Re: [ossig] University curriculum for OSS?

[Harish Pillay <harish@lugs.org.sg>]

> for this, i will let someone else in this list, who's hosted stallman
> at his house, tell the story. i heard it in phuket, first person 
> narrative. :)

Well, I guess this is my cue.  I think this is the first time I am writing
up that narrative.  RMS might have a different account of this :-).

LUGS had invited RMS to be our guest of honour for the very first Singapore 
Linux Conference, held in March 1999 (he was here in 2001 as well).  As per 
RMS' wish, he prefers not to stay in a hotel and instead be offered to stay 
in someone's home.  He feels, and I think it is fair, that you get a better 
sense of the town/city/country you are in by being amongst one of their 
natives.  Hotel rooms, as I am sure list members will agree, are all the 
same everywhere.

Anyway, we agreed to his request and I offered my home as his HQ for the 
time he was to be in Singapore.  We cleared out one bedroom which has a 
bathroom attached etc.  RMS arrived, I pick him up from the airport and 
he has this huge duffle bag almost as tall as him and one handcarry and 
a recorder/flute.  He gets to my place and is shown his room.  He likes 
it.  I asked him if he has any special requirements etc and says that he 
is OK but would love to have some Indian sweets. [more of that later]

We get him to the conference and he gives an excellent speech - which is
done what seems to be off the cuff, but very cogent and passionate.  He
does do the St. iGNUtius bit as well. [He repeats the speech almost 
verbatim at another seminar held the the NUS Computer Science department
the next day.]

After his SLC keynote, he asks about the Indian sweets.  One of the committee
members offers to bring him to Little India.  He goes there and orders a
whole lot of Indian sweets and relishes it.  He gets kinda carried away 
in the ambience of the place and takes out his recorder/flute and starts 
dancing around along one of the side streets.  My committee member kinda 
panics but manages to gets him to one side.  He then asks about visiting 
the botanic gardens.  He is brought to the Singapore Botanic Gardens.  
There he does his music making and dancing as well.

RMS gets to be interviewed by the local press and for that, the reporter
brought him to Sim Lim Square which then was (and still is) the local
headquarters of the software "pirates".  He is reported to have said 
something to the effect that what they are doing is not piracy but a 
service and should not be penalized.  Suffice to say that the likes of 
MS and BSA were unclued about him nor his presence here - so there were 
no comments from them.

After about 4 days in Singapore, he left.  After sending him off, we were 
cleaning up the room and found, to our surprise, that he did not sleep 
on the bed provided in the room, but was using a feather mattress and 
sleeping on the floor instead!  [BTW, he had the mattress in his duffle 
bag.]  Suffice to say that we found many tiny bits of feather all over 
the room.  

My parents met him before he left and they were rather puzzled as to why
I was hosting a long haired, bearded, shabbily-dressed chap in my house.
They remarked that he looked more like a Hindu holyman/sage than a 
computer geek.
 
Anyway, even though some may think he is an eccentric, I think deep down,
he is a person who has a real passion for what he believes in - he really
walks the talk.  Yes, there will people who are put off with his persona, 
frankness and idiosyncracies, but if you look at the some of the parts
you will realize that there is a quiet greatness and gentleness about him. 

BTW, he *might* be here again for the AEOSC event (www.aeosc.org).

[Now, back to your regular programming ...]

Harish


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