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25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing

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Re: 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing

#42

Out of curiosity, what is Stallman a doctor of? Wikipedia says that he did not finish his Ph.D. Or is that one of the honorary doctorates he received?

It's a pain to see "Dr" next to bullshit like this: > "Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software." You don't like skype, fine. I am prety sure what it enables millions of people to do: freely communicate no matter the distance, but I don't really get what freedoms it denies. Do I lose som freedom just but installing it, or must I use it for that to take an effect?

  > Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  > Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call.
It made me wonder what's free-er about an ordinary phone call. Presumably, most of the software the phone companies use is also proprietary.

Does it become less non-free if somebody else runs the software? Or maybe it shifts the moral burden of using something non-free to somebody else?

Re: 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pain to see "Dr" next to bullshit like this: > "Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software." You don't like skype, fine. I am prety sure what it enables millions of people to do: freely communicate no matter the distance, but I don't really get what freedoms it denies. Do I lose som freedom just but installing it, or must I use it for that to take an effect?

> Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. > Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. It made me wonder what's free-er about an ordinary phone call. Presumably, most of the software the phone companies use is also proprietary. Does it become less non-free if somebody else runs the software? Or maybe it shifts the moral burden of using something non-free to somebody else?

Isn't there an option for decentralized P2P communication?

Re: 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing

#44
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. > Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. It made me wonder what's free-er about an ordinary phone call. Presumably, most of the software the phone companies use is also proprietary. Does it become less non-free if somebody else runs the software? Or maybe it shifts the moral burden of using something non-free to somebody else?

Isn't there an option for decentralized P2P communication?

Sorry, should have pasted the full quote. Edited.

Re: 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing

#45

Out of curiosity, what is Stallman a doctor of? Wikipedia says that he did not finish his Ph.D. Or is that one of the honorary doctorates he received?

It's a pain to see "Dr" next to bullshit like this: > "Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software." You don't like skype, fine. I am prety sure what it enables millions of people to do: freely communicate no matter the distance, but I don't really get what freedoms it denies. Do I lose som freedom just but installing it, or must I use it for that to take an effect?

Stallman has a page on this that explains why he says this:

http://stallman.org/skype.html

Re: 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing

#46
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. > Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. It made me wonder what's free-er about an ordinary phone call. Presumably, most of the software the phone companies use is also proprietary. Does it become less non-free if somebody else runs the software? Or maybe it shifts the moral burden of using something non-free to somebody else?

Isn't there an option for decentralized P2P communication?

Until something like Ekiga does multipart conference calls, a minimum of 10 nodes and more voice only, then it is hard for me to switch from something like Skype.

Re: 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing

#47
post #5

With inline LaTeX previews, we're already surprisingly close. In fact, I'd say that going all the way would be almost a step back. WYSIWYG is ultimately not an ideal editing paradigm: it wins in the short term, being easy to learn, but drags you down in the long term. I've recently started using Quora a bit more. Unlike StackOverflow, they use a WYSIWYG editor. I've found this significantly less convenient than Stack…

What about TeXmacs [1]? I'm not a heavy emacs or (La)TeX user, but when I tried it it felt amazing, with the best of both worlds.

[1] http://www.texmacs.org

Re: 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing

#49

Out of curiosity, what is Stallman a doctor of? Wikipedia says that he did not finish his Ph.D. Or is that one of the honorary doctorates he received?

It's a pain to see "Dr" next to bullshit like this: > "Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software." You don't like skype, fine. I am prety sure what it enables millions of people to do: freely communicate no matter the distance, but I don't really get what freedoms it denies. Do I lose som freedom just but installing it, or must I use it for that to take an effect?

OTOH he wrote software you and I probably couldn't... and gave it for free.

Re: 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing

#50

Out of curiosity, what is Stallman a doctor of? Wikipedia says that he did not finish his Ph.D. Or is that one of the honorary doctorates he received?

It's a pain to see "Dr" next to bullshit like this: > "Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software." You don't like skype, fine. I am prety sure what it enables millions of people to do: freely communicate no matter the distance, but I don't really get what freedoms it denies. Do I lose som freedom just but installing it, or must I use it for that to take an effect?

You can choose to be denied a freedom, quite obviously. If you choose to use Skype you are granted the ability to make free Skype calls. You are denied the freedom to:

* Freely distribute * Modify * Read the source code.

Among others, so it's a trade off. One that Stallman disagrees with and believes denies you too many freedoms.

Stallman is a weird guy, and hardly a pragmatist. But I don't think the things he says can be described as Bullshit, they are largely internally consistant. And to be frank, given the NSA revelations, I think we need rather more weird idealists than less.

Dr new299

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