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Comment by joshaidan | Hacker News Reader

My funniest memory of Richard Stallman is once he was invited to give the commencement speech at my local university, Lakehead University. He was pretty oblivious to the fact he was at a graduation, and not at any point in his speech did he address the students and their future. All he talked about was free software, how copyright was bad, and that the university should be using free software. Most of the students were pretty pissed off at him because he ruined one of the most significant moments in their life. He didn't even say, congratulations well done on graduating, or even a simple "hello." He only spoke about free software.

I think the video is still up on the university's website somewhere. If you're interested in it, I could try to find it and post it.

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Okay, I found the speech on YouTube, it's in three parts and it's over 30 minutes long:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbsifBoI_0E Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APb1tNxvGMY Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukQURxJ2QYc

If you're looking for a quick laugh, listen to part 2 where he starts off going on a rant about how the university is using Windows Media Player to stream the convocation and forces users to use Windows. He tells the audience to "throw Windows out of the computer, or the computer out the Window." He did get a lot of cheers for that remark though.

Thanks for posting this. The laugh in here for me was watching the person to the right of the podium try to hold in their giggles.

You can't blame that on Stallman. He has always been completely clear and up front about what he will and will not speak about. And he always agrees on the topic ahead of time with who ever is arranging the event.

In other words. Who ever arranged this graduation obviously did a horrible job, and is the person you should blame.

I think it's fair to assume most people have basic "people" skills, humility, manners etc. Unfortunately that isn't the case with Stallman. He's an obsessive fundamentalist only concerned with one topic.

That fact is well known.

If your university hired someone who only spoke Mongolian, would you be upset at the speaker, or the idiot who hired him?

It's well known within a certain rather narrow community of people. The folks who booked him may just have read his name on a list of "vaguely important people who are willing to give speeches".

If your university hired someone who only spoke Mongolian but spit in people's faces when they extended their hand for a handshake, would you be upset at the speaker or the idiot who hired him?

RMS lacks basic social graces. He preaches to the choir but somehow still manages to piss them off with pedantic shit like GNU/Linux. Why doesn't he just copyright it so he can plaster the GNU logo all over everything and be done with it.

"If your university hired someone who only spoke Mongolian but spit in people's faces when they extended their hand for a handshake, would you be upset at the speaker or the idiot who hired him?"

If their spitting was common knowledge, as RMS's eccentricities are, then yes. Of course I would be upset primary with whoever booked them...

> He preaches to the choir but somehow still manages to piss them off with pedantic shit like GNU/Linux.

Maybe, just maybe, you aren't in the choir. I'm only saying this because you dismiss things many people find important.

He does, however, provide a rider before to anyone considering inviting him to speak that makes his personal obsession and his inflexibility around that obsession abundantly and explicitly clear.

I have a suspicion that whoever booked him simply didn't read it, or didn't understand it.

I mean, come on now -- other people make lots of noise about his eccentricities, and he himself basically wears a signboard explaining them, and then people are still surprised?

There are plenty of eccentrics who are still nice people.

Yes; they are likely better candidates for commencement speakers.

I wouldn't say rms "isn't a nice person" in this context -- he's just very focused on his cause, and he doesn't take detours or "tone it down" for the sake of avoiding temporary inconvenience to others. It's rare for people to stick to their own principles so studiously (unfortunately, perhaps?), so he even goes out of his way to warn them.

It's not exactly stepping on puppies.

And there are plenty who have no social graces. What of it?

If you book a speaker without researching them, you have only yourself to blame when things go wrong.

I've both planned some fairly large events with speakers and worked closely with well known but 'eccentric' personalities similar rms. It's really a mixed bag as to who is to blame. On the one had the committee coming up with this should have done some research (and asked themselves "why hasn't rms done any convocations before?"). I've known organizations entertaining the idea of rms as a keynote, and it almost immediately gets shot down by anyone how has actually watched him speak. But undoubtedly the committee in charge of this event was mix, and rms on paper does sound like a good idea. At the same time, I know rms is passionate about his cause, but it is a dick move to not at least pay some superficial lip service to the event you're speaking at. In fact he'd do a much better service to his cause if he just made a good speech connecting graduation to free software. Look what a fantastic speech Steve Jobs gave, but certainly promoted both his personal image and apple as well.

It's really a mixed bag as to who is to blame. On the one had the committee coming up with this should have done some research (and asked themselves "why hasn't rms done any convocations before?"). I've known organizations entertaining the idea of rms as a keynote, and it almost immediately gets shot down by anyone how has actually watched him speak.

Yeah. It seems like ordering squid at a restaurant: if you order squid or someone orders it for you, you shouldn't complain that you don't like seafood. And you can't really blame the squid.

I think you should have read the whole comment you were responding to. Dead squids don’t have brains. rms does.

I believe that the plural of squid is squid.

But you do remember the talk and you are still willing to promote it, so from his point of view that's mission accomplished.

You see, that's the problem. His mission was to promote free software, instead of the mission the university hired him for: sending the graduates off on their next journey.

You don't hire a missionary with a vision to pat yourself or your audience on the back.

That's like expecting Sylvester Stallone to do higher mathematics or Mother Theresa to do an arms deal for you.

Some people are what they are and their environment/audience will have to accept them as they are.

The problem lies squarely with the person that hired him, the abstract of the speeches listed should have adequately explained what they were going to get. That's exactly what that rider exists for in the first place, to avoid misunderstandings like that.

I highly doubt if RMS could even tailor his speech to the occasion, he must know it by heart by now except for the Q&A part.

What I found interesting on reading the 'rider' is that he still refers to the GNU operating system as though it is in daily use. I've yet to see a HURD based system do anything useful in production but half the world wide web seems to run on Linux these days. Of course linux is 'merely a kernel'.

But if you write free software the you also give away the right to name that software, after all, a fork is under no obligation to be named after the parent. So RMS holding on to insisting to call Linux GNU/Linux looks to be against the self-imposed freedoms.

> What I found interesting on reading the 'rider' is that he still refers to the GNU operating system as though it is in daily use. I've yet to see a HURD based system do anything useful in production but half the world wide web seems to run on Linux these days. Of course linux is 'merely a kernel'.

Considering that glib, libc, gcc, emacs, the vast majority of the Unix utilities, bash, grub, autoconf, make, readline, gzip, tar, screen, wget, and Gnome are all GNU projects[0], I would say that GNU is most definitely in daily use. The Linux kernel isn't much use without the software on top of it, and it's nothing at all without the compiler that turns it into machine code.

[0] See https://www.gnu.org/software/software.html#allgnupkgs for the full list.

I think I have more KDE code on my computer than GNU code. Both are undeniably useful, but no one is insisting on calling it KDE/Linux.

I wasn't referring to the name GNU/Linux; I was specifically refuting the comment I quoted. The funny thing is that the comment effectively justifies RMS's insistence on using GNU/Linux. Because so many refer to the entire distribution as Linux, a lot of people fail to realize the hugely-important role that GNU software plays in Linux systems.

Linux is still useful without KDE, but the functionality provided by GNU is critical and would require a large effort to replace.

> the functionality provided by GNU is critical and would require a large effort to replace

This isn't really true. You could just grab your userspace from a BSD, or Plan9Port. Clang and LLVM do well enough to replace GCC on most important architectures.

Clang and LLVM do well enough to replace GCC on most important architectures.

25 years later. Very few works are relevant for that long.

I would like to see someone go make a free operating system without using a single GNU piece. Just for the kicks.

Android.

GNU is, essentially, a clone of Unix except for the kernel, which is supplied by Linux. Calling your computer a GNU system is about as accurate as calling it a Unix system. Calling it a KDE computer is also technically accurate.

You could also form stacks, like KDE/GNU/Linux, or go all the way and just draw a directed graph of the major software dependencies. This isn't a serious proposal, but I would be kind of pleased if someone actually did this.

You do http://pedrocr.net/text/how-much-gnu-in-gnu-linux

However since GNU software is the foundation on which most of the system is built you can argue that it has a much greater importance.

"Measuring software productivity by lines of code is like measuring progress on an airplane by how much it weighs"

But that's taken from all the software available in the repos, not the software that's actually installed on people's systems. For instance, the pie chart shows slices for both Gnome and KDE. How many people have both installed on their systems? Or neither?

Now compare that to how many people have none of the GNU software on their systems.

I would imagine (purely anecdotal) if you take just installed software then the GNU percentage increases as its generally installed on most systems. I would also imagine in the Linux/BSD world the number of people running without GNU software is in the very low single digits.

It's really difficult to determine the relative importance of one software project at this level over another they reliant on each other. The Linux kernel needs GNU as much as GNU needs the kernel (at the moment anyway). You can run the OS without KDE (hence not calling it KDE/Linux).

I can see Stallman's point as he set out to create an operating system called GNU, created almost all of the parts required which were then used by someone else to create a Kernel which was then packaged up with a different name.

Personally I think you can call GNU/Linux whatever you want as the licence its released under has nothing in there saying you need to give mention to GNU in the name. If you package it up you can call it Fred for all I care and I will refer to it as Fred.

Actually in BSD/UNIX people generally don't use the GNU tools, except, maybe for gcc on BSDs (UNICES have their own compilers). We believe GNU tools are of very poor quality.

The Linux kernel isn't much use without the software on top of it, and it's nothing at all without the compiler that turns it into machine code.

Or without the its own license, the GNU GPL.

And yet, his "words to avoid" talks specifically about "GNU is not a tool set", either...

Are you going to argue that it is? Is GRUB merely a "tool" for booting your computer? Is libc a "tool" for exposing OS-provided functionality to software? Is GNOME a GUI "tool"?

Ok clearly you think the rest of your argument is obvious, but I'm going to be dense and say "yes", those are tools. Just as the Linux kernel is a tool for managing the various resources of the system. Maybe it's the word "merely" that's tripping things up, but I don't see how any of these things fail to fit the word "tool".

It would be easy to argue that most software fits the "tool" label. As far as I know, rms objects to describing GNU as a set of "programming tools" or "development tools" as he (reasonably, in this case, I think) finds those labels unfair. GNU software is required for any operating system using the Linux kernel, as far as I'm aware, and those systems are not limited to programming or development.

You could compile Android with Clang and be GNU free.

...or like expecting Steve Jobs to give a great graduation speech.

That's like expecting... Mother Theresa to do an arms deal for you.

You didn't know the real Mother Theresa, did you.

Just to offer a counter perspective, I'm sure that RMS honestly believes that the most important thing for your future is the use and advocacy of free software, and that being the case, there would be little point discussing anything else, no? Software increasingly pervades everything we depend on in life. The ownership and control of our futures rests to a large extent on who owns and controls the software we are using. The recent trend has been toward closed platforms behind opaque service interfaces, which is a problem of increasing difficulty for the free software movement.

That, and he does tend to be brusk.

The topics he's willing to speak about are clearly listed in his rider, and graduation isn't one of them.

> Most of the students were pretty pissed off at him because he ruined

The Univ, specifically whoever booked Stallman (in obvious ignorance), is who ruined their moment. Don't invite a Lion Tamer to fix your sink.

I'd definitely like to see that!!

See my comment above... I posted link to the speech on YouTube.

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