Richard Stallman Falls Ill At Conference

itwbennett writes "Stallman, 59, was speaking at the North Campus of the Polytechnic University of Cataluna when he started to feel ill and called for a doctor. It was originally reported in the Spanish press that Stallman was hypertensive, but it is not yet known what his eventual health status was, just that he left the building later under his own power." He is apparently okay and any significant confirmed updates will be posted here.

Comments

technology isn't that good for your health

[thetoadwarrior]

Face it, lots of people in our field die young. Being fat and sitting around all day is not good. I hope it's nothing and he's ok but likewise I wouldn't be that surprised. Just as I wouldn't be that surprised if someone said Gabe Newell had a heart attack. We've got some really awesome people we're risking losing early do to choices of a career.

Shame it can be a fun and healthy career.

Re:technology isn't that good for your health

[evil_aaronm]

Speak for yourself, you insensitive clod! I play semi-pro box lacrosse, race bikes, occasionally coach wrestling, and chase my grand-daughter around on the playground for kicks.

Yeah, I do spend a lot of time on my butt-tocks, but I make up for it by doing other things outside of work. Having said that, my younger brother falls more in line with the stereotype: he's fat, can't run 20 meters without stopping, and thinks walking over to the vending machine to get some Cheetos is exercise.

In between those poles, you'll find other people involved in technology. In my office, we have all kinds. It depends on your mindset: you either want to stay active and healthy, or you don't. That goes for any segment of the populace regardless of career.

Re:Putting his money where his mouth is

[TheSimkin]

RMS has spent his life fighting for your rights. And when he gets sick all you can do is pile dirt on him? Sure he has some strange views on some things, but in all cases he pushes for greater personal freedom and less corporate ownership of 'ideas' and less government interference in personal lives.

Re:Putting his money where his mouth is

[TapeCutter]

We are all hypocrites in our own way, including you. I'm not a fan of Stallman's ideology and never have been, but a difference in opinion is no reason to kick a man when he's down.

Re:Putting his money where his mouth is

[BasilBrush]

There are 3 ways of doing it, all legitimate. You can subscribe and see the posts early. You can see the posts on firehose and guess which stories will make the front page. Or you can just be aware of the tech news stories of the day, and predict what will come up that way.

Write your opinion.

Then you need to wait for the story to come up. Possibly using a webpage change monitoring app with built in search. Or maybe just by lurking.

Or course you'd only go to that effort if you're either very keen to get moderated up on slashdot and get lots of replies. Or if you really care about the topic really strongly.

And Slashdot is full or both of those kinds of people. Although the specific topic they obsess about varies.

Everyone here that posts has an agenda to put forward.

Sad that /. is nothing but trolls.

[Beelzebud]

Looking through the comments, I'm reminded again why I visit this site less and less. I think this might just be my final post here. This site is a shadow of what it was when I joined, and I came along fairly late...

Re:Sad that /. is nothing but trolls.

[steelfood]

You must be really new here.

This is par for the course. In fact, it's better than usual. Had this exact same story appeared a few years ago, there would've already been beard jokes, free as in beer jokes, GPL v3 jokes, and a whole conversation consisting of nothing but puns.

Re:Gosh, is the Slashdot audience really that cree

[bziman]

Not everyone on /. is like that. Many of us quiet readers idolize folks like RMS and you, Bruce.

-brian

Just to stir the pot...

[gr8_phk]

No, he has spent his life picking up his toys and going to play in a corner. And he has been freeriding the open source "movement" ever since. I won't argue the impact GPL has made, or the merits it may have - but how many of that *popular* GPL-licensed software was actually done by him? Not much. And how well is that software supported in "non-free" operating systems? Well, at least *BSD ports keep their patches for a given application off the official sourcetree :P. Talking about hipocrisy...

Which compiler does BSD use for everything? And who wrote that initially? Who wrote a number of utilities that went along with it? Who wrote the GPL? Sure, RMS hasn't done any cool GUI apps or really any notable apps in 20 years. He moved on to running FSF and advocating his philosophy. He built the foundation for something big. It was actually the Open Source "movement" that freeloaded on the idea with a shitload of "approved" licenses.

I do agree that he should stick to his free software philosophy and perhaps anti-DRM stance (tech freedom?) and stay out of more social and political issues.

Re:Let's have some perspective.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

No. But you don't cut off a hearse or piss on people's graves do you?

Sure, if he didn't build GCC, emacs or the gpl, no one would give a shit. But he did. So people care.

Show some goddamned decency.

Re:Putting his money where his mouth is

[Stephan Schulz]

I'm posting this on an iPad for god's sake.

And of course the iPad is running iOS and apps build with XCode wich uses gcc as the compiler backend. No GNU, no iPad.

Re:Putting his money where his mouth is

[techno-vampire]

I disagree with this end game, and most of his ideology.

So do I. To a large part I think he's lost touch with reality and is busy tilting at windmills that nobody else can see. Yes, I use Linux on my computers because I don't see any reason to pay for an OS, pay for applications and then pay a different company for more applications to keep my computer free of malware, especially when I can get an equally good OS and applications for free. But unlike some people, I'm not a fanatic about it. I'm not going to try to push anybody else into Linux unless they're already interested in it. If asked, I'll tell them that whatever OS does what they want the way they like it is the best one for them. I can't imagine RMS doing that, and that's one of the things I don't like about him.

Having said that, I was saddened to hear that he's sick and I hope that it's nothing serious. 59 is much too young for us to lose him, because even though I don't agree with him, he keeps saying things that need to be said and bringing up ideas that need to be discussed.