10 ms·

Am I Doctor Stallman?

84 points by tjr 6y ago

rStar 6y ago
->I conjecture that buy-a-doctorate and sing-for-your-doctorate are found in the US only. Why? I conjecture the USA isn’t unique as far as people scamming credentials.
- fortran77 6y ago
  For some reason, he hates the United States.
  - Causality1 6y ago
    Well the United States has produced more non-free software and more profit based on non-free software than anywhere else, so naturally he hates it.
    - kstrauser 6y ago
      I'm reasonably sure we also produce more Free software than anywhere else, too.
      - bitL 6y ago
        Finland.
        Delk 6y ago
        Apart from Linux having gotten its start there, what exceptional contribution comes from Finland that makes it distinctive in the FOSS world?
      - Brian_K_White 6y ago
        So, the way it works is, since the murderer is nice to his mom... ?
- Brian_K_White 6y ago
  What do you base this "conjecture" on? I conjecture that you wouldn't call someone a liar without some pretty solid data or at least direct observation. Are you maybe saying that you've had 15 honorary degrees in various schools around the world, and the other people up their with you those days, or yourself, were utterly unworthy, to negate his stated observation? Or maybe you're saying that what he said just doesn't mean much since all he claimed was that he respected the other recipients accomplishments. Sure I get that. One thing everyone knows about RMS, he's easy to impress.
  - rStar 5y ago
    some humans are scammers, most scams are repeatable. so if scammers in country X benefit from credential scamming, then it follows that their exist scammers in countries Y and Z that are also benefiting via their own application of the scamming technique.
rvnx 6y ago
I didn't know his website, it's quite fascinating to be in his mind. There are a lot of unusual thoughts to read about.
- foobar33333 6y ago
  It's basically a huge dump of his thoughts daily with minimal filtering.
leephillips 6y ago
It’s a little tacky to use “Dr.” on the basis on an honorary doctorate, and may subject you to ridicule, as happened with “Dr.” Calvin Rolark. Also, Stallman is misguided in asking the universities if he had permission. It is not a matter of permission, and, even if it were, it would not be the universities’ to give. I admire Stallman’s accomplishments. But I always get an impression of feigned naïvité when reading these comments of his on his website. Can anyone in his position truly be so innocent?
- vbezhenar 6y ago
  > It is not a matter of permission, and, even if it were, it would not be the universities’ to give. Whose permission would it be to give?
  - leephillips 6y ago
    It, like most titles and honorifics, are a matter of societal convention. If some university gave him an honorary doctorate and told him he now had “permission” to use the title “Dr.”, that would barely attenuate the eye-rolling that would ensue.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      Indeed. Even Florida Atlantic University is correct and (apparently helpfully) clear on the point.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- koolba 6y ago
  Not as tacky as referring to yourself as “doctor” in the context of a medical discussion when your field has nothing to do with medicine whatsoever.
  - leephillips 6y ago
    Are you referring to anything in particular?
riskneutral 6y ago
Well this is cringe.
filmgirlcw 6y ago
Betteridge’s Law strikes again. If it is honorary, you don’t get to use the title. Everyone should know this and it doesn’t matter if you feel you “deserve” your honorary degree more than others. If you didn’t write the dissertation, you don’t get the title. List it on your CV but don’t use the title or request others refer to you that way. Moreover, although some people are definitely swayed by titles and degrees, once you have achieved a level of notoriety and respect in an industry or subject matter, titles really do become meaningless. I want my actual medical doctor to have a degree. Same with my dentist and my lawyer. I don’t really care about the engineer or academic or author. Pseudo-related note. I used to work with a person who signed all of their emails [first] [last], Ph.D as if anyone cared (it was wholly irrelevant to his work). When they rage quit in a mass email to the team, they had to send the email twice because they forgot the Ph.D the first time. I’ve never laughed harder at the amount of self-satisfaction on display in my life.
- o_p 6y ago
  Someone who made a contribution relevant to the field deserves far more the title than someone who made a dissertation no one reads. These silly formalities dont benefit academia
  - filmgirlcw 6y ago
    I don’t disagree with you in theory but if you didn’t earn the degree, you shouldn’t use the title. Title != respect and assuming you should automatically respect or disrespect a person based on title alone seems fairly pointless to me.
    - Brian_K_White 6y ago
      Define "earn", in some way that results in his recognition being un-earned.
      - filmgirlcw 6y ago
        “Earn” in the academic sense. These are not by definition an earned degree. It is honorary. This isn’t a semantical discussion. He literally didn’t earn the degrees by academic study. He was awarded them because of honor, which is lovely, but literally not the same thing.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
I always address him as Doctor Stallman, without giving much thought to how it officially works. Even without the 15 honoraries, he's done more for me and the world at large than most officially credentialed.
jpmattia 6y ago
An interesting factoid about his alma mater: MIT awards no honorary doctorates. The only path to an MIT PhD is the old-fashioned way: You have to earn it.
- kazinator 6y ago
  Evidently, though, it offers office space for an indefinite term, if you can just avoid being embroiled in scandals.
- bitL 6y ago
  Earn it and pay a fee. I think there is at least one case of a person who earned it but didn't pay the fee and ended up without PhD.
  - leephillips 6y ago
    Fee? This doesn‘t sound right at all. Credible institutions pay their graduate students (a little), not the other way around.
    - bitL 6y ago
      OK, it was Harvard and Dennis Ritchie who didn't submit a bound copy of his thesis to Harvard library because he didn't want to pay the fee, so he didn't receive his PhD. https://dmrthesis.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/AlbertMeyer-DMRThesisStory.pdf https://dmrthesis.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/AlbertMeyer...
- tjr 6y ago
  His earned degree was from Harvard; he was admitted to MIT graduate school, but dropped out of academics to focus on programming.
tormeh 6y ago
To be fair, there are many different kinds of doctorates. Many will be surprised to learn that most lawyers are doctors too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juris_Doctor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juris_Doctor I don't really know all that much about Stallman himself, but doctorates (and degrees in general) are awarded a bit arbitrary anyway. I don't see what's less valuable about an honorary degree. I'd be more inclined to look at which universities it is that award the doctorates, honorary or not. Here, Stallman has an honorary degree from KTH in Sweden. There aren't all that many tech universities with a higher pedigree than KTH.
- leephillips 6y ago
  The stature of the institution has nothing to do with it. Also, lawyers are not “doctors” in any sense, despite getting JDs from some places. And they do not use “Dr.”, and can get in trouble for doing so.
  - tormeh 6y ago
    > Also, lawyers are not “doctors” in any sense, despite getting JDs from some places. And they do not use “Dr.”, and can get in trouble for doing so. According to the American Bar Association it's a bit more complicated than that. Lawyers can, in fact, call themselves doctors in many cases: https://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/lawyers_are_doctors_too https://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/lawyers_are_doct...
    - leephillips 6y ago
      Ahh, I concede: it depends on which state bar you are a member of. Interesting.
  - jack9 6y ago
    "Doctor" is widely used throughout the US media without repercussion. Dr. Phil - philosophy Dr. Drew - medical doctor Dr. Laura - physiology (honorary in tradition and culture from a tiny college) Dr. Ruth - education Dr. Oz - medical doctor M.D. or Physician means what you think "Doctor" means. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/20/702.404 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/20/702.404 Legally, it depends on the very lenient existing laws of the land to determine if you are prohibited (or default allowed) to be referred to as a doctor when you receive a doctorate. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5026525/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5026525/ (mentioned US and CAN)
not2b 6y ago
I would recommend against someone with an honorary doctorate using "Dr." in the way RMS does. Even for those who have an actual Ph.D. are better off not saying "Dr.". I do have "Ph.D" on my business cards but haven't handed one out in years (mine's from UC Berkeley, 1993). I never call myself "Doctor", that just seems weird. But it may be appropriate for an academic in an academic setting.
rewgs 6y ago
Richard Stallman is always so preoccupied with whether he could make a semantic argument, he never stops to think if he should.
- foobar33333 6y ago
  That's why he uprooted his life to fight proprietary printer drivers rather than just putting up with it like most would. His pedantic behavior is what started FOSS.
  - anon9001 6y ago
    It's not pedantry, it's a philosophy. > rather than just putting up with it like most would Whatever that virtue is, I wish I had more of it.
  - rewgs 6y ago
    He's clearly one of the most important figures of the last century and utterly brilliant. But what makes him an incredible programmer also makes him a bit insufferable. Further reading: his infamous blog post about the semantics surrounding the word pedophilia.
    - Brian_K_White 6y ago
      He's not insufferable to me. I say his positions are so inarguably correct that whoever finds them insufferable is either one of the people actively making life suck, or, merely a weaker person than him. If I ever had to try to work with him, and his inability to use zoom or something was annoying to me, I know that the source of that problem is ME. Not even zoom but me.
      - rewgs 6y ago
        It’s not necessarily his positions that are insufferable. It’s his insistence on making them regardless of good taste.
      - deleted 6y ago
azov 6y ago
This is weird. Is there anyone even remotely familiar with free software for whom the Doctor part in "Doctor Stallman" sounds more credible than the Stallman part?..
- Lammy 6y ago
  It's a small detail that keeps coming up as people grasp at straws trying to cancel a person who has given humanity so much over so many decades :(
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- atq2119 6y ago
  "Remote familiarity" with free software includes people who have a hard time telling open source and free software apart, which may include politicians who have only been recently told that those terms even exist. It stands to reason that many of them don't know who Stallman is.
Lammy 6y ago
The best part of reading this post is witnessing a rare Stallman Burn :) > The article is not error-free. For instance, it calls me an "open-source software pioneer," which misrepresents my views and my work. ( https://gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html https://gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html )
twirlock 6y ago
If you're cringing at this, yet you think it's ok to use the title Dr. when you don't have a medical degree, you are an abject pseudo-intellectual.
earthscienceman 6y ago
I'm most intrigued by the fact that Dr. Richard Stallman (of send-myself-websites-by-email-to-retain-my-freedom fame) reads "howstuffworks" articles with opinions about honorifics and takes them seriously enough to rebuke them in some manner It's almost comical. And, for the record, I respect the man and the importance of his movement immensely. But this particular post is pretty ridiculous. Such is the nature of being Richard Stallman I suppose.
- 2bitencryption 6y ago
  Perhaps only certain sites, like HowStuffWorks, are antiquated enough for his terminal-based web browser to render? I kid, I kid.
fouc 6y ago
> For instance, it calls me an "open-source software pioneer," which misrepresents my views and my work. > We address this problem by publishing the definition of free software, and by saying “Think of ‘free speech,’ not ‘free beer.’” TIL Richard Stallman is a Free Software pioneer, and Free means freedom, not free beer. Also FLOSS is better to use than FOSS, it stands for "Free/Libre and Open Source Software", in order to clearly call out the freedom part of the meaning of free software.
ARandomerDude 6y ago
There's a lot about Stallman I admire, and a lot I dislike. In his case, I have no qualms with the title Doctor, given that his work is more than sufficient to have an earned doctorate at many (most? all?) universities. Does he really need to defend a dissertation to be acknowledged as an expert in the CS field? The dissertation is a filter to ensure you know what you're talking about and have earned the title. In Stallman's case, his professional work speaks for itself. His work is the research and dissertation.
- leephillips 6y ago
  A dissertation is not “a filter to ensure you know what you're talking about”. It is supposed to be an original piece of research that advances the state of knowledge. I am aware of Stallman’s inspiring promotion of freedom and his creation of useful, and widely used, tools, such as emacs. But I don’t know very much about him, really, or his work. What contribution did he make to research?
  - bitL 6y ago
    He had some high impact papers while at MIT. He could have used those to get PhD at any top 100-500 university easily.
  - ARandomerDude 6y ago
    Think about the time in which emacs was written though. In 1985 it was absolutely ground-breaking, and has stood the test of time. I've seen PhD dissertations approved at reputable schools for reimplementing Apache Storm badly. And emacs is one example of a lot of really valuable contributions to the state of the art Stallman has made. Honestly, his political fame is the least interesting thing about his career, in my opinion. Disclaimer: I'm not a fanboy and I use vim. :-)
    - leephillips 6y ago
      Point taken. I have no doubt that he could have earned a PhD if he had wanted to bother. But since he didn’t, the use of the title does not accord with custom. Not important, but he brought it up and we're talking about it.
motohagiography 6y ago
Perhaps Doctor is a nickname he has earned moreso than many who were granted the honorific. Given what you can get a PhD in these days, if it flatters him and it's in genuine admiration, call him that. I'd take a nickname over an honorific any day. IMO, the thing about honors is they're only meaningful if you can afford to dispense with them, so I think it would be pretentious for him to introduce himself with it. I've only ever called the various Sirs, Lords, Rt. Hons, Generals, Colonels, and various Worships I've met by their first names because I'm a civilian.
bitL 6y ago
He could have easily earned a PhD at MIT with his work, IIRC there were some important papers he produced. He should probably use Dr(h.c.) and the matter would be settled. I bet he could easily get a PhD in business or sociology with the impact of free software on either of those.
iab 6y ago
Honorary doctorates are to doctorates as the Nobel peace prize is to the Nobel prizes
- leephillips 6y ago
  Don’t forget the literature one.
sanj 6y ago
The very fact that RMS has 15 honorary doctorates undermines his argument: if they were at all equivalent, there would be individuals with a comparable number of earned doctorates. But the latter don’t get offered for the same body of work, over and over again.
- Brian_K_White 6y ago
  Another way to consider the meaning of a degree is: "School X asserts that person Y knows their stuff on topic Z" normally a school only ever says that about someone because they themselves produced and gauged that persons education. And for the same reason, normally a person only ever gets one school to say that about them. But that could be seen as more a matter of logistics than some concept of "earning". Some school that doesn't know me can't make any declarations about my fitness to work in a given field. The earning thing is not exactly a wrong way to think about it, but it's not exactly the only or the whole way either.
7e 6y ago
On almost every topic, Stallman is embarrassing. Yet somehow, when it comes to free software, he is 100% correct and can't be questioned. I'll stick with license types which predated, and remain more popular than, GPL: BSD and MIT.
nickm12 6y ago
The big thing missing from this self-centered musing is "in what context?". Unless you are the Queen of England, titles are generally used only in certain contexts. For a PhD in Computer Science in the US, the title of "doctor" is rarely used outside of academia. I have a PhD in CS, work in industry, and never use the title "doctor" professionally and can't think of anyone else who does—people in my company are generally recognized by their job level, and even then it is context-dependent. The FSF board has not generally used the title of "doctor" even for members with a PhD. https://web.archive.org/web/20150314205150/https://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board https://web.archive.org/web/20150314205150/https://www.fsf.o...
- travv0 6y ago
  Actually, he explicitly states the context: > in formal situations, in connection with talks, interviews and publications, not in ordinary conversation.
yellow_lead 6y ago
> The reason that is beyond personal is so that people who know little or nothing of my career may decide, based on the title of "Doctor", to pay a little attention to that work The attention this would normally get from me is looking up their thesis, seeing instead their honorary degree(s), and turning me off from whatever the person is associated with. Not sure that's the intended effect.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mtmsr 6y ago
Simple solution: just use the correct title abbreviation: Dr.h.c. Edit: Also technically he would not be called Dr.h.c x12 but "Dr.h.c. mult.". Greetings from a country obsessed with titles...
- _nalply 6y ago
  Austria?
Brian_K_White 6y ago
"We couldn't really prove he's a pedofile, damn it. What else we got?" "He's kind of a little pretentious?" "Just as bad! Run with it."
knbknb 6y ago
I have observed that some female doctors (from any academic field; h.c. or regular) like to put a "Dr." prefix in front of their names, in their social media profiles. I guess some women do this to signal "I am open to interactions here, even with random people from the internet, but preferably on a professional level. I am an expert in something myself." - in order to receive less toxic content, less rudeness, on social media. Perhaps he was thinking about doing something like this himself.

84 points by tjr 6y ago

->I conjecture that buy-a-doctorate and sing-for-your-doctorate are found in the US only. Why? I conjecture the USA isn’t unique as far as people scamming credentials.

fortran77 6y ago
For some reason, he hates the United States.
- Causality1 6y ago
  Well the United States has produced more non-free software and more profit based on non-free software than anywhere else, so naturally he hates it.
  - kstrauser 6y ago
    I'm reasonably sure we also produce more Free software than anywhere else, too.
    - bitL 6y ago
      Finland.
      - Delk 6y ago
        Apart from Linux having gotten its start there, what exceptional contribution comes from Finland that makes it distinctive in the FOSS world?
    - Brian_K_White 6y ago
      So, the way it works is, since the murderer is nice to his mom... ?
Brian_K_White 6y ago
What do you base this "conjecture" on? I conjecture that you wouldn't call someone a liar without some pretty solid data or at least direct observation. Are you maybe saying that you've had 15 honorary degrees in various schools around the world, and the other people up their with you those days, or yourself, were utterly unworthy, to negate his stated observation? Or maybe you're saying that what he said just doesn't mean much since all he claimed was that he respected the other recipients accomplishments. Sure I get that. One thing everyone knows about RMS, he's easy to impress.
- rStar 5y ago
  some humans are scammers, most scams are repeatable. so if scammers in country X benefit from credential scamming, then it follows that their exist scammers in countries Y and Z that are also benefiting via their own application of the scamming technique.

rvnx 6y ago

I didn't know his website, it's quite fascinating to be in his mind. There are a lot of unusual thoughts to read about.

foobar33333 6y ago
It's basically a huge dump of his thoughts daily with minimal filtering.

leephillips 6y ago

It’s a little tacky to use “Dr.” on the basis on an honorary doctorate, and may subject you to ridicule, as happened with “Dr.” Calvin Rolark. Also, Stallman is misguided in asking the universities if he had permission. It is not a matter of permission, and, even if it were, it would not be the universities’ to give. I admire Stallman’s accomplishments. But I always get an impression of feigned naïvité when reading these comments of his on his website. Can anyone in his position truly be so innocent?

vbezhenar 6y ago
> It is not a matter of permission, and, even if it were, it would not be the universities’ to give. Whose permission would it be to give?
- leephillips 6y ago
  It, like most titles and honorifics, are a matter of societal convention. If some university gave him an honorary doctorate and told him he now had “permission” to use the title “Dr.”, that would barely attenuate the eye-rolling that would ensue.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    Indeed. Even Florida Atlantic University is correct and (apparently helpfully) clear on the point.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
koolba 6y ago
Not as tacky as referring to yourself as “doctor” in the context of a medical discussion when your field has nothing to do with medicine whatsoever.
- leephillips 6y ago
  Are you referring to anything in particular?

riskneutral 6y ago

Well this is cringe.

filmgirlcw 6y ago

Betteridge’s Law strikes again. If it is honorary, you don’t get to use the title. Everyone should know this and it doesn’t matter if you feel you “deserve” your honorary degree more than others. If you didn’t write the dissertation, you don’t get the title. List it on your CV but don’t use the title or request others refer to you that way. Moreover, although some people are definitely swayed by titles and degrees, once you have achieved a level of notoriety and respect in an industry or subject matter, titles really do become meaningless. I want my actual medical doctor to have a degree. Same with my dentist and my lawyer. I don’t really care about the engineer or academic or author. Pseudo-related note. I used to work with a person who signed all of their emails [first] [last], Ph.D as if anyone cared (it was wholly irrelevant to his work). When they rage quit in a mass email to the team, they had to send the email twice because they forgot the Ph.D the first time. I’ve never laughed harder at the amount of self-satisfaction on display in my life.

o_p 6y ago
Someone who made a contribution relevant to the field deserves far more the title than someone who made a dissertation no one reads. These silly formalities dont benefit academia
- filmgirlcw 6y ago
  I don’t disagree with you in theory but if you didn’t earn the degree, you shouldn’t use the title. Title != respect and assuming you should automatically respect or disrespect a person based on title alone seems fairly pointless to me.
  - Brian_K_White 6y ago
    Define "earn", in some way that results in his recognition being un-earned.
    - filmgirlcw 6y ago
      “Earn” in the academic sense. These are not by definition an earned degree. It is honorary. This isn’t a semantical discussion. He literally didn’t earn the degrees by academic study. He was awarded them because of honor, which is lovely, but literally not the same thing.

forgotmypw17 6y ago

I always address him as Doctor Stallman, without giving much thought to how it officially works. Even without the 15 honoraries, he's done more for me and the world at large than most officially credentialed.

jpmattia 6y ago

An interesting factoid about his alma mater: MIT awards no honorary doctorates. The only path to an MIT PhD is the old-fashioned way: You have to earn it.

kazinator 6y ago
Evidently, though, it offers office space for an indefinite term, if you can just avoid being embroiled in scandals.
bitL 6y ago
Earn it and pay a fee. I think there is at least one case of a person who earned it but didn't pay the fee and ended up without PhD.
- leephillips 6y ago
  Fee? This doesn‘t sound right at all. Credible institutions pay their graduate students (a little), not the other way around.
  - bitL 6y ago
    OK, it was Harvard and Dennis Ritchie who didn't submit a bound copy of his thesis to Harvard library because he didn't want to pay the fee, so he didn't receive his PhD. https://dmrthesis.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/AlbertMeyer-DMRThesisStory.pdf https://dmrthesis.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/AlbertMeyer...
tjr 6y ago
His earned degree was from Harvard; he was admitted to MIT graduate school, but dropped out of academics to focus on programming.

tormeh 6y ago

To be fair, there are many different kinds of doctorates. Many will be surprised to learn that most lawyers are doctors too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juris_Doctor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juris_Doctor I don't really know all that much about Stallman himself, but doctorates (and degrees in general) are awarded a bit arbitrary anyway. I don't see what's less valuable about an honorary degree. I'd be more inclined to look at which universities it is that award the doctorates, honorary or not. Here, Stallman has an honorary degree from KTH in Sweden. There aren't all that many tech universities with a higher pedigree than KTH.

leephillips 6y ago
The stature of the institution has nothing to do with it. Also, lawyers are not “doctors” in any sense, despite getting JDs from some places. And they do not use “Dr.”, and can get in trouble for doing so.
- tormeh 6y ago
  > Also, lawyers are not “doctors” in any sense, despite getting JDs from some places. And they do not use “Dr.”, and can get in trouble for doing so. According to the American Bar Association it's a bit more complicated than that. Lawyers can, in fact, call themselves doctors in many cases: https://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/lawyers_are_doctors_too https://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/lawyers_are_doct...
  - leephillips 6y ago
    Ahh, I concede: it depends on which state bar you are a member of. Interesting.
- jack9 6y ago
  "Doctor" is widely used throughout the US media without repercussion. Dr. Phil - philosophy Dr. Drew - medical doctor Dr. Laura - physiology (honorary in tradition and culture from a tiny college) Dr. Ruth - education Dr. Oz - medical doctor M.D. or Physician means what you think "Doctor" means. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/20/702.404 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/20/702.404 Legally, it depends on the very lenient existing laws of the land to determine if you are prohibited (or default allowed) to be referred to as a doctor when you receive a doctorate. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5026525/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5026525/ (mentioned US and CAN)

not2b 6y ago

I would recommend against someone with an honorary doctorate using "Dr." in the way RMS does. Even for those who have an actual Ph.D. are better off not saying "Dr.". I do have "Ph.D" on my business cards but haven't handed one out in years (mine's from UC Berkeley, 1993). I never call myself "Doctor", that just seems weird. But it may be appropriate for an academic in an academic setting.

rewgs 6y ago

Richard Stallman is always so preoccupied with whether he could make a semantic argument, he never stops to think if he should.

foobar33333 6y ago
That's why he uprooted his life to fight proprietary printer drivers rather than just putting up with it like most would. His pedantic behavior is what started FOSS.
- anon9001 6y ago
  It's not pedantry, it's a philosophy. > rather than just putting up with it like most would Whatever that virtue is, I wish I had more of it.
- rewgs 6y ago
  He's clearly one of the most important figures of the last century and utterly brilliant. But what makes him an incredible programmer also makes him a bit insufferable. Further reading: his infamous blog post about the semantics surrounding the word pedophilia.
  - Brian_K_White 6y ago
    He's not insufferable to me. I say his positions are so inarguably correct that whoever finds them insufferable is either one of the people actively making life suck, or, merely a weaker person than him. If I ever had to try to work with him, and his inability to use zoom or something was annoying to me, I know that the source of that problem is ME. Not even zoom but me.
    - rewgs 6y ago
      It’s not necessarily his positions that are insufferable. It’s his insistence on making them regardless of good taste.
    - deleted 6y ago

azov 6y ago

This is weird. Is there anyone even remotely familiar with free software for whom the Doctor part in "Doctor Stallman" sounds more credible than the Stallman part?..

Lammy 6y ago
It's a small detail that keeps coming up as people grasp at straws trying to cancel a person who has given humanity so much over so many decades :(
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
atq2119 6y ago
"Remote familiarity" with free software includes people who have a hard time telling open source and free software apart, which may include politicians who have only been recently told that those terms even exist. It stands to reason that many of them don't know who Stallman is.

Lammy 6y ago

The best part of reading this post is witnessing a rare Stallman Burn :) > The article is not error-free. For instance, it calls me an "open-source software pioneer," which misrepresents my views and my work. ( https://gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html https://gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html )

twirlock 6y ago

If you're cringing at this, yet you think it's ok to use the title Dr. when you don't have a medical degree, you are an abject pseudo-intellectual.

earthscienceman 6y ago

I'm most intrigued by the fact that Dr. Richard Stallman (of send-myself-websites-by-email-to-retain-my-freedom fame) reads "howstuffworks" articles with opinions about honorifics and takes them seriously enough to rebuke them in some manner It's almost comical. And, for the record, I respect the man and the importance of his movement immensely. But this particular post is pretty ridiculous. Such is the nature of being Richard Stallman I suppose.

2bitencryption 6y ago
Perhaps only certain sites, like HowStuffWorks, are antiquated enough for his terminal-based web browser to render? I kid, I kid.

fouc 6y ago

> For instance, it calls me an "open-source software pioneer," which misrepresents my views and my work. > We address this problem by publishing the definition of free software, and by saying “Think of ‘free speech,’ not ‘free beer.’” TIL Richard Stallman is a Free Software pioneer, and Free means freedom, not free beer. Also FLOSS is better to use than FOSS, it stands for "Free/Libre and Open Source Software", in order to clearly call out the freedom part of the meaning of free software.

ARandomerDude 6y ago

There's a lot about Stallman I admire, and a lot I dislike. In his case, I have no qualms with the title Doctor, given that his work is more than sufficient to have an earned doctorate at many (most? all?) universities. Does he really need to defend a dissertation to be acknowledged as an expert in the CS field? The dissertation is a filter to ensure you know what you're talking about and have earned the title. In Stallman's case, his professional work speaks for itself. His work is the research and dissertation.

leephillips 6y ago
A dissertation is not “a filter to ensure you know what you're talking about”. It is supposed to be an original piece of research that advances the state of knowledge. I am aware of Stallman’s inspiring promotion of freedom and his creation of useful, and widely used, tools, such as emacs. But I don’t know very much about him, really, or his work. What contribution did he make to research?
- bitL 6y ago
  He had some high impact papers while at MIT. He could have used those to get PhD at any top 100-500 university easily.
- ARandomerDude 6y ago
  Think about the time in which emacs was written though. In 1985 it was absolutely ground-breaking, and has stood the test of time. I've seen PhD dissertations approved at reputable schools for reimplementing Apache Storm badly. And emacs is one example of a lot of really valuable contributions to the state of the art Stallman has made. Honestly, his political fame is the least interesting thing about his career, in my opinion. Disclaimer: I'm not a fanboy and I use vim. :-)
  - leephillips 6y ago
    Point taken. I have no doubt that he could have earned a PhD if he had wanted to bother. But since he didn’t, the use of the title does not accord with custom. Not important, but he brought it up and we're talking about it.

motohagiography 6y ago

Perhaps Doctor is a nickname he has earned moreso than many who were granted the honorific. Given what you can get a PhD in these days, if it flatters him and it's in genuine admiration, call him that. I'd take a nickname over an honorific any day. IMO, the thing about honors is they're only meaningful if you can afford to dispense with them, so I think it would be pretentious for him to introduce himself with it. I've only ever called the various Sirs, Lords, Rt. Hons, Generals, Colonels, and various Worships I've met by their first names because I'm a civilian.

bitL 6y ago

He could have easily earned a PhD at MIT with his work, IIRC there were some important papers he produced. He should probably use Dr(h.c.) and the matter would be settled. I bet he could easily get a PhD in business or sociology with the impact of free software on either of those.

iab 6y ago

Honorary doctorates are to doctorates as the Nobel peace prize is to the Nobel prizes

leephillips 6y ago
Don’t forget the literature one.

sanj 6y ago

The very fact that RMS has 15 honorary doctorates undermines his argument: if they were at all equivalent, there would be individuals with a comparable number of earned doctorates. But the latter don’t get offered for the same body of work, over and over again.

Brian_K_White 6y ago
Another way to consider the meaning of a degree is: "School X asserts that person Y knows their stuff on topic Z" normally a school only ever says that about someone because they themselves produced and gauged that persons education. And for the same reason, normally a person only ever gets one school to say that about them. But that could be seen as more a matter of logistics than some concept of "earning". Some school that doesn't know me can't make any declarations about my fitness to work in a given field. The earning thing is not exactly a wrong way to think about it, but it's not exactly the only or the whole way either.

7e 6y ago

On almost every topic, Stallman is embarrassing. Yet somehow, when it comes to free software, he is 100% correct and can't be questioned. I'll stick with license types which predated, and remain more popular than, GPL: BSD and MIT.

nickm12 6y ago

The big thing missing from this self-centered musing is "in what context?". Unless you are the Queen of England, titles are generally used only in certain contexts. For a PhD in Computer Science in the US, the title of "doctor" is rarely used outside of academia. I have a PhD in CS, work in industry, and never use the title "doctor" professionally and can't think of anyone else who does—people in my company are generally recognized by their job level, and even then it is context-dependent. The FSF board has not generally used the title of "doctor" even for members with a PhD. https://web.archive.org/web/20150314205150/https://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board https://web.archive.org/web/20150314205150/https://www.fsf.o...

travv0 6y ago
Actually, he explicitly states the context: > in formal situations, in connection with talks, interviews and publications, not in ordinary conversation.

yellow_lead 6y ago

> The reason that is beyond personal is so that people who know little or nothing of my career may decide, based on the title of "Doctor", to pay a little attention to that work The attention this would normally get from me is looking up their thesis, seeing instead their honorary degree(s), and turning me off from whatever the person is associated with. Not sure that's the intended effect.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mtmsr 6y ago

Simple solution: just use the correct title abbreviation: Dr.h.c. Edit: Also technically he would not be called Dr.h.c x12 but "Dr.h.c. mult.". Greetings from a country obsessed with titles...

_nalply 6y ago
Austria?

Brian_K_White 6y ago

"We couldn't really prove he's a pedofile, damn it. What else we got?" "He's kind of a little pretentious?" "Just as bad! Run with it."

knbknb 6y ago

I have observed that some female doctors (from any academic field; h.c. or regular) like to put a "Dr." prefix in front of their names, in their social media profiles. I guess some women do this to signal "I am open to interactions here, even with random people from the internet, but preferably on a professional level. I am an expert in something myself." - in order to receive less toxic content, less rudeness, on social media. Perhaps he was thinking about doing something like this himself.