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May 16, 2003

Talk: RMS

Richard Stallman, founder of GNU and the Free Software Foundation, came here to BU to talk yesterday. I had heard him talk on the radio, video and read some of his writings but this was my first time seeing him speak in person. He turned out to be an excellent speaker, with lots of humor; somewhat unexpected from my previous knowledge of him and how radical and abrasive his reputation is. At the end of the talk, he did put on a Gnu (the animal) smock and a disc Halo to become the Saint Ignutius which really is pretty appropriate given his unswerving vision and devotion to his cause. This was my favorite line from his talk (paraphrased):

There came a point where the Free Software Foundation had enough money to hire a full-time developer. I [Stallman], as president of the FSF, had to decide whether to hire Stallman [me] or someone else. I realized, though, that hiring Stallman would be like throwing the money away as we could get him to work for free so we hired the other person.

At the end of the talk, however, his abrasiveness came through when it came time for questions. He handled questions possibly worse than any speaker I have ever seen, despite all the questions being pro-FSF. He interrupted questions to make a point and then, once the question was asked, basically completely ignored it to say something else. He also was horrible at accepting thank-yous for his work. Still, a very interesting talk and I was quite glad I went.

I also imagine his speaking skills, which really were good, are entirely learned and not at all natural and think of this as a positive sign. Thanks, RMS, for your great work. You really are a modern day Saint.

Posted by aarondf at May 16, 2003 11:47 AM

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