "Open Source" is not equal to "Free Software", not even close.

For Stallman there is a real need to be precise about the terms, to avoid adding to the confusion.

If you ever have the chance to visit one of his speeches, do yourself a favor and go. Stallman is a really great speaker. Just don't make the mistake of asking why "he decided to do open-source". I garantee he will ride your ass about that one! I doubt the clueless French guy at Fosdem2006 will do that again... ;-)

Re:"His" terms?

[dbIII]

The "clueless" French guy was going by the dictionary or the definition from a few years ago and not by the RMS redefinition. Being cruel to what he sees as newbies certainly makes him a character but it makes it hard to commmunicate.

Lazy vs. Wasteful

[foreverdisillusioned]

He's not "dressing lazy"; IIRC he simply does not own a suit. He does not believe in wasting wealth on non-essential items; this enables him to live on a relatively small income while spending most of his time pursuing the ideals he cares about. In my opinion, this attitude is much more noble than your "Hey, there's a guy with a cheap wardrobe! What a disrespectful jerk!" attitude. Expecting someone to waste hundreds of dollars to dress up like a penguin (insert Linux joke here) just to show that they "respect" you is extremely childish. Respect is a quality of interaction between people--material goods have no inherent 'respect'.

And don't try to hide behind social custom. Just because some people are (by common custom) materialistic, elitist assholes doesn't mean you have to be too.

Re:Lazy vs. Wasteful

[CSMatt]

He does not believe in wasting wealth on non-essential items; this enables him to live on a relatively small income while spending most of his time pursuing the ideals he cares about. Um, aren't computers non-essential items? Seeing as he's a hacker, I'm willing to bet that Stallman owns at least one.

Re:Lazy vs. Wasteful

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Sure, as long as you're OK with being stuck on a planet that can only support a few billion people.

Re:Lazy vs. Wasteful

[Anonymous Coward]

and enabled him to waste his life trying to push his pathetic neo-communist bullshit on people who DO actually like the nice things in life, without dickheads like him helping people steal from them.
he needs to grow up

Re:Lazy vs. Wasteful

[amRadioHed]

Considering the importance of free software to the "ideals he cares about", I would guess computers are quite essential to him.

Re:Lazy vs. Wasteful

[dangitman]

Sure, as long as you're OK with being stuck on a planet that can only support a few billion people

Wait a minute, how does Stallman owning a computer help the planet sustain more people? Given the amount of resources it takes to make a computer, it seems more logical that his owning one would reduce the capacity of the planet for human population.

Re:Lazy vs. Wasteful

[Splab]

So you are saying the nut-job standing at the freeway ramp with a sign saying the end is near (or how about all gays are disease carriers or niggers should be hanged) is a noble cause if he is only spending his money on non essential stuff?

Re:Lazy vs. Wasteful

[caluml]

I'm sure if he thought that him not having a computer would make the world a better place, he'd get rid of it.
He obviously thinks that he can make it better by having one.

Re:Lazy vs. Wasteful

[dangitman]

I'm sure if he thought that him not having a computer would make the world a better place, he'd get rid of it. He obviously thinks that he can make it better by having one.

But what does any of that have to do with increasing the population of the Earth? Perhaps Stallman believes the world would be better with fewer people? More people doesn't necessarily mean the world is a "better" place.

That aside, how is Stallman owning a computer directly linked to the planet being able to sustain a greater population, as the great-grandparent post implies?

Re:Lazy vs. Wasteful

[PeeAitchPee]

Just because some people are (by common custom) materialistic, elitist assholes doesn't mean you have to be too.

Then why bother to speak at Yale at all? ;-)

Re:Lazy vs. Wasteful

[Oktober Sunset]

Ok, if you're right, why don't you tell us all your great plan of how we can organise the world economy, continue scientific research, communicate effectively, operate modern technology, and do anything with the speed and efficiency we are used to, using only typewriters, card files and slide rules?
Cos, I reckon it could easily be done without suits and ties.

Re:Lazy vs. Wasteful

[CSMatt]

My point here was that "non-essential" can be relative. I'm sure that Stallman considers them to be essential as well, but others may not. I guess it could also depend on how much the product or technology in question was looked into, and whether or not efficiency or simplicity is more important to the person asked. When I was questioning whether or not computers are "essential," I was simply implying that in some cases and to some people they may be seen as more of a luxury than a necessity.

Re:Lazy vs. Wasteful

[Anonymous Coward]

The real question is why are you so stupid? Computers do math fast. This enables to optimization from construction, through transportation, to agriculture. If you think the world could support 6.5 billion people who each looked after themselves then you are even dumber than I thought. Eat shit and die.

Re:Lazy vs. Wasteful

[Anonymous Coward]

Richard Stallman doesn't do any of those things. He uses computers as a glorified soapbox for mailing list communication. He doesn't even write software anymore. He might as well just have a myspace page dedicated to insulting emacs developers.

Re:Lazy vs. Wasteful

[Anonymous Coward]

And by defining "essential" subjectively, you undermine the point being made about clothing.

Re:Lazy vs. Wasteful

[WilliamSChips]

Computers are essential to his income.

Re:Lazy vs. Wasteful

[dangitman]

Computers do math fast. This enables to optimization from construction, through transportation, to agriculture

No shit. But what has Richard Stallman specifically done to advance this? What does some kid who only uses his computer to play games have to do with this?

If you think the world could support 6.5 billion people who each looked after themselves then you are even dumber than I thought.

I never said anything of the sort. But again, what does this have to do with Richard Stallman owning a computer? Even if he did not own a computer, they would still be used to optimize things like construction or transportation. But then there's also the fact that most computers are not used to optimize our efficiency.

Re:Lazy vs. Wasteful

[Kingrames]

Because they're Intelligent materialistic, elitist assholes.

Re:Lazy vs. Wasteful

[DarrylKegger]

He's not "dressing lazy"; IIRC he simply does not own a suit. He does not believe in wasting wealth on non-essential items; this enables him to live on a relatively small income while spending most of his time pursuing the ideals he cares about.

Non-essential items like the clearly vast quantities of crap food required to keep that enormously repulsive guts of his in business?? How does he expect anyone to take him seriously with that disgusting fat,hairy, smelly exterior? And then he has the gaul to pontificate!!?? Put him on a couple of seasons of 'Biggest Loser' and then I might maybe, maybe give him the time of day.

Re:Lazy vs. Wasteful

[foreverdisillusioned]

He does not consider his appearance to be essential. He might not even consider his health to be absolutely essential. He does consider his cause to be essential, and that is what he chooses to spend his time and energy on.

Re:Lazy vs. Wasteful

[porkrind]

I think you mispelled "Harvard" ;)

-John Mark

Re:Lazy vs. Wasteful

[amRadioHed]

First of all, essential is subjective. American's probably consider electricity to be essential but humans managed quite well without. The only things that are truly essential are food, water, air and shelter and I imagine he has those all covered adequately.

Secondly the fact that "essential" is subjective undermines nothing. RMS thinks a computer is essential. RMS doesn't think nice clothes are essential. Therefore he chooses to spend money on a computer while not spending any on suits. What's the confusion here?

The concept

[Cosmic AC]

This sounds like something that's a lot funnier when you're reading xkcd and imagining it in a marijuana-induced state than when you're actually carrying it out. Even the photos look awkward ("We're attacking you, Stallman, get it?"). And the ninja suits, sheesh.

Re:The concept

[LingNoi]

Looking at the pictures Richard looks like he doesn't get it at all. He's trying his best with the confused smile.

Re:He pays both a financial price and a social pri

[Anonymous Coward]

In some ways he is extremely intelligent, but socially he is a lost puppy Like the Industrial Revolution?

He probably does not accurately evaluate the social cost of acting differently, otherwise he would not want to pay such a high social price. Is that the justification of aristocratic rule or just good 'ole down home dictatorship? Unless garbage was just relative to treasure.

Blooming bearded hippie

[threaded]

Blooming bearded hippie ought to get a job. ;-)

Re:Blooming bearded hippie

[master_p]

...as a ninja.

I'd like to see him with a ninja outfit.

Too bad...

[YutakaFrog]

...he didn't bring his katana.

Re:Too bad...

[doti]

I got impressed this is not in the post of this story, but obviously I woke up late and somebody would mention it first.

Mod parent up!

Re:He pays both a financial price and a social pri

[Anonymous Coward]

No way. Lost puppies are cute.

Quick! Someone warn Eric and Linus!!!

[IchBinEinPenguin]

They're NEXT!

Re:Quick! Someone warn Eric and Linus!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, there's no need to worry. ESR and his friends are always ready for a ninja attack.

Re:Quick! Someone warn Eric and Linus!!!

[Faylone]

Yeah, I'm thinking ESR isn't a good one to pull that on: http://www.catb.org/~esr/guns/

Re:Quick! Someone warn Eric and Linus!!!

[passion]

Ummm, ESR has guns and uses them. I wouldn't break into his house dressed as a ninja.

Fox News Headline:

[spleen_blender]

Left wing liberal software communist gets attacked by terrorist extremists. O'Reily celebrates. More at 9'.

Re:He pays both a financial price and a social pri

[h4rm0ny]

Alternately, he is undoing a system that sets too much store by clothing and labels by showing people that a hugely influential and intelligent person can get where they are and change things without having to conform to other people's expectations. In that, he is trying to bring about another social change he believes is for the better. And I agree with him. Confusing the cost of someone's clothing with the value of what they're saying is a problem in our society.

Re:He pays both a financial price and a social pri

[cheater512]

I dont think he cares too much.

Thou art incorrect

[mrwolf007]

in WORD Now, obviously, if you were to send a stink bomb via a postal package,
would you send the package to your friends or enemies?
WORD format nicely specifies the intended recipients.

Why Bother?

[Ash Vince]

I am sure he made some very good points regarding DRM and why it is bad for consumers and also the businesses that are currently using it.

But why bother? The fact that he could not even be bothered to wear shoes, let alone a suit has probably set our position back miles. The fact is that first appearances count for a lot, and the first impression you would get of him when he took that stage is that he was just there are as joke and the ninjas were just part of it.

I know us techies are known for refusing to wear suits and such but that is actually half the problem. The corporate world would rather hire techies who are slightly less good at their jobs but are will make a very minor concession to corporate culture. If you want to get taken seriously by the future corporate managers attending Yale, wear a suit.

On a topic such as DRM you have to be very careful how you come across. If the corporate world only ever see people lobbying against it who look like they would also lobby against the corporate culture itself may well think the two are related. If they see people campaigning against DRM who are already part of the corporate world they may take them more seriously.

So when Steve Jobs comes out and makes a speech against DRM it helps, when someone who looks like a worthless hippie does the same it actually helps the proponents of DRM more than the opponents.

Re:Why Bother?

[irtza]

well, I don't think the corporate suit types are the ones he was targetting. He was targetting those sitting in the audience that truly question the system and furthermore are willing to take a stand to change it.... essentially, Yale is not the place to be for this sort of thing because he will essentially be talking to those who idolize those who rose to the top in out current system and for the most part will choose to emulate them. They probably wouldn't listen to what he had to say even if he were in a suit (though I do agree with you that they would probably pay more attention if he were in a suit).

Now the Steve Balmer types only see one thing when he is on stage.. RMS walking back and forth rallying his troops by yelling: "commies! commies! commies!"

Re:Why Bother?

[LingNoi]

The corporate world would rather hire techies who are slightly less good at their jobs but are will make a very minor concession to corporate culture.

I think you'll find that is the problem not a programmer in a suit where no one is going to look at him anyway.

I also thought that it was funny in an article about Ninjas attacking Richard Stallman you get so worked up about what's not on his feet. Way to miss the point!

Re:Why Bother?

[markdavis]

I don't think he should need to wear a suit. Or even a tie.

But many people would take him a bit more seriously if at least he wore shoes and a decent (collared) shirt and groomed himself a tad better. A decent polo shirt ($20) and a pair of tennis shoes ($20) wouldn't kill him.

It isn't fair or "right" that most people judge other people by what they wear or how they look or based on what accent they have. But the reality is: MOST DO. So, if your object is to try and get people to listen to what you have to say, it would help to look like you should be taken seriously.

So, while I agree with most (certainly not all) of what RMS has to say, he can be somewhat embarassing to the whole idea of Free and Open software. The media will focus on the antics and the message is lost or just dismissed as ramblings from some hippie.

Re:Why Bother?

[vertinox]

The fact that he could not even be bothered to wear shoes, let alone a suit has probably set our position back miles.

If dressing up meant getting more credibility, then people in brown uniforms could easily win over a nation even though their message was insane. Oh wait...

But seriously, any douche can wear a snappy suit and/or uniform and look impressive on stage even if their message is BS. It takes a strong message to do it barefoot.

Re:Why Bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't take a strong message, it just takes incredible arrogance and lack of respect for the venue.

Re:Why Bother?

[Vexorian]

That's actually a well styled fallacy of origin, "he didn't wear shoes". I would say that if people are lame enough to dismiss the speech just for that they deserve to be controlled by the big corporations, f*cked from behind by DRM...

Re:Why Bother?

[jkabbe]

To paraphrase George Carlin:

Have you ever noticed that most of the people who are against DRM are people you wouldn't want to take video of in the first place?

Re:Why Bother?

[babbling]

He was there to warn people about something that negatively affects them.

Do you only pay attention to fire alarms if you like the sound of the alarm?

Re:Why Bother?

[wikinerd]

incredible arrogance and lack of respect for the venue

If RMS was wearing a suit and a tie then he would project strong and clear arrogance and lack of respect for the venue. Why? Because in that case he would be considering the people in the venue as customers that should be subverted with marketing messages and sales techniques.

RMS has clearly stated that he doesn't think of activism as being marketing and sales, as stated in his homepage: 'we shouldn't think of political activism as being marketing and sales, because those terms refer to business, and politics, when honest, is something much more important than mere business' .

I see nothing unreasonable in wearing a t-shirt and being barefoot.

Re:Why Bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you presume that his audience consists of people that care what he looks like? Why do you presume that he would rather cater to the expectations of others than to be himself and fail?

Why are you such a coward? If he doesn't like shoes, why should he wear them to placate you?

You confuse that with respect? Why?

If you respected us you wouldn't post insipid drivel to the Internet that wastes our time. Don't you want me to listen to your message? Well make it less stupid, so that it shows you at least respect me. Here's the great thing, it won't even cost you $20.

Re:Why Bother?

[jellomizer]

Ummm no you are wrong.

When dressing down where the majority of the people are dressed up shows a lack of respect. It is saying I am good that I don't need to be dressed for this, getting dressed for this occasion is to much effort and not worth it. By dressing down it is saying I am too good for you. It is not about marketing it is showing a degree of respect towards the people who will listen to him. If I was incharge of the event I would not have let him on the stage unless he was appropriately dressed.

Re:Why Bother?

[PenGun]

Fuck the corporate world and the horse it rode in on. You are so brainwashed by these marroons that you believe their self serving bullshit.

  Wake the fuck up moron ... oh just forget it you were probably born a slave.

Re:Why Bother?

[wikinerd]

When dressing down where the majority of the people are dressed up shows a lack of respect

Dressing up when the majority of people are dressed down also makes some people uncomfortable.

Re:Why Bother?

[Ash Vince]

I would love to wake up. But until food is free I have to keep earning money.

Maybe when your dad stops paying for everything you will understand, until then, Shut the fuck Up. When you have spent a night in prison for your beliefs you can criticise me for being a slave, but not until then.

I have spent years campaigning against capitalism. I have tried so many different paths of resistance that I realised the only one that stood a chance was to convince the masses that it was bad for them to. This is a form of marketing. You have to market the idea that the current world we live in is not ideal, and that it can be improved. You don't like the word marketing, fine. Called in convincing or something else without the same connotations. But that is just stupid semantics that are lost on most of the uneducated masses you need to convince.

Re:Why Bother?

[jellomizer]

Yes, that is true. I was going to make a point about that but I was pressed for time.

Re:Why Bother?

[david_thornley]

I know us techies are known for refusing to wear suits and such but that is actually half the problem. The corporate world would rather hire techies who are slightly less good at their jobs but are will make a very minor concession to corporate culture. If you want to get taken seriously by the future corporate managers attending Yale, wear a suit.

Which means those future corporate managers are screwing their companies, by hiring second-rate techies. Serves them right for looking for conformance rather than competence.

In the meantime, if you are a suit-wearing techie, you're coming off as an incompetent, somebody who thinks the clothes are more important than the person. If you like working with first-rate people (and I do), this is a bad idea. Where I've been interviewing, the hiring manager is normally a techie, and if you insist on the suit you're marking yourself as more interested in style than substance. If you're on the job, if you want to work smoothly with other techies you still don't want to look like sales or marketing; there's too many places where these are enemies of the people who actually make things to sell. You don't wear a lion suit to blend into a zebra herd, do you?

So, pick out who you want to look good to: management, or the people you work with. Live with the consequences.

Re:Why Bother?

[Ash Vince]

That's actually a well styled fallacy of origin, "he didn't wear shoes". I would say that if people are lame enough to dismiss the speech just for that they deserve to be controlled by the big corporations, f*cked from behind by DRM... The fact that he didn't wear shoes I took from the full article linked above.

And the people he was addressing are likely to be the people who end up running huge corporations not the people who end up getting screwed by them.

Re:Why Bother?

[Ash Vince]

Not sure what your point is, but I have never heard anyone recomend not wearing a suit to an interview. Most large companies have a selection of people interviewing (Techies, Management and Human Resources) all at the same time. So you have to face three people who go and compare notes after the interview. You might be able to carry off convincing the techie if you don't wear a suit, but the other two are a different matter.

Which means those future corporate managers are screwing their companies, by hiring second-rate techies. Serves them right for looking for conformance rather than competence. Their not screwing their company if they still hire someone who can get the job done. They are just hiring someone who has more potential to end up in a managerial position. These are the techies who are in the most demand, the people who can ultimately put things into terms that management can understand.

Re:Why Bother?

[david_thornley]

Not sure what your point is, but I have never heard anyone recomend not wearing a suit to an interview. Most large companies have a selection of people interviewing (Techies, Management and Human Resources) all at the same time. So you have to face three people who go and compare notes after the interview. You might be able to carry off convincing the techie if you don't wear a suit, but the other two are a different matter.

I am going on my own experience only. I've still been wearing the suit to the first interview (but not the second), but I have been told (by a recruiter) that I might want to stop doing that. Nor have I faced that selection of people; in all my interviews for the last few years, the decision who to hire has basically been made by a techie in first-line management. YMMV, of course; I can only report on what I've been seeing here in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota.

Their not screwing their company if they still hire someone who can get the job done. They are just hiring someone who has more potential to end up in a managerial position. These are the techies who are in the most demand, the people who can ultimately put things into terms that management can understand.

If they're hiring techies based on how they would be in management, they're getting second-class techies. Technical work and management are two different things, and the number of people good at both is fairly small. If they want techies that can serve in the "Speaker to Management" role (for you Niven fans), they can always ask the techie to explain something in nontechnical terms at the interview.

And all that "in the most demand" ultimately means is that they'll get the most money eventually. A competent techie can make a very nice living, in my experience, and I personally am not interested in being something I'm really not in order to get more money some time later on.

WOW!!!

[yanyan]

Ninjas with B00BS!!!

Re:WOW!!!

[Thing 1]

Yeah, the one on the left is pretty hot.

... you can tell by the pit stains :)

Re:WOW!!!

[RossumsChild]

Heh. I love /.

The parent is marked "2. Interesting."

[dies a little inside].

Re:He pays both a financial price and a social pri

[Palpitations]

*sigh*

Where are my mod points when I need them?

The points you make are very valid... But, since I can't mod you up, I might as well inject my opinion while I'm at it. The people who are interested in what he has to say aren't the ones in suits. The people he can speak to most directly, and who he'll have the biggest sway with, are people who most likely would show up to work in the same attire.

I don't mean that to be pejorative, of course. I think MBA-having, suit wearing asskissers are just slightly more evolved than lawyers, and slightly below pond scum...

Unfortunately, until we reach the point where intelligence is more important in business than how you look and who you know (not to mention the lack of morality or compassion, which I think is assumed), those suits are exactly the people we need to be impressing.

Impress, infiltrate, overthrow.

Don't do this to Eric S. Raymond

[Cheesey]

Unless you want to get killed.

It's not that he'll shoot you if you dress as a ninja and try to sneak up on him. It's just that his speech might exceed the bullshit threshold that you can tolerate.

Re:Don't do this to Eric S. Raymond

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I know that he couldn't be bothered to uphold his commitments, from what happened to a local talk that he didn't bother to show up to give, despite being offered transportation to go there.

Re:Don't do this to Eric S. Raymond

[Anonymous Coward]

Just find a random mongoloid to read some choice obvious insights from one of his banal essays. For authenticity, just get him to shit his pants and jog around the block a few times beforehand.

I don't see it.

[soccerisgod]

I really don't see why anyone would mention Stallman, Torvalds and whatshisface... Raymond in one sentence. Seriously, ESR is a nobody and a nutcase. Actually, if anyone actually deserved to be attacked by ninjas (AND pirates AND monkeys) it's him.

Re:I don't see it.

[Cairnarvon]

If I had mod points I'd mod you up. Honestly, the fact that he maintains Stallman and his followers are a PR nightmare is hilarious in the face of his racism and homophobia.
Whatever good he may have done at one point, he's pissed on the goodwill of the open source community for so long it's time people stop giving him the attention he craves.

Re:I don't see it.

[Zero__Kelvin]

"I really don't see why anyone would mention Stallman, Torvalds and whatshisface... Raymond in one sentence. Seriously, ESR is a nobody and a nutcase. Actually, if anyone actually deserved to be attacked by ninjas (AND pirates AND monkeys) it's him."

Nobody mentioned them in a single sentence. It was in a single comic frame; three separate sentences. If you are going to be a moron, at least be an accurate moron. If you don't like ESR that is fine, though I doubt you know him well enough to form an opinion either way. Never the less, calling him a nobody paints you as a clueless person. ESR gave us "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", the ESR Smart Questions FAQ , and was the author of The Art of UNIX Programming . He was also the person to whom someone chose to release the Halloween Documents . If he is a nobody, what does that make you?

Re:I don't see it.

[Anonymous Coward]

He has also been doing a lot of needed but not necessarily fun cleanup work on Battle for Wesnoth.

he sported a T shirt, and no shoes

[fatovich]

He was at least wearing pants I hope, can't fend off a ninja attack without pants. Even pirates know that.

Re:He pays both a financial price and a social pri

[h4rm0ny]

Likewise, you make valid points about how much upper management in big business is largely informed by who you know and emulating the powerful. However, I (politely) disagree that the following is a workable strategy:

Impress, infiltrate, overthrow

Leaving aside that there are many very nice and sincere people who simply like to wear suits and plenty of incompetents who wear combats and t-shirts, those who breaking suit prejudice amongst those who hold it cannot realistically be achieved by first conforming to the prejudice. The only workable approach is to demonstrate value whilst not conforming. To do otherwise is to sign over the value one possesses to the cause of suit-prejudice, i.e. if someone who contributes as much to free software as Richard Stallman is commonly seen wearing an expensive suit and dazzlingly coiffured hair, it simply goes to reinforce the idea that suit=competence. If he does not, his value contributes to the idea that not-wearing-suit can also equal competence. Someone who wore a suit for twenty years to become CEO and then suddenly started turning up in beach shorts and sandles, would not be seen as "overthrowing" anything. People don't work like that, no more than the Pope could suddenly reveal he's a muslim infiltrator and declare that Catholicism is now a branch of Sunnism. If you want to overcome prejudice, then the first rule is to stand by what you are.

be grateful he didn't ..

[rs232]

Be grateful he didn't he didn't attempt to demonstrate nasal sex with plants ..

was: Re:he sported a T shirt, and no shoes

Re:He pays both a financial price and a social pri

[Palpitations]

You know, I actually agree with you. My "impress, infiltrate, overthrow" thing wasn't meant to be a quick, easy fix. I never meant it to be taken that way. It's a much more long term plan. I'm looking at a decade, not a year.

#1 - Impress. Get the established software vendors to recognize the work done by those who are behind open source.

#2 - Infiltrate. Once the value of open source is seen, have people who are dedicated to it, and who have contributed to it be seen as valuable. Get them into influential positions.

#3 - Once in positions of influence, start flexing that muscle!

#4 - ???

#5 - Profit!

Bad Dudes

[Anonymous Coward]

Richard Stallman has been attacked by ninjas! Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the Richard Stallman?

À propos de picture ...

[Bananenrepublik]

They put this under his picture in the first article that is linked to:

Political activist Richard Stallman spoke against the resolution "Digital Restrictions Management should be illegal" at a Yale Political Union debate Wednesday night. The article got it right, though. Thay appear somewhat confused, maybe because RMS shattered their beliefs?

Hahahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

That's good. Some of us *do* get it.

How is a uniform going to inspire creative thought

[Chas]

Easy answer. It's not.

HOWEVER, it's possible that a person, freed of the decision making by such a dress code, has extra time and brainpower to devote to thinking about truly important things, rather than wasting time with trivialities like "Should I wear the Ozzy T-shirt or the Slayer T-shirt? Sandals or flops? Pants or kilt?"

Why we discuss his dress

[noddyxoi]

By discussing or judging the way a person dresses we are putting ourself in a judge position, which is empowering to us. It's even more empowering because the person is socially important.

T-Shirt & No Shoes

[andi75]

I'm surprised noone has mentioned it yet, but: ...That's all the airport security left him with.

Re:T-Shirt & No Shoes

[mqduck]

I'm surprised noone has mentioned it yet, but: ...That's all the airport security left him with. Okay, I'm not gonna make fun of you for typing "noone" instead of "no one". Grammar is the worry of people with nothing to say. BUT, if I ever have a daughter, I think I'm going to name her "Noone". (P.S. Notice how I started that last sentence with "but"? Ha!)

They clearly mistook him for a pirate.

[Jim in Buffalo]

Once they realized he had no parrot, eye-patch, or pirate hat, they left him alone.

Re:He pays both a financial price and a social pri

[h4rm0ny]

#1 - Impress. Get the established software vendors to recognize the work done by those who are behind open source.

Done.

#2 - Infiltrate. Once the value of open source is seen, have people who are dedicated to it, and who have contributed to it be seen as valuable. Get them into influential positions.

Done.

#3 - Once in positions of influence, start flexing that muscle!

Doing it.

;)

Re:He pays both a financial price and a social pri

[Palpitations]

The +1 informative, interesting, and funny trifecta is complete!

Now we just need to get out brightest minds working on "#4 - ???" and "#5 - profit!" and we're set!

Text of the Minutes (converted from .doc)

[Anonymous Coward]

Posted anonymously to avoid Karma Whoring. Not sure if someone has already done this, but I wasn't able to find anything on first glance through the threads.

---
MINUTES OF THE FLOOR MEETING OF
THE YALE POLITICAL UNION
October 17, 2007

The Floor Meeting of the Yale Political Union held on October 17, 2007 was called to order at 7:42 p.m. in LC 102 with the Speaker, Noah Mamis, presiding.

The chairmen report the results of their last debates and announce their upcoming debates and events.

The President of the Union, Miss April Lawson, welcomes the body to the debate and introduces Richard Stallman, founder and leader of the free software movement. She summarizes a few of the terms involved in the debate.

The President moves the topic "Resolved: Digital Restrictions Management should be illegal."

Mr. Stallman believes that all software should be free, but he is instead here to argue for something less extensive: that software should not be designed to restrict their users under the control of companies. He defines Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) as the practice of making products to restrict their users. DVDs are an example: they are designed by a conspiracy of companies to restrict the users. Any company that wants to make a DVD player has to agree to restrict users in the same way; this is a matter of public record. Free software is illegal in the US, because the conspiracy won't allow it. It is legal to copy all or part of a book for some purposes; you can borrow it, sell it to a used bookstore, lend it to a friend, buy it anonymously, or keep it and use it as much as you'd like. Publishers want to take these rights away with DRM. No one could pass a law taking these freedoms away, but e-book formats prevent you from doing this, and publishers want to encourage consumers to use e-books instead of traditional books. Companies want more power over their consumers.

DRM appears in a wide range of products from a wide range of companies: Apple uses DRM as part of iTunes, Google uses DRM in the Google Earth client. Mr. Stallman does not believe we ought to force any company to make a certain product with a certain feature, but he does not want companies to deny us access to technology to prevent us from doing things they don't want us to do. Companies are using laws to deny our rights, but there is no reason to use the laws in these particular ways. Anti-trust laws prevented companies from having too much power over the marketplace, but they didn't go far enough. An oligopoly can be almost as bad as a monopoly. However, high prices are not the only problem. Now, companies want power, which is even worse. Mr. Stallman thinks we should use democracy to defend the interests of the many against the interests of the rich few. (At the body's response, Mr. Stallman asks, "Is there a doctor in the house? I think we need to perform a hiss-terectomy.")

The first part of this solution is to remove those parts of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that do not deal with copyright. The US government is under the thumb of the corporate conspiracy. Software that can, for instance, play a DVD, is illegal: the distributors face prosecution. The censorship system must be abolished. Corporations are extremely powerful. AACS (the follow-up to DVD technology) is used in HD-DVD and in Blu-Ray to restrict the users; the conspiracy wants to outlaw analog video outputs, which cannot be sufficiently controlled.

The "perpetrators" of this conspiracy typically argue that the consumers have agreed to buy these products, and so shouldn't complain, but this argument has been used to justify exploitative practices like low pay, long hours, and unsafe working conditions. These regulations are extremely important, because they prevent businesses from trampling us. The richest and most powerful people win politically and in the marketplace. No one can find a better product - all the DVD players on the market restrict the user.

The many should be able to work together to limi

Re:Text of the Minutes (converted from .doc)

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr. Stallman thinks we should use democracy to defend the interests of the many against the interests of the rich few. You mean like all the fucking monarchical plutocrats that Yale calls students?

Get real.

[babbling]

Can you provide some examples of "extremism" from RMS?

I am aware of activism from him. Things such as holding up signs, giving speeches, or attending demonstrations. Since when is that "extremism"? Non-violent protest is simply a pillar of democracy.

Just because you're filled with apathy doesn't mean that anyone who isn't is an extremist.

Re:He pays both a financial price and a social pri

[Anonymous Coward]

The only workable approach is to demonstrate value whilst not conforming. Or to not demonstrate while conforming. We need to find armies of incompetent idiots and dress them in the finest suits and send them to work. Oh wait... That's most of corporate America...

Re:How is a uniform going to inspire creative thou

[mikkelm]

Does anything in the picture of him suggest that he did anything other than just picking out whatever was at the top in his drawers?

What No ...

[Chemicalscum]

St. Ignucious

You are not in the target audience to XKCD

[Per Abrahamsen]

The target audience being intelligent people.

Re:You are not in the target audience to XKCD

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that you've gotten that kindergarten-level ad hominem attack out of your system, answer the question: how is XKCD funny, considering it lacks all of the traits associated with humor?

Brazilian wax

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a brazilian wax too while you are at it you fudge packing sheep molester?

Einstein looked like a cross between a hobo and mad scientist...if only he had a good haircut, people would have listened to him.

RMS should have bought an overpriced pair of Nikes made in some third world country and you would have been happy then?

Go back to being a follower and bleet happily...

Re:Why Bother? I can tell you.

[mrwolf007]

But why bother? The fact that he could not even be bothered to wear shoes, let alone a suit has probably set our position back miles. The fact is that first appearances count for a lot, and the first impression you would get of him when he took that stage is that he was just there are as joke and the ninjas were just part of it Lets start with an old experience of mine, dont worry ill get to the point soon enough.

Quite a few years ago, when i was on a Karate training course, the trainer, who happened to be a renowned euorpean champion corrected one of my techniques. Even so i was still pretty green behind my ears back then i was sure that the way my local teacher showed me the technique wasnt inferior (acutally more or less a simple style question) so i refused to comply.
The master told me thats ok, but if hes sees me doing it differently once then its wrong.
Next day i did my next belt test exam under that guy.
Obviously enough he wouldnt have minded letting me fail (maybe even prefered) and eyed me really closely.

So let me tell you.
You DON`T earn respect by sniffeling and being conform.
Obviously enough itll be harder if you stand up to your own opinions and standards.
But its definatly more pleasing in the long run.

RMS is RMS no matter what he wears

[wikinerd]

RMS is right in wearing or not wearing whatever he wants. His message is the same one whether he wears a suit or is barefoot.

If you sincerely think that eccentricity is bad for free software publicity, then you should try to become an activist yourself and project whatever image you want. If you think free software advocates should wear a suit, then wear one yourself and go speaking at people about freedom.

RMS is a teacher: He is trying to teach you that you must value your freedom. RMS is not a superstar or celebrity. There is no reason why he should care about clothing. He just came and visited you in simple practical clothing to help you understand some issues about freedom. If people think it's better to look at his clothing instead of listening to what he has to say, then I am afraid society is still in the dark ages.

I personally see no reason why he should wear a suit, a tie, or shoes. T-Shirt and no shoes look perfectly reasonable to me.

Re:RMS is RMS no matter what he wears

[Barlo_Mung_42]

Sure it looks reasonable to you. You already get it, but I'm sure there were lots of people who didn't hear what he had to say because they were busy wondering why he took off his shoes. I wondered that myself. Did he have shoes when he arrived and decided his feet were too hot? Did he wear the wrong shoes by mistake and they became uncomfortable? What is the thought process behind the decision to remove shoes before going on stage? Is it something he does to deal with stage fright?

Re:RMS is RMS no matter what he wears

[MMC Monster]

Clothing is optional, but not for him.

(*shudder*)

Re:RMS is RMS no matter what he wears

[master_p]

"I am afraid society is still in the dark ages"

It is.

We humans still judge someone by the way he/she looks, the clothes he/she wears, the posture, etc.

Lots of people on Earth still live by religion.

Materialism dominates. We think we will be happier with a bigger house, a bigger car, etc.

Most people look up their horoscope at daily basis...

Summary of the entire thread

[Wonko the Sane]

rational: RMS's choice of clothing has nothing to do with the content of his arguments.
pragmatic: Dressing in certain ways can prevent distracting the less-than-rational members of the audience.
asshole: Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. Your attire insulted my father. Prepare to die."

Re:He pays both a financial price and a social pri

[Anonymous Coward]

I work with a bunch of kids that are also financially and socially hurt by being different. They don't have straight hair. They don't have light skin. They are not tall. They do some things, like cut off all their hair, so as not to be so different. They do the calculus and change to maximize opportunity. In reality, however, until those norms change, they will never have full opportunity.

Even in criminal organizations, like for instance Enron and the Mafia, where the suit plays a primary role in pecking order, my kids would not have the opportunity that other have. There is no suit in the world that you could put on one of my kids that would allow him or her to steal as much money or terrorize a state like the Enron people did.

The opportunity costs we impose on ourselves are primarily due to the fact that we trust a person in a suit no matter how much evidence says that we should not trust that particular person. The corollary is that we do not trust people who do not look the way we wish them to, no matter the evidence that says we should.

Female Politicians Re:this guy is a liability

[Anonymous Coward]

RMS needing to dress to code in order to get his message out is so much bunk. Those that are willing to listen will do so, those who are unwilling to listen will simply pick up some other frivilous attribute to attack while ignoring his message.

Female Politicians go through much the same issue (though from the other side of the coin). While most male politicians will have their message discussed, a lot of the media focused on a female politician don't give a damn about her message and instead focus on her clothes. It's not like they should have to undergo a sex change in order to run for office.

Stallman shouldn't have to dress up in order to be taken seriously. Besides, by living freely (and dressing freely, within the confines of the law) he epitomizes what he is struggling for.

Re:Female Politicians Re:this guy is a liability

[RadioElectric]

"Those that are willing to listen will do so, those who are unwilling to listen will simply pick up some other frivilous attribute to attack while ignoring his message." You don't usually debate in order to persuade people who already agree with you.

Note to the mods

[coolGuyZak]

Neoncow's post is misleading. The error does not prevent Word (at least Word 2003) from opening and displaying the file.

I'd say it'd be better to mod "Funny" than "Insightful", but whatever.

bum

[delong]

Richard Stallman wants everything to be free because he's a shoeless, shirtless, tieless bum. What a neanderthal.

Re:bum

[e4g4]

Wow, for such a low uid, I'm surprised you haven't yet learned how to distinguish the difference between free as in beer and free as in speech. Stallman wholeheartedly encourages the latter - but the former not at all; have you read the GPL? Or are you so obsessed with appearance that you missed the message entirely?

Re:bum

[delong]

Wow, another Stallman zealot/fanboy on Slashdot. Imagine that. Here's a clue, fanboy. I DON'T GIVE A SHIT.

Re:bum

[e4g4]

Wow, that was a very well reasoned, well thought out response to my criticism of your post.

If you don't give a shit, why bother even posting?

Re:bum

[delong]

I wasn't a criticism, it was mental ejaculation. I was criticising Stallman's lack of decorum, respect for his forum, general hygiene, and manners. But all you saw was "OMG! Free as in Speech!" Fanboyism at its worst.

Re:bum

[e4g4]

So you say that by this:

Richard Stallman wants everything to be free because he's a shoeless, shirtless, tieless bum. What a neanderthal. You actually meant this:

I was criticising Stallman's lack of decorum, respect for his forum, general hygiene, and manners. What I understood was that you meant "free as in beer" in your use of the word free - as the context would seem to indicate (why? because you called him a bum - and bums like free beer). I was merely indicating that Stallman does not advocate for everything to be free as in beer. Spare me the ad hominems, just because I'm clarifying Stallman's position doesn't mean I'm a fanboy.

Re:bum

[delong]

Once again, your flaming fanboyism blinds you to the fact that what caught your eye was a flippant remark and the least important part of the sentence. Your reading comprehension skills are handicapped, at best.

Re:bum

[Anonymous Coward]

ouch, fanboy and his agenda exposed

Re:bum

[Anonymous Coward]

Stallman has created the FSF and the GPL/LGPL licenses. He is also the author of emacs, and began the gcc project.

What have you contributed to the world in your lifetime ? Anything of value ?

Re:bum

[PenGun]

Barely sentient. It's so easy now.

Re:bum

[Almahtar]

Richard Stallman wants everything to be free because he's a shoeless, shirtless, tieless bum. What a neanderthal. Shoeless? Points to need of finance. Shirtless? Same. Tieless? points to lack of understanding on your part but also lack of finance. When given that you claimed these particular needs are his reason for wanting things to be "free", the only logical conclusion is that you mean "free as in cost" or "free as in beer".

Nobody wants things to be "free as in speech" because they don't have shoes. Nobody wants things to be "free as in speech" because they don't have shirts. Certainly the same holds for ties.

If you didn't realize that your comment was inflammatory and indicated that RMS wanted things free because he was a penniless bum then it's your writing skills that lack, not the GP's reading comprehension skills.

What you wrote was slanted and intentionally so. Don't blame him for that.

Shoulda fought back

[Ronin Developer]

What would have been truly funny is that as the ninjas where "attacking", he drew a toy light saber and took the classic Jedi stance to defend himself.

RD

Re:He pays both a financial price and a social pri

[Anonymous Coward]

How to become a lion? Endure being an enlightened camel. It is a matter of will

WTF?

[coolGuyZak]

The mods are especially astute today. Not only do they mod the joke (GP) insightful, but they mod troll the voice of reason that follows it.

Cheers!

no ninja can win against budda

[3seas]

.... seems so comical...

and if it were done as a comic....

levatating RMS in budda like lotus position with his forcefield aura protecting him from the black ninja... as they try and try again to strike him until they wear themselves out.

Hmmm..... seem so real.. Even even grand master ninja gates can't seem to strike Budda Stallman....

Stallman

[Presto Vivace]

To the extent Stallman has succeeded, it has been through his anti-success view of the world. He could not have achieved what he did had he been less absolutist about his approach to the world. It is counter - intuitive, but it works for him.

Geeze People

[stu42j]

XKCD is great and all but enough with the reenactments already. I think Randall is starting to do comics just waiting to see if people will be crazy enough to reenact them.

Re:Geeze People

[fuo]

I'll agree with this when I see the birth certificate for Little Bobby Tables.

lolol

Dissapointed

[Xenographic]

Dammit! Where was Stallman's katana? People even sent him a katana for situations EXACTLY like this one!

It just goes to show you what happens when you go around unprepared for ninjas. What next? Will he be caught flat-footed during a raptor attack?

Re:Dissapointed

[pwizard2]

Dammit! Where was Stallman's katana? People even sent him a katana for situations EXACTLY like this one!

Not that it would have done him any good... Katanas like the one RMS is holding in that blog are quite flimsy and are suitable for display only; any real use would quickly break it.

"Contributing member of society"

[nameer]

I loved this quote from the minutes

Mr. Kasten says that people like to obey the law when it comes to copyright because it is more economically efficient. He also says that the Secretary is not a contributing member of society, which she rather resents.

Re:"Contributing member of society"

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you! It's lovely that someone notices it when I make a funny.

--the aforementioned secretary

What is Stallman, really?

[ScrewMaster]

Some people like to call him a fanatic. Now, personally I define a fanatic as someone who sticks to his guns ... whether they're loaded or not. Granted, there are plenty of people in the public eye nowadays who long ago ran out of bullets, but the problem with trying to attribute fanaticism to Richard Stallman is that he's got plenty of ammo. That is why he gets to speak at such august institutions as Yale while barefoot, and the rest of us never will no matter how presentable we happen to be.

He has something to say that more people need to hear, and you don't need to swallow every word to get something of value. Even the Stallman-bashers in the crowd should be willing to admit that he did get a lot of things right.

Re:What is Stallman, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

august institutions as Yale

Yea, the guy who's the President of the US of A is a grad how much more 'gusting is that?

You are not in the target audience of XKCD

[gomoX]

The target audience being people who find it funny. I think XKCD is the work of a genius, the accuracy achieved on identifying geek-type reasonings and thought-games is mind blowing. You may not share this type of thinking and thus it just isn't funny for you. "Ninjas" is not teh funney, I agree, but there are other comics that are just plain perfect.

Even then, maybe funny is not the right word. I'd say XKCD is most of the time "+5 Insightful", with a touch of cleverness and humor. It's not a traditional comic. I know at least one other comic that shares this spirit, it's in spanish and it's called Macanudo, and it is more related to feelings and people than it is to geeks, but they do share a big pattern.

Why don't you respond to what I said?

[A nonymous Coward]

Poor response, F in debate. Try to refute the argument itself, don't exaggerate, and don't substitute insults and cussing for reason. It looks like you have nothing to contribute to the discussion.

Re:He pays both a financial price and a social pri

[Osty]

The points you make are very valid... But, since I can't mod you up, I might as well inject my opinion while I'm at it.

The quotes the parent made were not valid. They were hero-worshipping wishful thinking, that RMS did anything more than crawl out of whatever he calls a bed and toss on whatever was on the top of the drawer. You're thinking too hard about something I doubt RMS thinks about at all.

The people who are interested in what he has to say aren't the ones in suits. The people he can speak to most directly, and who he'll have the biggest sway with, are people who most likely would show up to work in the same attire.

That's almost true. The people who are interested in what RMS has to say aren't the ones in suits (ie, the people running businesses), but they should be the people he wants interested. He's welcome to sway all of the slovenly-dressed, low-totem-pole workers. What are they going to do? It's the suits that run the businesses and make the decisions on what software to buy or use, whether or not to sell their own software, how to license it, etc. These are the people that RMS should be targetting, because they're the only ones who can realistically make the changes he wants. Too bad he's been very effective at alienating himself from them.

I don't mean that to be pejorative, of course. I think MBA-having, suit wearing asskissers are just slightly more evolved than lawyers, and slightly below pond scum...

So all pepole who wear suits are asskissers? There's no possibility of a slobbish, t-shirt/shorts/flip-flops-wearing hippy being an asskisser too?

Unfortunately, until we reach the point where intelligence is more important in business than how you look and who you know (not to mention the lack of morality or compassion, which I think is assumed), those suits are exactly the people we need to be impressing.

When it comes to software companies, we're quite past that. Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer don't often wear suits. Steve Jobs doesn't wear a suit. Larry Page and Sergey Brin don't often wear suits. They do dress acceptably (their t-shirts are at least clean and tucked-in), and they're aware when it's socially polite to dress up. But the real difference is that they live in the real world while RMS lives in a fantasy of his own creation.

HELP!

[Mr2cents]

I started reading the comments hoping to find a discussion and maybe some interesting posts about DRM, but it's just page after page of comments about what the man's wearing! Has the army secretly started testing that gay weapon"? Come on, people, get a grip!

Perhaps RMS's feet were hurt, but does it matter?

[wikinerd]

Last time I met RMS in Athens when he came to speak at a university here, I think he came with shoes but if I remember correctly he removed them during the scheduled break. I was I think near him, and I didn't pay much attention to what he was doing with his shoes, and neither it did attract my interest (to me removing one's shoes is perfectly natural, and I actually also do it sometimes), but I think he applied some gel or some form of medicine on them, and he did look a bit jet-lagged (which is natural after a transatlantic flight). Perhaps he had to walk a lot in the chaotic roads of Athens in order to come to the venue and with the excessive Greek summer heat his feet got hurt (this also happens to me). If I remember correctly, he later put on his shoes again. In general, if you watch his blog, you will see that he always travels somewhere to speak about free software or related matters. Too much travel = too much walking = hurt feet. Maybe when he got to Yale he had walked really a lot and shoes became too uncomfortable so he may have had to remove them. This is perfectly natural. He literally gets hurt and exhausted to teach people about freedom (an extremely important matter) and people look whether he wears shoes or not (which is a totally unimportant matter). I wonder what people are going to do if a meteor is going to strike us dead with an 1-year warning period and a scientist presents to the world a method to save our planet. Will people choose to listen to him, or will they spend their time looking at his clothing and discussing about his shoes? I have heard what some people say about Einstein's hair. How ridiculous people are!

Re:How is a uniform going to inspire creative thou

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you look at the pictures? He's wearing a buttoned, collared shirt while most of the audience members are in T-shirts with graphics, un-tucked open flannel shirts, etc. This entire thread for people who have nothing better to do than to rail on RMS for no reason.

He communicates that he does not care.

[Futurepower(R)]

THAT is the entire issue: He communicates powerfully that he does not care about other people.

Re:He communicates that he does not care.

[cheater512]

There is a slight distinction to be made.

He cares about other people. Thats what most of his speeches are about.
He doesnt care what other people think about him however.

Its a good attitude to have when your someone like him.
If he cared what other people thought about him then his views would be far more conservative incase he pisses someone off.

Re:Perhaps RMS's feet were hurt, but does it matte

[Barlo_Mung_42]

"I wonder what people are going to do if a meteor is going to strike us dead with an 1-year warning period and a scientist presents to the world a method to save our planet."
That's a very good question and I suspect that the scientist would wear shoes, knowing that it's an important issue he would not want to distract people from his main point. I really do think that in your hypothetical scenario many people would take the evidence less seriously if presented by someone without shoes. Not you or many of us here but I suspect you also don't tune in to Entertainment Tonight, eager to learn the latest about celerity X, Y or Z.

Its about consistency

[Requiem18th]

Think again, this guy survives on donations, if you donate $50 to his cause, would you prefer him to spend it on food, shelter or a bus ticket to a conference, or in a suit?

It's about priorities.

And if you say that he should buy the suit because it helps get the message across... well honestly anybody who can't get over his dress code in less than 10 seconds is too shallow to pay attention to his words. The suit would be a waste anyway.

The shoes...

[wfolta]

Yes, I can understand someone who does not own a suit showing up without one. Or someone who only wears one for weddings/funerals. Etc.

But the no-shoes thing is definitely trying to make an in-your-face statement. I don't know and have never worked with anyone who does not wear shoes in an urban environment. Or for that matter, in a wilderness environment. The only place they go shoeless is in their own home, at the pool, and perhaps in their backyard or at a park.

So when someone decides to make a statement by what they wear, they should not be surprised when people react to the action as much as to whatever else was supposed to be discussed. It's really no different from Stallman agreeing to discus DRM, and instead showing up on stage and talking about the Dali Lama instead.

Re:Perhaps RMS's feet were hurt, but does it matte

[wikinerd]

I really do think that in your hypothetical scenario many people would take the evidence less seriously if presented by someone without shoes

Then the scientist would be correct in keeping their silence and letting all lamers die in a giant meteor impact. Stupid civilisations have no right to exist in this universe.

Distribution model vs Licenses

[Nicolay77]

I think that in that case, the distribution model is more important than the license.

I mean, 'people who receive the program in than modified form' can simply get it from the original author and skip the middleman. Problem solved. Period.

Monopolies and evil middeman in distribution channels of information are made obsolete by a bit of technology, like iTunes store and all its clones for music or Steam for games (and its lots of future clones, I hope). CVS, SVN and GIT repositories did the same for source code long ago.

In other words: The creation, distribution, and evolution of software enabled by the Internet is more important than the license, as long as that license is not closed source.

Public domain would be enough, as long as there's an Internet. I mean, BSD is like public domain except for some text that should be added and that's all.

(All this is of course invalidated by Software Patents. Evil Software Patents.)

He pays a HUGE price for his areas of not caring.

[Futurepower(R)]

This issue cannot be explained away. This is what he communicates:

Mr. Stallman cares about DRM in software.

He doesn't care about the social rules of the group he is visiting.

He doesn't care about what people think concerning a vast range of other social issues having to do with behavior in public.

All I'm saying is that he pays a HUGE price for his areas of not caring. He wants to influence human culture. He wants to influence how people think. He is self-defeating in the way he does that.

Way to go and spoil it for all of us, hippy.

[Anonymous Coward]

You try to make everyone think all hippies are hackers.

Go smoke your pipe from your ass, you pot-headed cumtwaddle.

Someone sent RMS a katana, too.

[foreverdisillusioned]

Reading the XKCD forums, apparently prior to the ninja incident someone actually sent RMS a katana (which, in the comic, he whips out to defend himself against them.) He didn't bring it to the debate with him, but someone did take some pictures of him holding it: http://www.gnu.org/people/jag/rms-with-katana/

Don't worry...

[Anonymous Coward]

Linus should have nunchucks. I just hope he keeps them ready so that he doesn't get caught unprepared, like Stallman.

Re:He pays both a financial price and a social pri

[Almahtar]

This may seem off topic at first - bear with me.

Just this weekend I was staying in a hotel in Seattle (on business) with a very old friend of mine. We were hanging out in the lobby in the morning enjoying some coffee, and a man wearing a T-shirt, a kilt, and sneakers walked through the lobby. I pointed out the rather odd combo. My friend responded "You know, that's the nice thing about these times - people can dress however they want. In the 60's everyone here would have to be wearing a nice shirt and tie at very least. If someone walked in like that, it's likely the police would have been called because something was 'off' about him."

That just seems so wrong and foreign to me. Now, I wasn't alive in the 60's and couldn't vouch for the correctness of what he said, but if that's true we've come a long ways. Extrapolate, and you can see why I think it's really cool that RMS showed up barefoot in a T-shirt.

You miss the point

[Almahtar]

The dress in and off its self was a statement as much as the speech. It's part of a consistent philosophy - money, culture, appearance, all that doesn't matter. Let's talk truth, and I'm interested. Instead of asking "Why would he draw attention to his clothing rather than his address?" we are supposed to be asking "Why are we talking about the clothing instead of the address?". The difference is taking responsibility before pointing the finger.

Re:He pays both a financial price and a social pri

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, his choir already has the sermon down pat. Unfortunately, he isn't attracting anyone else to church...

Then have the guts

[Anonymous Coward]

To actually enforce the GPL rights.

*points at Virgin and the Virgin WebPlayer*

*points at the various parties who placed their code under the GPL*

"you are a bunch of gutless 'tards"

Filtration

[Dire Bonobo]

In my opinion, the clothes are irrelevant and basically a filter

Quite true - anyone who blatantly flouts societal norms is obviously an outsider whose interests are irrelevant to mainstream society, and hence can be safely ignored by the vast majority.

Or is that not what you meant? Because, I assure you, that's the filter a whole lot of people are using. And not entirely without reason.

Humans are social animals, whether you like it or not, and many of the silly social customs and mores we have were developed in order to make the massive, crowded society we have now run smoothly. Willfully ignoring our social nature is immensely selfish, as it actively undermines the glue that holds society together. A stable society is one that has feedback mechanisms to maintain and reinforce its glue, and marginalizing those who would undermine it is a likely one.

Now, you may argue that society is changing, that the current glue is being replaced, that what is is not what must be. I agree. But the fact is that how you present yourself matters, a great deal, and will continue to do so for the forseeable future. That's not so important for most people, but - like it or not - it's very important for public figures, of which Stallman is one.

Does that mean he's a liability because of his behaviour? I don't know enough to say. But, make no mistake, his behaviour absolutely influences how his message is perceived.

It certainly influenced you quite strongly. Just remember that those positive feelings from him being in your in-group are going to be negative feelings for many, many people who see him as part of an out-group. Would it be more effective to have the message delivered in a more neutral manner, the better to have it assessed on its own merits?

on the topic of appropriate clothing

[bziman]

Suits and ties are uncomfortable... The shoes that go with them are uncomfortable and bad for your feet Such clothes are overpriced and a horrendous waste of money

I hear a lot of people say this, and I just don't understand it. I find baggy jeans that have to be continuously hitched up ridiculously uncomfortable, but a well tailored suit is just about the most comfortable thing I can think of. If your tie is uncomfortable, then you've tied it too tight. Tied properly, the only thing a tie does, is hide the buttons on your shirt. If your shoes are uncomfortable, then you probably shouldn't have bought them. I don't believe I own any uncomfortable shoes. Sometimes I have to try on four or five pairs before I find a pair that both match the outfit and are comfortable... but it's stupid to buy something that hurts your feet.

Not only that, but dressing in a suit and tie strongly suggests you need to try and use your appearance to give some credibility to what your saying because it can't stand on it's own.

Or maybe you like the way it looks and think it's comfortable. Those auditoriums are always painfully over air conditioned, and I think a jacket would be standard wear, just to keep warm.

And finally, there's also a matter of showing respect to your audience or hosts. If you're invited to a gathering where the invitation says "black tie", then it would be rude to show up in casual dress. Similarly, if you're introducing skateboarders at the X-Games, you can't expect to be taken seriously in a three-piece suit. Personally, if I were famous like RMS and giving a talk at a prestigious Ivy League university, I'd be wearing a suit -- or at least a tweed jacket with elbow patches.

I'm not sure why people today are so afraid of looking nice. I don't buy the argument that nice clothes aren't comfortable. You can get away with the argument that they're expensive, but anyone who is in a situation where nice clothing is merited can afford at least one outfit to match the event.

And now, I'm off to the lab... in jeans and a t-shirt, which are appropriate for crawling around on the floor after a bunch of robots.

Intent

[Dire Bonobo]

Is it so unlikely that he was intentionally drawing contrast?

That's absolutely possible. I think perhaps one of the key points here is simply that what he wore or did not wear matters. The overall effect may have been good, bad, mixed, or simply weird (a slashdot thread hijacked by discussing clothes??), but the fact of the matter is that an effect was effected.

Humans are inherently social; appearance is inherently important. There is no way to get away from that, and attempting to ignore it is its own powerful statement.

I almost didn't bother to reply, but...

[znerk]

I have worn jeans and t-shirts to both of the occasions you mention. I assume the majority of those involved were of a similar mind, and felt that it was appropriate attire, as they were dressed "casually" as well. Not all of us were in shoes, for some of the events.

Am I a bad person for not dressing up? No. Did I show disrespect? No. Are you an ignorant twit for making a snap judgement? Maybe... What do you think?

define "respectable".

[znerk]

Respectable/serious attire are necessary not to convince your audience that you are right, but to convince them that you are "normal" by everybody else's standards.

Uhm, no. I don't know anyone who wears a suit and tie, except on Sundays for church (and damn few of those). As for your statement that

The guy probably wears shoes outside his home, so why take them off to get on stage and deliver a speech to respected academics?

Well, I don't know him personally, but he may not wear shoes if it is at all possible. It is perfectly normal *to me* to have people come to my home that wear sandals only because footwear is legally required while driving, and take them off as soon as they come inside, or once they get to my patio, or even before they leave their vehicle (gasp!). Similarly, it is perfectly normal *to me* to have people wear jeans, shorts, "cutoffs", skirts, slacks, polos, t-shirts, no shirt, socks, no socks, or any number of other "outrageous" attires. It is the accepted norm in my household not to be offended by attire unless it is unsafe or unsanitary (which even being completely naked may not be, depending upon conditions).

It appears to me that you are being just as pig-headed as the people screaming that he needs to wear a suit. And before you go shouting that bare feet are unsanitary, please explain to us all how bare feet are somehow less clean than shoes? They go the same places, you know...

Oh, and one final rebuttal to your comments... you said

... it doesn't help when your leaders are barefoot lunatics who dislike shampoo and don't cut their hair.

So now you're not only advocating a dress code, but hair style as well? Having "longer than typical" hair doesn't make him unclean. How does he smell? Oh, you don't know? Then don't make judgments based on someone's appearance. Just in case you were wondering, you don't have to use shampoo to be clean, and just because you're not clean-shaven and/or wearing a crewcut doesn't mean you smell bad.

On the other hand, I don't know him, either, and I have yet to see any photos from the event (no, I haven't yet read the article, although I plan to. The minutes were cool, I'd love to see the YouTube Video of the entire event). All of this post was formed from my own reactions to your post.

--
This post has been sanitized to remove personal attacks, other than those required to make my point.

Re:define "respectable".

[Plutonite]

If the people you are addressing are staring in disbelief at the state you're in, you are probably not dressed "properly" for the situation, where "properly" indicates normalcy and moderation in attire generally acceptable by tradition or practice. And no its not about whether you have socks on or not, you are *completely* ignoring the bigger picture. He looks like a fucking caveman. We are not cavemen. It's not nice to be branded as such when you are trying to say something to the world that is contrary to what the billion-dollar corporation business models. Try going with his outfit - barefoot - to a restaurant somewhere (never mind a respected academic institution to give a speech). See if they let you in through the door.

Re:define "respectable".

[ccp]

Try going with his outfit - barefoot - to a restaurant somewhere (never mind a respected academic institution to give a speech). See if they let you in through the door.

As far as I know he indeed went to an "respected academic institution" and actually gave a speech. What was your point again? That he's worth listening at and you're not?

Cheers,
CC

I can't stop myself from responding to this drivel

[znerk]

I've been trying, really trying. I can't stop myself from attacking you personally on this one.

YOU (SMACK) ARE (SMACK) MISSING (SMACK) THE (SMACK) MESSAGE!

First of all, the important factor here is THE SPEECH. This discussion is bogging down on whether he was wearing socks, and was his T-shirt Hanes or Jersee? WHO CARES?!? IT'S NOT IMPORTANT, STFU ALREADY!

To be completely honest, I think anyone who flips out over his attire is too stupid to get the message he was trying to give them.

Secondly, it's not $40. I can get a polo *AND* a pair of sneakers for less than $15... Within walking distance... Of damn near anywhere I'm likely to be.

... but I'm not likely to.

--
Understanding stupidity is kinda like cheering for silence.

maybe *you* didn't RTFA...

[znerk]

From the pictures i saw once I got around to reading the full article, I noticed that he was dressed in slacks and a tshirt. From the pictures I saw in the full article, I saw college students (gasp!) dressed in jeans and tshirts (GASP!)

Maybe you should check the stick in your ass before bitching about the splinter in my eye.

Re:maybe *you* didn't RTFA...

[Anonymous Coward]

*sigh*

It's not about your house and your friends. I have people walking around in dreadlocks and bikinis in my place all the time. It's about public perception, and the freshmen wearing t-shirt and jeans will normally be required to be dressed formally if they were giving an official presentation at their school (with a large number of attending faculty..etc).

PS: Good luck going barefoot and shirtless to your next job interview. Moron.

Woosh?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's referencing this: http://www.venganza.org/piratesarecool4.gif

From http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/. It was kind of a meme a few years ago.

Unadulterated nonsense.

[jotaeleemeese]

Ghandi (yeah, that Ghandi) knew that dress codes were an instrument of control and power, and although he was perfectly capable to dress westernized clothes he consciously choose not to.

If you think that somebody that can understand the social implications of how software is licensed can't understand the implications of how he dresses, you are tremendously disingenuous, to say the least.

It depends.

[jotaeleemeese]

I had a teacher (Electrical Systems I think he tried to teach us) that used to wear a suit, but clearly had been to a taco stand before the lecture (full of spots and grease), he also couldn't do a tie knot properly and his shoes were invariably dirty. To top it all he was often late when he showed up at all.

After him came a lecturer that wore impeccable casual clothing. He confessed he did not have a single neck tie on his wardrobe. He was always on time and in the very few occasions when he could not attend a lecture he would send an assistant (no mobile phones back then you young things) to apologize.

Oh yeah, I have rarely worn a suit all my life and that does not seem to have hindered me particularly and I am quite respected in my field, thank you very much.

Propietarizing public domain.....

[jotaeleemeese]

... is immoral. Somebody stood in the shoulders of others but then pretended all is his own effort.

In other words he became a fucking freeloader. Legal? Yes. Moral? No way. Any remediation to this (GPL) is a good thing.

Yes, I think that, and you think it, also.

[Futurepower(R)]

"If you think that somebody that can understand the social implications of how software is licensed can't understand the implications of how he dresses, you are tremendously disingenuous, to say the least."

Yes, I think that, and you think it, also. We have around all of us numerous situations in which someone was intelligent in one area, and foolish in another.

A valuable lesson

[uuxququex]

First thing to learn in public speaking is that you adapt to your audience. Same thing for asking questions in a lecture hall: asking Stallman about "open source" just shows that you haven't done your homework and that you have no business hogging the microphone.

The French guy got a valuable lesson.