Am I Doctor Stallman? | Hacker News Reader

Am I Doctor Stallman?

stallman.org

84 pointstjr116 comments

It’s a little tacky to use “Dr.” on the basis on an honorary doctorate, and may subject you to ridicule, as happened with “Dr.” Calvin Rolark.

Also, Stallman is misguided in asking the universities if he had permission. It is not a matter of permission, and, even if it were, it would not be the universities’ to give.

I admire Stallman’s accomplishments. But I always get an impression of feigned naïvité when reading these comments of his on his website. Can anyone in his position truly be so innocent?

Not as tacky as referring to yourself as “doctor” in the context of a medical discussion when your field has nothing to do with medicine whatsoever.

Are you referring to anything in particular?

It is important to note that in many places outside the US, Physicians are only honorary Doctors. For example in New Zealand, Physicians graduate MB ChB - Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of surgery. Lawyers likewise graduate LLB - Bachelor of Laws. You’re only technically a Doctor if you have a Doctorate - PhD, DPhil, DSc, MD.

It doesn’t invalidate your opinion, but it’s worth being aware of your own cultural context when making judgements.

In New Zealand, when you are sick, do you go to the doctor or to the Bachelor of Medicine?

You go to the GP - General Practitioner.

So that’s what people use in conversation? They don’t use “doctor” as a synonym for physician?

Isn’t that what they say in Britain? “GP”?

Yes

If it's as in Britain - and New Zealand is a Commonwealth country - then yes, people say, "I have an appointment with my GP."

My copies of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories of Sherlock Holmes speak of Doctor Watson rather than GP Watson.

Is this a Philosopher's Stone/Sorcerer's Stone situation where someone published an Americanized edition and that's what I have?

No, I think it's because GP is a newish term.

There’s a difference between “being a doctor” and “Dr Watson”. Nobody would ever say an academic is “a doctor”.

we do use "doctor" as a synonym fro GP, but we also understand that it's a traditional customary title and they don't actually have a doctorate

As others have commented, you would indeed say, “I have an appointment with my GP.” However, people would certainly know what you meant if you said “I’m going to see the doctor.”

Kiwi here. In NZ, a doctor is assumed to be a medical doctor without other context. And calling yourself a doctor when you're not a medical doctor gets you mocked, unless the context makes it clear you mean academic doctor-- as in, you're on a podium, and about to give an academic talk.

Mind you, calling yourself anything which isn't explicitly self deprecating gets you mocked in NZ.

Why? He has a doctorate in Open Source Software. What does a PhD represent?

He does? In what department in what university did he earn this earned degree? What was his dissertation about?

"earn" as in was granted by a university? The purpose of a graduate degree (Masters, Doctorate, et al) is to further knowledge. Without churning out "dissertations", Universities would be nothing more than echo chambers for what's already accepted and considered "known". https://vimeo.com/9270320 - Greg Wilso mentions this, because it's important to all modern human industry and somehow that's rarely understood.

In that vein, there are discoveries, studies and experts that occur or develop outside of universities. This is the source of an honorary degree. Famously, others have been given various degrees for effort and demonstrated competence (eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Joel). People who scoff at honorary doctorates are elitists, at best. Those who do not accept that expertise can be cultivated excepting through anything other than standardized processes understandably believe that no other process is legitimate despite the fact that there are narrow and wide fields of study for which there exists no framework.

There is some truth to the observation that age unfairly plays into academic accomplishment insofar as someone younger could not be granted a teaching position or honorary degree, even if they demonstrate comparable knowledge. Part of the leeway is due to a passion or commitment to topics that can only be demonstrated through a life-long pursuit of knowledge and criticality.

Nobody is being an elitist or scoffing at anyone. The phrase “earned degree” has a particular meaning: it means “not honorary”. I think honorary degrees are great. But they are what they are. The convention is not to use the title “Dr.” on the basis of an honorary degree. That‘s it. Stallman is a legend, and obviously has no need of titles.

> The phrase “earned degree” has a particular meaning: it means “not honorary”

Maybe you meant academic degree.

> But they are what they are.

Still not clear on what that means. Recognition of expertise? They are that.

> The convention is not to use the title “Dr.” on the basis of an honorary degree

Again, by those aforementioned.

I meant exactly what I typed. As I just informed you, the phrase has a well-established meaning.

> As I just informed you

I think you have a flawed set of beliefs. Good luck with whatever.

What exactly are they that they are? Not earned? I bet there are more un-earned regular degrees than honorary.

Indeed, honorary degrees are earned. The accreditation process differs for every individual, at a micro level and for individuals across organizations (and time and discipline, et al) at a macro level. The idea that a degree is "earned" based on a lack of the "honorary" descriptor belies a bias of ignorance, at best.

What was doctor pepper's dissertation? Does freddy engineer have licensure?

I don't think he likes Open Source things. As I understand, he prefers Free software.

> It is not a matter of permission, and, even if it were, it would not be the universities’ to give.

Whose permission would it be to give?

It, like most titles and honorifics, are a matter of societal convention. If some university gave him an honorary doctorate and told him he now had “permission” to use the title “Dr.”, that would barely attenuate the eye-rolling that would ensue.

Indeed. Even Florida Atlantic University is correct and (apparently helpfully) clear on the point.

Can anyone in his position truly be so innocent?

By all accounts -- even his own -- he's pretty socially clueless.

That seems to be a root cause of why he's so controversial. No one seems able to imagine he acquired his stature due to technical expertise alone.

Everyone seems to imagine you have to also be smooth, diplomatic, well-mannered, etc to be at the top of anything. Merely being a technical genius and pioneer couldn't possibly be the explanation, no.

Or maybe not clueless, but persistently and pedantically trying to get to the bottom of every possible issue.

It's his personal site. It says so in big, bold letters across the top of the site: Richard Stallman's Personal Site.

Maybe the tech world could stop being so enamoured of gossip and cult of personality that techies often like to imagine they are immune to. Maybe people could just let him pedantically examine his belly button in public to his heart's content and not bother him about it.

I have no idea why people are reacting so negatively to this piece. It's extremely mild and reasonable and compares his firsthand experience with what he's heard about practices on two continents.

If you don't care what the hell he thinks about every random social topic, stop reading every random thing he writes about random social stuff.

He has gotten plenty of real world push back on genuinely harmful and problematic statements he has made. He's owned up to "Yeah, that wasn't great. I'm not great at social nuance. I learned something there."

And people are continuing to have a cow about a post like this?! That's not his fault. That's other people being ridiculous.

> an honorary

OK, but he has 15. The cumulative effect of these has to be capable of overcoming a barrier potential.

There is no cumulative effect to honorary degrees. Fifteen imaginary things are still 100% imaginary.

He didn't earn them, he was gifted them because people liked him. They're puffery, they don't mean anything.

If one person says "this comment is idiotic and I'm down voting it", it means nothing. If fifteen people also all say the same thing... it means something.

All a " real" doctorate is in the first place is a certification of expertise and/or recognition of acheivement, just like a uniform or a badge or a license etc, so that someone who was not there and has no way to know from direct experience, how seriously to take your advice, and on which topics.

An honorary degree performs exactly the same function.

>An honorary degree performs exactly the same function.

No, it doesn't. Richard Stallman didn't put in the work to earn fifteen doctorates, he hasn't earned the right to be considered on par with someone who put in the work to earn even one.

The function of an honorary doctorate is the same as the function of a key to the city, which is to say an ego boost to the receiver and publicity for the giving institution, but make no mistake - a real doctorate and an honorary one are not the same. The former takes years of study, discipline and effort, the latter requires literally nothing but showing up.

That is factually false. Doctorate degrees aren't earned for doing a certain quantity of work, but for expanding human knowledge. If your work doesn't expand human knowledge, regardless of its quantity or quality, it is not Ph. D. level.

I generally want to agree with you on separating honorary doctorates from those earned through explicit academic achievement, and I think you're right that one shouldn't go ahead and call themselves a doctor for having received a honorary degree, or fifteen.

The tone I don't agree with, based on my understanding of honorary degrees. I haven't heard of honorary doctorates being handed out to just random people who did nothing but showed up, nor for just being pals with someone. Where I live, honorary degrees seem to be awarded to people with distinctive achievement in the industry, politics, the arts, or in other areas of society. That's not "literally nothing but showing up", and you make it sound like none of those people did anything to be worth a distinction.

Maybe the culture of awarding honorary degrees is different in different countries, but my understanding is that they're valid acknowledgements of contribution, although not for academic work.

As for Stallman, whether you like him or not, and whether you even agree with his ideas of free software or not, it would be silly to say he has done nothing, or that he hasn't achieved and contributed something.

And assuming that a honorary degree is not just "imaginary" but an acknowledgement of achievement or contribution, maybe fifteen actually is more than one or none. Still not a normal academic degree (and certainly not several), but perhaps indicative of higher impact or contribution than one.

So, I agree that honorary degrees should generally not be treated the same as normal academic degrees. I can see how, especially if you've put in the explicit work for a doctorate, seeing someone get the same for "free" (i.e. without putting in the explicit effort for just that) could be frustrating and seem wrong. But the tone you used was IMO way too dismissive in general, so I strongly disagree with the rest of it.

Stallman has arguably contributed to work that is academic, at the Ph. D. level. It was just not research into new areas under the umbrella of obtaining a Ph. D.

I was looking through Evolution of Lisp again recently and noticed some citations of Stallman working with Sussman on computer aided circuit analysis.

Stallman also did research into Lisp systems at a time when that sort of thing was still Ph. D worthy, by the way. He was on the ANSI Common Lisp committee, too.

As a hacker, Stallman can easily wipe the floor with many a CS Ph. D.

Stallman can easily be regarded as a "Dr." and specifically in computer science.

You know .. I have a PhD in CS, and even I feel odd about having put Dr. on my driving license. It is kind of messed up that a Chiropractor and a Dentist call themselves Doctors without batting an eye (nothing against those professions), and I have feelings of doubt. I sort of understand what he is saying even though I earned my PhD :-p

> It is kind of messed up that a Chiropractor and a Dentist call themselves Doctors without batting an eye

For a Dentist, DDS (Doctor of Dental Surgery) and DMD (Doctor of Medicine in Dentistry), which I understand to be the same degrees, at least implies a medical background.

I always address him as Doctor Stallman, without giving much thought to how it officially works.

Even without the 15 honoraries, he's done more for me and the world at large than most officially credentialed.

This is weird. Is there anyone even remotely familiar with free software for whom the Doctor part in "Doctor Stallman" sounds more credible than the Stallman part?..

It's a small detail that keeps coming up as people grasp at straws trying to cancel a person who has given humanity so much over so many decades :(

"Remote familiarity" with free software includes people who have a hard time telling open source and free software apart, which may include politicians who have only been recently told that those terms even exist. It stands to reason that many of them don't know who Stallman is.

Richard Stallman is always so preoccupied with whether he could make a semantic argument, he never stops to think if he should.

That's why he uprooted his life to fight proprietary printer drivers rather than just putting up with it like most would. His pedantic behavior is what started FOSS.

It's not pedantry, it's a philosophy.

> rather than just putting up with it like most would

Whatever that virtue is, I wish I had more of it.

He's clearly one of the most important figures of the last century and utterly brilliant. But what makes him an incredible programmer also makes him a bit insufferable. Further reading: his infamous blog post about the semantics surrounding the word pedophilia.

He's not insufferable to me.

I say his positions are so inarguably correct that whoever finds them insufferable is either one of the people actively making life suck, or, merely a weaker person than him.

If I ever had to try to work with him, and his inability to use zoom or something was annoying to me, I know that the source of that problem is ME. Not even zoom but me.

It’s not necessarily his positions that are insufferable. It’s his insistence on making them regardless of good taste.

There's a lot about Stallman I admire, and a lot I dislike. In his case, I have no qualms with the title Doctor, given that his work is more than sufficient to have an earned doctorate at many (most? all?) universities. Does he really need to defend a dissertation to be acknowledged as an expert in the CS field? The dissertation is a filter to ensure you know what you're talking about and have earned the title. In Stallman's case, his professional work speaks for itself. His work is the research and dissertation.

A dissertation is not “a filter to ensure you know what you're talking about”. It is supposed to be an original piece of research that advances the state of knowledge. I am aware of Stallman’s inspiring promotion of freedom and his creation of useful, and widely used, tools, such as emacs. But I don’t know very much about him, really, or his work. What contribution did he make to research?

He had some high impact papers while at MIT. He could have used those to get PhD at any top 100-500 university easily.

Think about the time in which emacs was written though. In 1985 it was absolutely ground-breaking, and has stood the test of time. I've seen PhD dissertations approved at reputable schools for reimplementing Apache Storm badly.

And emacs is one example of a lot of really valuable contributions to the state of the art Stallman has made. Honestly, his political fame is the least interesting thing about his career, in my opinion.

Disclaimer: I'm not a fanboy and I use vim. :-)

Point taken. I have no doubt that he could have earned a PhD if he had wanted to bother. But since he didn’t, the use of the title does not accord with custom. Not important, but he brought it up and we're talking about it.

https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6255

PhD and Doctor degrees are sometimes just handled out to important inventors without bothering them to write and defend a thesis. At least it happened in Soviet Union with some researchers.

For example, see 1935 thesis details.

https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%...

> For instance, it calls me an "open-source software pioneer," which misrepresents my views and my work.

> We address this problem by publishing the definition of free software, and by saying “Think of ‘free speech,’ not ‘free beer.’”

TIL Richard Stallman is a Free Software pioneer, and Free means freedom, not free beer.

Also FLOSS is better to use than FOSS, it stands for "Free/Libre and Open Source Software", in order to clearly call out the freedom part of the meaning of free software.

The big thing missing from this self-centered musing is "in what context?". Unless you are the Queen of England, titles are generally used only in certain contexts. For a PhD in Computer Science in the US, the title of "doctor" is rarely used outside of academia.

I have a PhD in CS, work in industry, and never use the title "doctor" professionally and can't think of anyone else who does—people in my company are generally recognized by their job level, and even then it is context-dependent.

The FSF board has not generally used the title of "doctor" even for members with a PhD. https://web.archive.org/web/20150314205150/https://www.fsf.o...

Actually, he explicitly states the context:

> in formal situations, in connection with talks, interviews and publications, not in ordinary conversation.

I didn't know his website, it's quite fascinating to be in his mind. There are a lot of unusual thoughts to read about.

It's basically a huge dump of his thoughts daily with minimal filtering.

->I conjecture that buy-a-doctorate and sing-for-your-doctorate are found in the US only.

Why? I conjecture the USA isn’t unique as far as people scamming credentials.

For some reason, he hates the United States.

Well the United States has produced more non-free software and more profit based on non-free software than anywhere else, so naturally he hates it.

I'm reasonably sure we also produce more Free software than anywhere else, too.

Finland.

Apart from Linux having gotten its start there, what exceptional contribution comes from Finland that makes it distinctive in the FOSS world?

So, the way it works is, since the murderer is nice to his mom... ?

What do you base this "conjecture" on?

I conjecture that you wouldn't call someone a liar without some pretty solid data or at least direct observation.

Are you maybe saying that you've had 15 honorary degrees in various schools around the world, and the other people up their with you those days, or yourself, were utterly unworthy, to negate his stated observation?

Or maybe you're saying that what he said just doesn't mean much since all he claimed was that he respected the other recipients accomplishments. Sure I get that. One thing everyone knows about RMS, he's easy to impress.

some humans are scammers, most scams are repeatable. so if scammers in country X benefit from credential scamming, then it follows that their exist scammers in countries Y and Z that are also benefiting via their own application of the scamming technique.

> The reason that is beyond personal is so that people who know little or nothing of my career may decide, based on the title of "Doctor", to pay a little attention to that work

The attention this would normally get from me is looking up their thesis, seeing instead their honorary degree(s), and turning me off from whatever the person is associated with. Not sure that's the intended effect.

"We couldn't really prove he's a pedofile, damn it. What else we got?"

"He's kind of a little pretentious?"

"Just as bad! Run with it."

He could have easily earned a PhD at MIT with his work, IIRC there were some important papers he produced. He should probably use Dr(h.c.) and the matter would be settled. I bet he could easily get a PhD in business or sociology with the impact of free software on either of those.

Perhaps Doctor is a nickname he has earned moreso than many who were granted the honorific. Given what you can get a PhD in these days, if it flatters him and it's in genuine admiration, call him that. I'd take a nickname over an honorific any day.

IMO, the thing about honors is they're only meaningful if you can afford to dispense with them, so I think it would be pretentious for him to introduce himself with it. I've only ever called the various Sirs, Lords, Rt. Hons, Generals, Colonels, and various Worships I've met by their first names because I'm a civilian.

I have observed that some female doctors (from any academic field; h.c. or regular) like to put a "Dr." prefix in front of their names, in their social media profiles. I guess some women do this to signal "I am open to interactions here, even with random people from the internet, but preferably on a professional level. I am an expert in something myself." - in order to receive less toxic content, less rudeness, on social media.

Perhaps he was thinking about doing something like this himself.

Simple solution: just use the correct title abbreviation: Dr.h.c.

Edit: Also technically he would not be called Dr.h.c x12 but "Dr.h.c. mult.".

Greetings from a country obsessed with titles...

Austria?

I would recommend against someone with an honorary doctorate using "Dr." in the way RMS does. Even for those who have an actual Ph.D. are better off not saying "Dr.". I do have "Ph.D" on my business cards but haven't handed one out in years (mine's from UC Berkeley, 1993). I never call myself "Doctor", that just seems weird. But it may be appropriate for an academic in an academic setting.

The very fact that RMS has 15 honorary doctorates undermines his argument: if they were at all equivalent, there would be individuals with a comparable number of earned doctorates.

But the latter don’t get offered for the same body of work, over and over again.

Another way to consider the meaning of a degree is: "School X asserts that person Y knows their stuff on topic Z"

normally a school only ever says that about someone because they themselves produced and gauged that persons education. And for the same reason, normally a person only ever gets one school to say that about them.

But that could be seen as more a matter of logistics than some concept of "earning". Some school that doesn't know me can't make any declarations about my fitness to work in a given field.

The earning thing is not exactly a wrong way to think about it, but it's not exactly the only or the whole way either.

To be fair, there are many different kinds of doctorates. Many will be surprised to learn that most lawyers are doctors too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juris_Doctor

I don't really know all that much about Stallman himself, but doctorates (and degrees in general) are awarded a bit arbitrary anyway. I don't see what's less valuable about an honorary degree. I'd be more inclined to look at which universities it is that award the doctorates, honorary or not. Here, Stallman has an honorary degree from KTH in Sweden. There aren't all that many tech universities with a higher pedigree than KTH.

The stature of the institution has nothing to do with it.

Also, lawyers are not “doctors” in any sense, despite getting JDs from some places. And they do not use “Dr.”, and can get in trouble for doing so.

> Also, lawyers are not “doctors” in any sense, despite getting JDs from some places. And they do not use “Dr.”, and can get in trouble for doing so.

According to the American Bar Association it's a bit more complicated than that. Lawyers can, in fact, call themselves doctors in many cases: https://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/lawyers_are_doct...

Ahh, I concede: it depends on which state bar you are a member of. Interesting.

"Doctor" is widely used throughout the US media without repercussion.

Dr. Phil - philosophy

Dr. Drew - medical doctor

Dr. Laura - physiology (honorary in tradition and culture from a tiny college)

Dr. Ruth - education

Dr. Oz - medical doctor

M.D. or Physician means what you think "Doctor" means. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/20/702.404

Legally, it depends on the very lenient existing laws of the land to determine if you are prohibited (or default allowed) to be referred to as a doctor when you receive a doctorate. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5026525/ (mentioned US and CAN)

Dr. Phil is widely and routinely criticized for calling himself a doctor. The internet says Dr. Laura has a "Ph.D. in physiology." I had no idea Dr. Ruth wasn't a real medical doctor and I feel lied to learning that now. Your examples cement to me the idea that routinely calling yourself a doctor without a medical degree is extraordinarily dishonest and used to mislead people into thinking you have a level of expertise you don't.

We certainly are not doctors! Only in the US do we get a JD instead of an LLB. But if someone used that title, they could not really get in trouble, although everyone in the profession would heap scorn on the moron who did that.

I was referring to the fact that some state ethics boards have said it is a no-no, but as I was reminded in a later comment, others have said, “go at it!” So it depends on what state you lawyer in!

An interesting factoid about his alma mater: MIT awards no honorary doctorates. The only path to an MIT PhD is the old-fashioned way: You have to earn it.

Evidently, though, it offers office space for an indefinite term, if you can just avoid being embroiled in scandals.

Earn it and pay a fee. I think there is at least one case of a person who earned it but didn't pay the fee and ended up without PhD.

Fee? This doesn‘t sound right at all. Credible institutions pay their graduate students (a little), not the other way around.

OK, it was Harvard and Dennis Ritchie who didn't submit a bound copy of his thesis to Harvard library because he didn't want to pay the fee, so he didn't receive his PhD.

https://dmrthesis.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/AlbertMeyer...

His earned degree was from Harvard; he was admitted to MIT graduate school, but dropped out of academics to focus on programming.

Honorary doctorates are to doctorates as the Nobel peace prize is to the Nobel prizes

Don’t forget the literature one.

I'm most intrigued by the fact that Dr. Richard Stallman (of send-myself-websites-by-email-to-retain-my-freedom fame) reads "howstuffworks" articles with opinions about honorifics and takes them seriously enough to rebuke them in some manner

It's almost comical. And, for the record, I respect the man and the importance of his movement immensely. But this particular post is pretty ridiculous. Such is the nature of being Richard Stallman I suppose.

Perhaps only certain sites, like HowStuffWorks, are antiquated enough for his terminal-based web browser to render?

I kid, I kid.

Betteridge’s Law strikes again. If it is honorary, you don’t get to use the title. Everyone should know this and it doesn’t matter if you feel you “deserve” your honorary degree more than others. If you didn’t write the dissertation, you don’t get the title. List it on your CV but don’t use the title or request others refer to you that way.

Moreover, although some people are definitely swayed by titles and degrees, once you have achieved a level of notoriety and respect in an industry or subject matter, titles really do become meaningless. I want my actual medical doctor to have a degree. Same with my dentist and my lawyer. I don’t really care about the engineer or academic or author.

Pseudo-related note. I used to work with a person who signed all of their emails [first] [last], Ph.D as if anyone cared (it was wholly irrelevant to his work). When they rage quit in a mass email to the team, they had to send the email twice because they forgot the Ph.D the first time. I’ve never laughed harder at the amount of self-satisfaction on display in my life.

Someone who made a contribution relevant to the field deserves far more the title than someone who made a dissertation no one reads. These silly formalities dont benefit academia

I don’t disagree with you in theory but if you didn’t earn the degree, you shouldn’t use the title. Title != respect and assuming you should automatically respect or disrespect a person based on title alone seems fairly pointless to me.

Define "earn", in some way that results in his recognition being un-earned.

“Earn” in the academic sense. These are not by definition an earned degree. It is honorary. This isn’t a semantical discussion. He literally didn’t earn the degrees by academic study. He was awarded them because of honor, which is lovely, but literally not the same thing.

I don't see a definition anywhere in there. Certainly not one that differs from any dictionary I ever saw.

Standing in front of a panel of his peers and advisors, defending a written thesis?

I believe that’s the customary standard for earning a PhD.

> Betteridge’s Law strikes again. If it is honorary, you don’t get to use the title.

With one exception: When at a function hosted by the institution who granted you that honorary degree.

Fair. But even then, and I have never been to one of those functions, I don’t think they call you “Dr. [X].”

If one doesn't deserve the respect associated with the title why was it given to them in the first place?

I take more exception to people who sprinkle it in regardless of how they earned it.

“You are on the council but we do not grant you the title of Doctor.”

I feel anyone can call themselves Doktor (ignoring fraud like pretending to be a medical practitioner without a license) and people can choose to follow along with their “preferred pronoun” or not as the evidence sways them.

I’d be inclined to use the terms others are using and when in doubt defer to the person themselves.

I feel Dr Stallman won’t care much how you refer to him as long as you don’t call him a proponent of closed-source.

Or open source, for that matter.

I feel that gets the heavy sigh and the “let me explain” whereas the former would be the “you’re trying to piss me off” line.

All of this strikes me as a tempest in a teapot: but I’d still be interested in speaking with the man.

The best part of reading this post is witnessing a rare Stallman Burn :)

> The article is not error-free. For instance, it calls me an "open-source software pioneer," which misrepresents my views and my work. ( https://gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html )

On almost every topic, Stallman is embarrassing. Yet somehow, when it comes to free software, he is 100% correct and can't be questioned. I'll stick with license types which predated, and remain more popular than, GPL: BSD and MIT.

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