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Comment by mgraczyk | Hacker News Reader

I read through the linked email thread discussing the need for a C++ AST in emacs, and I have to say I was stunned by the arrogance, rudeness, and completely ignorance of RMS. When faced with clear, specific evidence that he was out of his depth and confused, he doubled down and literally said he would no longer discuss the issue because the other parties were "trying to pressure him instead of convince him". This is IMO embarrassing and unprofessional behavior for an adult. Most engineering managers or architects in most jobs would be reprimanded or fired for behaving that way. I would never consider interacting with GNU in a professional capacity after reading those emails, so I agree with the conclusion that RMS should step down.

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When all discussion happens in the open it's easy to get caught in a bad day. This applies to people as disparate as RMS, Linus Torvalds or Steve Jobs. You can find plenty of anecdotes of how rude or arrogant they are specially after so many years. They have been leaders for decades.

What people would think of us if we were famous? I try to be very polite and reasonable at work but I know, for a fact, that I'm not always at my best. The alternative is easy: you start to talk like a big corp CEO or a politician. You say nothing or give pleasant lies. Your acts may be later despicable but somehow facts are open to interpretation while your words carry all the weight.

He has done many great things but also has a very large amount of public bad days.

> has a very large amount of public bad days

I'd argue that such things tend to happen when a mob tries their best to destroy your reputation by publicly associating you with crimes you haven't committed.

This isn't a "bad day" or one angry rant. The conversation around emacs completions appears to have spanned multiple years and multiple days at a time.

One of the best things about async text communication is that you can wait until your bad day or mood has passed, so you can communicate effectively.

As an undergraduate, Stallman came to visit and I got to spend about 3.5 hours around him in a crowd of no more than 20 people. He acted like this the whole time. Come to find out, this is basically how he acts all of the time, to everyone. Every person I have ever spoken to who has interacted with him personally has had a similar experience.

Ash put it well, to describe Stallman as stifling GNU's success. At this point, GitHub, NodeJS, and PyPI have done more for open source software than any GNU axe-grinding. As Clang grows, the FSF and GNU software shrink away. NeoVIM is on Apache. GCC still doesn't have LSP bindings, and it's due at least in part to this petty email exchange in 2015.

And that isn't even getting into these dumpster fires:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26619440

- https://www.reddit.com/r/justneckbeardthings/comments/2vkeze... (which he was handing out as late as 2019!)

- https://thenewstack.io/why-almost-everyone-wants-richard-sta...

> At this point, GitHub, NodeJS, and PyPI have done more for open source software than any GNU axe-grinding.

Except there wouldn't be GitHub and NodeJS and PyPI and certainly no GNU/Linux if not for Stallman starting the whole movement.

You can start an entire decades long movement and then later prevent it from making further progress.

OT but:

> This is IMO embarrassing and unprofessional behavior for an adult. Most engineering managers or architects in most jobs would be reprimanded or fired

I don't understand why I keep hearing complaints about "professional behaviour" in an open source context, where it's most likely not the "profession" of the people involved.

Please stop asking open source maintainers to behave professionally, until you are paying them a full time salary.

They can have this attitude, and so can you, but people like me will avoid working with you if you don't believe you should act professionally just because you're not getting paid.

These days, many of the people who pretend to act professionally are paid and do very little.

Periodically, they usurp huge contributions from outsiders and market the success to their employers as a project success without mentioning the actual author. Then they boss around the author until he/she rage-quits.

And while they were young, they were entirely rude and unprofessional. CoCs are a political tool to protect the inner circle.

At least RMS is not a hypocrite. Neither is Torvalds.

A professional is by definition someone who receives money for their work.

Are you paying RMS for work rendered? If not, you have no standing to demand RMS act professionally.

Not to mention, FOSS by its own definition excludes all facets of money and is in practice primarily driven by volunteers. You can't and shouldn't demand professional behaviour from people who are not professionals.

I was not using the word "professionally" that way, it's a different definition that is not contingent on getting paid.

“The skill, good judgment, and polite behavior that is expected from a person who is trained to do a job well” Merriam-Webster

Good job not actually quoting the definition (you even spelled Merriam-Webster wrong).

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/professional

("professionally" also redirects to the above URL.)

---------------------------------

professional adjective

pro· fes· sion· al | \ prə-ˈfesh-nəl , -ˈfe-shə-nᵊl \

Definition of professional (Entry 1 of 2)

1a: of, relating to, or characteristic of a profession

b: engaged in one of the learned professions

c(1): characterized by or conforming to the technical or ethical standards of a profession

(2): exhibiting a courteous, conscientious, and generally businesslike manner in the workplace

2a: participating for gain or livelihood in an activity or field of endeavor often engaged in by amateurs

a professional golfer

b: having a particular profession as a permanent career

a professional soldier

c: engaged in by persons receiving financial return

professional football 3: following a line of conduct as though it were a profession

a professional patriot

professional noun

Definition of professional (Entry 2 of 2)

: one that is professional

especially : one that engages in a pursuit or activity professionally

---------------------------------

The phrase you are looking for is perhaps "act like a gentleman", among many other ways to describe behaviour that is mature and reasonable, but in any case RMS is not a professional and thusly none of us can demand he act professionally.

No, I'm using definition (2) from the ones you listed.

Definition 2 specifies "in the workplace".

"workplace" is defined as "a place (such as a shop or factory) where work is done"[1].

"work" in the context of "workplace" is defined[2] as follows under definition 1:

---------------------

1a: to perform work or fulfill duties regularly for wages or salary

works in publishing

b: to perform or carry through a task requiring sustained effort or continuous repeated operations

worked all day over a hot stove

c: to exert oneself physically or mentally especially in sustained effort for a purpose or under compulsion or necessity

---------------------

Definition 1a is a direct reference to monetary payment for work rendered. Definition 1b describes the act of working itself. Definition 1c loosely refers to some sort of goal or need, which may or may not include money, as a motivator for working.

So in a very, very liberal context you can pedantically use "professional" in a non-monetary sense, but there are much more accurate ways to describe what you want to convey such that you wouldn't need to be liberal with your choice of words.

RMS isn't a professional, so he can't be demanded to act professionally.

[1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/workplace

[2]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/work

An email thread discussing work that will be done on GCC is "the workplace" in this sense. If we took a vote I'd guess at least 90% of English speaking adults would agree with me.

The way I used the words "behave professionally" is very common in American English. You could use this phrase to describe a student, a volunteer, or even a dog at a dog show.

I'm very much aware "professional" is used as slang to mean someone who generally conducts themselves like an eloquent businessman.

However, slang is slang. Officially, the definition of a professional is whether you make money for work rendered. The slang usage of "professional" is incorrect.

The slang usage might get added to the dictionary and become correct some day, language evolves, but as far as I'm aware today is not yet that day.

> slang to mean someone who generally conducts themselves like an eloquent businessman.

That's not the definition in question here. This is:

> exhibiting a courteous, conscientious, and generally businesslike manner in the workplace

That is but one definition and it's American-English, not English. The more complete definition from the OED says:

  A. adj.

†I. Senses relating to a profession or vow.

1. Relating to or marking the occasion of entrance into a religious order. Cf. profession-ring n. at profession n. Compounds. Obsolete. rare.

2. Of or relating to a profession or declaration; that is avowedly (but sometimes falsely) the thing specified; professed. Obsolete.

II. Senses relating to or derived from (the conduct of) a profession or occupation.

a. Of a person or persons: that engages in a specified occupation or activity for money or as a means of earning a living, rather than as a pastime. Contrasted with amateur. Sometimes applied disparagingly to a person who makes a trade or profession of something usually associated with higher motives.

b. Of an event, activity, occupation, etc. (now esp. a sport): undertaken or engaged in for money; engaged in by professionals (as distinct from non-professionals or amateurs).

c. In humorous or derogatory use. Of a person: habitually making a feature of a particular activity or attribute, esp. one that is generally regarded with disfavour; inveterate.

4. Of, belonging to, or proper to a profession.

a. Relating to, connected with, or befitting a (particular) profession or calling; preliminary or necessary to the practice of a profession. professional examination.

b. Engaged in a profession, esp. one requiring special skill or training; belonging to the professional classes.

c. Characteristic of or suitable for a professional person; (now esp. of equipment) of a type used by professionals.

d. That has or displays the skill, knowledge, experience, standards, or expertise of a professional; competent, efficient.

5. That has knowledge of the theoretical or scientific parts of a trade or occupation, as distinct from its practical or mechanical aspects; that raises a trade to a learned profession. Now rare except as merged with senses at A. 4.

6. Physiology. Designating or relating to a cell which is specialized for the ingestion of particles by phagocytosis, such as a macrophage or neutrophil (as distinct from a cell capable of occasional phagocytosis).

III. Senses related to the office of professor.

7. = professorial adj.Now rare.

B. n. 1. a. A person who engages in a specified activity, especially a sport, as a paid occupation. Frequently opposed to amateur.

b. Chiefly colloquial. A prostitute.

2. A person engaged in a profession, esp. one requiring special skill or training; a professional person, or a member of the professional classes.

3. Scottish University slang. Short for ‘professional examination’

4. A person who does something with a high level of competence, commitment, or expertise.

-----

So the use in this case can be construed to be entirely correct, c.f. Sense II §4 and Sense III §2 and §4

Lmao now this is like reading email debates in the FOSS community!

I think when you get down to debating definitions you’ve probably lost some of that professionalism.

As a manager I probably would be reprimanding people debating definitions like this. We should be asking: “do we understand each other?”

The point of this entire argument is Stallman isn’t paid, dedicates his life to this work, probably is overworked and runs his org and does so completely openly (ie you’re likely to see lots of good and some bad). He’s not a professional; he’s a passionate, often crazed and zealous leader of an organization with an extreme position (free software being the exception not the rule).

I frankly wouldn’t expect anything from Stallman. Manners, personal relationship, etc.

That I can agree with.

I posted this to highlight the absurdity of the original posting of another definition. I perhaps could have been more explicit, but I thought that my tongue being in my cheek was established by making the point that the original excerpt was taken from an American-English dictionary. Should've started with "Akshually..."

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” - Bertrand Russell

Yes, perhaps this pattern of behavior is to be expected from someone who's staked out such an uncompromising position and stuck to it for ~30 years.

But it's also really sad that, in acting this way, he undermines his own goals.

> does so completely openly

Not so. This is partly where the "Cathedral" nomenclature came from.

Thanks, that was a very professional comment!

OED really goes all the way into their words

Thanks for adding that definition, and it is sad that it is needed.

(though those who already act professionally already knew it ;) while other people will grasp at straws and try to find technicalities to justify their bad attitude )

This falls apart when viewed from the perspective of two FOSS collaborators. Neither is getting paid so both can act like privileged pricks?

You can demand volunteers act like gentlemen, but you can't demand they act professionally because they are not professionals.

How about asking them to behave respectably. A maintainer takes up explicit and implicit responsibilities to their users. If they are unwilling or unable to discharge those responsibilities in a respectable (“professional”) manner they should let someone else take up that mantle who is willing and able. Money changing hands is not material to this question, as not all responsibilities need to involve the exchange of money.

Just like we expect our neighbors to be respectful to us even when we don’t pay them for the privilege, there’s nothing surprising that users ask a maintainer to be respectful of their time. Yes, the users can go somewhere else, just like how we can move if we have a bad neighbor, but that’s just not a good way of going about things.

> A maintainer takes up explicit and implicit responsibilities to their users.

No, that's not how it works.

I'm free to publish something and completely ignore bugreports.

There is no such responsibility principle. Some people, out of goodness of their hearths, follow up on things. But they have no obligation to do so.

This is not about obligation to fix bug reports. It is about respectful communication, which is pretty orthogonal.

I can just ghost you. The only obligatory relationship possible between us is either of blood or money. As a private individual, I don’t really owe you anything. You have the previlege of not having to use my work, or fork it and make it your own.

You can and that's fine, but if you do reply and you're unnecessarily rude, I hope we can agree that's bad

> I hope we can agree that's bad

No we can't agree on that. There is no obligation to be polite.

Rudeness is highly corrosive in a collaborative environment, RMS is damaging the community needed to sustain development by his rudeness.

There is no obligation to collaborate either. I can write a software, publish it and insult people who wrongly report bugs.

Of course I wouldn't expect people to love me for that, and it's not how I personally act; but if someone felt like acting in this way, it would be fully within his/her rights to do so.

RMS has the right to behave as he wants. He is not obliged to behave in a particular way.

My point is that the way he chooses to behave is in the long run damaging to the community that he founded and leads.

I replied to a comment saying "a maintainer". If you had unilaterally decided to change topic without informing me… well in the future try not to do that.

Not a change of topic. Rudeness from a maintainer is equally corrosive.

No it's not "corrosive".

You are somehow deciding that collaboration is needed and wanted by every maintainer.

That's your (wrong) assumption.

The only truly obligatory relationship is between you and the physical world. It's dictated by the laws of physics.

The places where I have seen the least respect between humans in my life are all in professional contexts. Why would you equate the two ? They're almost opposite.

What? If I write code and stick it on github or whatever, be glad I let you clone it. But I don't owe you a damned thing. If my users don't like how I maintain the repo, they can fork it and maintain it themselves. Or find a different project.

This entitled attitude that maintainers owe their users anything is visibly driving people away from that work.

> I was stunned by the arrogance, rudeness, and completely ignorance of RMS

Why were you stunned? The guy signs his emails "Dr. Richard Stallman" whilst only having an honorary doctorate. Clearly there are issues. It's as insane as signing emails "Dr. Bill Gates", "Dr. Clint Eastwood" and "Dr. Billy Joel" (all having honorary degrees).

Without saying I agree with him on this, here's his defense of it: https://stallman.org/articles/dr-stallman.html

It just shows how out of touch he is. Almost everyone I've worked with in my career has had a PhD. Not one of them have ever included "Dr" in their titles on emails or anywhere else. I've even worked with a few MD/PhDs who transitioned to software engineering, and they did not include "Dr" in their capacities as software engineers.

I have a brother in law who has an PhD in economics who signs everything Dr and refers to himself as doctor. We don’t get along.

He missed his calling as maestro.

> who signs everything Dr

As he should. He earned it

It used to be more common, and is still quite common in Europe, I believe.

It's common in Germany. It's concidered pompous asshattery everywhere else.

In Italy you can call yourself doctor with a bachelor degree. And people do sign "doctor" in official communication.

It's also illegal to do it without actually having the title.

One exception that comes to mind would be Ferdinand Porsche. To this day the company is called "Dr. Ing. h. c. F. Porsche AG" (although I wonder if that changed with their recent IPO.)

At least they include "h. c.", honoris causa, "for honor", which is where we get the (perhaps not all that well translated) term "honorary" doctorate.

I work with several PhDs and it's probably a 60%-40% of people who don't use "Dr." as a title and people who do. So (anecdotally) it still happens.

In Germany people always do though. Cultural context or people showing off, I am not sure.

Sure, but not particularly relevant in this context.

Germany is also rather strict about it and using an academic title like doctor when you do not have the right to it can be considered fraud. A honorary doctorate is not considered equal to the academic title and has to be explicitly distinguished.

I think these titles are just like being a hacker. No one calls themselves a hacker, it's other people who do it after respect is earned.

Still, it is a fact that he has a doctorate. I don't think he's wrong to call himself a doctor. A little formal, perhaps?

> Still, it is a fact that he has a doctorate.

This is false and insulting to people who earned real degrees.

He has an honorary doctorate. Which is about as worthless as if someone had the local trophy shoppe mint you a plaque that said "World's Greatest Hacker".

Maybe universities should stop giving them out then. They can literary give any other honor but they choose to tie it to a doctorate and insult people who earn real degrees. How is Stallman the problem?

Sometimes, people create entire new fields of knowledge. The idea that somebody could teach Shakespeare about Shakespeare's work is ludicrous. The idea that somebody could teach what is open source to Stallman for a limited period of time does not have any sense. He coined the term.

Honorary doctorates are created for this cases, when the recipient is --the-- expert in the field. Is a shortcut to encourage this experts to became teachers and pass their knowledge. Win-win. Do we really think that somebody spending four years writing a these about emacs knows more than Stallman about a program that he developped since 70's?

Is abused to groom donors? Yes, Sometimes is abused, but is a perfectly legit way to became a doctor.

An honorary doctorate is still a doctorate, though. It doesn't have the usual academic requirements but it's not like universities just hand them out to anyone. It's supposed to denote a significant contribution to a field. Stallman did contribute significantly so I personally see no problem with it.

Dr. Linus Torvalds has entered the chat.

Moreover, it is completely aligned with how Stallman operates. Most people do not have doctorates, so universities and recipients can arbitrage the "doctorate" title by a socially acceptable lie wherein the recipient understands to not use it like one. Stallman doesn't do socially acceptable lies. You either give him a doctorate and let him use it like one or you don't give him one. Socially acceptable lies where people "agree to disagree" are how principles get bent and if he were also this way he would have bent long ago.

Valentino Rossi (motorcycle pilot) has been calling himself "The Doctor" since receiving a honoris causa master degree in communication.

It's important to note that in Italy, the title of doctor works differently than in the German and anglophone world, and you are granted the title of "dottore" (doctor) with a bachelor's degree. A master's makes you a "dottore magistrale" and a PhD makes you a "dottore di ricerca" (research doctor)

> but it's not like universities just hand them out to anyone.

No, but at least in the US, they're often given out for things other than achievement in a particular field, like as unofficial quid-pro-quo for large donations to the university.

Perhaps that doesn't damn the practice entirely, as many are awarded for extraordinary contributions, but it does add an unfortunate extra step, having to ask the question, "did this person get this honor because they did amazing things, or because they paid amazing sums?"

do you have any examples of someone who got an honorary doctorate by paying for it?

> An honorary doctorate is still a doctorate, though.

A honorary doctorate is to a doctorate as a honorary citizenship is to a citizenship. It does not imply any rights or qualifications and trying to pass it of as the real deal may be (and in some places is quite explicitly) considered fraud.

And in other places is not fraud. Your mileage may vary.

But it is awarded by the very institutions that award "real degrees", not local trophy shoppes.

It is now being included by folks that historically didn't get many doctorates and it is considered ok.

I know someone who does this. She also refers to other people with PhDs as "Dr" even if they don't typically refer to themselves that way.

I suspect it's some sort of cultural thing, and that with how much computer people tend to reject typical forms of formality we're just mostly on the far opposite side of whatever cultural thing it is.

I’ve worked with a handful of people with PhDs, that I know of, and about half of them signed off that way. One or two really wanted you to know about it.

Clearly you haven't had much interaction with German PhDs. It's very common to include titles in your name (this also includes lower ones) there. Although it admittedly has become less common.

Let's not even talk about medical doctors everywhere, or formal engineering qualifications, both are very often used in letters.

The argument is that they make a direct difference to the perception of the individuals competence (and I know that for medical doctors there is a direct effect on earnings). While I don't think it would make a difference for RMS corresponding with software engineers he might be thinking it does make a difference because of his interaction with other stakeholders. Not really defending it, just offering a different perspective.

> While I don't think it would make a difference for RMS corresponding with software engineers

I think it does make a difference: many software developers might take him less seriously because of it. And that has nothing to do with the fact that his doctorates are honorary; same goes for someone who has completed a PhD program.

The German "Dr. med" is a scam. They do 1 year of an irrelevant experiment that is sped up by p-value fishing and get the "Dr. med" thrown after them. They and their professors generally have no clue about the statistics used to validate the fake and irrelevant experiment.

They also omit the "med", which is much like omitting "h.c.". And they are very keen on using the title in general.

> Clearly you haven't had much interaction with German PhDs. It's very common to include titles in your name (this also includes lower ones) there. Although it admittedly has become less common.

Expat living in Germany here. You’re absolutely correct according to my experience. In fact, I’ve seen people with PhD put “Dr.” on the mailbox in front of their home.

Hell, most of the people I know who have PhDs are at least mildly embarrassed if you call them "doctor". Or at the very least they roll their eyes and think the title is silly. This is in the US; I don't know about how people feel in other countries.

Granted, these are mostly (or even all?) people who received their doctorates in the past 10 or 15 years, and as such are a good 30 years younger than Stallman, so perhaps there is a generational thing at play here too, where the respect/desirability of titles like that has been dropping over time.

If they paid the $100,000 why would they be embarassed? There's probably a psychological explanation for their reasoning. M.D. is a "doctor", but a person with their PhD is a "Doctor of ..." If anything, I'm more inclined to believe someone with a Doctorate in anything other than medicine.

Perhaps the PhD holders don't want to be associated with the hubris that most medical doctors exude. For reference, google "endometriosis suffer" or spend some time researching medical malpractice.

It also is possible that a lot of kids coming out of the 80s got a bum deal on their education - or at least feel they did. Like, "it was too easy to get this degree" - from the standpoint of applying themselves, not the overall workload of getting a PhD. Medical Doctors who are board certified, that did all their rotations, and whatever else required, there's only one other doctorate that requires more workload, and that's psychiatry.

What should maybe be questioned is why someone needs a doctorate for "the world to learn from them."

Using "doctor" as a title or a form of address is common in the academia, including in the US. It's also very formal, especially in spoken language. Hearing it in situations where such formality is not expected can be awkward and embarrassing.

I only ever see it with people in the humanities. In science... weird - more than weird, in general seeing someone who uses the Dr. title is a good indication of "you're going to read the worst shit ever hidden under an insufferable amount of vague verbiage".

To give another data point: in France I remember the university having to ask the local profs. to put their titles (Dr, Prof, etc) in their mail signature as otherwise students thought that french teachers were much less competent than e.g. teachers from germany who would have three layers of Dr. Eng. prepended

What nonsense!

A PhD has earned their title "Dr".

Many people use it, and they should. They paid for it with their mental health.

I apply the title to everyone I know with a PhD.

I guess it's cultural. I and a fair amount of my friends with a PhD find it just super weird.

Like I said, it's very formal.

One common situation is introducing an invited speaker at a conference. After the first mention, you refer to the speaker using a mix of pronouns and names. Full name or last name would sound weird. Using first name works if the speaker is your friend and many people in the audience also know them as a person. Otherwise "Dr. Lastname" is a reasonable choice.

Academic websites are full of short biographies of speakers, lecturers, PIs, and so on. They are often written in third person. Again, "Dr. Lastname" is often the form of reference that sounds least weird.

Academic spam is often addressed to "Dr. Lastname", especially if the sender is asking the recipient to do something. Using "doctor" as a title is a safe default choice. It sounds respectful, it's very likely to be correct, and it saves the sender from guessing the gender (and possibly marital status) of the recipient.

At least he doesn't insist you call him Maestro.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La9c6Af802w

This is very culturally dependent, you would be surprised at the # of openly proclaimed Drs in Central Europe - the academic culture inherited from the ancient German-speaking empires loves all sorts of titles.

But this is not relevant here, as Dr. Stahlmann doesn't work in Tübingen.

Is their choice not to use it, but is not a norm engraved in marble. For each one that declines to use the title, you would find ten in the Academia that will happily use it. It depends on if is a formal context or not.

As a math PhD (the usual, thesis-and-all kind), I really see no issue with Dr. Stallman identifying as such.

A doctorate is a doctorate. And if it makes him happier, why not? There's no harm or confusion (his qualifications are clear enough in any context where they matter). Unlike, say, the case of Dr. Phil.

There so many other things to have an issue with about Stallman, I don't know why this one stands out in particular.

...that said, the only time I've used the "Dr." next to my name was on obnoxious web forms which force me to choose between Mr/Ms/etc, and Dr. is the only non-gendered option.

> Unlike, say, the case of Dr. Phil.

Except Dr. Phil does have an actual PhD. Which he attended university and defended via dissertation. Unlike, say, RMS.

A PHD is not that hard to get when you already reach masters degree. Its mostly a matter of choice, not mad skills or something.

In what world is this true, except at fly-by-night places that advertise on TV?

As is usual the case with the "I could easily do it had I have the chance", the world of not having enrolled in a PhD programme.

in sweden that'd mean 5 more years of university, after 5 years of university.

In the US it's 2-5+ extra but depends a lot on the field.

An honorary doctor is in general significantly harder to get than a regular PhD. If we want to talk about people undeservedly getting the Dr. title, let's talk about medical doctors. The thesis to get the title is often a joke even compared to a masters thesis.

You can buy honorary doctor degrees so it's way easier, probably just more rare.

>Except Dr. Phil does have an actual PhD. Which he attended university and defended via dissertation. Unlike, say, RMS.

Well that's the point.

When RMS says he's a "Doctor", the expectation is "made a significant contribution to computer science" - which, arguably, he did.

When Dr. Phil says he's a "doctor", the expectation is "qualified and licensed to practice medicine in his field". Which he is very much not (in particular, he hasn't renewed his license).

Context matters.

Imagine that. The pedantic buffoon at the center of the ridiculous GNU/Linux naming controversy created an entire page dedicated to his title. Amazing.

There are a few dozen comments about this insignificant detail in this very thread.

Now is the time to call me Doctor!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_A8Xe9M0NY

    Call me doctor (Call me doctor)
    No need to look
    He's not in the book
    The doctor's not an M.D.
    What he does this time he does for free

https://genius.com/Devo-theme-from-doctor-detroit-lyrics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2VaMIFEQDg

>Mom, I am going to rip off your head and shit down your neck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeOBZWQEJE4

>For whatever intimidation and injustice vie with decency and honor, let the Doctors arise, and arise they must, for within every one of us, there is a Doctor, a dormant Doctor, a supreme arbitrator, who can be summoned to intervene, when crises threaten the stabilities and well-beings of our heartlands. Now let's party!

I don't really see the issue here. Is this a cultural thing ?

I have problems with some of RMS's opinions and behavior, but I have no problem with him calling himself "Dr."

One of my professors used to talk about the difference between a Masters degree and a PhD:

"To get a Masters degree you have to learn something. To get a PhD the world has to learn something."

The world has learned a great deal from RMS. Regardless of what one thinks of him as a person, he's probably been more influential on how the world thinks about software than the vast majority of PhDs.

The world has also learned a great deal from Tom Silva on This Old House, does that set the precedent to be called "Dr. of Carpentry"?

If institutions that award normal doctorates in carpentry decided he contributed enough to the field to be conferred a doctorate.... absolutely?

Unironically, I'd be fine with that.

Dr. Demento introduced Weird Al Yankovic to the world.

The Beastie Boys issued millions of "License to Ill" but they never specified an expiration date.

RMS actually did ask a few of the universities who granted him doctorates, if it was acceptable for him to use the title "Doctor". Some said no, some said yes, and some said he should use "Dr.(h.c.)"[0] (as in "doctor, honoris causa", where we get the term "honorary doctorate", even though, as RMS points out, it'd be perhaps more accurate to call it "doctorate for honor"[1]).

Of course, he took that as license to just do whatever he wanted to do. Personally I wouldn't even consider adopting any kind of title in the first place, but if I was of that bent, I would at least have the decency to append the "(h.c.)".

I do believe that RMS's contributions to the world have been significant, but, to me, at least, a doctorate is something you get after completing a doctoral program. If you don't do that, you should call yourself a "doctor, honoris causa" -- because that's what you are! -- not a "doctor".

But what do I know, I only completed a bachelor's degree, and even then only barely.

[0] https://stallman.org/articles/dr-stallman.html

[1] I learned something new today!

> some said yes

So, regardless of your personal opinion, he is allowed to call himself Dr.

Titles like Dr. are protected by law in many countries, so the answer probably still is "it depends", considering regional differences

Who gives a shit if he calls himself Doctor or not.

This is character assassination, leave it alone.

He could probably apply today and get a doctorate from a pretty good school in two years. That said i do find it weird that he'd use the title. He's a weird guy but also someone I look up to. :)

And who do we think that could mentor him? Who could teach him what is open source for example?

It is a rude digression to discuss RMS’s personal character flaws and mental instability. The FSF more importantly is a force for good and always has been. And we need them to try to be more relevant and effective in the coming age of completely locked, learning capable and vastly more influential proprietary software.

An honorary degree is not meaningless. It is an official degree typically bestowed by a bona fide institution (that also has non-honorary degrees). It is also given to individuals that had a deep impact in some area, arguably a much deeper impact than any freshly graduated PhD student has.

So it doesn't bother me if any of them signs Dr. Bill Gates, Dr. Billy Joel or Dr. Clint Eastwood as they, in all likelihood, are important in their fields, much more than I was when I submitted my thesis.

If somebody is a doctor honoris causa, has been seen as deserving to be doctor by the only group of people that can legally grant this titles.

Anybody with a doctorate can decide to use the title, use it only in an ironic way, or just don't use it, as you wish. "Dr. Clint Eastwood" would not be a symptom of anything strange. Eastwood is clearly an expert in films, successful at both sides of the camera, so... why not recognize it?

I had once a rather long e-mail discussion with RMS, regarding some points that I believe to be logical contradictions and inconsistencies in GPL, concerning the meaning of the concept of "linking", in opposition with LGPL, which I consider as a fine license.

While I have presented a series of arguments, which in my opinion could not be refuted logically, it was not possible to change RMS's mind about anything, so the discussion has ended with everybody keeping their original opinions, unchanged.

Nevertheless, I am immensely grateful to RMS for his past work. I am a very good programmer and i could have been able to write all the programs that I use daily, including an operating system, device drivers, compilers or a text editor.

Nevertheless that is a huge amount of work, which would have taken many years of my life. Due to the open-source movement, I was able to benefit of the work shared by countless others, thus saving an enormous amount of time.

I usually take advantage of the open-source nature of the programs to make customizations that would have been impossible when using proprietary programs. However, making various modifications to an open-source program is orders of magnitude less work than writing the program from scratch.

While the great quantity of open-source programs existing now is the work of a very large number of developers, RMS has played a critical role in catalyzing this evolution, which must not be forgotten.

I also agree with the author of the article that in general all the targets set by RMS about free software and hardware remain as valuable and important as ever, but the strategy and tactics advocated by him are no longer effective and by now it cannot be expected that he will ever change in the future.

I understand why people would like discussing GPL with RMS, but RMS is not a legal scholar nor has a legal background or education. If we look into the history of GPL we see that RMS himself did not arrive at the finer legal details by himself, but rather through the help by his friend Eben Moglen who is a professor of law and legal history. RMS tend to focus on the philosophy and the strategic use of GPL towards free software goals.

The concept of "linking" in GPL also came from Eben Moglen. The legal theory was fairly simple, ie, would a non-technical judge see a linked program as one large single copyrighted work or two independent separate works (originally in US legal context only)? RMS initially viewed it as two works, but Eben Moglen had a different view about it, which RMS then changed his opinion to.

Technically, dynamic linking looks like use, and not the creation of a combined or derived work.

Using an interactive dynamic language with FFI, I can connect to a shared library at the REPL and interact with its functions, just as if I were calling programs in /usr/bin.

It’s also a perplexing display of ignorance for a compiler writer, as clearly and obviously static analysis typically requires the whole AST, and there’s almost no limit to the static analyses that are useful to have in a code editor.

"This is IMO embarrassing and unprofessional behavior for an adult"

It is pretty normal behavior for RMS. And his fundamental reason for limiting access to the AST makes no sense.

> And his fundamental reason for limiting access to the AST makes no sense.

It makes sense in the context cited in TFA.

RMS would rather go down in flames than risk having third parties "abuse" GCC.

Substantive evidence that the situation has changed since the founding of GNU is moot.

RMS's binary view is arguably unfortunate, but there it is.

He's painted into a corner by ideology. He can't get any more flexible than he already has.

I guess it makes sense to RMS, but his brain is a very strange place.

People: can't live with them; can't live with 'em.

As others have explained in the mailing list, the technical ability to dump the AST in a way that circumvents the GPL already exists via GCC plugins. So, no, it doesn't make sense even from that perspective.

Stallman is probably a good example of how people practice based on principles end up like how you describe when the principles drive them away from the real practice of their users (or just reality in general).

"skin in the game" as taleb would say, only a little bit more subtle.

The thread in which he changes the topic from garbage collection to "you should be prioritizing making Emacs a better word processor" is just stunning.

Like, no, that's not how it works! This person is a volunteer with a detailed design proposal for a prototype. You can't just ignore the proposal and demand something entirely unrelated! I was blown away.

The part where he just shuts down discussion based on his authority was pretty shocking to me. I remember other instances where he did that and if I'm not mistaken it led to people forking GCC.

Arguably, that exact behavior led to Clang existing.

Remember that LLVM almost became a FSF or GNU project. The only thing that prevented it from happening was RMS missing an email in his inbox. Imagine where LLVM would be today if he hadn't missed that email.

Probably an irrelevance thanks to the GPL. We should all be grateful RMS missed that email.

Exactly.

Ironically exactly thanks to the licence, clang is now lagging behind GCC and Visual C++ in ISO C++, even though LLVM itself has a contribution level similar to Linux kernel, the C and C++ vendors leeching clang forks aren't that keen stepping into Apple and Google's shoes now that they are focused on their own C and C++ follow ups.

Good luck not interacting with GNU professionally in this day and age. Snark aside, I’d be interested in how that turns out.

I mean the "GNU Project", not the software.

GNU/Linux is part of the GNU Project. It wouldn't have gotten far without using the GPL license and having all the people from GNU working on it.

Fortunately most GNU software is fine. Emacs and GCC are exceptions because they're RMS's babies and he micromanages them.

But it is precisely not a job!!

If you don't like his way of management, you are welcome to fork the project.

Or, if a community doesn't like it's leader the community should pick a new one (or find a better form of governance)

No surprise that the etherium developer (yes, I've looked at yr linked bio) throws in the 'governance' canard, i.e. control software projects through power games, rather than by free association (support a project or fork it).

Free Software is not about governance; it's pretty much a complete antithesis to such power structures. Communities voluntarily coalesce around software projects with a core developer group. Don't like the group, fork the code; don't attempt a takeover/coup and if you do, or agitate for one, then you've revealed your true colours and that community will now see you as a hostile threat to their project.

I work on camera algorithms full time and do Ethereum stuff in my free time, not sure that's relevant though.

Like it or not, FSF has governance and power structures. The GNU project power structure is very top heavy, effectively a dictatorship. I believe dictatorships are bad so I'll continue advocating for GNU to change.

Interestingly the approach to cooperation you're describing (if you don't like it, fork it) is actually the same as OG crypto Bitcoin people. IMO it's not conducive to good outcomes and most of the crypto world has embraced processes that lead to consensus building and more inclusivity (although clearly not perfect yet).

> dictatorships are bad

I think you should be more a bit subtle in your analysis and weight the pros and cons. Especially in the context of software projects where nobody gets killed or detained :)

Not saying that dictatorship is the only good way to lead software projects but there are enough highly successful dictator led software projects that it's worth not rejecting this type of governance as just "bad".

On your point about talking about Free Software projects as 'dictatorships', the analogy looks especially silly if you bring it back the other way, which would mean that anyone living in a real world dictatorship could simply 'fork' the country they are living in, recreating/replicating all its lands, forests, cities & towns and install themselves as the new ruling class and attract a new population to people their newly created land. Without any bloodshed; the old 'dictatorship' and its physical lands still exist in a parallel reality and they can carry on along their own original path. Also, people living in these two lands can 'teleport' to the other reality, if they decide they like it better. Doesn't sound very oppressive now, with the analogy properly extended.

It was RMS who "played the governance card" in the first place:

> Emacs is not an independent project, and it isn't governed by its contributors. I'm the head of the GNU Project, and that includes Emacs. > > You, as a contributor, can advocate a certain decision, which means you present arguments why I should approve it. I don't need to advocate a decision in that sense. > > I leave most technical decisions up to the contributors, including you, because for most of the questions I don't have any special preference of my own. For those questions, I'm happy with whatever works, and I know the contributors can figure out what works.

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2018-03/msg00...

> and it isn't governed by its contributors

I don't see that as 'playing the governance card'; I see that as him rejecting the attempt by others.

That was addressed in the long (and interminable) example thread linked in the article.

Because of RMS's opposition to making gcc usable in any context other than gcc, people just moved to llvm and clang.

The core issue is that these are people who care about FSF, GNU, gcc, etc running headlong into RMS who is forcing design decisions based on a threat that does not exist, leading to the gradual erosion of there relevance.

Take gcc as in the example thread: RMS intentionally hobbling gcc means that gcc is simply not involved in any significant amount of compiler and language research any more. Why bother? it's intentionally designed to make the kind of things that compiler researchers would want to do hard, to "stop it being used in non-free software", similar happens for new languages: why bother messing around gcc where by design your only real option is "compiling" your code to C, which comes with _many_ costs.

These are people who _want_ to use gcc, who _want_ to use gpl, gnu, fsf, etc software, but cannot because functionally RMS does not allow it.

Then llvm will flourish and GCC will diminish.

Those people who you speak of that have a romantic attachment towards GCC, are creating their own issues by being inflexible. However, I fail to see how their attachment should be of any serious concern to anybody. Surely, the mature way of dealing with this is for them to learn to let go and vote with their feet sort of speak.

RMS is clearly on the spectrum, yet his reputation precedes him so most people never actually apply rigour to his positions.

> most people never actually apply rigour to his positions.

What do you mean?

I have an open source project of my own. For some strange reason, some people who interact with it is some way believe it is acceptable for them to tell me how to run the project. However, they are not in the position to tell me how to run it, and how polite I should be when showing them to the door.

> [he] literally said he would no longer discuss the issue because the other parties were "trying to pressure him instead of convince him".

Who says that RMS is not telling what the truth is from his perspective?

You should expect nothing more than this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ

I'm yet to see RMS out of his depth in any technical discussion of computer science related matters and I think it's a very big call for anyone to make without backing the assertion up (as you very noticeably failed to do).

RMS has a towering reputation in the computer science field based on very significant accomplisments, that is undeniable. Any random person on a forum is welcome to challenge that reputation, but they'll need to do it properly, not just sling mud.

Read the linked email thread and decide for yourself.

He doesn't know operator overloading exists. Then when he's told and given an example he claims it doesn't interact with type deduction in a way that is not true in C++. Then when given a simple example with auto he claims that the method overload resolution is equivalent to finding the right return type, ignoring multiple overloads and the possibility of type conversion after the function returns.

All these mistakes are acceptable, but when they were pointed out to him, he reacted by claiming blanket bad faith on everyone who was trying to justify using the full AST. He then said he wouldn't listen to them and instead would talk to "people he trusts".

His approach to implementing this feature would have been “if code completion needs data X from the code, we provide an API for that”, and repeat this for all other possible use cases. This, to protect the AST.

This is of course technically feasible, but a huge amount of effort, and will constantly have to be updated / changed. When people are effectively arguing “it’s a much more forward-compatible and scalable approach to let tools use the AST directly”, he rejects that as changing the discussion, not a concrete example, and/or pressuring.

This is super ironic coming from someone who made an editor entirely based on LISP, which is successful precisely because it is completely transparent and anything can be changed / inspected / done.

Given the success of LSP in the recent years, it’s super evident that RMS was wrong on this matter. It has created an ecosystem for LSP around clang, and the integration with emacs is great.

> Given the success of LSP in the recent years, it’s super evident that RMS was wrong on this matter.

But the LSP doesn't expose the AST. It just expose what the editor needs. That looks like the kind of interface RMS was asking for.

Sometimes the editor needs the AST, and LSP is general enough that language implementations can expose it. For example

https://clangd.llvm.org/extensions#ast

Sure, but the "success of LSP in the recent years" was not because of that extension.

Ironically that's what modern LSPs are, aren't they? An API on the handful of use cases an IDE might want to care about.

Yes but I don’t think that could have happened if they were not decoupled from the compiler.

But yes it’s a good point that LSPs are actually an API for editors instead of exposing the AST to the editors directly, but from the discussion I’m fairly convinced that RMS lacked the imagination of all the possibilities LSPs could create.

And it’s also quite ironic that he resisted opening up the compiler to support these kind of tools, and it ended up being a for-profit corporation that spearheaded this whole open standard / ecosystem of LSPs.

To be more accurate, this to protect an AST parsed into source code that is _readily available_ for anyone who wants it, because... it's open source. Anyone with knowledge of GCC could write a patch in a week or so to dump the AST into JSON and publish it as a patch.

You're right, too, though: this exact argument is part of why LSP and clang won. When people showed up (in _2015_!) to try to start on support for this sort of thing in emacs and gcc, the dictator at the top could not be convinced this was worthwhile. And now the world uses Clang and LSP and the GNU counterparts get dustier and dustier.

The man is right about a lot of things but the GCC thing isn't one of them. First time I read those emails it permanently changed the way I looked at GNU software. Now I always wonder if they crippled something on purpose every time I run into any difficulty. For example, is this the reason why GCC is unable to output source file dependency data in anything but makefile format? That would make so much sense.

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