

Richard Stallman speaker visit guidelines - pearjuice
https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/pipermail/developers-public/2011-October/007647.html?

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na85
I was really put-off when I saw video of him throwing a temper tantrum on the
podium, smashing the microphone into the table and generally making a fool of
himself.

I like what he's done for Free Software and GNU is an important part of
computing (even if their kernel is awful). His personal choices about how he
does his computing, i.e. wgetting each page and reading it with less or
another pager are a little strange but I figure it's good to have someone on
the fringe like that.

I'd never seen video or heard audio of RMS before and always assumed him to be
a sort of Gandalf-type figure, wise and soft-spoken.

In reality he appears to be a fucking child. It was really disappointing.

That impression I got was reinforced when I read these guidelines; he seems
really full of himself. I really got the primadonna vibe when I read some of
the "guidelines". He requires they set aside an additional 45 minutes for
photos after a 75 minute speech? Cringe.

Maybe it's just a cultural thing, but holy ego, Batman.

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mattl
So, a couple points.

He uses wget to get pages because he's on the road almost constantly. His life
is in his email, and he tries to respond to all of it, but gets a TON, and
responds pretty quickly. He does this partly because he's using his own email
client and his own editor, both of which he's been using for 35 years or so.
In Emacs he has a ton of abbrevs for various common responses.

Because he travels all the time, he has a lot of experience of what works and
what doesn't work, and is trying to make things as smooth as possible.

45 minutes of photos after a speech isn't his ego, its him asking the
organizers to make sure they have plenty of time after the event for all the
people who'll want him to sign a book or their laptop, or talk to him about
free software.

I went to Brazil with him on a trip and I'm pretty sure there were photos and
signing and things for a few hours after. We had to have a dedicated
photographer to cope with the sheer number of people.

This is a guy who travels so much, someone bought him a parrot as a gift
because they thought he'd like it, and it forced him to ask people to not buy
animals as gifts. That's the scale of what he's dealing with.

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fluxon
RMS's guidelines are very very old news. His temper tantrum is now _two_ years
past. Exactly how is this relevant to Hacker News?

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axaxs
Him again. Look I appreciate his zeal and previous ventures, but why he has
any relevance at all is beyond me. He's a pregnant prima donna who has lost
touch with reality. I'd rather listen to the temple os guy talk to be honest.

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smadge
>Please do not ever mail me a file larger than 100k without asking me first.

Quote from an email that is 50k of pure text.

