At 10:38 AM 10/12/2001 +0100, Chris Withers wrote:
Kapil Thangavelu wrote:
dealing with RMS is tricky period.
I am at a loss as to why anyone bothers ;-)
(nope, this is not an attempt to start a flame war, everybody move along peacefully now...)
I am not going to proceed with a war (that will be my only post on that), but I think someone like Richard is needed. Without the extreme side, the entire movement would not work out. He is a pain to deal with, I have heard that his conference requirements (hotels, food ...) are ridiculous and when I met him I did not have the greatest experience either, but the "Debian kids" (that are the teens between 14-17 that work on Debian) jumped around him trying to catch some of his wisdom, like baby-birds try to catch food from their mom. It was fascinating! You should have been at Linuxtag 2000. There was this girl with a nice voice (and sexy dressed, which did not seem to impress anyone at a geek meeting like this) which sang a song a-cappella and the crowd barely clapped their hands; only out of good manners. Then Richard came and sang the hackers song and the crowd was transformed. After Richard was done they wistled and applauded, and the entire room became alive, even though his voice and singing was totally bad. It was hilarious! But this is the type of character the community needs. Someone who has the power to get a lot of people motivated! I think Richard is the only individual that is able to attack these large monolithic companies such as M$ in a way that he refuses to understand their point of view and they do not understand his. This gives a certain balance. I think that often Richard only argues with such extreme thoughts in order to keep the community together. I think, if you would privately talk with him and he trusts you, his opinions would not be that fanatic as they seem to be in public. Remember: He is a public figure and has to represent Open Source in its **totality**! Regards, Stephan -- Stephan Richter CBU - Physics and Chemistry Student Web2k - Web Design/Development & Technical Project Management