[Zope-dev] ZPL2.0

[Stephan Richter]

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