Re: usability problem of emacs describe-mode

[David Kastrup]

Xah Lee <xahlee@gmail.com> writes:

> His technical, coding, contribution is unquestionably a positive
> contribution. His “free” software movement is, however, questionable.
> The reason that society recognized this social contribution, is
> partly, if not significantly, due to the fact that he is successful in
> spreading his philosophy. For example, to illustrate, if Hitler was
> successful, today he would be a hero, leader, founder, as opposed to a
> criminal. As another illustration, if US lost the war to UK, then the
> “founding fathers” of US would be considered criminals today who got
> punished by death. In fact, many of the leaders in the US at the time
> is doing quite morally questionable things besides treason.
>
> Richard Stallman, also did some morally questionable things before he
> started FSF. In one perspective, you can consider him a software
> criminal. Lucky for him that at the time there was no software law
> yet.

Huh?  What did he do according to your overboarding fantasy?  He started
the free software movement exactly so that he would not be forced to
choose between morals and laws.

> Else, he'd be in jail before he had a chance to mouth his
> manifesto.

For what offense?

> So, in this perspective, he is someone who breaks the law, got dissed
> by MIT, got pissed, with vengeance he starts the FSF to recoup his
> ego.
>
> The above is one perspective. A perspective neutral, where human
> animal's behavior is considered foremost sans a context of any
> particular moral system.

Hogwash.  Without a context of a moral system _and_ without existing
laws (which you claim did not exist at that time) _and_ without having
broken any law, calling somebody a criminal ist not "neutral", but
rather idiotic.

> I have thought about how to remedy this situation for few minutes
> yesterday, but didn't see any solution or conclusion.

Others have thought about those issues for decades.  Do you really not
understand that statements like those make you appear like a pompous
fool without the slightest clue what he is talking about?

> The above paragraph is a bit of rambling. In any case, i do doubt the
> necessity for FSF to require the paper work. Maybe it was important in
> 1990s or earlier, but probably not today. I even question if it was
> necessary in the 1990s. For example, there was BSD's license.

Look, you don't even understand the difference between license types and
software ownership.  It does not matter what license you pick: the only
party allowed to press for compliance is the copyright holder.  Via
authorship or assignment.

> No, i didn't have a bad day. I get very irritated by idiots,

How do you manage to shave?  Mirrors must be very annoying to you.

-- 
David Kastrup