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Comment by x0x0 | Hacker News Reader

I dunno, I think that's some bullshit doublespeak right there. He conflates emacs and the gnu project, while claiming to want the best possible emacs.

   The GNU Emacs maintainer's responsibility is to take charge of Emacs
   on behalf of the GNU Project, and produce the best possible GNU Emacs
   -- which means, the one that advances our aim the most.
   [...]
   It includes making sure dynamic loading resists GPL violation. [1]

Non bs would be to say, eg, "the task of our maintainer is to build the best emacs possible subject to the political goals of the gnu project."

Note that I'm not sharing my opinion of whether this is good or bad; I just dislike bs.

[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-10/msg00...

edit: I take it back; you're talking about the message to the NSA? I skipped over everything in brackets while reading...

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He's being straightforward and honest, which you label "bullshit doublespeak".

I have seen many demos and such where Steve Jobs and the like talk about how they want to make the best product possible for users and so forth. According to you, they all have saying "the task of our company is to build the best product possible, subject to the overriding concern - profits for the billionaires who own a majority of our stock".

I have never seen this. They don't say this. That's the real bullshit doublespeak. Stallman is honest and straightforward about his goals, and you use that honesty to not only attack him, which is fair enough, but to use his honesty to say he is being dishonest. It is you who is being dishonest. Why aren't you attacking companies who don't say "Our #1 priority is making profits for the billionaires who own a majority of our stock, the quality of our products reflects this concern". That's the truth, that's the agenda, but you say nothing about this. Stallman is honest about his agenda, and you use his honesty not to attack him because you disagree, which is fair enough, but use it to call him dishonest, which is ridiculous.

I don't think you're justified in reading in your own definition of "best", when RMS defines it himself right there in your quote. If you're prepared to agree that the best possible chocolate mousse is probably "good" in ways that are incomparable to the best possible steam locomotive, then all you have in your comment here is misleading rhetoric.

Kind of funny to then sign off with

> I'm not sharing my opinion of whether this is good or bad; I just dislike bs

the thing is, words have meanings. Writing

   we want to create the best X (*)
   [...]
   * NB: not the best

   we want the best X (redefinition of best)

is bs

Finding mangling language to deceive dumb is orthogonal to my opinion of the political goals of the gnu foundation.

How is it a "redefinition" of best? What was the original definition? Unless you add some qualifier, "best" for a software project doesn't have any kind of objective definition. For a company it might be "most profitable", for a newbie it might be "easiest to use", etc. There are a ton of criteria that can go into it. RMS helpfully explains in broad terms what in his opinion would constitute the "best Emacs".

In the context of avoiding widely desired features in order to preserve the political goals of the gnu foundation, it's straightforward to understand.

"Best" means "most optimized for some utility function". It always requires the utility function to be defined, and there's always an infinite array of conflicting utility functions that could be used -- that's the nature of "best".

Stallman is, quite properly, clearly addressing the relevant utility function. This may differ from your preferred utility function, but that doesn't make RMS's definition a "redefinition of best".

Read it carefully: When he talks about Emacs, he says Emacs. Then he says: “produce the best possible GNU Emacs”. You might have just skipped over the GNU here, because that is also the name of the software, but it matters in this case. If your realize that, his message is extremely clear.

(And this also how I read his message the first time, before I read your post)

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