"Oh sorry, they don't serve Pepsi here."
Richard Stallman's way makes it clear that he does not want to support Coke. He does not want you to hand him a Coke by mistake. Since I assume that is his goal, he communicated it well.
His story helps you to notice, and remember, this seemingly trivial detail.
EDIT: Make it clearer by saying "Pepsi (absolutely not Coke or any other brand)" by all means but the person buying the drink wants to make sure you get what you want and then get on with their lives, they're really not interested in the why.
It feels to me that Stallman wants to use this - as with most of what he does - as something of a polemic about what he believes. That's fine but it does make the whole document less clear about the actual detail of what he wants.
"A few cans of Pepsi (NOT COCA COLA (http://example.com) and not any diet product please)" does have the advantage of being more check-list like, allowing people to hghlight / crossout the items they've done or not done yet.
The post-mortem of a kickstarter posted to HN yesterday, where someone managed to print and deliver a poster with a misspelling of the word "BROOKLYN" as "BROOKLYIN" has made me think about how people find and prevent errors.
HN isn't a good audience to ask that question because there are different ways to write code. There is only one way to write BROOKLYN.
>DON'T buy a parrot figuring that it will be a fun surprise for me. To acquire a parrot is a major decision: it is likely to outlive you. If you don't know how to treat the parrot, it could be emotionally scarred and spend many decades feeling..
This right here is why I can't stand RMS. He's putting together a rider for all his (borderline unreasonable) demands when he speaks. And even when he's adding irrelevant things, he still manages to be a condescending know-it-all who has to tell you why your decisions are wrong, and why the way he thinks is the correct way to see things.
http://www.theguardian.com/Columnists/Column/0,,305870,00.ht...