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Comment by hengheng | Hacker News Reader

So he's self-centered enough that he expects everybody to read through all of this essay. Interesting.

Actually, back in the 80s, people normally wrote email of about that length, and since gaming was uncommon, had the leisure to read well-written prose from their peers.

Sometime around 2000, busy people started complaining about this practice, and old timers started to hold their tongues. I knew the era was over when my Millennial co-worker one cube away asked me to not interrupt him and IM him instead, since he had to take off his earphones. About the same time, my boss complained about how long my (senior engineer, explaining matters related to the immanent demise of the company...) emails were -- frankly managers were busy and 1-2 sentence ought to explain about this O-ring problem.

Your projection of self-centeredness on the part of your elders is unbecoming and ill-informed. You are merely young.

rms is just old school.

I am young. RMS has written a very simple email, well laid out and information dense. There is no external referencing and it is easy to skim read.

I find most "short" messages lack key details, requiring me to either search out more information, request a clarification, or abandon the conversation (due to anticipation of the pain continued communication would cause). This is more time and mentally expensive to me than reading a longer more precise message.

There is no need to insert arbitrary ageism. It just makes you look immature, whatever your age.

To me, this seems to be making two opposite points. One reason to prefer asynchronous interruptions (like IM) to their synchronous counterparts (like out-loud conversation), is so that you have the leisure to deeply read long-form writing (like well-written emails or (hopefully) well-written documentation).

I don't see that as self-centred at all. He is politely explaining how email fits into his schedule and offers you alternatives if you need to speak with him urgently. That is a lot better than people who get your email but just ignore it for a day or more until you end up sending a "did you get my email".

Also RMS replies to a lot of the random emails he gets. Much more than a lot of people who are as well known as him to be fair.

Sounds to me like you are just not a big fan of RMS so find a negative in everything he does that isn't quite the norm.

Huh. Am I the only one around here who thinks that it's completely normal to wait a few days for an email reply?

Old enough to have done email by way of dialup?

Probably old enough to learn by experience that you have to fight for the control of your own time and attention. If you get people used to quick replies to any small issue, they will later expect it.

Even big computers (e.g., VAXes running Unix) used to transfer e-mail by way of dialup. In the days before everyone had internet access, some hosts would only have intermittent dial-up connections to other hosts, and they'd transfer e-mail over UUCP. If these machines were in underfunded organizations like university departments, they'd make their calls at night when long-distance calls were cheaper. It could take a day or two just for an e-mail to get across the country, and another day or two for the reply to get back.

For more on this, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP#Mail_routing

My first access to the web was via UUCP exchange via a local BBS that exchange mail with their upstream 4 times a day, coupled with the CERN mail<->web gateway...

Seem very similar to Fidonet.

I tend to do email once a day in the morning when I get to work. I mostly don't look at it again after that unless there's something particularly critical at issue.

I have an ongoing exchange with a guy that's contributed bug fixes to one of my projects where the average response time (both ways) is on the order of months. It's become a standing joke. I have a mail from him sitting in my inbox right now. It's been there a few months - I'm sure I'll reply to it in a month or three.

No, he's reasonable enough to explain why and how long it takes to respond to the massive amount of mail he must receive daily.

Early in my professional career, I learned something: nobody in the professional world wants to hear what anyone else has to say, unless money is involved (e.g. one of you is the other one's client or customer), and even then they want to hear as little as possible. I had to learn how to professionally communicate with my employers and clients, which means learning to say as little as humanly possible while still mostly getting the point across.

So you optimize for communicating with that sort of person if you need money from them.

Never having met the guy, that doesn't really sound like rms' MO.

He also has rather complex rules about inviting him for a talk

https://groups.google.com/a/mysociety.org/forum/#!msg/mysoci...

To people who think like rms, these rules are very helpful, but I think many people will get the impression that he is being very rude by having a long document with his preferences.

Reminds me of the infamous "no brown M&M's" rider...

Those sort of riders are a sentinel to signal that the venue read the contract carefully, not diva behavior, as is commonly assumed. If they caught the brown M&M's thing, they probably got all the stuff about rigging safety, so you don't have to grill them on those things. Otherwise, you'd better double check.

Honestly, I think that such clauses can have opposite effect. I mean: how can you treat the other party seriously if they put such ridiculous, childish demands like 'no brown M&M" in contract?

> ...how can you treat the other party seriously if they put such ridiculous, childish demands like 'no brown M&M" in contract?

If you don't know what you're doing, you won't treat the other party seriously. This is a strong signal to the other party that you don't know what you're doing and SHOULD be avoided.

If -however- you do know what you're doing, then you take the other party seriously even when you come across such demands because (as shawn-furyan said):

> Those sort of riders are a sentinel to signal that the venue read the contract carefully... If they caught the brown M&M's thing, they probably got all the stuff about rigging safety, so you don't have to grill them on those things. Otherwise, you'd better double check.

I'm not sure if this is accurate, but the brown M&M thing started after Van Halen performed at a college gymnasium and their stage setup inflicted tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage to a facility that, if the organizers had read the rider, was never fit to host such a show.

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/david-lee-roth-van-halen-brow...

This applies to RMS -- when he's on the road, he's often at the mercy of the event organizer for transportation and lodging arrangements (either directly or indirectly by them providing information). If they mess up, he's in real trouble.

You do not know why that clause is there. When somebody asks for something and you do not understand why, and decide you don't want to do it, it is the sensible thing to ask for explanation. It is the childish thing to ignore it.

His time is important enough, and he is contacted/harassed/solicited by so many people that he expects people who waste it have to do it on their own terms.

If he reaches to YOU, and he still demands that, then that's another story.

You gotta understand, despite what you may think of RMS (and I may share some of your negativity), he is practically WORSHIPPED amongst parts of the *nix community. The man certainly has some condescending opinions about software, but he is not conceited about his own celebrity - he quite certainly would gladly give it up if he could. This is the message of someone who knows he gets more email than he can adequately respond to in a timely basis and still do anything productive at all with his day. He's doing the best he can.

I agree that we can't fault famous people for not being able to answer every email immediately, but

>The man certainly has some condescending opinions about software, but he is not conceited about his own celebrity - he quite certainly would gladly give it up if he could.

Which is why he's happy to let Linus get all the credit?…

It's not like he wants to call it RMS/Linux. Many people have contributed to the GNU project, and one doesn't have to be looking for self-publicity to advocate for its recognition.

It continues: "please do not buy me a parrot..."

top-notch hackers are not ordinary people ;)

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