If the person with the t-shirt is both sympathetic to communism or the Che, and RMS, I can see how it can not be a provocation.

RMS was probably right not to sign it though. I also believe producing a t-shirt with RMS depicted as the Che is not quite right.

Well first of all I was 15 or 16 at the time, so I guess I didn't give it as much though as you currently do, and besides, Che Guevara is (to me at least) not a symbol of communism first and foremost, but a symbol of a man fighting for his ideas (not saying that's my opinion of him especially nowadays, I'm talking about the symbolic power, especially of the famous photograph we all know).

So... no.

Besides, it was in Europe. Us Europeans do not have the same epidermic reaction to communism that Americans have.

It's funny, I read those Che t-shirts completely differently to the way you do.

What could be more capitalist than remixing a photo of a communist revolutionary and selling it for profit? I see them as ironic, not endorsing, especially in their remixed state.

I guess this just underlines the fact RMS shouldn't have signed the t-shirt - it's just a graphic, so you could make out it means anything.

How can this be viewed as a provocation, unless your views align with the regimes who people like Che faught against?

Regardless of your views on 'communism' (and I say that as someone who will quickly detest any of those governments at that time in history), they faught against overtly fascist regimes that trampled on all personal freedoms and routinely rounded up dissidents to be summarily executed. RMS 'not endorsing' fighting for personal freedom is an endorsement of the status quo of that era, where governments like Pinochets would literally kidnap dissidents, sedate them, throw them into the cargo holds of 747s and dump them out over the ocean from tens of thousands of feet in the air.