Sharing and Empathy
In August 2010 Richard Stallman wrote about a "Childhood Sweetheart". He said she had "got well enough to live at home again, but she was never able to resume productive activities. They stopped the birds from breeding, and after a few years very few were left."
She died "of natural causes" about 41 days before he wrote this. She had campaigned for animals and was a close friend of Stallman. They spoke a lot.
Quoting Stallman: "she told me about a silent performance she had done, in a courtroom, while a businessman was testifying in favor of destroying a wilderness area that she had campaigned to save. She took off her dress, grabbing the attention of everyone in the room, revealing another dress with pictures of endangered animals sewn on. She ostentatiously pointed them out, one by one. Then she took off this dress, revealing yet another dress which had pictures of extinct animals. She pointed them out, one by one. Whatever the developer said, nobody listened. She called this her "strip moll act"."
Today PCLinuxOS Magazine remembers and mourns a lady who helped around in the PCLinuxOS forum as a moderator while she "lived like a hermit in a Kilburn basement which she loved, full of Linux computers, crime novels and small cabinets on wheels (everything was on wheels), with visiting foxes, cats and squirrels – mostly in the garden but not infrequently in the house."
If GNU/Linux attracts activists like these, then it means altruism is "in the blood".
The world remembers people not based on the number (or "final balance") in their bank account or number of offspring, it tends to remember people based on notable things they accomplished which helped change the course of history for the better (or worse).
In recent years, as Linux approaches 35, Linus himself seems to have compromised himself and ruined his image in pursuit of money. Many sites have blasted him over this. He also joined the xenophobia of his employer, where exclusion is celebrated as a virtue. Repentance is not possible on the payroll of the Linux Foundation, run by a promoter of a pyramid scheme and married to one who ran a pyramid scheme and ran away from class action over securities fraud [1, 2]. Perhaps they aim to have an epitaph like Enron's.
Be more like Stallman, not Linus and Jim the opportunist (mischievous pretender like Campinos). █