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Comment by schmuckonwheels | Hacker News Reader

I believe Stallman's doctorate is honorary. Courtesy of Wikipedia:

>With regard to the use of this honorific, the policies of institutions of higher education generally ask that recipients "refrain from adopting the misleading title" and that a recipient of an honorary doctorate should restrict the use of the title "Dr" before their name to any engagement with the institution of higher education in question and not within the broader community.

This, however, does not overshadow his contribution to computing and I must say that as of 2025, he has been right about most things (with the possible exception of secure boot).

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Dr. Stallman has received 15 honorary doctorates (see: https://www.stallman.org/articles/dr-stallman.html). After a certain point, the consistency of such recognition speaks for itself. TBH after like 5 I would start seeing the point of calling myself 'doctor'. Georgia Tech also awards honorary doctorates through the statewide university system, and as such, there is no institutional policy dictating how individuals are to address one another.

I appreciate the concern and agree that RMS has been extraordinarily influential in the field of computing. We will be posting videos of the event afterward, so if you’re interested in hearing what he has to say in 2025, please keep an eye out!

Except honorary doctorates are awards, not academic qualifications. Influence or not he didn't do the work at those institutions, defending a dissertation, that would earn him the title, regardless of his contributions. That many of these awards are from non-US universities doesn't change that they're a form of marketing - these awards were not given out of the goodness of someones heart, but because these businesses wanted something out of the relationship by associating with his name.

I'm ok with the honorary Dr thing but the article says he completed graduate studies. He actually quit grad school (MIT theoretical physics) for personal reasons and focused on software after that.

Taking about physics still always seemed to make him happy. I was once tempted to invite him to a study session for a QM class I was taking. He helped me with a problem set and his explanations were WAY clearer than the professor's or TA's. I think his understanding of the subject was simply better than theirs.

GCC was surely worth a non-honorary CS PhD all by itself. I can say that because the guy who wrote LLVM got one for doing basically the same thing 30 years later.

He's considered and written about this very subject: https://www.stallman.org/articles/dr-stallman.html

> Though I do occasionally tell people that they don't need to call me Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Stallman.

Donald Knuth wrote of Robert Floyd that

  (Bob used to say that he was planning to get a PhD by the “green stamp method,” namely by saving envelopes addressed to him as “Dr. Floyd.” After collecting 500 such letters, he mused, a university somewhere in Arizona would probably grant him a degree.)

See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=1299661

I suppose that Stallman must have received enough letters.

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