[WSIS CS-Plenary] CS speakers from ITU for opening, roundtable and high level panel

[Georg C. F. Greve]

 || On Thu, 13 Oct 2005 00:06:27 -0700 (PDT)
 || djilali benamrane <dbenamrane at yahoo.com> wrote: 

 db> I do support this proposal to re nominate Richard Stallman.

I strongly support this proposal.

It is most disturbing that Richard Stallman was apparently excluded
for his dressing habits and on the grounds of personal dislikes.

Knowing Richard well, I understand that some people may find him a
difficult person to deal with: His insistance on clarity, precision,
integrity and truth under complete disregard for personal feelings can
be challenging, to say the least.


However: The goal of this process as far as I understood it was not to
select the most fashionable "Mr. or Mrs. Civil Society", but rather to
find people who had something meaningful to say.

Speaking to a large audience also does not require "1:1 diplomacy", it
requires the skill to speak to a large audience, something everyone
who has ever seen him knows Richard to be very good at.

Besides being one of the central people in bringing the internet
about, Richard has spent the past 20 years of his life traveling
around the world, inspiring large audiences (including heads of
states) with his speeches to value their freedoms in the digitised
information society -- long before most of the people on this list
realised those issues existed.

So if the purpose is to find an inspiring, skilled and experienced
speaker to address a large audience and carry forth the values of
freedom and equality, Richard is an excellent choice.

But then again: If I misunderstood the intention of this process and
the goal really was to find the most fashionable person, or the most
popular, I guess excluding Richard Stallman was a logical choice.

Regards,
Georg

-- 
Georg C. F. Greve                                 <greve at fsfeurope.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe	                 (http://fsfeurope.org)
Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom!     (http://www.fsfe.org)
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