hi, i attended a lecture by richard stallman at temple u. where he discussed how copyrights are more limiting to the community rather than beneficial to the content holder.

the a lot of discussion seemed propagandizing; it took him less than 7 minutes into the lecture to demonize microsoft.

he touched on file sharing
drm
free software
dvd's ...

he was kinda' a prick during the q&a session. i remember he had a back and forth with someone about how long authors can hold on to the right of charecters for future novels... he basically ended by saying the guy was brain-washed by the publishing companies.

any other general thoughts on the topic.

I can only imagine your response if you attended a lecture by Al Gore on global warming Or Candy Lightner on tougher drunk driving laws.

^ i dont get it ?

Stallman is, and has long been, the most vociferous proponent of free software. His role is to be the loud voice who argues for the extremes. Not to say he doesn't believe what he says, I'm sure he does. He is also intelligent and savvy enough to realise that he may be the only one who thinks to these extremes. However, like with Gore, we need people who are prepared to argue to the extremes so that things don't get watered down before they even begin.

He is also a Stanford University trust-fund baby who knows that the best way to a paycheck is notoriety. You're quite correct that many of his lectures are propagandizing. He's good enough at grabbing headlines for himself that you regularly hear geeks muttering about "rms." He's laughing all the way to the bank: his initials have become a brand-name.

The strategy is legend: you take a controversial position, and then you argue-like-hell one side of it, as though no other side existed.

That would only get you so far - otherwise we'd all be doing it. His position is assailable but it does kick off a number of other discussions. Passing him off as yet another rich kid, unfairly puts down his achievements. He is, after all, using that trust fund to give the uber-arguments that the other arguments are borne from.

In India, those of us who know about Mr. Stallman would agree with Mr. XavierP.

In India, at least in some measure due to his "propagandizing", FOSS culture remains on the radar of the powers that be and indeed, the southern Indian State of Kerala has adopted FOSS as a buying habit in all their computers for governing and education. He is a regular invitee to the state's meets on FOSS. This is a significant success.

As a matter of fact, he was a guest speaker at the recently concluded "Open Source Tech Days" held in Chennai (Another southern Indian state) and gave an interview which was reported in the press.

End

Actually, that's Brigadier General Lord XavierP. Not your fault, you weren't to know.

Good, he got straight to the point

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LOL

When did you get promoted from Major Major Major Major?

To fight propaganda you have to use propaganda.

It seems like RMS is running out of real 'enemies' so he is quick to make some up.

Wait for the RMS vs. Paris Hilton lecture - dunno what it's going to be about but he's going to find something....

Not a good example ... plenty of dirt on that *****. Same with Brittney, and most other attention ***** celebs. I dunno, it might be interesting, I would attend.

Is this another "Lets-bash-Stallman/No-GNUs-is-good-news" thread? So you don't like his personality? Well, nobody's perfect. Not him, not you, and not even me (that might be hard for you to believe ). He's an idealist, and we need a few of them about, even though what they want is unachievable. At least give him credit for his contributions to the software we all use.

I'll give him credit for all the things he did.
The things he's been doing recently are unfortunately not that great the way I see it - like defining freedom the RMS way (you are free to choose whatever RMS thinks is right for you).

Like when he figured BSD is evil because you have the choice to install non-free software.His reasoning was that if the BSD guys wouldn't include ports to non-free software people wouldn't figure out they exist - that shows how smart he thinks users are.....