[0x12]

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.

[BrandonM]

> 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.

[metabrew]

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.

[icebraining]

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.

[FireBeyond]

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

[pork]

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

[sliverstorm]

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

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