Open source advocate gets “re-educated” in China!
God dammit. I always seem to miss the best parties. Thanks to a friend of mine I was on the list to attend the Microsoft conference in Peking University. The guest of honor was Microsoft’s founder and all round philanthropist, Bill Gates. Supposedly he was going to discuss “Innovation in China’s future”. I wonder if that includes spyware, malware etc., all of which is synomonous with the Microsoft brand name.
Anyone who knows me for 5 minutes knows that I am a complete advocate of Open Source software. Anyhow I bailed out of not going to Bill’s speech for a few reasons.
- I would have to collect the tickets around 6am (I was coding until 3am that morning)
- I would have to make travel for an hour to get out to Peking University followed by another hour to get back out to my house.
- l’d have to put up with listening about how Vista is amazing(It’s crap), how Microsoft changed the world (Fair enough), and because of this they deserve to be our overlords (No fecking way).
Anyhow, a friend of mine warned me that if I was going to go that obviously my rotten eggs would be confiscated at the door, so that would obviously lead to a piss poor party. What is a party of Microsoft without a little egg throwing anyhow?
I’m really kinda regretting not going right now. It appears that someone else was undeterred and crashed the party.
Bill is looking thoroughly amused n’est pas? Is this the best way to represent the Open Source movement? Off course not, it’s not even sensational, it’s idiocy at it’s height. If you want to support open source then run Debian or Ubuntu or one of the other plethora of free operating systems out there. Both organisations have released fantastic systems this past month that blast Vista out of the water.
Now this man appears to be an middle aged gentleman. Back in Ireland this kind of stunt would have been purpotrated by a teenager with perhaps a slight slap on the wrist. However remember that this is China, is this unknown gentleman’s whereabouts currently known? Does he still have organs? Has he been or is currently being “re-educated”?
It appears that the culprit reportedly darted across the stage, “loudly shouted against Microsoft’s monopoly,” proudly displayed a sign of “Free software, open source,” and was promptly “tackled by security and removed for questioning.”
Anyhow, all jokes aside, anything that is done to bring awareness to the open source movement is only a good thing. I’m just sorry I wasn’t there to throw some eggs and evade capture. Viva la revolution!
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