Zbr's days.

Richard Stallman in Russia and related problems.

Here are number of interesting moments in this miserable melodrama (got via Linux Today News).

Stallman wanted to visit Russia this March, and parliament member Viktor Alksnis promoted his visit and wanted to help with 'administration issues'. Then LOR (www.linux.org.ru, one of the most popular linux sites in Russia) moderator Sergey Udaltsov (who lives in Ireland) sent a letter to Richard, where pointed that Alksnis is not a good man, he also noted about Alksnis' "fight against the independence of the Baltic countries" in late 80s.
Stallman then said that he does not want Alksnis to organize his visit.

Well, my couple of points about this stupid situation.
First, Alksnis is really not a very smart person in IT, and it looks very much like he is a usual careerist, since I do not know about his work at all except stupid idea of creation of 'national OS', probably using 'nanotechnologies' (it is a modern trend here :).
Second, step of Sergey Udaltsov is very well braindamaged - while it is ok to describe who Alksnis is, but pointing to Baltic independence is even more stupid than 'national os' idea.

So, my simple point is that both Viktor Alksnis and Sergey Udaltsov just wanted to make some self-advertisement profit from Rishcard Stallman's visit and do not really do it because of open source. Although self-advertisement is not a bad idea (you read this blog :), such movements are stupid.
If Stallman got problems with visa (I'm surprised if it takes more than two weeks), then it means he does not really want to visit Russia, for example I got kernel summit invitation more than two month ahead of the meeting, which was enough to get visa (it required two (!) visits to the UK visa office just to give and get back documents, it took two (!) days to check documents, and it was possible to order a courier, although previous year time frame was shorter). If he does not want, why would we care?

If someone wants to visit a country, he can find a way to do that himeself and do not wash own brain with stupid rethorics.
I think it will be a cause for Richard not to visit, since it really looks like he does not want to do it :)

C. Smith wrote at 2008-02-15 02:18:

Well, now. The situation is somewhat complex, and simplifying it to a does/doesn't want to come _may_ be a bit unfair. Maybe things are a bit distorted outside of Russia, but the impression is that the scene over there is somewhat rough. I rather hope that isn't true, but my wife had business in St. Petersburg, and had fun stories to tell about having to pay bribes to get people/equipment through customs, for example.

Zbr wrote at 2008-02-15 02:40:

Well, that's unfortunately true that custom officers are allowed to do whatever they like, it really sucks in trains, although one can always start official procedure of the declaration and kick them ass, if custom officers are wrong. But obtaining visa is a completely different process. It only requires documents (and in some very rare cases meeting). Also airport customs are very 'civilized' now.
I think the root of the problem for Richard is the fact, that russian visa office will get his passport for too long, so he can miss some other meetings before visit to Russia. Which means he did not want to visit too much before all this started :) Iirc, he already was in Russia, so he should know how things are done...

grange wrote at 2008-02-15 11:09:

what do you all find so attractive in that old beardy hippie?

Zbr wrote at 2008-02-15 15:24:

He is a bit fanatic, but what he did made open source looks like we see it now.

grange wrote at 2008-02-15 15:57:

the only thing i really need from the gnu world is gcc. other ``open-source'' i use has nothing to do with rms.

Zbr wrote at 2008-02-15 16:56:

It is not only about software (you forgot emacs, gdb and lisp for example, world does not end at openbsd hacker who uses vim :), but pioneering role in open source movement at all.
Without his early steps at 80th there would not be open systems at all at least how we know open source now.
He is probably kind of a legend now :)

anonymous wrote at 2008-02-17 04:56:

I find Stallman a brilliant software hacker, and I carefully ignore all of his opinions on anything but software, *especially* politics.

Fri, 15 Feb 2008