Much like Steve Jobs, RMS is a visionary. Most visionaries aren't necessarily pleasant people in any conventional sense, they can be peremptory, irritatingly specific and detailed in their demands.
Anyone can write a text editor though. It's fairly simple.
It's beyond bizarre to compare the creation of a massive company, thousands of jobs, numerous earth shattering products which enhance the lives of millions, with a text editor a few programmers use.
IMHO Stallman has been a net negative on the computer industry, and will not be remembered fondly outside the emacs niche userbase.
Comparing the two is a bit like comparing Thomas Paine to Thomas Edison.
Stallman created a movement. A movement that largely predicted the ways technology and society interact. I think in 100 years people will still using the GPL. I can't say that about the iPod.
Perhaps a few hundred years ago we could read someone's work without knowing who they were. Now we are subject to the cult of the personality - and indeed, seek it out. It's difficult to detach the work from its owner without consciously attempting to do so.
(Having said that I was disappointed to read such public vitriol from RMS, surely he could have found a way to express the sentiment in a more creative manner).
I don't see anything there that's especially unreasonable. When Stallman gives a speech he knows he's representing GNU and the FSF. The rider basically obligates the organization to tell Stallman in advance what kind of venue he's going to, and warns the organization that there will be a large crowd, so that they should plan accordingly. In his position, I'm sure that I'd have similar clauses in any agreement to talk.
I'm not sure if the message was posted to the list to criticize Stallman or whatever.
And I was thinking the same thing as you, until I got down to the second half of the rider.
Spoiler: it involves cats, parrots, hygiene, social awkwardness, and just about every other minute little detail. The sheer length of the piece might also be considered a turnoff.
Alternate interpretation: he has had overly solicitous people fret over why he's not eating breakfast, and would rather simply put the topic out of everyone's minds. He comes off as a solidly decent person in the rest of this letter; losing his composure at the mention of breakfast seems out of character.
Right. Which wouldn't have happened, if he hadn't already added in the first paragraph about how he really likes parrots and would be "very very glad" to stay with someone who owns one.
RMS likes parrots, but because of his frequent travel he can't take care of one himself all year round. What better way to be around parrots than to combine his travel activities with meeting parrot owners?
I don't think it was posted to the mySociety list in order to criticise RMS, more a notification of what's in store for anyone who is thinking of organising an event where he is a speaker. You certainly wouldn't want to go ahead without having seen the rider, given the number of conditions attached.
"I usually decline to participate in "open source" or "Linux" events. See http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html for why it is incorrect to refer to the operating system as "Linux"."
Ah, this never gets old.
Also, using Pepsi to keep awake.
Are all riders this god damn picky? It wouldn't surprise me. I imagine there is a great amount of antagonism between performers/speakers/etc and the venues.
Linux was a good kernel that was better than what GNU had at the time, and it was compatible (technically/legally) with the rest of GNU, so it deprecated Hurd.
Sure, if enough folks wanted to, they good finish Hurd. But what's the point? They should go work on Linux.
Remember.
A lot of his talks are likely to be to universities/user groups who have never organised a talk before - so 'remember a microphone' is useful!
And a lot of talks maybe in 'emerging nations' who assume that since he is American he is rich and FSF is something like IBM - so he can afford to fly half way round the world without being paid.
This is from a few years ago (ie recording on tape) so GNU/FSF/Linux may not have been as mainstream and organisers might have only advertised this as a computer department seminar rather than a large event. I once organised a university SciFi society talk for a UK "childrens" author - just as they became a global hit. A talk that might bring 20 people suddenly filled the largest auditorium.
The rest of the stuff is just an engineers approach to solving problems. Rather than tell a dozen people at 100 talks a year how I like my coffee - I write it down once and end of problem
>Are all riders this god damn picky? It wouldn't surprise me. I imagine there is a great amount of antagonism between performers/speakers/etc and the venues.
For certain performers, it's pretty much necessary. Someone else has mentioned Van Halen's "No brown M&M's" clause here, which they used as a quick way to see if every line in the rider has been followed. That's especially important when pyrotechnics or special stage instructions are in the rider, because if the venue is following small details like "no brown M&M's", they're much more likely to follow large safety requirements.
The good ones are. When you travel and speak that much, you have figured out what you need in order to perform at your best. The more specific you can be to an event organizer (and the more you can get it out in advance, so they don't have to ask about it), the better shape you'll be in to perform. Some people are super easy-going and enjoy the adventure of travel, and can do with a one-page rider that just talks about sound - but they're few and far between. When you travel three weeks per month, that romance is gone. Your event is just one more engagement in one more city for the presenter, and consistency/familiarity is the highest virtue you can provide..
For all the weird stuff on there (like buying a parrot, or checking to make sure you can dial out from a hotel), it's probably listed because someone's done it before, and he didn't want it to happen again. If you're interested in more examples like this, check out the Smoking Gun's collection of celebrity riders - http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstage.
Methinks in large part such "pickiness" is reasonable. These are people, not minor deities. They are being thrust into wildly different situations with complete strangers on a daily basis. They know what keeps them functioning, optimal, and sane - and nobody else is going to know, guess, or care unless it's spelled out in black-and-white. Their stress and schedules are maxed out enough as it is without having to deal with annoying mundane inanities (or worse) for a significant part of every day. Odds are their income/costs are high enough that just the time spent saying "I can't stand diet sodas, please get me the real thing" cost more than having a 2-liter of what he said he wanted on ice right there when he wanted it. And yes, there are odd little things that make all that stress tolerable, and the absence of which can drive one batty (every morning make sure there's 2 tbsp unflavored non-French-roast coffee beans, a small hand grinder, an Aeropress coffee maker, and 200F water or I'm not going to start the day well; a hard-won point of daily satisfaction for me, bewilderingly specific to others).
A supply of tea with milk and sugar would be nice. If it is tea I really like, I like it without milk and sugar. With milk and sugar, any kind of tea is fine. I always bring tea bags with me, so if we use my tea bags, I will certainly like that tea without milk or sugar.
Really, I think he's just screwing with us. Douglas Adams would be proud.
How is that even somewhat ambiguous? Personal and, perhaps, skirting the outer edge of what a remarkably parochial person might regard as quirky, but he laid out a drink preference specific enough someone has a shopping list and doesn't have to guess. Which is what a rider is for.
You don't even need to buy him tea; he explicitly says he always brings his own with him.
So if I provide tea he likes, I don't have to provide milk and sugar. If I provide tea he doesn't like, I have to provide milk and sugar. Unless of course he chooses to drink his own tea, in which case my tea, my milk, and my sugar will all go to waste.
This is fine, as long as I know precisely what kind of tea he likes. But that's not specified, so I just gotta guess what he might like. And then buy some milk and sugar, just in case he likes my fancy tea just enough to drink it, but not enough to skip the milk and sugar.
Really I think he's just writing his opinions on tea off the top of his head.
Having had experience organizing lots of public speaking/platform events, I can assure you that "please provide milk and sugar" is one of the easiest-to-comply with requests I've ever seen. He doesn't specify that it must be soy milk, or 2%, or half and half. He doesn't say it has to be natural cane sugar grown on the sunny side of a hill and harvested by certified sugar cane naturalists during the summer solstice. He just wants milk and sugar; beyond that he leaves the details to you.
Worst case scenario is that he doesn't use them, in which case you're out what, two dollars? That is peanuts compared to what some riders cost you by specifying elaborate A/V and lighting setups, specific vendors and contractors (i.e. friends of the speaker) you have to deal with, luxury transportation and lodging, et al.
As to the "what kind of tea" issue, he helpfully solves the problem for you -- he'll bring his own, which he is guaranteed to like. So there's no scenario where your failure to choose the right tea will result in him being tealess. Strictly speaking the only thing you're on the hook to provide is hot water, which is free and easy to scrounge up at short notice.
It's really a remarkably stress-free document, as riders go.
He's basically saying, "if you provide tea provide a full tea service or I likely won't like it." If you don't want to provide that, don't.
If that's too complicated he repeatedly says "email me and ask". "Hey RMS, what tea would you like us to buy" would do it. As would giving him $0.75 for the tea bags he brought, if you feel the need.
sounds like a Mother Goose tongue twister:
she sells seashells by the seashore,
the shells she sells are seashells I am sure,
so if she sells seashells by the seashore,
I am sure the shells are seashore seashells.
"If you can find a host for me that has a friendly parrot, I will be very very glad. If you can find someone who has a friendly parrot I can visit with, that will be nice too."
He's fine with coach class, and will sleep on a couch. Better to have more info than too little.
"All of his demands are either directly related to his health or the moral causes that he champions."
Did you read the same list I did? He requests to stay in somebody's home but specifies a list of foods he doesn't like and demands he be consulted on any meals he's served. Some of his demands relate to his cause, and a few to his health, but overall I'd say he comes across as overly particular and demanding. I guess if he's heavily in demand he can get away with it as there will always be someone willing to accommodate him, but that someone won't be me.
Written out in black-and-white it seems rather cold and heartless, but it merely clarifies what would be a normal practice.
If a guest in your house is uncomfortable/unable to eat what you're having, and has given no prior notice, then it can be quite a problem to find out right when mealtime is approaching.
This is a sensible way of avoiding unnecessary conflict.
Right -- I've done my share of being a guest of and a host to many people of different cultures, and a decent share of his points are either a "how to be a good host" checklist, or removing the difficult aspects of being a good host to him (i.e., guessing the needs of a guest who may not express them directly).
I think I'm generally a good host, because I read people well. But armed with a document like this, even someone who reads people terribly could be a good host to rms with minimal effort. It doesn't look very hard once you know what he's hoping for; some of his points (like saying he sometimes makes suggestions that may cause inconvenience, and please let him know... like his request that hosts not offer to help him with everything) are basically "I know how to be a good guest if you let me."
I've been in those situations (carefully avoiding praising things for fear that your hosts will find some way of giving them to you...), and it's really quite frustrating.
If I was a constant guest (and constantly faced with the same frustrations), I'd start compiling a document like this. Over time -- and I'm pretty sure this has been underway for a long time (notice the reference to changing the tape when recording him?) -- I suspect it would grow as this one has.
Perhaps it is my experience in reading many of these riders in the past but I actually found this rider to be very reasonable and well thought out.
I would imagine it's an evolution of compiling best-case scenarios and trying to limit the worst.
You have to take into account that Dr. Stallman travels a lot and has to be a guest considerably more than most other people. Usually the people reading this rider want to make him feel at home and cater to his whims.
I would like to say that I'm surprised but honestly I'm not. Sure RMS has some odd behaviors but pretty much everyone who has dedicated a tremendous amount of energy to a cause as he has come with a cavalcade of interesting behaviors. Everything I've read about RMS as a person has revealed that he is generally a well thought out and decent person.. with some polarizing fundamental beliefs.
Health includes mental health. Especially important for someone who's personal make up is not particularly compatible with a life of travel and public appearances.
Most of it tells me "this is what I need to stay sane and productive", and although very detailed and somewhat peculiar, none of his demands are particularly hard to meet.
I think the "flown around the world" bit is the most important. In America (or even Western Europe, for that matter), we may wonder why it includes so much detail. But perhaps by spelling things out, it removes the possibility of cultural misunderstandings.
Indeed. Including, but perhaps not limited to, possibly offending your hosts/organizers when you don't drink the Pepsi they so carefully provided for you. In the Western world we might not care so much if he leaves a few sodas on the presenter's table. That may not fly so well in cultures that don't drink as much soda and abhor waste far more than we.
What did strike the most is how much this precise description of a conference organization is at odds with Asian culture. I guess rms would not be in his shoes in China for instance.
Actually, from my perspective as a contracts lawyer, this rider is far from what I would call clear. Like the GPL, it's a helpful document, and cheerfully neurotic, but it leaves lots of room for dispute and confusion. Specificity != clarity.
Likewise, verbosity is not an indicator of a good contract. To the contrary.
That might be because as a lawyer you're biased to prefer form over intent. I'm sorry if this sounds nasty, it's not supposed to be though. People are different. GNU/Stallman goes to great lengths to describe where he is coming from so the reader can understand what the motivations behind his points are.
It's not supposed to be a watertight contract between two parties with opposing agendas who are trying to outmaneuver each other at a soulless semantics game. Instead, the rider is supposed to enable people who already have friendly intentions to understand (and interpolate!) what is important to their guest.
At the end of the day, a contract doesn't replace a relationship. It just puts everyone on notice about what's intended.
Most of the rider is crystal clear. It just gets hard to follow in areas such as the following:
A supply of tea with milk and sugar would be nice. If it is tea I really like, I like it without milk and sugar. With milk and sugar, any kind of tea is fine. I always bring tea bags with me, so if we use my tea bags, I will certainly like that tea without milk or sugar.
If I am quite sleepy, I would like two cans or small bottles of non-diet Pepsi. (I dislike the taste of coke, and of all diet soda; also, there is an international boycott of the Coca Cola company for killing union organizers in Colombia and Guatemala; see killercoke.org.) However, if I am not very sleepy, I won't want Pepsi, because it is better if I don't drink so much sugar.
In more concise (and readable) form: (1) milk and sugar is required, although he may not use it, and (2) Pepsi, not Coke.
The problem with unerring dedication to a moral cause is that life always manages to present the most absurd edge cases. You start with someone casually asking 'Coke or Pepsi?' and your knee-jerk response is something about murdered workers in a South American jungle. There's nothing wrong with moralizing in every context, but it's the opposite of fun/pleasant to be around. Everything in life is a tradeoff.
Myself, I have a hard time being fiercely moralistic about anything, because Moralizers often do more harm than good. Necessarily, they purport to know the truth better than others – a conceit that I can't get behind.
"So there I am, in Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, at 3 in the morning, looking for 1000 brown M&M's to fill a brandy glass, or Richard Stallman wouldn't go on stage that night."
If you can find a host for me that has a friendly parrot, I will be
very very glad. If you can find someone who has a friendly parrot I
can visit with, that will be nice too.
Heh ... reminds me of the story of Van Halen's rider - no brown M&Ms or they have the right to not play the event (without penalty)! This actually served a purpose. The had exacting specs for some of their pyrotechnics. They reasoned that if someone had adhered to the rider carefully enough to notice the M&Ms clause, they likely would have been exacting for the other specifications as well.
> The had exacting specs for some of their pyrotechnics
... and their electrical gear (amps and so on), and possibly the sheer weight of everything they'd be bringing on to the stage, and the simple fact that, at the time that rider was drawn up, Van Halen was playing venues that had never had a serious rock band of their kind before and were likely to be unprepared to the point of putting the fans at risk of being killed, which has happened a few times (that Whitesnake concert is the most recent, I believe).
This is wonderful, in so many different ways. I've read quite a bit of the FSF material--which is invariably specific, clear and verbose--and it's interesting to read material in the same style, but about a completely different topic.
For example, under "Hospitality":
"In some places, my hosts act as if my every wish were their command. By catering to my every whim, in effect they make me a tyrant over them, which is not a role I like. I start to worry that I might subject them to great burdens without even realizing. I start being afraid to express my appreciation of anything, because they would get it and give it to me at any cost. If it is night, and the stars are
beautiful, I hesitate to say so, lest my hosts feel obligated to try to get one for me."
For such a specific rule, it must have happened before.
I'd wager somebody once gave him a parrot for breakfast.
"Good morning, sir. Your host ordered you a breakfast of eggs over easy and a parrot we've named Lenny, The Open Source Linux Parrot sponsored by Coke®."
I mean obviously, I bet nothing happened before. Who gives someone a parrot?
But he has a short graf on why you shouldn't give him Coke. I had no idea about the "Killer Coke" story. Clearly, he reads up on this stuff; he just wants to share how inhumane the parrot pet trade is, I'd guess.
It may well have happened. I helped organized his talk at Concordia University a few years ago, and this text was slightly different back then. It specified that he'd like to meet a parrot. But that's it. Just was one sentence, giving little information. Given that this is his standard text, I bet someone bought a parrot at one point over the last few years, and that prompted this seemingly peculiar addition.
I start being afraid to express my appreciation of anything, because they would get it and give it to me at any cost. If it is night, and the stars are beautiful, I hesitate to say so, lest my hosts feel obligated to try to get one for me.
RMS is quite unkempt, his feet stink like a hobo.
In general he has a retarded way of dealing with people,
not a nice person to be in touch with.
Just my 2 cents.
PS: I did not mention his philosophy, neithe if his ideas are wrong.
I just said he's got a bad personal hygiene and that he is has a retarded way of dealing with people, here are some quotes: http://edward.oconnor.cx/2005/04/rms
It is plain wrong to offer condolences to a father with a newborn child and thus retarded.
RMS is a delightful man (I've had the pleasure of interviewing him at length in person), and his demands are completely in line with his philosophies. His dedication to free and open-source ideals, if impractical, is also inspiring and rare.
Saying he has "a retarded way of dealing with people" is perhaps too general. I myself found him enchanting and enlightening in our interactions. Maybe you just didn't like the way he treated you.
He certainly manages to get your attention. I saw him speak many years ago, the room was full of young, passionate enthusiasts and true to form even with his unkempt appearance we were glued to every word. I have no doubt he has been almost entirely responsible for maintaining the high profile nature of free software (for all his complaints about 'open source', the side affect has been to create a rich culture of sharing while producing work you can get paid for).
"I didn’t receive the DEC message, but I can’t imagine I would have been bothered if I have. I get tons of uninteresting mail, and system announcements about babies born, etc. At least a demo might have been interesting."
I think your poor English isn't sufficient to understand the dark humour at play in the post.
The foreword from Edward O'Connor might just as well be rewritten: "In which I consider the latest example of my own utter lack of humour." I love his casual Asperger's syndrome diagnosis. Then Edward goes on to write authoritative posts on empathy, on hypocrisy, and on overpopulation.
As it says on top of his homepage: Edward O'Connor is a web standards developer in San Francisco, CA.
Mr King of the Hill, get down from your eloquent throne and stop suggesting something untoward.
You are twisting words around, no more no less. Your personal beef with Mr. O'Connor wasn't really worth mentioning and there is no dark humor at play, Edward's opinion is utterly irrelevant here, as I only asked to look at the statements made by RMS. In my humble opinion Richard Matthew Stallman is a prime example of antisocial personality disorder.
I think my favorite piece, aside from the parrots, is this: "If the police want information about free software, they are welcome to come to my speech."
My funniest memory of Richard Stallman is once he was invited to give the commencement speech at my local university, Lakehead University. He was pretty oblivious to the fact he was at a graduation, and not at any point in his speech did he address the students and their future. All he talked about was free software, how copyright was bad, and that the university should be using free software. Most of the students were pretty pissed off at him because he ruined one of the most significant moments in their life. He didn't even say, congratulations well done on graduating, or even a simple "hello." He only spoke about free software.
I think the video is still up on the university's website somewhere. If you're interested in it, I could try to find it and post it.
You see, that's the problem. His mission was to promote free software, instead of the mission the university hired him for: sending the graduates off on their next journey.
You don't hire a missionary with a vision to pat yourself or your audience on the back.
That's like expecting Sylvester Stallone to do higher mathematics or Mother Theresa to do an arms deal for you.
Some people are what they are and their environment/audience will have to accept them as they are.
The problem lies squarely with the person that hired him, the abstract of the speeches listed should have adequately explained what they were going to get. That's exactly what that rider exists for in the first place, to avoid misunderstandings like that.
I highly doubt if RMS could even tailor his speech to the occasion, he must know it by heart by now except for the Q&A part.
What I found interesting on reading the 'rider' is that he still refers to the GNU operating system as though it is in daily use. I've yet to see a HURD based system do anything useful in production but half the world wide web seems to run on Linux these days. Of course linux is 'merely a kernel'.
But if you write free software the you also give away the right to name that software, after all, a fork is under no obligation to be named after the parent. So RMS holding on to insisting to call Linux GNU/Linux looks to be against the self-imposed freedoms.
> What I found interesting on reading the 'rider' is that he still refers to the GNU operating system as though it is in daily use. I've yet to see a HURD based system do anything useful in production but half the world wide web seems to run on Linux these days. Of course linux is 'merely a kernel'.
Considering that glib, libc, gcc, emacs, the vast majority of the Unix utilities, bash, grub, autoconf, make, readline, gzip, tar, screen, wget, and Gnome are all GNU projects[0], I would say that GNU is most definitely in daily use. The Linux kernel isn't much use without the software on top of it, and it's nothing at all without the compiler that turns it into machine code.
I wasn't referring to the name GNU/Linux; I was specifically refuting the comment I quoted. The funny thing is that the comment effectively justifies RMS's insistence on using GNU/Linux. Because so many refer to the entire distribution as Linux, a lot of people fail to realize the hugely-important role that GNU software plays in Linux systems.
Linux is still useful without KDE, but the functionality provided by GNU is critical and would require a large effort to replace.
> the functionality provided by GNU is critical and would require a large effort to replace
This isn't really true. You could just grab your userspace from a BSD, or Plan9Port. Clang and LLVM do well enough to replace GCC on most important architectures.
But that's taken from all the software available in the repos, not the software that's actually installed on people's systems. For instance, the pie chart shows slices for both Gnome and KDE. How many people have both installed on their systems? Or neither?
Now compare that to how many people have none of the GNU software on their systems.
I would imagine (purely anecdotal) if you take just installed software then the GNU percentage increases as its generally installed on most systems. I would also imagine in the Linux/BSD world the number of people running without GNU software is in the very low single digits.
It's really difficult to determine the relative importance of one software project at this level over another they reliant on each other. The Linux kernel needs GNU as much as GNU needs the kernel (at the moment anyway). You can run the OS without KDE (hence not calling it KDE/Linux).
I can see Stallman's point as he set out to create an operating system called GNU, created almost all of the parts required which were then used by someone else to create a Kernel which was then packaged up with a different name.
Personally I think you can call GNU/Linux whatever you want as the licence its released under has nothing in there saying you need to give mention to GNU in the name. If you package it up you can call it Fred for all I care and I will refer to it as Fred.
Actually in BSD/UNIX people generally don't use the GNU tools, except, maybe for gcc on BSDs (UNICES have their own compilers). We believe GNU tools are of very poor quality.
GNU is, essentially, a clone of Unix except for the kernel, which is supplied by Linux. Calling your computer a GNU system is about as accurate as calling it a Unix system. Calling it a KDE computer is also technically accurate.
You could also form stacks, like KDE/GNU/Linux, or go all the way and just draw a directed graph of the major software dependencies. This isn't a serious proposal, but I would be kind of pleased if someone actually did this.
Are you going to argue that it is? Is GRUB merely a "tool" for booting your computer? Is libc a "tool" for exposing OS-provided functionality to software? Is GNOME a GUI "tool"?
Ok clearly you think the rest of your argument is obvious, but I'm going to be dense and say "yes", those are tools. Just as the Linux kernel is a tool for managing the various resources of the system. Maybe it's the word "merely" that's tripping things up, but I don't see how any of these things fail to fit the word "tool".
It would be easy to argue that most software fits the "tool" label. As far as I know, rms objects to describing GNU as a set of "programming tools" or "development tools" as he (reasonably, in this case, I think) finds those labels unfair. GNU software is required for any operating system using the Linux kernel, as far as I'm aware, and those systems are not limited to programming or development.
Just to offer a counter perspective, I'm sure that RMS honestly believes that the most important thing for your future is the use and advocacy of free software, and that being the case, there would be little point discussing anything else, no? Software increasingly pervades everything we depend on in life. The ownership and control of our futures rests to a large extent on who owns and controls the software we are using. The recent trend has been toward closed platforms behind opaque service interfaces, which is a problem of increasing difficulty for the free software movement.
If you're looking for a quick laugh, listen to part 2 where he starts off going on a rant about how the university is using Windows Media Player to stream the convocation and forces users to use Windows. He tells the audience to "throw Windows out of the computer, or the computer out the Window." He did get a lot of cheers for that remark though.
You can't blame that on Stallman. He has always been completely clear and up front about what he will and will not speak about. And he always agrees on the topic ahead of time with who ever is arranging the event.
In other words. Who ever arranged this graduation obviously did a horrible job, and is the person you should blame.
I think it's fair to assume most people have basic "people" skills, humility, manners etc. Unfortunately that isn't the case with Stallman. He's an obsessive fundamentalist only concerned with one topic.
It's well known within a certain rather narrow community of people. The folks who booked him may just have read his name on a list of "vaguely important people who are willing to give speeches".
If your university hired someone who only spoke Mongolian but spit in people's faces when they extended their hand for a handshake, would you be upset at the speaker or the idiot who hired him?
RMS lacks basic social graces. He preaches to the choir but somehow still manages to piss them off with pedantic shit like GNU/Linux. Why doesn't he just copyright it so he can plaster the GNU logo all over everything and be done with it.
"If your university hired someone who only spoke Mongolian but spit in people's faces when they extended their hand for a handshake, would you be upset at the speaker or the idiot who hired him?"
If their spitting was common knowledge, as RMS's eccentricities are, then yes. Of course I would be upset primary with whoever booked them...
He does, however, provide a rider before to anyone considering inviting him to speak that makes his personal obsession and his inflexibility around that obsession abundantly and explicitly clear.
I have a suspicion that whoever booked him simply didn't read it, or didn't understand it.
I mean, come on now -- other people make lots of noise about his eccentricities, and he himself basically wears a signboard explaining them, and then people are still surprised?
Yes; they are likely better candidates for commencement speakers.
I wouldn't say rms "isn't a nice person" in this context -- he's just very focused on his cause, and he doesn't take detours or "tone it down" for the sake of avoiding temporary inconvenience to others. It's rare for people to stick to their own principles so studiously (unfortunately, perhaps?), so he even goes out of his way to warn them.
I've both planned some fairly large events with speakers and worked closely with well known but 'eccentric' personalities similar rms. It's really a mixed bag as to who is to blame. On the one had the committee coming up with this should have done some research (and asked themselves "why hasn't rms done any convocations before?"). I've known organizations entertaining the idea of rms as a keynote, and it almost immediately gets shot down by anyone how has actually watched him speak. But undoubtedly the committee in charge of this event was mix, and rms on paper does sound like a good idea. At the same time, I know rms is passionate about his cause, but it is a dick move to not at least pay some superficial lip service to the event you're speaking at. In fact he'd do a much better service to his cause if he just made a good speech connecting graduation to free software. Look what a fantastic speech Steve Jobs gave, but certainly promoted both his personal image and apple as well.
It's really a mixed bag as to who is to blame. On the one had the committee coming up with this should have done some research (and asked themselves "why hasn't rms done any convocations before?"). I've known organizations entertaining the idea of rms as a keynote, and it almost immediately gets shot down by anyone how has actually watched him speak.
Yeah. It seems like ordering squid at a restaurant: if you order squid or someone orders it for you, you shouldn't complain that you don't like seafood. And you can't really blame the squid.
"I do NOT use browsers, I use the SSH protocol. If the network requires a proxy for SSH, I probably can't use it at all."
I wondered if this applied to all net usage or just email, turns out he never uses a web browser, ever. If he needs the contents of a web page, he emails a daemon which wgets the page and emails it back to him: http://lwn.net/Articles/262570/
This takes me back. In the early/mid 90s, particularly in Universities, internet was slow as molasses and many of us used these mail interfaces, for web and also for FTP (FTPmail). In many places email was given most of the bandwidth and it was a lot faster like that. Big files would come Uuencoded in several parts. In Uni, usually pics of Cindy Crawford and Erika Eleniak among others.
Now it seems incredibly geeky but back then it wasn't anything remarkable at all.
My first web usage was via message exchange with a local BBS which did UUCP e-mail exchanges every 4 hours. I e-mailed my request to an e-mail <-> web gateway at CERN, and got my page back in the next exchange.
Thankfully that only lasted a year before I got proper access.
And yes, I remember FTPmail, as well as similar gateways for Gopher, Veronica, Archie, WAIS... I feel old now.
This entire comments thread has a higher than expected level of subtle/downplayed humor. I appreciate subtle humor, but I don't know if Hacker News is the place for it.
His demands are surely the cumulative result of years of travelling, giving speeches, dealing with cat fur, losing numerous tickets etc. I would be surprised if he wasn't this systematic.
avocado
eggplant, usually (there are occasional exceptions)
hot pepper
olives
liver (even in trace quantities)
stomach and intestine; other organ meats
cooked tuna
oysters
egg yolk, if the taste is noticeable, except when boiled completely hard
many strong cheeses, especially those with green fungus
desserts that contain fruit or liqueur flavors
sour fruits, such as grapefruit and many oranges
beer
coffee (though weak coffee flavor can be good in desserts)
the taste of alcohol (so I don't drink anything stronger than wine)
Mr. Stallman is neither nice in manner or smell. His ideas, while visionary at times, are not pragmatic. He is his own worst enemy. Perhaps, however, it takes an unfriendly, smelly man to trumpet the ideas of freedom in the digital age. I'm ok with that.
I thought about voting that down or not. Instead I'm just going to comment. This smell thing is really uncalled for, isn't it. I must admit that I always admired what he does, but - maybe like you - I have come to the conclusion that this guy is probably not a nice person. Probably.
Also, he kind of comes across as a one-trick pony. He literally can only think about one single issue. I believe when he thinks about the entire universe, he just looks at free and proprietary software and he's done. There is nothing else. Yes, maybe that's what it takes. Maybe visionaries can't be nice. Maybe successful people have to be assholes. Then again, I hope not.
I can empathize with that, since I also have some traits that raise similar responses, which I'd rather avoid.
But I'd better word my request as "please don't question my choices" instead of going into that much detail about them, which is precisely what I'd like to avoid in the first place.
I actually had breakfast with him at a conference in Havana in 2007, so I was a little surprised to see this in his rider. Another reader posted that it's new since 2008, so maybe he had some sort of breakfast-related disaster at some point in '07-'08... or maybe having to spend an entire breakfast lecturing me about why Linux should always be called GNU/Linux put him off the meal for good.
Given the kind of talks he does, I can see where he's coming from with this; it sounds like the kind of list that was built up over time.
In general, I would imagine he doesn't want to repeat the kind of incident that happened at linuxworld 99, where the he was given the torvalds award[1].
I think he pronounced it "GNU plus Linux" the time I attended one of his speeches. I don't know if he keeps on doing that, but it seems more elegant and positive than the slash.
Thanks for this, but I can't help feeling like something of a voyeur for reading. It really is a burden to be in a position where your communications are divulged publicly, to be dissected. He's hardly Van Halen.
I apologize up front to those of you who take the following comments as me being purposefully obtuse. That's not my intent.
I am not familiar with the intricate details of his message but on the surface it seems to me to be at odds, at some level, with the idea of it being ok to have a parrot as a pet. Software needs to be free or humans have a right to have free access to software but it's okay to keep a bird in a captive environment. Birds are meant to fly. Even if parrots aren't kept in a cage they're still kept within some confines. For those of you who have ever seen first hand a bird who surfs on wind drafts, remaining stationary in the air in the process, either on the edge of a canyon or just in a field somewhere; or a bird swooping through the Grand Canyon gets a sense of the freedom I'm inferring these birds are being deprived of.
I'm perfectly willing to admit that I'm missing some piece of the puzzle but it seems hard to me to be able to reconcile these two ideas. Do you think he's ever thought about this?
Parrots should never be physically confined, either by cages or (god forbid!) chains. If they like you, they will hang around you on their own accord. After a while they seem to regard some humans as family. Mine would follow my mom around like a dog.
As far as I know, they do not surf wind drafts, but they do require exercise. Therefore, you should have an open space. Either that, or take it outdoors at a safe location (no roads!) for it to fly. But most importantly, let it climb some tress, they love it - even more if it has fruits or seeds. It was difficult convincing mine to get out of trees - we usually had to resort to bribing.
They can eat human food to some extent, mainly fruits and grain. I had trouble with parrot rations, because it was very picky and only ate what it wanted to (mostly the peanuts) and left the rest.
If you do get a parrot, get a couple. It makes them happier and safer (a cat might attack and seriously hurt one - but it is unlikely to kill). A cat attacking two parrots would die before doing much.
I don't really think that a pet parrot would be unhappy per se, provided the above holds. I can agree with RMS when he says that wild parrots would become unhappy.
Unfortunately, mine was a wild one. What's more, judging by the behavior, he seemed to be the leader of his group - the others seemed to follow and imitate him. However, it was also the most docile and appeared to be the happiest one. The others didn't seem to be so well. But we did treat him as well as we could.
The vet could not determine the cause of its death. I get the impression that, since it is an uncommon pet even here, he didn't have any previous experience. I think whatever it was, an experienced vet could have saved him. And I found years later that sunflower seeds have to be eaten in moderation, as they are very fatty.
I am having a hard time using the pronoun "it". His death haunts me to this day and it's been almost two decades now.
I'm really sorry to hear about your loss. Parrots are wonderful creatures.
I will point out that, though letting your parrot out of the cage for indoor exercise is important -- and they do indeed love to climb around, so get a big ol' play gym with branches and little chains and stuff -- nobody in the (North American) pet-parrot literature recommends letting them outside. Indeed, letting a hand-raised parrot escape to the outdoors is a classic way to get them killed. They have no idea what to do out there, they often get lost or confused or stressed and fail to come home, even from the top of a tree right next door. And, obviously, there are a lot of dangers to a naive bird in a tree: Hawks, cats, other mammals, perhaps even snakes...
Now, obviously there are lots of places where wild parrots live outside by the thousand. And in the right climate even former pet birds can successfully transition back to the wild. (Even in North America: See The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, a great movie.) And if you had an originally-wild bird it's even less surprising that it managed to negotiate trips to the trees and back. But it's kind of fortunate that yours kept coming back.
I have kept a parrot for many years now, but I eventually decided that I agree with you: I don't intend to get any more parrots, and you shouldn't get one either. They are great birds but I don't think they make great pets after all.
(I'd elaborate but it's more fun just to refer you to RMS, who is completely correct on this subject. I didn't read the rest of his note, though, so he may be less correct on other subjects. ;)
Having said that: Just as birds are "meant" to fly around all the time, so are humans "meant" to spend most of their lives without sitting, run long distances across equatorial plains in bare feet, live in bands of perhaps a dozen or two individuals, teach their children how to find, identify, and possibly eat hundreds of varieties of wild plant, periodically endure starvation, cope with a wide variety of exciting parasites inside and out, and occasionally get attacked by wild creatures. And though at one time or another various people have become fanatical about recreating one (presumed) aspect of our early environment or another -- ranging from barefoot running to the "paleo" diet -- humans do in fact live full and happy lives in modern cities, or in the Arctic Circle. We're quite adaptive.
Parrots are also quite adaptive. Like dogs, their main concern is that they live just as the flock does. In a home the flock, of course, is you and any other creatures that happen to be around. Parrots are pretty happy so long as they're around people and doing what the people are doing. My parrot can fly, but does not do so often; when he is out of his cage, he generally flies only to get closer to me, and then only when I refuse to heed his calls to come closer to him.
But I agree that all parrots would be even happier living in flocks in outdoor flight cages, of a size ranging from eight feet wide to, well, infinity. So I don't encourage anyone else to acquire a pet bird, although I obviously endorse taking good care of the pet birds that already exist, like mine.
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[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 291 ms ] threadSteve Jobs created a massive company. Thousands of jobs. He created products we all love and use.
Stallman just goes around ranting mad rants at people.
It's beyond bizarre to compare the creation of a massive company, thousands of jobs, numerous earth shattering products which enhance the lives of millions, with a text editor a few programmers use.
IMHO Stallman has been a net negative on the computer industry, and will not be remembered fondly outside the emacs niche userbase.
Stallman created a movement. A movement that largely predicted the ways technology and society interact. I think in 100 years people will still using the GPL. I can't say that about the iPod.
(Having said that I was disappointed to read such public vitriol from RMS, surely he could have found a way to express the sentiment in a more creative manner).
And I was thinking the same thing as you, until I got down to the second half of the rider.
Spoiler: it involves cats, parrots, hygiene, social awkwardness, and just about every other minute little detail. The sheer length of the piece might also be considered a turnoff.
Tip: never use the word breakfast near him.
Ah, this never gets old.
Also, using Pepsi to keep awake.
Are all riders this god damn picky? It wouldn't surprise me. I imagine there is a great amount of antagonism between performers/speakers/etc and the venues.
Question: Isn't writing the kernel most of the work in an operating system?
Answer: No, many components take a lot of work.
If I recall correctly, work on the GNU kernel began in the mid-80's (HURD in 1990?). I'll leave the correlation to the reader.
Sure, if enough folks wanted to, they good finish Hurd. But what's the point? They should go work on Linux.
And a lot of talks maybe in 'emerging nations' who assume that since he is American he is rich and FSF is something like IBM - so he can afford to fly half way round the world without being paid.
This is from a few years ago (ie recording on tape) so GNU/FSF/Linux may not have been as mainstream and organisers might have only advertised this as a computer department seminar rather than a large event. I once organised a university SciFi society talk for a UK "childrens" author - just as they became a global hit. A talk that might bring 20 people suddenly filled the largest auditorium.
The rest of the stuff is just an engineers approach to solving problems. Rather than tell a dozen people at 100 talks a year how I like my coffee - I write it down once and end of problem
For certain performers, it's pretty much necessary. Someone else has mentioned Van Halen's "No brown M&M's" clause here, which they used as a quick way to see if every line in the rider has been followed. That's especially important when pyrotechnics or special stage instructions are in the rider, because if the venue is following small details like "no brown M&M's", they're much more likely to follow large safety requirements.
The good ones are. When you travel and speak that much, you have figured out what you need in order to perform at your best. The more specific you can be to an event organizer (and the more you can get it out in advance, so they don't have to ask about it), the better shape you'll be in to perform. Some people are super easy-going and enjoy the adventure of travel, and can do with a one-page rider that just talks about sound - but they're few and far between. When you travel three weeks per month, that romance is gone. Your event is just one more engagement in one more city for the presenter, and consistency/familiarity is the highest virtue you can provide..
For all the weird stuff on there (like buying a parrot, or checking to make sure you can dial out from a hotel), it's probably listed because someone's done it before, and he didn't want it to happen again. If you're interested in more examples like this, check out the Smoking Gun's collection of celebrity riders - http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstage.
Methinks in large part such "pickiness" is reasonable. These are people, not minor deities. They are being thrust into wildly different situations with complete strangers on a daily basis. They know what keeps them functioning, optimal, and sane - and nobody else is going to know, guess, or care unless it's spelled out in black-and-white. Their stress and schedules are maxed out enough as it is without having to deal with annoying mundane inanities (or worse) for a significant part of every day. Odds are their income/costs are high enough that just the time spent saying "I can't stand diet sodas, please get me the real thing" cost more than having a 2-liter of what he said he wanted on ice right there when he wanted it. And yes, there are odd little things that make all that stress tolerable, and the absence of which can drive one batty (every morning make sure there's 2 tbsp unflavored non-French-roast coffee beans, a small hand grinder, an Aeropress coffee maker, and 200F water or I'm not going to start the day well; a hard-won point of daily satisfaction for me, bewilderingly specific to others).
Some of these things might seem strange to people who are younger than 50 years old, and aren't flown around the world to give hundreds of talks.
I think that this demonstrates the value of a clear and verbose contract.
About the only thing that I laughed at (in joy) was the thing about parrots...
A supply of tea with milk and sugar would be nice. If it is tea I really like, I like it without milk and sugar. With milk and sugar, any kind of tea is fine. I always bring tea bags with me, so if we use my tea bags, I will certainly like that tea without milk or sugar.
Really, I think he's just screwing with us. Douglas Adams would be proud.
You don't even need to buy him tea; he explicitly says he always brings his own with him.
This is fine, as long as I know precisely what kind of tea he likes. But that's not specified, so I just gotta guess what he might like. And then buy some milk and sugar, just in case he likes my fancy tea just enough to drink it, but not enough to skip the milk and sugar.
Really I think he's just writing his opinions on tea off the top of his head.
Worst case scenario is that he doesn't use them, in which case you're out what, two dollars? That is peanuts compared to what some riders cost you by specifying elaborate A/V and lighting setups, specific vendors and contractors (i.e. friends of the speaker) you have to deal with, luxury transportation and lodging, et al.
As to the "what kind of tea" issue, he helpfully solves the problem for you -- he'll bring his own, which he is guaranteed to like. So there's no scenario where your failure to choose the right tea will result in him being tealess. Strictly speaking the only thing you're on the hook to provide is hot water, which is free and easy to scrounge up at short notice.
It's really a remarkably stress-free document, as riders go.
Now we're left to guess, which means we will stock several kinds of tea, in the hopes of one being to his liking.
He's basically saying, "if you provide tea provide a full tea service or I likely won't like it." If you don't want to provide that, don't.
If that's too complicated he repeatedly says "email me and ask". "Hey RMS, what tea would you like us to buy" would do it. As would giving him $0.75 for the tea bags he brought, if you feel the need.
It's so low maintenance.
I love to imagine that this actually happened.
He's fine with coach class, and will sleep on a couch. Better to have more info than too little.
Did you read the same list I did? He requests to stay in somebody's home but specifies a list of foods he doesn't like and demands he be consulted on any meals he's served. Some of his demands relate to his cause, and a few to his health, but overall I'd say he comes across as overly particular and demanding. I guess if he's heavily in demand he can get away with it as there will always be someone willing to accommodate him, but that someone won't be me.
If a guest in your house is uncomfortable/unable to eat what you're having, and has given no prior notice, then it can be quite a problem to find out right when mealtime is approaching.
This is a sensible way of avoiding unnecessary conflict.
I think I'm generally a good host, because I read people well. But armed with a document like this, even someone who reads people terribly could be a good host to rms with minimal effort. It doesn't look very hard once you know what he's hoping for; some of his points (like saying he sometimes makes suggestions that may cause inconvenience, and please let him know... like his request that hosts not offer to help him with everything) are basically "I know how to be a good guest if you let me."
I've been in those situations (carefully avoiding praising things for fear that your hosts will find some way of giving them to you...), and it's really quite frustrating.
If I was a constant guest (and constantly faced with the same frustrations), I'd start compiling a document like this. Over time -- and I'm pretty sure this has been underway for a long time (notice the reference to changing the tape when recording him?) -- I suspect it would grow as this one has.
I would imagine it's an evolution of compiling best-case scenarios and trying to limit the worst.
You have to take into account that Dr. Stallman travels a lot and has to be a guest considerably more than most other people. Usually the people reading this rider want to make him feel at home and cater to his whims.
I would like to say that I'm surprised but honestly I'm not. Sure RMS has some odd behaviors but pretty much everyone who has dedicated a tremendous amount of energy to a cause as he has come with a cavalcade of interesting behaviors. Everything I've read about RMS as a person has revealed that he is generally a well thought out and decent person.. with some polarizing fundamental beliefs.
Most of it tells me "this is what I need to stay sane and productive", and although very detailed and somewhat peculiar, none of his demands are particularly hard to meet.
Likewise, verbosity is not an indicator of a good contract. To the contrary.
It's not supposed to be a watertight contract between two parties with opposing agendas who are trying to outmaneuver each other at a soulless semantics game. Instead, the rider is supposed to enable people who already have friendly intentions to understand (and interpolate!) what is important to their guest.
Most of the rider is crystal clear. It just gets hard to follow in areas such as the following:
A supply of tea with milk and sugar would be nice. If it is tea I really like, I like it without milk and sugar. With milk and sugar, any kind of tea is fine. I always bring tea bags with me, so if we use my tea bags, I will certainly like that tea without milk or sugar.
If I am quite sleepy, I would like two cans or small bottles of non-diet Pepsi. (I dislike the taste of coke, and of all diet soda; also, there is an international boycott of the Coca Cola company for killing union organizers in Colombia and Guatemala; see killercoke.org.) However, if I am not very sleepy, I won't want Pepsi, because it is better if I don't drink so much sugar.
In more concise (and readable) form: (1) milk and sugar is required, although he may not use it, and (2) Pepsi, not Coke.
Myself, I have a hard time being fiercely moralistic about anything, because Moralizers often do more harm than good. Necessarily, they purport to know the truth better than others – a conceit that I can't get behind.
Besides, I like the idea of buying/not buying a company's products based on whether you support them or not.
I mean, that wasn't specifically mentioned as a no-no.
If you can find a host for me that has a friendly parrot, I will be very very glad. If you can find someone who has a friendly parrot I can visit with, that will be nice too.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2839581
... and their electrical gear (amps and so on), and possibly the sheer weight of everything they'd be bringing on to the stage, and the simple fact that, at the time that rider was drawn up, Van Halen was playing venues that had never had a serious rock band of their kind before and were likely to be unprepared to the point of putting the fans at risk of being killed, which has happened a few times (that Whitesnake concert is the most recent, I believe).
For example, under "Hospitality":
"In some places, my hosts act as if my every wish were their command. By catering to my every whim, in effect they make me a tyrant over them, which is not a role I like. I start to worry that I might subject them to great burdens without even realizing. I start being afraid to express my appreciation of anything, because they would get it and give it to me at any cost. If it is night, and the stars are beautiful, I hesitate to say so, lest my hosts feel obligated to try to get one for me."
Whatever an American might think, this is THE major problem - not terrorism - but being 'hospitalitied' to death!
I'd wager somebody once gave him a parrot for breakfast.
"Good morning, sir. Your host ordered you a breakfast of eggs over easy and a parrot we've named Lenny, The Open Source Linux Parrot sponsored by Coke®."
But he has a short graf on why you shouldn't give him Coke. I had no idea about the "Killer Coke" story. Clearly, he reads up on this stuff; he just wants to share how inhumane the parrot pet trade is, I'd guess.
But still! It's charming in this context.
http://stallman.org/archives/2011-jul-oct.html
I start being afraid to express my appreciation of anything, because they would get it and give it to me at any cost. If it is night, and the stars are beautiful, I hesitate to say so, lest my hosts feel obligated to try to get one for me.
Just my 2 cents. PS: I did not mention his philosophy, neithe if his ideas are wrong. I just said he's got a bad personal hygiene and that he is has a retarded way of dealing with people, here are some quotes: http://edward.oconnor.cx/2005/04/rms It is plain wrong to offer condolences to a father with a newborn child and thus retarded.
Saying he has "a retarded way of dealing with people" is perhaps too general. I myself found him enchanting and enlightening in our interactions. Maybe you just didn't like the way he treated you.
You didn't read the part of the rider about "open source".
I actually laughed at that.
Do a google search for 'childfree' some time and you'll see that RMS is on the nice side of that one.
The foreword from Edward O'Connor might just as well be rewritten: "In which I consider the latest example of my own utter lack of humour." I love his casual Asperger's syndrome diagnosis. Then Edward goes on to write authoritative posts on empathy, on hypocrisy, and on overpopulation.
As it says on top of his homepage: Edward O'Connor is a web standards developer in San Francisco, CA.
I think the video is still up on the university's website somewhere. If you're interested in it, I could try to find it and post it.
That's like expecting Sylvester Stallone to do higher mathematics or Mother Theresa to do an arms deal for you.
Some people are what they are and their environment/audience will have to accept them as they are.
The problem lies squarely with the person that hired him, the abstract of the speeches listed should have adequately explained what they were going to get. That's exactly what that rider exists for in the first place, to avoid misunderstandings like that.
I highly doubt if RMS could even tailor his speech to the occasion, he must know it by heart by now except for the Q&A part.
What I found interesting on reading the 'rider' is that he still refers to the GNU operating system as though it is in daily use. I've yet to see a HURD based system do anything useful in production but half the world wide web seems to run on Linux these days. Of course linux is 'merely a kernel'.
But if you write free software the you also give away the right to name that software, after all, a fork is under no obligation to be named after the parent. So RMS holding on to insisting to call Linux GNU/Linux looks to be against the self-imposed freedoms.
Considering that glib, libc, gcc, emacs, the vast majority of the Unix utilities, bash, grub, autoconf, make, readline, gzip, tar, screen, wget, and Gnome are all GNU projects[0], I would say that GNU is most definitely in daily use. The Linux kernel isn't much use without the software on top of it, and it's nothing at all without the compiler that turns it into machine code.
[0] See https://www.gnu.org/software/software.html#allgnupkgs for the full list.
Or without the its own license, the GNU GPL.
Linux is still useful without KDE, but the functionality provided by GNU is critical and would require a large effort to replace.
This isn't really true. You could just grab your userspace from a BSD, or Plan9Port. Clang and LLVM do well enough to replace GCC on most important architectures.
25 years later. Very few works are relevant for that long.
However since GNU software is the foundation on which most of the system is built you can argue that it has a much greater importance.
"Measuring software productivity by lines of code is like measuring progress on an airplane by how much it weighs"
Now compare that to how many people have none of the GNU software on their systems.
It's really difficult to determine the relative importance of one software project at this level over another they reliant on each other. The Linux kernel needs GNU as much as GNU needs the kernel (at the moment anyway). You can run the OS without KDE (hence not calling it KDE/Linux).
I can see Stallman's point as he set out to create an operating system called GNU, created almost all of the parts required which were then used by someone else to create a Kernel which was then packaged up with a different name.
Personally I think you can call GNU/Linux whatever you want as the licence its released under has nothing in there saying you need to give mention to GNU in the name. If you package it up you can call it Fred for all I care and I will refer to it as Fred.
You could also form stacks, like KDE/GNU/Linux, or go all the way and just draw a directed graph of the major software dependencies. This isn't a serious proposal, but I would be kind of pleased if someone actually did this.
You didn't know the real Mother Theresa, did you.
That, and he does tend to be brusk.
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbsifBoI_0E Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APb1tNxvGMY Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukQURxJ2QYc
If you're looking for a quick laugh, listen to part 2 where he starts off going on a rant about how the university is using Windows Media Player to stream the convocation and forces users to use Windows. He tells the audience to "throw Windows out of the computer, or the computer out the Window." He did get a lot of cheers for that remark though.
In other words. Who ever arranged this graduation obviously did a horrible job, and is the person you should blame.
If your university hired someone who only spoke Mongolian, would you be upset at the speaker, or the idiot who hired him?
RMS lacks basic social graces. He preaches to the choir but somehow still manages to piss them off with pedantic shit like GNU/Linux. Why doesn't he just copyright it so he can plaster the GNU logo all over everything and be done with it.
If their spitting was common knowledge, as RMS's eccentricities are, then yes. Of course I would be upset primary with whoever booked them...
Maybe, just maybe, you aren't in the choir. I'm only saying this because you dismiss things many people find important.
I have a suspicion that whoever booked him simply didn't read it, or didn't understand it.
I mean, come on now -- other people make lots of noise about his eccentricities, and he himself basically wears a signboard explaining them, and then people are still surprised?
If you book a speaker without researching them, you have only yourself to blame when things go wrong.
I wouldn't say rms "isn't a nice person" in this context -- he's just very focused on his cause, and he doesn't take detours or "tone it down" for the sake of avoiding temporary inconvenience to others. It's rare for people to stick to their own principles so studiously (unfortunately, perhaps?), so he even goes out of his way to warn them.
It's not exactly stepping on puppies.
Yeah. It seems like ordering squid at a restaurant: if you order squid or someone orders it for you, you shouldn't complain that you don't like seafood. And you can't really blame the squid.
The Univ, specifically whoever booked Stallman (in obvious ignorance), is who ruined their moment. Don't invite a Lion Tamer to fix your sink.
I wondered if this applied to all net usage or just email, turns out he never uses a web browser, ever. If he needs the contents of a web page, he emails a daemon which wgets the page and emails it back to him: http://lwn.net/Articles/262570/
He was polite enough to reply to me and say that it was ok.
Unfortunately I don't have any email from that time so I can't check or find exactly what he said
Now it seems incredibly geeky but back then it wasn't anything remarkable at all.
Thankfully that only lasted a year before I got proper access.
And yes, I remember FTPmail, as well as similar gateways for Gopher, Veronica, Archie, WAIS... I feel old now.
You sir, are really subtle with your humor.
"I do not eat breakfast. Please do not ask me any questions about what I will do breakfast. Please just do not bring it up."
Also, he kind of comes across as a one-trick pony. He literally can only think about one single issue. I believe when he thinks about the entire universe, he just looks at free and proprietary software and he's done. There is nothing else. Yes, maybe that's what it takes. Maybe visionaries can't be nice. Maybe successful people have to be assholes. Then again, I hope not.
I do not eat breakfast. Please do not ask me any questions about what I will do breakfast. Please just do not bring it up. """
Love it. Anyone know why?
"Oh, are you sure? It's no trouble? It's good for you! Breakfast is the most important meal of the day! Why not just eat breakfast with us?" etc. etc.
But I'd better word my request as "please don't question my choices" instead of going into that much detail about them, which is precisely what I'd like to avoid in the first place.
In general, I would imagine he doesn't want to repeat the kind of incident that happened at linuxworld 99, where the he was given the torvalds award[1].
1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDxMJQLXmBE
I never knew he pronounced the slash in GNU/Linux. Not very brandable IMO.
I am not familiar with the intricate details of his message but on the surface it seems to me to be at odds, at some level, with the idea of it being ok to have a parrot as a pet. Software needs to be free or humans have a right to have free access to software but it's okay to keep a bird in a captive environment. Birds are meant to fly. Even if parrots aren't kept in a cage they're still kept within some confines. For those of you who have ever seen first hand a bird who surfs on wind drafts, remaining stationary in the air in the process, either on the edge of a canyon or just in a field somewhere; or a bird swooping through the Grand Canyon gets a sense of the freedom I'm inferring these birds are being deprived of.
I'm perfectly willing to admit that I'm missing some piece of the puzzle but it seems hard to me to be able to reconcile these two ideas. Do you think he's ever thought about this?
Parrots should never be physically confined, either by cages or (god forbid!) chains. If they like you, they will hang around you on their own accord. After a while they seem to regard some humans as family. Mine would follow my mom around like a dog.
As far as I know, they do not surf wind drafts, but they do require exercise. Therefore, you should have an open space. Either that, or take it outdoors at a safe location (no roads!) for it to fly. But most importantly, let it climb some tress, they love it - even more if it has fruits or seeds. It was difficult convincing mine to get out of trees - we usually had to resort to bribing.
They can eat human food to some extent, mainly fruits and grain. I had trouble with parrot rations, because it was very picky and only ate what it wanted to (mostly the peanuts) and left the rest.
If you do get a parrot, get a couple. It makes them happier and safer (a cat might attack and seriously hurt one - but it is unlikely to kill). A cat attacking two parrots would die before doing much.
I don't really think that a pet parrot would be unhappy per se, provided the above holds. I can agree with RMS when he says that wild parrots would become unhappy.
Unfortunately, mine was a wild one. What's more, judging by the behavior, he seemed to be the leader of his group - the others seemed to follow and imitate him. However, it was also the most docile and appeared to be the happiest one. The others didn't seem to be so well. But we did treat him as well as we could.
The vet could not determine the cause of its death. I get the impression that, since it is an uncommon pet even here, he didn't have any previous experience. I think whatever it was, an experienced vet could have saved him. And I found years later that sunflower seeds have to be eaten in moderation, as they are very fatty.
I am having a hard time using the pronoun "it". His death haunts me to this day and it's been almost two decades now.
I never got any other pets.
I will point out that, though letting your parrot out of the cage for indoor exercise is important -- and they do indeed love to climb around, so get a big ol' play gym with branches and little chains and stuff -- nobody in the (North American) pet-parrot literature recommends letting them outside. Indeed, letting a hand-raised parrot escape to the outdoors is a classic way to get them killed. They have no idea what to do out there, they often get lost or confused or stressed and fail to come home, even from the top of a tree right next door. And, obviously, there are a lot of dangers to a naive bird in a tree: Hawks, cats, other mammals, perhaps even snakes...
Now, obviously there are lots of places where wild parrots live outside by the thousand. And in the right climate even former pet birds can successfully transition back to the wild. (Even in North America: See The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, a great movie.) And if you had an originally-wild bird it's even less surprising that it managed to negotiate trips to the trees and back. But it's kind of fortunate that yours kept coming back.
(I'd elaborate but it's more fun just to refer you to RMS, who is completely correct on this subject. I didn't read the rest of his note, though, so he may be less correct on other subjects. ;)
Having said that: Just as birds are "meant" to fly around all the time, so are humans "meant" to spend most of their lives without sitting, run long distances across equatorial plains in bare feet, live in bands of perhaps a dozen or two individuals, teach their children how to find, identify, and possibly eat hundreds of varieties of wild plant, periodically endure starvation, cope with a wide variety of exciting parasites inside and out, and occasionally get attacked by wild creatures. And though at one time or another various people have become fanatical about recreating one (presumed) aspect of our early environment or another -- ranging from barefoot running to the "paleo" diet -- humans do in fact live full and happy lives in modern cities, or in the Arctic Circle. We're quite adaptive.
Parrots are also quite adaptive. Like dogs, their main concern is that they live just as the flock does. In a home the flock, of course, is you and any other creatures that happen to be around. Parrots are pretty happy so long as they're around people and doing what the people are doing. My parrot can fly, but does not do so often; when he is out of his cage, he generally flies only to get closer to me, and then only when I refuse to heed his calls to come closer to him.
But I agree that all parrots would be even happier living in flocks in outdoor flight cages, of a size ranging from eight feet wide to, well, infinity. So I don't encourage anyone else to acquire a pet bird, although I obviously endorse taking good care of the pet birds that already exist, like mine.