Stallman Goes to India

SureshD writes "The Hindu is reporting on a 40 minute long meeting between Richard Stallman and the Indian President - Dr APJ Abdul Kalam. After the interview, RMS said that the President was 'receptive' to his views that development of software should be seen as a political and social issue and not just from the technological point of view. Interestingly, the article mentions that the President had prepared for the meeting by downloading and reading Stallman's biography (Free as in Freedom) from the Internet."

what sealed the deal..

[Anonymous Coward]

..is when Stallman promised the president a totaly no-cost, no-strings-attached copy of GCC for every Indian citizen. Even Bill Gates couldn't match that incredibly generous offer!!

Wow...

[mgebbers]

I didn't know the Indian government was hiring [slashdot.org]

Was Richard in need of a job?

[ryen]

Hi, Thank you for calling Dell technical support. My name is Richard. How may I help you?

Re:Braindrain

[cujo_1111]

They say a million monkeys could produce Shakespeare, just imagine what a billion Indians could do for Open Source projects...

Maybe..

[xzap]

the President gave him some tips on what shampoo to use..after all both the President [cnn.com] and Stallman [netmonger.net] a long long mane ;)

Any music?

[fastdecade]

For the sake of open source diplomacy, I hope he didn't sing for the PM.

In any event, great to see open source has reached this level. Won't be long before managers have to justify their platform decisions again.

Re:Outsource

[GrumpySimon]

Hmm... I heard that bovine livestock was sacred in India... maybe this is why India respect him:
The Artwork of Jin Wicked || A portrait of Richard Stallman [jinwicked.com]

Re:what sealed the deal..

[NonSequor]

Bill Gates offered them a set of steak knives but for some reason they turned down the offer.

All I have to say is

[kurosawdust]

If this means the addition of a sitar track in "The Free Software Song", I'm all for it.

Re:what sealed the deal..

[cujo_1111]

Hello Bill. Welcome to /.

Don't hide behind the AC, we know it is you...

Re:Full text

[gasgesgos]

The site's not even slashdotted, (I hope) most of us can actually click a link (or type in the link, for IE users) and read the original article ourselves, without possibility of alteration from the karma whores.


Next the karma whores are going to start repeating the Slashdot headline and text "in case it ever gets slashdotted."


FULL TEXT OF SLASHDOT POSTING:

Stallman Goes to India

Posted by michael on Monday February 02, @02:33AM
from the exploring-outsourcing-next-version-of-gcc dept.
SureshD writes "The Hindu is reporting on a 40 minute long meeting between Richard Stallman and the Indian President - Dr APJ Abdul Kalam. After the interview, RMS said that the President was 'receptive' to his views that development of software should be seen as a political and social issue and not just from the technological point of view. Interestingly, the article mentions that the President had prepared for the meeting by downloading and reading Stallman's biography (Free as in Freedom) from the Internet."

( Read More... | 62 of 75 comments )


can I have my +5 informative now?

Re:Full text

[foidulus]

I know it shouldn't be funny, but who didn't give a little giggle when they read the name, "Sandeep Dikshit"?

Surname

[vpscolo]

has no one else noticed the surname of the author?

By Sandeep Dikshit

I would almost say a this is a troll article if it wasn't so positive

Rus

Re:Braindrain

[fuzzybunny]

The theory that "a million monkeys with typewriters will eventually produce something intelligent" is age-old. And, as we now know, wrong.

The Internet has conclusively disproven it.

And, this is not a troll but based on my experience, a billion Indians with telephones have yet to produce an intelligible tech support call.

But then again, the same goes for Texans/Irish/Germans/...

Re:Surname

[provocative]

so by your logic, anything said by 'Dick Stallman' would be troll.. eh?

Dikshit is a pretty common Indian surname.. Just for fun, try to find out what 'Rus' means in hindi.

why?

[Anonymous Coward]

These hairy commie bastards are always up to something!

Re:what sealed the deal..

[gid13]

Actual conversation between the lead singer of my band and his overly Christian aunt:

"Holy cow!"
"Cows aren't holy, Mike."
"In India they are."
"Well, they're wrong."

What does this have to do with software, you ask? Uh... Well... Christians try to bind everyone to Christianity and Microsoft tries to bind everyone to Windows. Yeah. Think about it. :)

stop calling them Indians!

[Anonymous Coward]

They are Native Americans!

Re:All I have to say is

[mrjb]

Sitar tracking, across the universe...

Re:what sealed the deal..

[Anonymous Coward]

Would that be Big Indian or Little Indian ?

Re:what sealed the deal..

[MountainMan101]

You wouldn't believe how silly I felt when I realised that it wasn't an autobiography.

GNU/India

[freedom_leffo]

In other news, the Indian president announced that they'll from now on will go by the name GNU/India.

Re:what sealed the deal..

[Anonymous Coward]

BORING! Change it to the tech channel!

Re:Full text

[24-bit Voxel]

it's better than Dikdeep Sandshit.

Re:Full text

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer "GLOSS" (Gratis, Libre...") as a term because "Libre" is redundant after "Free".

A friend of mine prefers "FOS" because "Open-sourced" is a single concept and doesn't warrant two capitals there.

My uncle prefers "fucking hippie software".

To each their own. Don't come a-preachin' the "correct" form, buddy.

Outsourced?

[Anonymous Coward]

RMS outsourced to India? OMG, what times we have to live in...

RMS is very confused

[gosand]

RMS got a little mixed up about India. He thought the Gnu was holy instead of the cow.

O no!

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

He is going to outsource the GNU Project to India!
aaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

geez

[msouth]

first our jobs, now our free software guru...

It's a Western plot!

[autophile]

This fits in nicely with the Soviet pipeline story.

1. Stallman convinces Indian government to use GPL. Specifically, gcc.

2. Stallman smirks as he adds trojan horse to gcc. "Those Indians will never look at the code. Besides, my trojan horse is so obfuscated, they'll never find it!"

3. Indians use gcc to develop code for outsourcing contracts. Software works fine for a while.

4. In six months, software across America goes haywire. "Why oh why did we ever think outsourcing was so great?" sob the executives.

--Rob

Re:Was Richard in need of a job?

[Garabito]

-Hi, Thank you for calling Dell technical support. My name is Richard. How may I help you?

-Hello, I ordered a PowerEdge server with Red Hat Enterprise Linux on it...

-Excuse me, I would appreciate that you call it GNU/Linux. By using that name, you acknowledge all the contribution of the GNU project in a GNU/Linux Operating system.

-Well OK, I have Red Hat Enterprise GNU/Linux and I'm having this problem...

-Of course you have a problem! You are running a GNU /Linux distribution with pieces of software that are non free. Non Free software is evil! By using it you are privating your neighboor to receive the benefits from it.

-Is it that bad?

-Yes. If you use a single piece of non free software, you can't be a saint in the church of Emacs.

User hangs up the phone

Supervisor (with indian accent): Mr Stallman. Can you please come to my office?

Oh, great...

[3Suns]

So not only do we have to worry about getting our real jobs shipped overseas, but also our open source development as well! Won't there be anything left for an american techie?

Re:what sealed the deal..

[ThisIsAnExampleAccou]

"At least educated enough not to lambast someone else's deeply heald beliefs. ... Ignorance is an INVITE for criticism."

How very tempting.