It's also worth mentioning, that this was his autoreply :)
I am not on vacation, but I am at the end of a long time delay. I am
located somewhere on Earth, but as far as responding to email is concerned,
I appear to be well outside the solar system.
After your message arrives at gnu.org, I will collect it in my next batch of
incoming mail, some time within the following 24 hours. I will spend much of
the following day reading that batch of mail and will come across your
message at some point. If I write a response immediately, it will go out in
the next outgoing batch--typically around 24 hours after I collected your
message, but occasionally sooner or later than that. Please expect a minimum
delay of between 24 and 48 hours in receiving a response to your mail to me.
If your message is hard to understand or responding takes real work,
the response could take longer.
So please wait 48 hours after sending a message before you resend it,
remind me about it, or ask if I have received it. If it has been less
than 48 hours, the absence of a response from me only means you have not
given me time to answer.
If you are having a conversation with me, please keep in mind that each
message you receive from me is a response to the mail you sent 24 to 48 hours
earlier, and when writing it, I probably had not yet downloaded your later
mail.