Having attended last year’s GCDS keynote one sentence in the latest GNOME Foundation board meeting minutes scared me: “GNOME.Asia/COSCUP: Richard Stallman will be doing a keynote”.
As I was told that he has received a copy of GNOME’s new Speaker guidelines I still have some (naive?) hope left that people have learned something in the meantime. Time will tell.
I’m not sure what you’re implying, but Stallman is a great man, and GNOME should feel very honoured that he’s doing a keynote.
Aleks: when you read the speakers guideline you will see that it outlines the acceptance and tollerance for people with different opinions.
Not one of Stallman’s strong points, to say the least.
I did not get it too.
Dennis, I admit he can be a bit eccentric at times, but give me an example where he didn’t have tolerance for an FS project like GNOME.
If you’re referring to his remarks on Mono, well it’s understandable where he was coming from, right?
@Aleks: What I implied (hmm, strange word) is that last year’s GCDS keynote was questionable in some areas as shown by the feedback afterwards. Also see the “GCDS” link in my posting.
Naivety for the win!
Hilarious when people think the issue is something RMS said about Mono.
Then they’re like “oh, he made a joke putting down women? and mocked religion? what’s the big deal? this must be an evil plot by Novell and/or Microsoft!”
Our community wins for attacking itself and continuing to be non-welcoming toward newcomers! :-P
Some of the feedback was questionable as well …
Sandy, thanks for strawmanning me. Nowhere did I mention Novell, or anything else you said. I was referring to RMS and his interactions with Miguel de Icaza, someone highly respected in the GNOME community.
@cgable: Might be, but in order for reactions to exist there’s always an action that triggered them.
@Aleks: I don’t think that Sandy refered to any of your comments but to past “discussions”. No need to feel attacked.
Aleks, I wasn’t specifically referring to you, but to a general attitude that seems prevalent among those who think RMS has been villainized specifically over his comments on Mono at GCDS.
Personally, when I attended his keynote I was disappointed by his general ignorance on the subject, but that’s because I did not yet understand how out-of-touch he is with this century. There are valid points to be made against Mono or .NET on any number of criteria, but RMS is not the one making them anymore.
Anyway, I can see how my earlier comments could be interpreted as strawmanning you, so I apologize for that.
humans are not perfect.
To paraphrase http://xkcd.com/468/ :
I am insulted by people that don’t insult anyone.
What specifically are you objecting to here? Why do you think citing some ridiculously over-broad speaker guidelines helps your case? What’s wrong with quoting RMS where he said something you disagree with and explaining your disagreement?
@J.B.:
To your first question: I already answered this in the comments: Last year’s GCDS keynote was questionable in some areas as shown by the feedback afterwards.
To your second question: “Personal opinion”, I call it.
To your third question: Nah, sorry, didn’t feel like doing that again. Done that before.
This whole attitude against Richard Stallman is damaging for GNOME. What happened at GCDS was manufactured by David Schlesinger (Lefty) in order to attack the FSF and promote Mono.
I am not a huge contributor to GNOME. However my time spent on GNOME is now greatly diminished. If that matters.
There it is ;-)
@humoroid: Thanks for your funny comment. Though you forgot to add the irony markers I still had a good laugh.
Just for the very unlikely case that your comment was serious:
Religion and virgins were part of the keynote *before* anything mono-related ever came up in the discussion afterwards. I pretty much know that because I was physically present while you were probably not. For future references you may want to avoid commenting on things that you have not much clue of.