The conversation segues into a discussion of Korean cuisine. During the same June, 2000, Asian tour, Stallman paid a visit to South Korea. His arrival ignited a mini-firestorm in the local media thanks to a Korean software conference attended by Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates that same week. Next to getting his photo above Gates's photo on the front page of the top Seoul newspaper, Stallman says the best thing about the trip was the food. "I had a bowl of naeng myun, which is cold noodles," says Stallman. "These were a very interesting feeling noodle. Most places don't use quite the same kind of noodles for your naeng myun, so I can say with complete certainty that this was the most exquisite naeng myun I ever had."
The term "exquisite" is high praise coming from Stallman. I know this, because a few moments after listening to Stallman rhapsodize about naeng myun, I feel his laser-beam eyes singeing the top of my right shoulder.
"There is the most exquisite woman sitting just behind you," Stallman says.
I turn to look, catching a glimpse of a woman's back. The woman is young, somewhere in her mid-20s, and is wearing a white sequinned dress. She and her male lunch companion are in the final stages of paying the check. When both get up from the table to leave the restaurant, I can tell without looking, because Stallman's eyes suddenly dim in intensity.
"Oh, no," he says. "They're gone. And to think, I'll probably never even get to see her again."
After a brief sigh, Stallman recovers. The moment gives me a chance to discuss Stallman's reputation vis-ý-vis the fairer sex. The reputation is a bit contradictory at times. A number of hackers report Stallman's predilection for greeting females with a kiss on the back of the hand.See Mae Ling Mak, "Mae Ling's Story" (December 17, 1998).
http://www.crackmonkey.org/pipermail/crackmonkey/1998q4/003006.htm
So far, Mak is the only person I've found willing to
speak on the record in regard to this practice,
although I've heard this from a few other female
sources. Mak, despite expressing initial revulsion at
it, later managed to put aside her misgivings and dance
with Stallman at a 1999 LinuxWorld show.
http://www.linux.com/interact/potd.phtml?potd_id=44
A May 26, 2000 Salon.com article, meanwhile, portrays
Stallman as a bit of a hacker lothario. Documenting the
free software-free love connection, reporter Annalee
Newitz presents Stallman as rejecting traditional
family values, telling her, "I believe in love, but not
monogamy."See Annalee Newitz, "If Code is Free Why Not Me?"
Salon.com (May 26, 2000).
Stallman lets his menu drop a little when I bring this up. "Well, most men seem to want sex and seem to have a rather contemptuous attitude towards women," he says. "Even women they're involved with. I can't understand it at all."
I mention a passage from the 1999 book Open Sources in which Stallman confesses to wanting to name the ill-fated GNU kernel after a girlfriend at the time. The girlfriend's name was Alix, a name that fit perfectly with the Unix developer convention of putting an "x" at the end of any new kernel name-e.g., "Linux." Because the woman was a Unix system administrator, Stallman says it would have been an even more touching tribute. Unfortunately, Stallman notes, the kernel project's eventual main developer renamed the kernel HURD.See Richard Stallman, "The GNU Operating System and the Free Software Movement," Open Sources (O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., 1999): 65. Although Stallman and the girlfriend later broke up, the story triggers an automatic question: for all the media imagery depicting him as a wild-eyed fanatic, is Richard Stallman really just a hopeless romantic, a wandering Quixote tilting at corporate windmills in an effort to impress some as-yet-unidentified Dulcinea?
"I wasn't really trying to be romantic," Stallman says, recalling the Alix story. "It was more of a teasing thing. I mean, it was romantic, but it was also teasing, you know? It would have been a delightful surprise."