
The Emacs Commune (2002) - poindontcare
http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch06.html
======
dragonquest
I consider Guy Steele Jr. to be one of the greatest programmers of all time.
And when he praises Stallman that way, you begin to grasp just how brilliant
Stallman must be.

Plus 10 hours of Steele and Stallman coding together, what a thing of beauty
those 100 lines of pretty-print would be.

~~~
vinceguidry
I didn't realize just how crazy smart he was until I started reading _Free as
in Freedom_ and read the accounts of how other impressive early programmers
viewed him. Even among these guys, he stood out.

Sometimes I think, "what a shame it is that he had to stop coding!" Then I
think of how the world might have turned out without the FSF and the GNU
project and I shudder.

Stallman was exactly what the world needed, exactly when the world needed him.
Now that the glory days are gone, the GNU project has matured, and there are
other competing mindsets and communities, Stallman's looked at as this crazy
hack activist and that's a shame. Nobody can be all things to all people. And
the things he says are still right, still prescient, and still timely, if a
bit antiquated.

Anyone reading this, if you can donate to or join the FSF, please do.
Everything you love about computing today ultimately rests on Stallman's hard
work.

[https://crm.fsf.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1...](https://crm.fsf.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=14)

~~~
daveloyall
I didn't realize how crazy smart he is until I attended a couple of
LibrePlanets (FSF annual conference).

I have a vivid memory of a young hacker's face, full of pain and confusion.
Stallman was belittling him for taking too much time fiddling with his smart
phone camera--you know, the kind that has only an onscreen shutter button...
The kid had traveled across the country to snap a photo with the folk hero of
his culture.

I watched the faces of his keepers/coworkers, too. Their lips were tight, they
said nothing.

They are no slouches! They aren't socially inept. Yet, yet... they tolerate
him, even while keeping him away from starry eyed kids as much as possible.
For the greater good.

I heard again and again that he's a genius. That the little trick he pulled
with that now famous software license has irrevocably changed the world for
the better.

I get the impression that to this day, he protects the FSF from making
mistakes that would eventually land it in history's dustbin. He's a
strategist. (Or tactician? I'm not clear on the distinction. I'm no genius...)
NB: I'm not talking about simple mistakes; I'm saying that what they are
trying to achieve is _really_ hard.

Stallman has a second sight for how systems plus inputs will unfold (oh, the
parent post used the word prescient--good word!) and he saw something terrible
in our future, so he has dedicated his life to changing it.

But he's still a world-class asshole.

Does anybody else have his talent? And maybe a little charisma? Or at least
compassion?

~~~
Scuds
> But he's still a world-class asshole. There's bits about him berating Tim
> O'Reilly for charging for the books his company publishes.

Here's the famous rider for his speeches:
[https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/pipermail/developer...](https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/pipermail/developers-
public/2011-October/007647.html)

He's a fine leader for the FSF, but not a frontman.

~~~
daveloyall
The leader and frontman can be a different person? Is the Free Software
movement a 'grassroots' movement?

------
sdegutis
> _" As a programmer, Steele was used to marathon coding sessions."_

That's not really a fair representation of programmers. Not all of us have
coding sessions that go by like a blur, causing us to lose track of time and
everything around us.

~~~
hollerith
>coding sessions that go by like a blur, causing us to lose track of time and
everything around us.

I used to engage in sessions like that, but now consider them undesirable, so
now I make a point not to get so absorbed in coding for so long that I lose
track of time.

------
melling
Does Stallman still have a bad case of RSI?

[http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_hand_pain_celebrity.html](http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_hand_pain_celebrity.html)

I was under the impression that he could no longer code.

~~~
tjr
From his website:

 _In the mid 90s I had bad hand pain, so bad that most of the day I could only
type with one finger. The FSF hired typists for me part of the day, and part
of the day I tolerated the pain. After a few years I found out that this was
due to the hard keys of my keyboard. I switched to a keyboard with lighter key
pressure and the problem mostly went away._

He still hasn't coded much for years, choosing instead to promote free
software usage through writing articles and giving speeches.

------
teddyh
Link to the same chapter in the 2.0 version (Stallman’s annotated version) of
the same book:

[https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/faif-2.0.pdf#chapter.6](https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/faif-2.0.pdf#chapter.6)

