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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.
Of course Stallman took advantage of medical services without checking first if it was free software. Like ever other hippie, he is an idealist dreamer up to the point where reality hits, like the hippie communes that abandoned technology until they ran out of food and realized that farming is hard work. Stallman's devoted supporters are petulant man-children and will defend him to the bitter end, even as both commercial software and less restrictive free licenses make the GPL irrelevant.
Did he refuse treatment until he had personally verified that the ambulance and hospital computers were running open source software?
What about you? Let's say a bunch of evil communists take over the United States (or your own country), and place all hospitals and roads under their dominion. It would still be relatively easy for you to avoid working at an hospital, or avoid working on the roads, because supposedly, there would still be other types of jobs available, but what would you do if you still wanted to walk outside on the streets, or needed to get treated in an emergency? Would you really place your very life or the very life of your family below the priority of your ideals? I doubt that.
And regarding his personal political views, you do not need to like the guy to appreciate some of what he has done. Case in point, Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs has been in the past an horrible father and a horrible bully, but that doesn't negate everything else he has done.
He's an anti-progress luddite who doesn't even visit webpages--he actually emails a daemon that wgets the page and sends it to him.
As your link references, he sees this as a time-management strategy that works for him. He says nothing about suggesting others to do the same. And yes, some people do some pretty weird things to avoid getting distracted by the Internet, but in his case, since he's actually been a very productive software developer, compared to the overwhelming majority of developers which I've run across, he may be someone worth emulating when it comes to getting things done and avoiding distractions.
Techies worship him as if he's the only one who ever came up with the idea of free source code or there weren't any other free source movements (hello, Berkeley UNIX?).
RMS is respected by some Techies, yes, for some of his software contributions, and yes, some of his more extreme software licensing views are even respected by some Techies as well, but "worship" is a bit of an hyperbole here.
In any case, I hope he's alright.
Note that this is also the same man who wrote on his blog:
...that people should be free to do things we find distasteful, in the absence of evidence that those behaviors are harmful.
RMS is pro-freedom. I am shocked.
Note: he was referring to a Bush court nominee who opined that if choosing a same-sex partner were permissible, then each of the acts on that list may also be Constitutionally protected. I happen to disagree with his statement that those things should be allowed (with the exception of adultery, which we've pretty much all agreed is a household matter and not something for the criminal courts). But within certain very narrow scopes, I see (but not concur with) his points.
So your main complaint with the man seems to be that he doesn't automatically have zero tolerance for situations you may be morally uncomfortable with. I don't like them either, and RMS himself probably doesn't (short of enjoying the reaction others have when he says that he supports them). That doesn't mean that they're off-limit to discussion, if not to allow them but only to suss out exactly why we don't allow them beyond "they're icky!"
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Which compiler does BSD use for everything?
Which version of BSD? Because BSD itself is older than GCC, are you telling me it wasn't compiled then? And FreeBSD 9 can be compiled using LLVM (now integrated in the tree). And (at least some releases) of NetBSD can be compiled with ICC. And I guess Linux is also ICC-friendly.
And who wrote that initially?
You are talking (and I guess using) GCC. So what you say is that the first Unix C compiler was done by RMS? Or that the first open source C compiler was done by RMS? Or that the first usable open source C compiler whas done by him? Or that the hundreds/thousands of contributions that GCC has had all over the years are RMS merit? Or that the merge with the EGCS patch (because people actually wanted features) is also RMS at work?
Who wrote the GPL?
That is easy. Someone on crack with no sense whatsoever of the real world.
Sure, RMS hasn't done any cool GUI apps or really any notable apps in 20 years.
I suggest you try to find genious in any of the code he's ever made. I'm not downsizing the importance of GCC or even the publicity GPL has gained, but everything you credit him for was a collective effort. Can you name anywone else involved in those projects?
He built the foundation for something big
No, he went home to play with his toys until Linux came around. Because until then, nobody really cared about GPL or the GCC. Linus built the foundation for something big. And I'm not even a Linux fan, but credit should be given when credit is due. And RMS should have none of it.
But you don't cut off a hearse or piss on people's graves do you?
No, I just don't care more about random strangers just because they had their life facilitated by being able to do academic work and public talks. You have people dying in Syria right now trying to defend values much more honorable than anything RMS ever stood for, do you give a shit about them? Because it is easy to talk about freedom (wtf!) and badmouth "evil corporations" when you and the ones that are close to you are protected from harm.
Show some goddamned decency.
YOU show some goddamned decency. There are people dying for what they believe is right, and you talk about decency in the context of someone that has used the only somewhat good idea it ever had to get a free lunch. Get some perspective, there is a lot more in the world than computers.