John Rearick
15 HN mentions · mentioned in 15 months, 2010–2025
2:22 · 695K views · Apr 10, 2009
A short clip from a lecture Q&A in which Richard Stallman appears to pick something off his foot and eat it.
Used as a recurring gag or jab at Stallman's social eccentricities; not recommended for its content.
15 comments from Hacker News
RMS has said publically that proprietary software should be illegal, and that free software guarantees user freedoms. This is a philosophy, and one that opines every user wants to become a developer. For things like emacs, and much of GNU, this is true, for most of the rest of the world, this is not. I eschew free software because I'm not about forcing my views on others (which is literally the mission of GNU). I'm about developing software to be the best it can be, and maybe meeting some friends along the way. Open source, being the best software development model overall, allows me to meet that goal. You could almost say some of RMS's more extreme quirks border on authoritarian (see the example with the abortion joke in the libc manual he FORBADE removal of and demanded be re-added when a dev simply overruled him). He's not acting in a manner that encourages "freedom", but as a simple and obvious dictator of all things GNU or claiming to be GNU. He's frequently tried to shape the path of GNOME (which I am a former foundation member and was on the sysadmin team) in areas he literally has no business weighing in on. Then there are some more gross personality problems, like his sexism, or tendency to actually eat his toenail gunk[1], or to ever refuse to be wrong on anything, even when an entire community disagrees with him. Dr Stallman has done a great deal of good for the world with Free Software, however like the VAX and PDP-11, his time has passed. Open source won just lik
Some folks miss the point. We only make fun of Stallman in an attempt to change his behaviour in a way that benefits both him and others. For instance, rms smells bad. If he could be persuaded to smell less bad, then everybody would benefit. Ridicule is a valuable social mechanism for giving negative feedback to those who behave inappropriately. For those who say "but can't we give this feedback in a non-hurtful way?", the answer is no, for the same reason that your brain can't make pain non-painful -- some people are too damn stubborn to listen to non-painful feedback. Here is a video of Richard Stallman, in the middle of a talk, eating something he's just picked off his foot: this video
> What's more worrying is people I speak to regularly now don't even know who he is. And if they do it's because of the toe cheese incident. I've known who Stallman is for a long time, but I had never heard about the toe cheese incident. I just looked it up. My reaction: [LINK] For anyone interested in the toe cheese incident: this video I'm not trying to malign Stallman here, but you can't deny this is interesting.
I don't care what this guy has to say anymore. After he pulled his sock off, picked his foot and ate whatever the fuck it was he picked off, all in front of what appears to be a lecture class sized audience - I lost all respect for the guy. this video No wonder computer people have a brutal rep for social interaction. WTF.
That's right, the guy who sits down, takes off his socks and eats his toenails/toe skin in the middle of a Q&A[0] shouldn't be held to some ambiguous standard of how to navigate society. It's exactly this eggshell stepping that people are expected to adhere to that has people treating him the way they are. this video