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[[!meta title="How Emacs made me appreciate software freedom"]]
[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2021 Protesilaos Stavrou"]]
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# How Emacs made me appreciate software freedom
Protesilaos Stavrou
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The theme will be "how Emacs empowered my software freedom".
I will outline the key moments in my transition to a GNU/Linux operating
system and mark those which eventually contributed towards me becoming
an Emacs user, maintainer of a—dare I say—popular package, and
contributor to upstream Emacs (among others). By alluding to personal
experiences, I will draw generalisable insights and connect them to what
I believe are irreducible qualities of Emacs qua software and Emacs as a
community of like-minded people. The talk will be theoretical in
nature: there won't be any code-related demonstration nor technical
references that only people with a background in computer science would
likely recognise. Personal anecdotes shall be tangential to the point
and considered as ancillary to the thesis of what Emacs represents from
the standpoint of software freedom and user empowerment. The
presentation is intended for a general audience that is interested in
GNU software in general and Emacs in particular. My formal educational
background as a social scientist (i.e. not a programmer) and later as a
philosopher informs my approach to this topic.
The presentation shall be 40 minutes long. Its text will be in essay
form and shall be supplied as complementary material to the video. The
notation will be in Org mode. I cannot provide an outline in advance,
as it will most likely not be consistent with the actual presentation.
If, however, this is absolutely required for administrative purposes I
shall furnish one regardless with the proviso that I am in no way bound
by it and thus reserve the right to modify it ahead of the main event.
# Discussion
Questions:
- Q1: (Unrelated, feel free not to answer): Is there an Emacs or
GNU/FSF group in Cyprus? I know it's a politically motivated
country, with a strong student-base, so I'm interested whether the
Emacs circles and political circles have any overlap.
- Q2: What do you think is the most effecitve way to demonstrate the
value of software freedom to non-techincal people? For a person who
can't program (or doesn't want to learn) the freedom seems less
immediate.
- Q3: your quote "emacs makes emergent workflow's possible" reminds
me very much of the previous talk (Emacs as Design Pattern
Learning). Can you share/reflect how you go about making/designing
your personal workflows?
- are "Prometheas" & "Prometheus" both forms acceptable? Is one "truer" than the other?
- protesilaos: Both are correct. The former is modern Greek.
Other notes:
- Emacs documentation is first class.
- Emacs is inclusive to both new users and experienced users alike,
which empowers all users.
- Knowledge is to be shared not hoarded..
- Emacs is an ecosystem you have to spend a lot of time with to fully
appreciate.
Feedback:
- "I'll definitly use this talk to try to convert more colleagues :D (not joking)"
- Wow, you phrased prometheus bit that excellently!
- wow great point on new users being enticed by the "easy productivity" angle
- I want to be productive, so give me this really complicated tool with countless high-level functions so I can get stuff done ASAP. bit of a paradox, really. very well said.
- what a well thought-through and well prepared talk. really appreciating this!
- you can't be an emacs tourist because IT SUCKS YOU IN AND DOESN'T LET GO
- protesilaos is a gift to the community
- i really appreciate prot's point right here: emacs is "free software" in the strongest sense of the word, from a practical point of a view since even if another program is libre, its usually so darn complicated that the freedom to modify the program is pretty useless since i'm not smart enough to do it
- the nuance brought by protesilaos between ellitism and exigence is very good.
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