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).
Of course the audience did not what has just happenned.
The answer of Devedjian was disapointing. He seems
to be in favor of Software Patents, while acknowledging
the matter was complex.
At that moment, I personnally felt incredibly depressed
and overwhelmed when the images of those 3 nice activists
superimposed upon the image of the minister getting his answer.
What if Hans died for nothing after all.?

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.
May be, in this case, Hans would have not died for nothing.

Quiescat in pace..

Francis