[Discuss] RMS in the news

[MBR]

I've known RMS since the 1970s when we were both regular attendees at 
the MIT Folk Dance Club.  His Aspergers has always made him a difficult 
person to deal with.

You say you "wonder if he would have done the same call out with a male 
professor in the same situation".  I'm pretty sure that the answer is, 
"Yes."


On 9/18/19 6:40 AM, Jack Bennett wrote:
> He came to give a public talk at Brown which was very well attended because
> he was quite well known among the CS, science, and engineering world.
>
> He gave a pretty typical rms talk - software freedom is important, open
> source is not good enough, closed systems are bad since you don't know what
> they are doing to your personal information. All the usual messages that
> he's been an uncompromising pitbull about for 35+ years.
> Almost offhandedly, he mentioned that people shouldn't procreate because
> having kids takes away from the time that you could otherwise be spending
> on REALLY important things, like working on free software and/or activism
> for software freedom. That was a new one that I hadn't heard. It kind of
> underscored his single-minded obsession to me. Here he is talking to a
> pretty diverse audience and he's saying that his "thing" is more important
> than literally any other important thing in any other person's life.
>
> Later on, one professor in the department, a member of my dissertation
> committee, was quietly leaving the talk a little bit early. rms noticed and
> called her out directly for leaving early so she retorted, "well, you know,
> I gotta pick up the KIDS".
>
> I thought it was a mildly funny exchange at the time, but I hadn't known of
> his reputation for singling out women in the audience and making them
> uncomfortable. I wonder if he would have done the same call out with a male
> professor in the same situation.
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 1:55 AM Rich Braun <richb at pioneer.ci.net> wrote:
>
>> I have a fond memory of RMS crashing one of our BLU meetings to hammer at
>> the point that our organization’s name included the word Linux and that we
>> should amend it to include the word Gnu. With rumors of his death not quite
>> entirely exaggerated—departure from FSF is tantamount to interment, it’s
>> been his whole life—I’d love to hear more RMS stories. -rich
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>