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Q. Would you mind sharing your Emacs configuration files? Richard Stallman: Configuration files are personal and will not be shared. This cracked me up! xD

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nanna 6y ago
More pugnaciously... > Q17: You've been a very important part of the Free Software movement, some argue the most important part. I very much appreciate that! Thank you. I think it's necessary to encourage more diversity within Emacs, however, that's difficult to do with the instances of sexual harassment that have come out. Are you or do you plan to work on addressing those situations and preventing further situations going forward? > I will forgive them if they stop bullying. > Note from RMS: "If someone who has condemned me unjustly takes it back, that will make it safe for me to empathize with any feelings of hurt that pers might have felt as a result of the misunderstanding and I will be very glad to show compassion."
- bitwize 6y ago
  Mofo got some balls on him. I'm surprised he was allowed to speak. The current practice for CoC enforcement at conferences is leaning toward preemptive: you can be banned for being considered likely to break the CoC.
  - zdragnar 6y ago
    That is, I think, a great shame.
    - silly-silly 6y ago
      No doubt it is a great shame. Everyone is so very sensitive that there is no room for anything but groupthink.
      - nanna 6y ago
        Totally agree!
- tptacek 6y ago
  This has nothing whatsoever to do with Emacs and these ideological tangents take over threads like kudzu.
neilv 6y ago
It can be (consider that some Emacs power-users used to do most things in Emacs, including email, Usenet, etc.), but this reminded me of something... Many years ago, some new founder I knew asked to see my elaborate .emacs file. I was reluctant, because it had some slightly sensitive info in it , as well as unreleased bits I might turn into packages. But he reassured me he just wanted to see how I'd done some things, to inform some non-Emacs thing he was about to build, and he'd keep it private. Sometime later, one of the developers at his startup happened to mention that "everyone" uses my .emacs file. Today, that person I let see my very personal .emacs has sold the original startup, and is CEO of a different business you've heard of, but I received nothing from the indiscretion. :)
- downrightmike 6y ago
  Wow, send a bill to the company and ask them to renew their site license for the emacs config. Or opensource what you can of it and remove the competitive advantage they have.
  - neilv 6y ago
    As much as I'm a fan of Emacs, I don't think a .emacs file had much to do with that startup's success. He just wanted to see the UX and features that were possible for a particular purpose, for ideas and competitive analysis. But I did opensource a minority of the bits. :) https://www.neilvandyke.org/emacs/ https://www.neilvandyke.org/emacs/
    - justinhj 6y ago
      Not unless the startup was Amazon, which used emacs as an application platform for all their customer support :)
      - neilv 6y ago
        Totally believeable. I had one research prototype that invoked an Emacs process for every Web CGI request. To get that kind of R&D rapid development productivity, I then had to start building out libraries for Scheme. :)
gumby 6y ago
EMACS was developed on ITS, a multi user timesharing operating system with no security. I developed a complex init file (in TECO of course) which was a compiled module in my home directory. One day I changed something in an incompatible way and received complaints. Unbeknownst to me there was a community of people who linked (symlinked) directly to my init file and whose workflows were disrupted by my change.
- EdwardCoffin 6y ago
  Were there any interesting consequences? Like did you consequently avoid making disrupting changes to your own init file, or did people agree to make copies instead of rely on links?
lebaux 6y ago
Folks sharing conf files are the reason I was able to switch to linux on desktop (i3wm).
alexott 6y ago
I simply separate user/machine specific things into separate files, and don’t commit them to public repository (https://github.com/alexott/emacs-configs https://github.com/alexott/emacs-configs - it wasn’t updated for a long time, and it needs to be rewritten to modern stuff - first line was written 25 years ago)... But this may allow sharing, and even contributions...
- a_e_k 6y ago
  I take advantage of the fact that a .emacs file has higher precedence than a .emacs.d/init.el file for this. All the common stuff lives in the .emacs.d directory and is under source control. The little bit of work/machine specific stuff I have goes in the .emacs file, which wraps a (load "~/.emacs.d/init") My home machines don't need anything special, so there's no .emacs file and the .emacs.d/init.el file just gets loaded directly.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

nanna 6y ago

More pugnaciously... > Q17: You've been a very important part of the Free Software movement, some argue the most important part. I very much appreciate that! Thank you. I think it's necessary to encourage more diversity within Emacs, however, that's difficult to do with the instances of sexual harassment that have come out. Are you or do you plan to work on addressing those situations and preventing further situations going forward? > I will forgive them if they stop bullying. > Note from RMS: "If someone who has condemned me unjustly takes it back, that will make it safe for me to empathize with any feelings of hurt that pers might have felt as a result of the misunderstanding and I will be very glad to show compassion."

bitwize 6y ago
Mofo got some balls on him. I'm surprised he was allowed to speak. The current practice for CoC enforcement at conferences is leaning toward preemptive: you can be banned for being considered likely to break the CoC.
- zdragnar 6y ago
  That is, I think, a great shame.
  - silly-silly 6y ago
    No doubt it is a great shame. Everyone is so very sensitive that there is no room for anything but groupthink.
    - nanna 6y ago
      Totally agree!
tptacek 6y ago
This has nothing whatsoever to do with Emacs and these ideological tangents take over threads like kudzu.

neilv 6y ago

It can be (consider that some Emacs power-users used to do most things in Emacs, including email, Usenet, etc.), but this reminded me of something... Many years ago, some new founder I knew asked to see my elaborate .emacs file. I was reluctant, because it had some slightly sensitive info in it , as well as unreleased bits I might turn into packages. But he reassured me he just wanted to see how I'd done some things, to inform some non-Emacs thing he was about to build, and he'd keep it private. Sometime later, one of the developers at his startup happened to mention that "everyone" uses my .emacs file. Today, that person I let see my very personal .emacs has sold the original startup, and is CEO of a different business you've heard of, but I received nothing from the indiscretion. :)

downrightmike 6y ago
Wow, send a bill to the company and ask them to renew their site license for the emacs config. Or opensource what you can of it and remove the competitive advantage they have.
- neilv 6y ago
  As much as I'm a fan of Emacs, I don't think a .emacs file had much to do with that startup's success. He just wanted to see the UX and features that were possible for a particular purpose, for ideas and competitive analysis. But I did opensource a minority of the bits. :) https://www.neilvandyke.org/emacs/ https://www.neilvandyke.org/emacs/
  - justinhj 6y ago
    Not unless the startup was Amazon, which used emacs as an application platform for all their customer support :)
    - neilv 6y ago
      Totally believeable. I had one research prototype that invoked an Emacs process for every Web CGI request. To get that kind of R&D rapid development productivity, I then had to start building out libraries for Scheme. :)

gumby 6y ago

EMACS was developed on ITS, a multi user timesharing operating system with no security. I developed a complex init file (in TECO of course) which was a compiled module in my home directory. One day I changed something in an incompatible way and received complaints. Unbeknownst to me there was a community of people who linked (symlinked) directly to my init file and whose workflows were disrupted by my change.

EdwardCoffin 6y ago
Were there any interesting consequences? Like did you consequently avoid making disrupting changes to your own init file, or did people agree to make copies instead of rely on links?

lebaux 6y ago

Folks sharing conf files are the reason I was able to switch to linux on desktop (i3wm).

alexott 6y ago

I simply separate user/machine specific things into separate files, and don’t commit them to public repository (https://github.com/alexott/emacs-configs https://github.com/alexott/emacs-configs - it wasn’t updated for a long time, and it needs to be rewritten to modern stuff - first line was written 25 years ago)... But this may allow sharing, and even contributions...

a_e_k 6y ago
I take advantage of the fact that a .emacs file has higher precedence than a .emacs.d/init.el file for this. All the common stuff lives in the .emacs.d directory and is under source control. The little bit of work/machine specific stuff I have goes in the .emacs file, which wraps a (load "~/.emacs.d/init") My home machines don't need anything special, so there's no .emacs file and the .emacs.d/init.el file just gets loaded directly.