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

Putting his money where his mouth is

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he ate some infected toe jam. But the big question is: Did he refuse treatment until he had personally verified that the ambulance and hospital computers were running open source software? If not, he's a hypocrite, because he has called all closed source software an "evil system" that should be avoided at all costs.

Note that this is also the same man who wrote on his blog:

"[P]rostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia ... should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness." - May 2003

"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing." - June 2006

RMS fans hate when these get mentioned, and they'll often call them lies without clicking on the links and seeing that they come directly from Stallman's online blog. Stallman is a kook, and he needs to be called out as one. This conference he fell ill at was about the "dangers of a digital society." He's a anti-progress luddite who doesn't even visit webpages--he actually emails a daemon that wgets the page and sends it to him. 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?).

Re:Putting his money where his mouth is

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Putting his money where his mouth is

[drinkypoo]

I am not fan of RMS ideas, but really should you use a first post to insult the man?

Yeah, good point. That could have been a gay nigger troll instead.

Re:Putting his money where his mouth is

[stephanruby]

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.

Re:Putting his money where his mouth is

[Just Some Guy]

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.

• Prostitution is supported by a lot of varied groups, from women's libbers to libertarian groups who see it as a free market barter.
• I don't think adultery is directly illegal anywhere.
• Necrophilia is hyper-icky, but if the, erm, cadaver, explicitly agreed to it while still in a condition to do so...
• Bestiality: OK, I'm having a hard time finding a scenario defending that one.
• If your 18 year old son has a sexy picture of his 17 year old girlfriend, he possesses child porn and would be put on a sex offender registry in many states. That's not in the same moral category as some perv collecting pictures of toddlers, but it seems to have the same legal classification.
• Incest: see necrophilia; I can't fathom it, but if two adults consent to something I find utterly repulsive, I'm not sure what right I have to tell them they can't be disgusting.
• Pedophila: see child pornography; a 50 year old with a teen is pretty clearly not OK, but I don't think a boy turns into a child molester on the day he turns 18 just because his girlfriend is a week younger than him.

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!"

Re:Putting his money where his mouth is

[crutchy]

why didn't samzenpus post using his nick. pretty obvious that whoever published the story posted the comment (within a minute).

mind you when i saw the title the first thing i thought of was that it was caused by bad toe cheese. he's never gonna live that down.

i don't have ay respect for rms, but you can't really knock the software he wrote back in the stone ages.

Re:Putting his money where his mouth is

[crutchy]

I have yet to shake his hand

just make sure you cut your hand off and put it through a sterilizer a few times and leave it soak in disinfectant, bleach and sulfuric acid for a week before sowing it back on

GreatBunzinni exposed

[Anonymous Coward]

GreatBunzinni, real name Rui Maciel, has been using anonymous posts to accuse almost 20 accounts of being employed by a PR firm to astroturf Slashdot, without any evidence. Using multiple puppet accounts, he mods up these anonymous posts while modding down the target accounts in order to censor their viewpoints off of Slashdot. GreatBunzinni accidentally outed himself as the anonymous troll who has been posting these accusations to every Slashdot story. For example, he wrote the same post almost verbatim, first using his logged-in account followed by an anonymous post days later. Note the use of the same script and wording.

It turns out GreatBunzinni is actually a 31-year-old C++/Java programmer from Almada, Portugal named Rui Maciel, with a civil engineering degree from Instituto Superior Técnico and a hobby working with electronics. He runs Kubuntu and is active on the KDE mailing list. Rui Maciel has accounts at OSNews, Launchpad, ProgrammersHeaven, the Ubuntu forums, and of course Slashdot.

Most of the users who Rui targets have done nothing more than commit the sin of praising a competitor to Google at some point in the past. Many of them are subscribers who often get the first post, since subscribers see stories earlier than non-subscribers. After one of Rui's accusations is posted as a reply, the original post receives a surge of "Troll" and "Overrated" moderations from his puppet accounts, while the accusatory post gets modded up. Often, additional anonymous posters suddenly pop up to give support, which also receive upmods. At the same time, accused users who defend themselves are modded down as "Offtopic."

Rui Maciel's contact information
Email: greatbunzinni@gmail.com, greatbunzinni@engineer.com, or rui.maciel@gmail.com
IM: greatbunzinni@jabber.org (the same Jabber account currently listed on his Slashdot account)
Blog: http://rui_maciel.users.sourceforge.net/
Programming projects: http://www.programmersheaven.com/user/GreatBunzinni/contributions

Known puppet accounts used by Rui Maciel
Galestar
NicknameOne
Nicknamename
Nerdfest
TheNarrator
Toonol
anonymov
chrb
flurp
forkfail
icebike
ilguido
psiclops
rreyelts
russotto
symbolset
zidium

tl;dr: An Ubuntu fan named Rui Maciel is actively trolling Slashdot with multiple moderator accounts to filter dissenting opinions off the site.

Of Course He's Hypertensive

[cmholm]

Of course Stallman is hypertensive, the brother has been fat and from his appearance pretty sedentary his entire adult life. At 59, his arteries are probably building up as much crap as my water heater. If this isn't a come-to-Jesus moment for a lifestyle change, blowing out his kidneys or a heart attack soon will be.

Re:Just to stir the pot...

[rev0lt]

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.

Re:Let's have some perspective.

[rev0lt]

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.