by Richard Stallman

This article is also available in Spanish

I read Negroponte's statement presenting the OLPC XO as a platform for Windows in the most ironic circumstances possible: during a week of preparing, under a deadline, to migrate personally to an XO.

I made this decision for one specific reason: freedom. The IBM T23s that I have used for many years are adequate in practice, and the system and applications running on them are entirely free software, but the BIOS is not. I want to use a laptop with a free software BIOS, and the XO is the only one.

The XO's usual software load is not 100% free; it has a non-free firmware program to run the wireless chip. That means I cannot fully promote the XO as it stands, but it was easy for me to solve that problem for my own machine: I just deleted that file. That made the internal wireless chip inoperative, but I can do without it.

As always happens, problems arose, which delayed the migration until last week. On Friday, when I discussed some technical problems with the OLPC staff, we also discussed how to save the future of the project.

Some enthusiasts of the GNU/Linux system are extremely disappointed by the prospect that the XO, if it is a success, will not be a platform for the system they love. Those who have supported the OLPC project with their effort or their money may well feel betrayed. However, those concerns are dwarfed by what is at stake here: whether the XO is an influence for freedom or an influence for subjection.

Since the OLPC was first announced we have envisioned it as a way to lead millions of children around the world to a life in which they do computing in freedom. The project announced its intention to give children a path to learn about computers by allowing them to study and tinker with the software. It may yet do that, but there is a danger that it will not. If most of the XOs that are actually used run Windows, the overall effect will be the opposite.

Proprietary software keeps users divided and helpless. Its functioning is secret, so it is incompatible with the spirit of learning. Teaching children to use a proprietary (non-free) system such as Windows does not make the world a better place, because it puts them under the power of the system's developer -- perhaps permanently. You might as well introduce the children to an addictive drug. If the XO turns out to be a platform for spreading the use of proprietary software, its overall effect on the world will be negative.

It is also superfluous. The OLPC has already inspired other cheap computers; if the goal is only to make cheap computers available, the OLPC project has succeeded whether or not more XOs are built. So why build more XOs? Delivering freedom would be a good reason.

The project's decision is not final; the free software community must do everything possible to convince OLPC to continue being (aside from one firmware package) a force for freedom.

Part of what we can do is offer to help with the project's own free software. OLPC hoped for contribution from the community to its interface, Sugar, but this has not happened much. Partly that's because OLPC has not structured its development so as to reach out to the community for help -- which means, when viewed in constructive terms, that OLPC can obtain more contribution by starting to do this.

Sugar is free software, and contributing to it is a good thing to do. But don't forget the goal: helpful contributions are those that make Sugar better on free operating systems. Porting to Windows is permitted by the license, but it isn't a good thing to do.

I am typing these words on the XO. As I travel and speak in the coming weeks, I will point to it in my speeches to raise this issue.

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Copyright 2008 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.

When I arrived in Brussels for FOSDEM on Friday, my first priority was to visit Marcolini again.  Regular readers of this blog will remember how I adored Marcolini's chocolates, and brought some for my friends in Madrid to try, but it melted in the trunk of the car while we were dining.  I got plenty this time.

The following day I gave two speeches at FOSDEM: one about software patents (because the EU is considering yet another directive which would authorize them, see ffii.org), and one about GPL version 3. After that speech, someone asked an interesting question: What if party A makes a machine that will only execute binaries released and signed by party B?  Would this escape from our anti-tivoization requirements?

I had to study the question afterward, and the answer seems to be that major companies would not try such a thing without having a contract between them, and that contract would make the joint activity a clear violation of the GPL.

The following day I flew to Bilbao, and since I arrived at 11pm, I had to take a taxi to San Sebastian, an hour away.  (Such extravagance makes me feel strange, but that is what my hosts advised me to do.) Once I arrived, there was no place to get any food, even a snack; all I had for dinner was a little chocolate.  The next morning I gave a speech about free software, and my host drove me to Bilbao, where I stayed with my friend Txipi.

It was Txipi who, a couple of years ago, gave me a record of Basque ballads (Hiru Truku).  Several of them are fascinating as music, and one of them, Aldaztorrean, also intrigued me for its story.  I could read the Spanish translation provided with the record, but it was written in a style that left important things unsaid, and I could not really make sense of it.  I had a long discussion with Txipi to try to interpret it.  He had the second record in the series, and we listened to it, but none of them grabbed me.  I guess they used the best tunes for the first record.

The next day I traveled by bus to Asturias, one of the last regions of Spain I have never spent time in.  I had made two brief visits (a couple of hours) to the edges of Asturias to see the mountains, which are beautiful and snow-capped, but I had never actually stayed there. This time I visited the University of Oviedo, but not in Oviedo; this was the campus in Gijón, a distinction I did not grasp until it was time for me to get on the bus.

In fact, I never saw Oviedo, which is the principal city of Asturias. But I did have time for a luscious visit to the mountains, including a most unusual lookout point (the Mirador de Fito) at the top of a stair to nowhere, and Covadonga, reported to be the place where Christians first held off the Moors in the 8th century.  Christians seem to make quite a fuss about the place now.  Although I don't look at this from a Christian perspective, I found the waterfall issuing from a cave in a cliff and pouring into a lake carved out of rock intensely moving. People inclined to project their feelings into whatever triggers them would probably say that the place itself is powerful.  I wonder if pagans worshiped there before Christians did.

On the way to the mountains, we ate a marvelous lunch in a restaurant which had on the menu "Chorizo de Leon", which could mean "lion sausage" but actually means sausage from Leon.  The menu also listed "tigres" (which were mussel shells filled with a creamy mixture including the mussel meat and other things, then breaded).  I asked the waiter for chorizo de tigre, but they had none.  Tigers are endangered these days, and cannot be hunted.

A pleasant surprise about visiting Gijón was that there is a museum of bagpipes, which shows bagpipes from many different countries, and not just in Europe.  Since European bagpipes were made from goatskins until a few centuries ago, the names for "bagpipe" in most European languages are derived from the word for "goat".  The Spanish word "gaida" is derived from an old Germanic word "gait", which was probably brought in by the barbarians that conquered Spain in the 5th century.  That word meant "goat", and I suspect it's cognate with English "goat".  I got two copies of the book that describes their collection, one for me and one for Tania (since she is a bagpipe fan also).

The museum gives visitors the opportunity to play an "electronic bagpipe".  This is a tube in the shape of a bagpipe-chanter, with switches instead of sound holes, and it controls a synthesizer.  It was easy for me to play, given my recorder experience, far far easier than a real bagpipe, to the point that I wondered whether it was really honest to compare them.  This instrument was developed by the region's star musician, Hevia.

My hosts gave me several records of bagpipe music, one of which I like fairly well, and one of which I haven't heard yet because I left it in a car in Italy.  But the most important one was the Hevia record. It's important because I had to refuse it.  It was a Corrupt Disk, with Digital Restrictions Management, and presumably impossible to copy.  As soon as I saw this, I gave it back to my hosts, and asked them to take it back to the store, so that the record company could not keep their money.  I would have been glad to listen to Hevia's music, but not on a Corrupt Disk.

A "CD" that I cannot copy is of no use to me.  I always travel with a bunch of records so that I can offer my hosts the chance to listen.  A year ago, when my backpack was stolen, I learned to bring only copies, not originals.  If I can't copy a CD, I can't travel with it, so I don't want it.

But there is more than convenience at stake here.  DRM attacks our freedom, and it attacks free software (since free software cannot access such media).  Therefore, as a matter of principle, I reject all DRM media.  I won't buy them, or even accept them as gifts.  Please join me in a total rejection of DRM.

After my hectic and topsy-turvy visit to Venezuela, I had a chance to relax for 10 days in Yucatan.  I made the visit to Yucatan a long one, thinking that Tania would be able to join me there, but there were no funds for her to go.  So I had a long period with just two speeches, during which I visited some ancient Maya cities: Uxmal, Chichen Itza, Dzibilchaltun, and Edzna.

I was staying in the home of the student who arranged my visit there, a home so large I would call it a mansion.  His mother liked to cook, and came from Galicia, so I had a chance to enjoy many delicious non-spicy foods such as pulpo gallego (octopus Galician style).  My inability to eat anything more than a little spicy left me with few options when eating out, and I did not like many of them very much.

The name Yucatan comes from a Maya word that means, "What's he saying?"  That is how a local inhabitant responded when the Spanish conquistador asked the name of the area.  So every time someone spoke too fast for me to understand, I said "Yucatan".

From there I went to Washington DC for a meeting with the US team negotiating the WIPO Broadcast Treaty.  This treaty is a monstrous power grab on behalf of technology companies, and includes prohibitions nastier than the DMCA.  The European Union, a highly antidemocratic institution, is also pushing to make the treaty as restrictive as possible, the better to crush the freedom of the citizens of Europe.

Our goal in meeting with them was to show a broad-based demand that they consult with the public and Congress before advocating such restrictions in treaty negotiations.

My flight took me to Baltimore-Washington airport.  The flight arrived early, and I got my luggage quickly too, which meant I was just barely in time for the last bus to the last DC metro train.  I had to guess which stop was closest, and did not guess quite right, so I had a long walk with my suitcase before arriving at the house where I was going to stay.  On arriving there, rather tired, I found that neither the doorbell nor banging on the door with my recorder succeeded in getting anyone's attention.  I was on the point of despair when someone walked by.  I asked him if he would be so kind as to phone for me.  His call brought my host down to the door.

The house was under active construction inside, and he said it had no heat or hot water, so that I would probably be more comfortable in their old house.  He brought me there, and I got settled in to a room in the basement.

The meeting was two days later.  People spoke well and persuasively at the meeting; I only hope the delegation pays attention.  The head of the delegation tried to brush us off with a basic civics lecture, explaining how the procedure of adoption would indeed allow Congress a chance to study the treaty and vote on it--after the text had been fixed by WIPO--and therefore, Congress would eventually be consulted.  Weren't we asking for what was already in the plan?  I responded, "At that point Congress will only be able to vote yes or no.  To have a meaningful consultation about what the treaty should say, it has to be done now."  If this had been a debate, intending to convince an audience, I think I would have won that point.  But there was no audience except the delegation, and I cannot judge whether we altered their plans.

After the meeting many of us gathered in the office of CPTech, where most of them held a post-mortem and discussed strategy for fighting the treaty.  Being overloaded, all I can do to help fight this treaty is go to occasional meetings like this one; so I left that discussion to the others and answered my mail.

I had expected to get a ride in a van to New York after the meeting, but the the person with the van had a sudden emergency, and did not come to DC at all.  The only person who was driving to NYC had a full car, so I was going to take a cheap bus instead.  However, about when it would be time for me to take a cab to the bus stop, Jay Sulzberger decided to go home by bus instead.  I remained behind to travel in the car.  It was a challenge to fit all my luggage into the car, but we did it.

We did not set out until a couple of hours later, and then we got lost in the one-way streets, and then another passenger had left a coat behind at the CPTech office, so we had to go back there.  By the time we were heading out of DC it was after 7pm.  The car was quite overloaded, and could not go more than 65 miles an hour, and we had to drop someone in Philadelphia, and the driver was sleepy so I had to drive for a couple of hours.  I was dropped off in Manhattan around 1am.  Jay was home in bed hours before.  All in all, the bus would have been much more convenient.  Two days later another bus brought me back to Boston.

On Jan 18 I flew to Venezuela via Miami.  As soon as I reached the boarding gate in Boston, I got a surprise: Tania was waiting for me there.  "What are you doing here?" I asked her.  She had left for the airport early that morning to fly to Bogota via New York and Miami (this was how we corrected the mistake of initially getting her tickets from the wrong city).  But her flight to New York had been canceled, so they rerouted her direct to Miami on the same flight I was on.

We managed to get adjacent seats.  It was a pleasant experience until we realized that the flight was hours late, and it looked like we would both miss our connections.

As soon as we got out of the plane, I looked for ground staff to deal with connecting flights, and saw there were none.  My flight to Caracas was delayed so much that I could still get on it, but Tania had to stay overnight in Miami.

When my flight arrived in Caracas, airport staff were waiting to collect me and a few others.  We were supposed to sleep that night in the airport's VIP lounge--a peculiar idea, since that lounge is a large sitting room, not meant or designed for sleeping.

None of the surfaces were soft enough for me to sleep on, but that was no problem; I inflated my air mattress.  Noise came in through the hallway, and the presence of other people sleeping in the same room, even though they were 40 feet away, made me feel a little uneasy, so I fell asleep only at 3am.  I was not allowed to sleep for very long, because at around 7:20am I was awakened and told that I had a flight to Valera soon and I should go immediately to the domestic terminal to check in.

The main thing that happened in Valera, aside from my speech, is that I came down with a cold.  When I arrived in Venezuela, I had already passed several nights with insufficient sleep, and I continued to miss sleep while there.  By the second day in Valera my throat was getting sore.  I tried to make myself sleep a lot that night, but didn't entirely succeed.  It took me over three weeks to get over the cold.

The trip through the mountains from Valera to Barinas was four hours by car, at night, so we did not see the mountains.

The rector of the university welcomed me to the speech in Barinas, so I hope he will heed the point that schools of all levels have a duty to teach only free software, so that they build a society of people accustomed to freedom, rather than inculcating permanent dependence on non-free software.  (See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html.)

After my speech in Barinas was done, we drove back part way towards Valera to visit the mountains in the daytime.  The photos can be found in http://stallman.org/photos/venezuela/to-barinas/.

The next day we were driven from Barinas to Caracas with a stop in Acarigua, where I gave a short speech because my cold was interfering with my voice.  We proceeded to Caracas by way of Valencia, where there are so many Chinese immigrants that there is good Chinese food. One of Octavio's free software enthusiast friends is Chinese, and he gave me some very nice jasmine tea; I asked him to tell us where to find the best Chinese restaurant in Valencia.  It was pretty good, because of its Chinese clientele--parts of the menu were written only in Chinese.  I treated the driver to dinner, because it would have been a shame if he were excluded and besides, his participation meant we could try more dishes.  He delivered me to the Caracas Hilton, which I've stayed in enough to become familiar with certain inconveniences, around midnight.

The most amazing thing about this road trip was the number of police controls.  Every 40 km or so we passed places which were set up as barriers for police to make the traffic stop.  At most of these places the police did not actually seem to be paying attention, and traffic did not actually stop; but once they checked the driver's papers, and once they made us all get out to be checked.  I asked the police, "Of what am I suspected?"  They said, "Nothing, this is just routine."  I refused to accept that reassurance.  "When you suspect someone of a crime, of course you have to investigate.  But questioning people when you don't suspect them, that is absurd!"  I did not refuse to obey their demands, but I firmly denied the legitimacy of what they were doing.  They seemed to find this somewhat disconcerting.

Octavio thought I must be crazy to speak my mind, but I told him that hardly anyone could be in a safer position to criticize them than I. I figured I had enough contacts (after all, I've even met the president) that they'd regret it if they really harrassed me, and that gave me a duty to speak up.  If not me, who?

In Caracas I mentioned this to the head of a government agency.  He told me that he had once been arrested by the same police because he wouldn't pay a bribe, and the police did not care that he was a high official, though eventually others in the government did rescue him. He said that police force has been meddlesome, corrupt, and useless for as long as anyone can remember, and that the government is now considering the simple solution of abolishing the force.

It took about four hours to drive to Caracas from Acarigua.  It would have taken even longer to reach Caracas from the airport of Caracas, because a viaduct collapsed a few months ago and now supports just one lane of traffic.  The collapse was due to improper construction, decades ago; recently, engineers warned that the viaduct might collapse, but nothing was done until that actually occurred.  (This resembles the attitude that humanity is taking towards the possible collapse of the Greenland ice cap.)  Now they are planning to build a new viaduct.

My main speech in Caracas was intended to be associated with the World Social Forum, but it was held in a ministry not near the rest of the forum, and the audience was not very large.  However, a government organization that promotes free software had a tent near the WSF area, and held continuous free software activites, with a considerable number of people coming by.  I gave a speech for them too.

On my last full day in Caracas, Tania arrived, looking for clients for her free software support company.  She had come by bus from Bogota, with a large group of people on their way from Colombia and other countries further south.  All had been delayed just inside the Venezuelan border, because the buses that were supposed to bring them to Caracas never arrived.  Tania had enough money to buy a commercial bus ticket to finish the journey; most of the others were simply stuck.  I don't know whether they ever reached Caracas.

My next destination after Caracas was Merida, in Yucatan, Mexico.  I had found that the most convenient way to go there from Caracas was to take a Mexicana flight that left in the afternoon, and spend the night in Mexico City.  However, the people who arranged the tickets chose to send me there on Continental via Houston, Texas, which implied a 5 hour layover and an extra examination by the US Committee for Public Safety (i.e., Department of Homeland Security).  When I found out, I asked if they could change the tickets, but they said it was too late. I had to fly out at 10am, and I would arrive in Yucatan 12 hours later.

Even if the viaduct had been intact, I would have had to wake up in Caracas at 5am to go to the airport for that flight.  No way!  I arranged to spend the previous night in a hotel near the airport. People said it would take up to four hours to reach the airport, so I planned to leave Caracas at 6pm and be asleep by 11.  But I didn't manage to get out that early--there were people wanting to see me at the last minute, etc.  At around 7pm I was buying some lentil soup and roast chicken to eat in the taxi, and then my friends went to find a taxi for me.  It wasn't easy to find one willing to go to the airport, and it cost a lot more than we had been told to expect.  The taxi had to wait for about three hours without moving; it had no air conditioning, and I needed to open the taxi door to cool off, but it was not safe to have the computer out with even the window open.  The container of lentil soup had been crushed and it had all leaked onto the seat.

Once we started moving, we made good time on a small road that goes over the mountains and then down at the coast.  The view must be spectacular by day.

I checked into the hotel at 12:20am, and tried to go to sleep quickly with the help of some melatonin.  They advised me that I should get to the airport around 7am, even though that might seem overcautious, because there were sometimes long delays.  I arrived at the Continental desk shortly after 7am, only to be told that I had a reservation but my ticket was void.  They could not explain why, but they invited me to buy another ticket, which would have been ridiculously expensive.

There is no place in or near the airport where I can do a mail transfer, or call to a cell phone, which meant I would find it nearly impossible to contact anyone I knew.  If I could not depart that morning, I would have to spend 5 hours getting back to Caracas, arriving there just in time to return to the airport for the night.

Then a possibility occurred to me.  What if my request to change to Mexicana had been implemented without telling me?  That could explain the void ticket.

I went to the Mexicana desk, having to face various obstacles to find and reach it, and told the agent I wondered if they had me booked on their afternoon flight to Mexico.  The agent told me they did not have an afternoon flight (why had people told me that there was one?), only the morning flight that would leave in half an hour.  So I said, just in case, please see if you have any reservations for me.  The agent told me that I had a seat their morning flight.  Wonder of wonders, he allowed me to check in, 30 minutes before departure time.  Soon I was on my way to Mexico, without going through the US, and it was going to take only 7 hours for me to reach Merida.

I think I won't return to Caracas until the viaduct is replaced.

After my experience at the first World Summit on the Information Society, I concluded that it had little potential to do much good.  In the official plan, which was approved by the first summit, the US had excluded any proposal to do anything to promote free software, and would have expunged all mention of it except that Brazil refused to stand for that.  The second summit did not officially have the power to change those plans, even supposing the balance of power would support a different outcome.  Further, it was hosted by Tunisia, a dictatorship famous for its censorship of the internet.

However, my friends in APDIP asked me to go to speak in their event, and I said yes.  They convinced me by telling me that they had invited a BBC documentary crew, which could have more effect than a speech itself.

On the taxiway, as I was filling out the immigration form, a burst of rebellious spirit came over me.  In the slot that asked for my profession, I wrote down "troublemaker".  The agent at the special WSIS entry booth paid no attention to that, but this did not reflect a general policy of relaxation: the president of Reporters without Borders was denied entry and thus excluded from the summit.

I arrived during the first official day of the summit.  By that time, an unofficial event where international human rights activists wanted to meet with Tunisian human rights activists had been blocked by the police.  (See http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=30399.)  Tunisia demanded the cancellation of an official summit event called "Expression under Repression", where speakers from several countries were invited to discuss their experiences using the internet to publish dissident political material.  However, the organizers refused to back down, and it was held anyway.  The exposure of Tunisian tyranny to foreigners was the only beneficial effect of the summit that I know about.

The only official thing I did that day was to get my badge.  The badge held not only my photo, but also an RFID taped onto the back.  I was disgusted by it, so that evening at dinner I asked the restaurant for some aluminum foil to cover the badge with.

The following day I went to the exhibit half of the summit area, to meet the APDIP people and get interviewed by the BBC.  I removed the aluminum foil from the badge to let the security checkpoint check it--I was not protesting against having security around the summit--then put it back on while inside.  I told various people about the issue of RFID, and urged them to obtain aluminum foil for their badges the next day.  An RFID communicates with radio waves, so if it is completely surrounded by metal, it cannot be scanned.  By covering our badges, we could prevent our movements within the summit, and our movements outside, from being scanned; we could also make a visible protest against the surveillance society that many governments are trying to impose.

There were several more interviews, one with a Tunisian who asked me what I thought of his country.  I told him I could not give him an answer he would be allowed to print.

That evening I went to a place in the old center of Tunis, and received a prize--the "Minimum Prize" of Fondazione Pistoletto.  I received it from Gilberto Gil, who is Brazil's Minister for Culture, in a ceremony attended by perhaps a hundred young people.  I made a brief speech, saying everything in both French and English.

Then someone asked me to sing the Free Software Song, accompanied by Gil.  I don't recall why, but I went on singing other filk songs I've written, including "My Ronnie Lies over the Radio", "Old MacDonald Lost His Farm", and "Servin' 'em the Writs". Then I excused myself to leave the stage to real musicians.

A young Tunisian then came up to me and told me that he wished his country could have other kinds of freedoms, aside from that of sharing and changing software.  I realized that this unofficial event was probably the only place a Tunisian without official support could approach any of the thousands of international visitors to the summit.

The next morning I took a cab to the summit venue, so I could stop at a store and buy a roll of aluminum foil.  I had to show the badge several times just to reach a point about half a mile away from the venue, at which point the guards? police? forced me to take a shuttle bus across the parking lot; to walk through the parking lot was forbidden.  I suspected that the purpose of this is to prevent Tunisian dissidents from approaching us visitors.  Not only were they unable to get inside the summit, they could not even speak to us outside.

Once inside, I gave out aluminum foil to a number of people, then went to my first speech, where I did the same.  Before the actual event started, police tried to take away my roll of aluminum foil, but I held on to it and took it back.  They said they wanted to speak with me privately, so I responded, loudly, with "Whatever you want to say to me, you can say right here."

At the end of the event, UN police blocked me as I tried to leave the room--demanding that I remove the aluminum foil.  I shouted out, "I am being kept prisoner in this room", and told them that if they wanted me to wear the badge exposed, they should not have put an RFID in it. After a minute they let me out into the corridor, where immediately people came up simply wanting to talk with me.  Eventually they let me proceed back to the exhibition area.  At that point I remembered that I was supposed to be in another event which had started just as the previous one ended.  I tried to go there, but was never able to find it.  People tried to guide me there but nobody knew where that room was located.  At one point we tried to pass through doors that (I later realized) went back to the summit area, and Tunisian security guards physically blocked me from passing through.  They told me it was against the rules for me to pass; when I shouted "Why can't I go through?", they only told me to wait.  A camera crew recorded some of this.

After this had gone on for several minutes, I told them the name of the room I was headed for.  A guard told me that room was in a different direction.  So I went away and looked for it following their directions.  I did not find it, and eventually I gave up and returned to the APDIP stand.  The same camera crew which had captured the actions of the police then came to interview me.

When that was done, it was time for my third event.  This one I knew was in the summit area, and I didn't know if I would be blocked again, so I invited them to come along with me.  This time, instead of just revealing the badge photo for the guard to look at, I removed the foil while still around the corridor corner from them.  Thus, I approached them with an ordinary badge.  This altered nothing; they once again physically barred my path, once again refused to tell me why.  But the interviewer of the camera team asked why, and they told him there was a specific order to block me.  I sent him along to the event, and he returned with Marco Ciurcina.  The guards did not care what Marco thought, so I said to him, "Bring the event here!"  He walked away towards the event.

Then a couple of uniformed UN police came by and asked to see my badge.  The Tunisians let them.  The UN police looked at the badge and said, "His badge says he's authorized for this area--so let him in." The Tunisians obeyed.

At this point I was in a hurry, because the people in the event might at any moment follow Marco back to the checkpoint.  I ran to the room, and reached it before they left.  In my haste I did not immediately start putting the aluminum foil back on the badge--and then I passed the UN security person who after the first event had told me to keep my badge visible.  It struck me that he might think, from seeing my badge without foil at that moment, that I was complying with his demand (which I had never accepted).  I was intensely embarrassed by the thought, so I then put the foil back on as quickly as I could--while still running--but it was too late.  In fact, he later told a reporter exactly what I feared he would say.

As this event ended, I decided to strip off the RFID from the badge. However, many others seemed to have badges with RFIDs embedded inside them.  They had no such option.

On returning to my hotel, I discovered that guards were checking summit badges simply to let people into the hotel's yard.  Apparently the whole hotel was reserved for summit visitors.  I began to wonder if the purpose of this was to prevent Tunisian dissidents from approaching us there.

The next day I did a little tourism, visiting the ruins of Roman Carthage (nothing survives of the older city that Rome fought), and the Bardo Museum which is an Ottoman-era palace full of transplanted Roman mosaics.  Something electronic in my camera died during that visit, so I borrowed a camera, and the photos can be seen in http://www.maxigas.hu/gal/stallman/stallmanday.html