3 ms·

I remember I once sent sent RMS a short message about a small bug on his website. He responded within 4 hours. > Small typo on line 724 of the source of your

by jnpatel 10y ago

I remember I once sent sent RMS a short message about a small bug on his website. He responded within 4 hours. > Small typo on line 724 of the source of your homepage... > I believe you meant "that is NOT an excuse to carry out the promise" Thanks, I fixed it. Would you like to join the FSF, perhaps?

jnpatel 10y ago
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.
- sdegutis 10y ago
  I've had several long correspondences with RMS over email. He's surprisingly humble and down to earth for someone with that level of fame. The first time I emailed him and he responded, I was very pleasantly surprised. In general he's very nice. He does take everything incredibly seriously though. And I do mean every single thing that goes through his brain. His website and his email reply kind of hint at that. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, it's just very unusual. And I think that's off-putting to a lot of people.
  - Pica_soO 10y ago
    Every sentence you form is a contract, every fantasized aloud common endeavor uttered a promise. The problem is, that he is a contrast to most of us who - for having a family and a live style "sell out". He is what we could have been if we would have stayed true to the ideals of our youth. That's what put people off.
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      Do wonder if the ancient greeks had similar reactions to their philosophers.

by jnpatel 10y ago

jnpatel 10y ago

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.

sdegutis 10y ago
I've had several long correspondences with RMS over email. He's surprisingly humble and down to earth for someone with that level of fame. The first time I emailed him and he responded, I was very pleasantly surprised. In general he's very nice. He does take everything incredibly seriously though. And I do mean every single thing that goes through his brain. His website and his email reply kind of hint at that. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, it's just very unusual. And I think that's off-putting to a lot of people.
- Pica_soO 10y ago
  Every sentence you form is a contract, every fantasized aloud common endeavor uttered a promise. The problem is, that he is a contrast to most of us who - for having a family and a live style "sell out". He is what we could have been if we would have stayed true to the ideals of our youth. That's what put people off.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    Do wonder if the ancient greeks had similar reactions to their philosophers.