If one person says "this comment is idiotic and I'm down voting it", it means nothing. If fifteen people also all say the same thing... it means something.
All a " real" doctorate is in the first place is a certification of expertise and/or recognition of acheivement, just like a uniform or a badge or a license etc, so that someone who was not there and has no way to know from direct experience, how seriously to take your advice, and on which topics.
An honorary degree performs exactly the same function.
>An honorary degree performs exactly the same function.
No, it doesn't. Richard Stallman didn't put in the work to earn fifteen doctorates, he hasn't earned the right to be considered on par with someone who put in the work to earn even one.
The function of an honorary doctorate is the same as the function of a key to the city, which is to say an ego boost to the receiver and publicity for the giving institution, but make no mistake - a real doctorate and an honorary one are not the same. The former takes years of study, discipline and effort, the latter requires literally nothing but showing up.
I generally want to agree with you on separating honorary doctorates from those earned through explicit academic achievement, and I think you're right that one shouldn't go ahead and call themselves a doctor for having received a honorary degree, or fifteen.
The tone I don't agree with, based on my understanding of honorary degrees. I haven't heard of honorary doctorates being handed out to just random people who did nothing but showed up, nor for just being pals with someone. Where I live, honorary degrees seem to be awarded to people with distinctive achievement in the industry, politics, the arts, or in other areas of society. That's not "literally nothing but showing up", and you make it sound like none of those people did anything to be worth a distinction.
Maybe the culture of awarding honorary degrees is different in different countries, but my understanding is that they're valid acknowledgements of contribution, although not for academic work.
As for Stallman, whether you like him or not, and whether you even agree with his ideas of free software or not, it would be silly to say he has done nothing, or that he hasn't achieved and contributed something.
And assuming that a honorary degree is not just "imaginary" but an acknowledgement of achievement or contribution, maybe fifteen actually is more than one or none. Still not a normal academic degree (and certainly not several), but perhaps indicative of higher impact or contribution than one.
So, I agree that honorary degrees should generally not be treated the same as normal academic degrees. I can see how, especially if you've put in the explicit work for a doctorate, seeing someone get the same for "free" (i.e. without putting in the explicit effort for just that) could be frustrating and seem wrong. But the tone you used was IMO way too dismissive in general, so I strongly disagree with the rest of it.
Stallman has arguably contributed to work that is academic, at the Ph. D. level. It was just not research into new areas under the umbrella of obtaining a Ph. D.
I was looking through Evolution of Lisp again recently and noticed some citations of Stallman working with Sussman on computer aided circuit analysis.
Stallman also did research into Lisp systems at a time when that sort of thing was still Ph. D worthy, by the way. He was on the ANSI Common Lisp committee, too.
As a hacker, Stallman can easily wipe the floor with many a CS Ph. D.
Stallman can easily be regarded as a "Dr." and specifically in computer science.
That is factually false. Doctorate degrees aren't earned for doing a certain quantity of work, but for expanding human knowledge. If your work doesn't expand human knowledge, regardless of its quantity or quality, it is not Ph. D. level.
All a " real" doctorate is in the first place is a certification of expertise and/or recognition of acheivement, just like a uniform or a badge or a license etc, so that someone who was not there and has no way to know from direct experience, how seriously to take your advice, and on which topics.
An honorary degree performs exactly the same function.