WORLD TOUR of the INFORMATION SOCIETY ( WTIS )
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Falling in the line of duty
Dr. Francis MUGUET wrote:
Hello everybody
Very sad news for this evening.
Richard Stallman was in Amsterdam on Wednesday 29, with a conference at night there too late to catch the last flight to Paris to attend the last day of the 5 th worldwide forum on electronic democracy ( 29- 30 September 2004, Issy-Les-Moulineaux, France ) http://www.issy.com/statiques/e-democratie/index_EN.htm
Therefore three activists from Nederland kindly brought Richard from Amsterdam to Paris by car. Richard arrived in Paris at around 4AM on Thursday. I met the all three ( I remember, two were wearing OpenBSD T-shirts, ) and one gave me his card. A fancy looking black card, with a white face ( his own ) and the URL of his site http://www.hans.cx They had to come back immediately to Amsterdam.
Unfortunately, on the way back, they had a serious car accident near Peronne, in France, on the motorway, According to the latest details I got this evening, their car collided a truck getting out of a gas station, in a thick fog.
It is unknown at this stage whether they were right or wrong, in terms of priority, or driving rules. The very sad thing is that one them died: Hans Bakker ( precisely the one with the fancy site http://www.hans.cx ) He was not the driver. The other two peoples have been undergone surgery ( mostly broken bones ) but their lifes are out of danger.
Friends of Hans are planning to turn this site into a memorial site. Hans shall be remembered as falling in the line of duty in helping the cause of free software. We should do something latter to contribute to his memorial site.
I have conveyed to his friends all the sympathy of this group. Of course, I personnally have a feeling of guilt, not because I did something wrong,but because I was one of the elements in a line of events that lead to his untimely death. Was it really worth it ?
Of course Richard was very shocked, probably with a similar feeling, but I can’t speak on his behalf.
In the afternoon at Isssy, we learned those sad news while waiting for the French Minister Patrick Devedjian http://perso.wanadoo.fr/devedjian/ http://www.premier-ministre.gouv.fr/devedjian/ to arrive ( he was quite late ). We were in a state of shock. After the speech of Devedjian, Richard was allowed to ask the first question to the Minister concerning the position of the French Gouvernment about Patents on Software concepts. Richard, very emotionnally, started his question (from my memory) with "A man died to allow me to be there to ask this question" (Ecouter l’échange).
However, we managed to get to the Minister before he left, and he promised in public that he would receive Richard personnally to further discuss this question.
I explained the emotional situation to one of his cabinet member, and he was also sincerely shocked. I hope that the Minister would keep his promise ( I have the feeling he is going to ) and that in the end, the French governement would reverse his position, like Nederland did recently, and would respect the will of the Europen Parliament.
Maybe, in this case, Hans would have not died for nothing.
Quiescat in pace..
Francis