Speech by Prot at LibrePlanet

I was really inspired by this talk Prot gave. He speaks about liberty not just fr a free software perspective but as a philosopher and it made me realize what a beautiful thing we have in EMacs. Not gonna lie, I teared up twice. https://youtu.be/CQM-GWKdHsU

The tldr of all this guy's gesticulating is: > When you struggle with your text editor as long as you and I have, > we're compelled to rationalize the wasted time with a larger-than-life > motivation. I'll give him the devastating charm and good looks, but I've seen his kind before in Werner Erhard and Joel Osteen. I'd debate this guy into the ground if I weren't a camera-averse misshapen dwarf.

What would you debate about? How is he wrong?

How do you give him the charm? Is it some idiom that I don’t understand?

It is an idiom: "I'll give him X" means "I agree that he has X" with the connotation that you agree a little begrudgingly.

\> What would you debate about? His fashion choices for a start. \> How is he wrong? He's not, in the the way my Sunday preacher is not wrong, nor Apple when it tells me to "Think Different." It's a text editor, folks, not a declaration of rights. Couching it in a mellifluous but anodyne nothing-burger like "freedom" is neither harmful nor productive.

If you think emacs is *just* a text editor then we're clearly using different software.

Thanks for the explanation.

> It's a text editor, folks, not a declaration of rights. If you don't think software licensing is political, you could just have said so, and there would've been the possibility for debate. No need to be so derogatory about it.

GP's derision of a well-meaning community figure is uncalled for, but why is the licensing issue so specific to software? Why shouldn't freedom advocates extend calls for product transparency to say Coca Cola's formula or KFC's 11 herbs and spices?

>It's a text editor, folks, not a declaration of rights. Curious -- Do you know about free software or only of open source?

I know the distinction; I even helped advance it back in the 00s. In my wizened years however, I cannot think of a more illustrative example of "a distinction without a difference."

Your proposition is valid. In related news, a chicken, having crossed the road, affirmed its desire to reach the other side.

Of course, this critique falls apart entirely once you learn that Prot selected emacs specifically for these reasons a few years ago, before learning lisp or any programming whatsoever. And before, not after, the struggle.

Are you involuntarily celebate?

Yes, one cannot but celebrate the life's many joys.

So, yes.

Please give a thumbs up on the video if you found it useful.

I found this speech quite inspiring too. In a software world that's increasingly not about *personal* computing and more about subscription-everything, siloed-everything, don't look under the hood computing, emacs is more important than ever. And I think the rising popularity of plaintext tools shows that more people are starting to grasp that there are real merits in a model of personal computing where people feel that they have full control over their tools, rather than existing in someone else's ecosystem. This model may not be for everyone, but I'm glad it exists.

Well said

> in the the way my Sunday preacher is not wrong I may have bad news for you.

Cool, I wasn't looking forward to an eternity of hellfire.

Emacs is a text-oriented UI framework that happened to be the best one we have these days, nothing more.

> When you struggle with your text editor as long as you and I have, we're compelled to rationalize the wasted time with a larger-than-life motivation. Masochism? Lack of a real job? Why struggle at all when you don't need to?

> If you are looking for consistency ... you need to look elsewhere. that's all you need to know

Who’s struggling ?

it looks like some Emacs users do

https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2022-03-22-libreplanet-emacs-living-freedom/

So your statement "It's a text editor, folks, not a declaration of rights" is interesting -- Free software was created as a political statement, and it's inherently about individual freedoms/rights. Open source/nonfree software is closer to what you are saying, as it's a business model and has nothing to do with liberties or rights.

I've just added you to my kill file. You sir, are a troll.

I realize I'm speaking to the kill-file ether, but solipsism is a uniquely human trait. You'd not be the first to call troll, a terminal token similar to "bigot", which given the mood I'm in, I'm inclined to dissect. The understanding about the troll is he doesn't actually believe the things he says on the internet. I *genuinely* believe the 37 sonorous minutes from this hirsute adonis could be condensed to my original tldr. I realize a troll would make the same claim. How then does one know one know if I'm lying? I repeat Ken Watanabe's answer in the film *Inception*, "You don't." A troll is also understood to be uncouth and uneducated. I am guilty of just one of those charges. Mr. Stavros is less educated than I, not because he's dumber, but because he's simply not been alive long enough to have read half as many books or written half as many programs or seen half as many populist nostrums (like software freedom) lose their luster as I have.