Moral lessons from free software and GNU Emacs

https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2021-04-16-emacs-moral-lessons/

by rbanffy • 5 years ago

155 85 5 years ago

User235• 5 years ago

Prot's literate emacs config[1] is easily the most informative that I've seen. I would follow his advice and not try to copy it verbatim, but rather view it as an excellent contribution to the Emacs documentation ecosystem.

[1] https://protesilaos.com/emacs/dotemacs

ossusermivami• 5 years ago

the most informative is arguably the emacs info manual

kstrauser2• 5 years ago

The Emacs manual is excellent at documenting how. I like resources like the above for explaining why.

DonHopkins• 5 years ago

And, despite its extensibility, Emacs can neither read your mind, nor reprogram it.

Not so fast there!

m-x doctor

http://www.art.net/studios/hackers/hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-d...

RMS -vs- Doctor, on the evils of Natalism

[...]

RMS> Perhaps the people who have decided to have no children should start making proud announcements, so as to set a better example.

Doctor> Is it because of your sex life that you are going through all this?

RMS> I could start.

Doctor> Is it because of hangups you have that you say you could start?

RMS> I'm sure everyone on this list will be glad to know I don't plan to reproduce myself.

Doctor> How do you reconcile your inhibitions?

[...]

brabel• 5 years ago

This guy is a legend... his emacs videos on Youtube are great!

Comevius7• 5 years ago

Meanwhile I use Linux + Emacs as a window manager because I don't like distraction. On Windows you are always an update away from unwanted software, news, the weather, advertisements popping up or Windows not letting you turning on or off your computer because it's doing something you did not ask it to. It feels more like renting a computer than owning one.

My Linux + Emacs will remain the same until the heat death of the Universe. The last change was when I had to write an early-init.el file for Emacs 27, the next one will be probably when X is no longer maintained.

I don't particularly hate change or learning, I just like my setup. It works for me. Don't take it away from me.

severus_snape• 5 years ago

I found annoying to restart all the windows that depend on Emacs window manager (namely EXWM) every time I used to modify its conf. And I modify its conf way more often that I would for any other window manager (because I use it for programming).

Also, the fact that when Emacs freezes, everything else freezes is a huge problem.

A solution would be to use another Emacs within EXWM? That seems unrealistic: keybindings conflicts I guess, and also, then why use EXWM?

Now I'm happy with Gnome (no conf file) + Emacs with 200 lines conf file (which is small). I love that it takes only 1s to restart Emacs when I play with its conf.

danShumway3• 5 years ago

I used EXWM for a pretty long while, and I liked it OK, but had similar experiences to you. Eventually moved over to i3wm, and will eventually move over to Sway whenever the chip shortage lets up and I can get a better graphics card.

What I found out:

- i3's config system is pretty extensible, and I was able to port over the majority of the shortcuts I wanted without too much trouble.

- I thought it would be annoying to have configs in two places, but because my Emacs config changes very rarely, and because my i3 config is the same and also changes pretty irregularly, it turns out it's actually not that big of a problem to duplicate setups when I want to add something. Once a setup is stable, optimizing for keeping it in a particular form can sometimes be a lot of work for very little payoff, because you don't spend a lot of time updating it or debugging it in the first place.

- EXWM's keyboard interception (particularly with evil mode) turned out to be not quite as good/low-latency as I needed it to be? And that meant that a lot of the benefits of "one set of bindings/commands everywhere that just works" were a little overstated in practice during daily use.

- On that note, you bump into the problem that stuff like your "save document" shortcut might not actually be very universal, because it's not enough to have your window manager recognize that, you also have to have the program recognize it. And it ends up getting kind of cumbersome to figure out the mappings/scripts you need for each piece of software you have installed (or at least it was for me). Again with the optimization question above, most of the work to keep my keybindings consistent ends up being with applications, not with the window manager.

- Some just general bugginess around some stuff like floating windows that were probably at least partially the result of my config.

- The single-threaded nature of Emacs was a problem, even though people told me it wouldn't be. Freezing your window manager because you run a terminal command incorrectly feels bad.

It was still usable, I was able to get work done on the machine, it was fine and I liked it at the time, I wasn't unhappy. But I've noticed that I spend a lot less time doing maintenance/setup now that I'm using i3, I have far fewer freezes/crashes, and I'm finding that this setup is able to replicate most of the other stuff I care about. There are a few things I miss, but not enough to go back.

shatteredgate3• 5 years ago

Not sure who you have been talking to but most Linux developers who I've communicated with have strongly suggested that you do always install updates and don't skip them. It seems it is an equally bad idea to disable automatic updates on Linux as it is on Windows; unfortunately neither of them are formally verified operating systems with any kind of guarantees about correctness and security, so you've just got to keep up with patches.

Comevius7• 5 years ago

I update once a day manually. I build a few packages, but I rely on linux-tkg for the kernel and pull the rest from AUR using git. The Arch Linux package maintainers are very reliable, rolling release is just better when testing is reliable. No big surprises.

rixed• 5 years ago

unfortunately neither of them are formally verified operating systems with any kind of guarantees about correctness and security, so you've just got to keep up with patches.

I'm unsure that conclusion follows from those premises, since patches are not formally verified either.

pritambaral• 5 years ago

Linux distros do differentiate between security updates and feature updates. Only the former are recommended to be done automatically.

Microsoft takes the idea of the latter, buries the distinction in the former idea, and shoves "feature" updates down your throat in the name of "security".

codethief• 5 years ago

My Linux + Emacs will remain the same until the heat death of the Universe. The last change was when I had to write an early-init.el file for Emacs 27, the next one will be probably when X is no longer maintained.

Looks like I must be doing something wrong then. Every single time I re-install Ubuntu (and switch to a newer Emacs version), yet another thing in my Emacs config breaks (mostly plugins). To me it's very far from a configure-once-run-forever piece of software.

_y5hn• 5 years ago

Try Doom Emacs. You can turn off evil-mode and tweak init.el to get most packages out-of-the-box, even all the language server mode-stuff of VSCode. Check which dependencies are needed and find out how to install them most cleanly, either using distro packages, nix, git, go, stack (for Haskell), npm, and the like. You can reconfigure keybindings so you get cut/copy/paste and everything you need, exactly how you need it. It's going to take a week, but should be stable after that, and you'll realize you could've theoretically done it in hours if you knew enough, which you now do. The Doom-part takes out 95% of needed configuration and makes it more ready-made for usage. It also looks and works like a modern IDE, but you scale it how you like it and have minimal annoyances to turn off.

VSCode has its own shenanigans, of constant updates, configurations, java/scala is a mess to set up, telemetry, proprietary extensions, etc. So deeper work is anyways going to need investments also there, but there's also lock-in to the eco-system and thus less freedom.

Comevius7• 5 years ago

I build my Emacs, and my Emacs configuration is relatively simple.

https://github.com/Comevius/dotfiles/blob/master/ABS/emacs/P...

https://github.com/Comevius/dotfiles/blob/master/.emacs.d/ea...

https://github.com/Comevius/dotfiles/blob/master/.emacs.d/in...

a0-prw• 5 years ago

Run vanilla Debian. Build emacs from scratch if a new version has something you need, or if you like shiny.

Only fuck with your init.el if you really want/need to.

I've had the same init.el for almost a decade.

matheusmoreira2• 5 years ago

It feels more like renting a computer than owning one.

These corporations don't really want us to own anything. There's always a "license", "terms" or whatever. They're just generously allowing us to use the computers we paid for.

maccard• 5 years ago

Why is it not OK for companies to ask you to use the software on their terms?

dgellow2• 5 years ago

On Windows you are always an update away from […] news, the weather, advertisements popping up […]

Block msn.com at the DNS level. That removes almost all of these annoying bugware.

I have a bunch of these rules as part of my pihole blacklist, that works surprisingly well. Adding msn to it was really a visible change when using windows.

DancesWTurtles• 5 years ago

What do you know, I tried, and found it to be impossible. You cannot block msn.com at the DNS level, not inside Windows anyway. It's been discussed and everything:

https://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2006/Apr/509 [RE: Microsoft DNS resolver: deliberately sabotaged hosts-file lookup]

So the only answer is, as pointed out, a pihole or similar outside approach.

mark_l_watson• 5 years ago

+1 I worked with someone in the late 1990s who didn’t run X Windows on his Linux laptop, just using Emacs as you do. He went to MIT, so at the time I thought it might be a thing there?

Have you tried the MathPlot shell backend, so you can get colored graphs in the Emacs interactive shell? I like that if I am doing any machine learning via SSH to a remote server.

Comevius7• 5 years ago

I run X actually, there is an Emacs package called EXWM that let's you treat any application window as an Emacs buffer. I need X for applications like Firefox, mpv, Wine, Inkscape, LibreOffice, QEMU, mupdf and RetroArch, and I need font rendering.

nxqs• 5 years ago

Reminded me of Terry [1]. I miss Terry... :(

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBgIBF9Y6PE

throw7• 5 years ago

I didn't watch the whole presentation, but I like the style of being able to read along. This guy is clearly a High Priest of the Church of Emacs. side note: I think he should just call it gimp and not worry about the heathens who think otherwise.

dontcare007• 5 years ago

Sounds like a conversation on progressivism versus conservatism, where progressivism===heteronomy.

bee_rider6• 5 years ago

It is probably better to not make everything about partisan politics.

electrotux3• 5 years ago

Progressivism and conservatism are perfectly cromulent words that have uses outside of politics.

If anyone is making this political, I think that's you.

shadowgovt3• 5 years ago

It's a good talk. The only quibble I have with it is the older I get, the less patience I have with this:

Never mistake conformism or obedience with virtue

I would tweak it to say "Don't rely on conformism if you will gain more with autonomy." But that's the kicker; most users won't. Microsoft and Apple are trillion-dollar companies not because they've tricked people into using their ecosystems, but because those ecosystems solve most people's problems most of the time without a lot of thought.

The kind of person that slings emacs around for fun probably won't flourish lashed to Apple's mast. But most people care more about the destination than the journey for their computing, and for them, I'd recommend one of the two big OS vendors over trying to self-maintain a GNU/Linux desktop ecosystem 99 out of 100 times. What the author calls "fake comforts" they just call "comforts."

User235• 5 years ago

Don't rely on conformism if you will gain more with autonomy.

The author and myself, among others, believe that we should be free to use our computing machines as we see fit. That is, the value of autonomy far exceeds that of any benefits of heteronomy. We believe that we always gain more with autonomy. That this is a minority view is of no ethical importance.

However history, both in computation and in general, has shown us there is never a shortage of those willing to sacrifice their autonomy for the initially lower cognitive burden of letting someone else make decisions for them. The costs of doing so are often only apparent after some time.

On using a system from heteronomous vendors such as Apple, Google, or Microsoft long enough, it will inevitably be changed in capricious and annoying ways. Those who abandon the virtue of freedom are forced to rationalize why accepting this abuse is actually a good thing. Meanwhile those who hold to freedom as a virtue do not. They either switch to a system that respects their autonomy, or they grit their teeth and bear the abuse without any need for calling evil good.

For what it’s worth I agree one of the things autonomy grants is the ability to give it up. I’m willing to grudgingly use closed firmwares and graphics drivers for example, but I view it as an ethical compromise and not anything good.

shadowgovt3• 5 years ago

That is, the value of autonomy far exceeds that of any benefits of heteronomy We believe that we always gain more with autonomy.

Unfortunately, it's simply not true for everyone. I'd hazard it's not true for most... That the set of people who can really make a computer dance if the architecture is open is a tiny, tiny set. The net harm were that to be the only option (i.e. if Apples and Microsofts were removed from the equation) would be significant.

I have older family members that I must continuously run tech support for. Most of my time is spent pruning their choices to the set of only things they want the machine to do because a wider space leads to confusion and inability to complete tasks (when it isn't being used as an exploit vector by malicious actors taking advantage of the flexible nature of a general-computing architecture to phish them).

None of this is to say nobody's architecture should be open and mutable, and I fight hard against any attempts to make closed the only option on the table. But most users aren't power users any more than most drivers want to replace their own spark plugs.

Autonomy and heteronomy should, ideally, both be options on the table, and I see no value passing moral judgment on those who adopt either. For some, a self-run architecture is the freedom of the frontier; for others, it's the freedom to get eaten by wolves in the jungle.

rackjack• 5 years ago

This is great article with a lot of insights that some of us, who have been deep in tech our whole lives, might have never encountered or considered fully. I strongly recommend actually reading the article instead of just going to the comments.

bee_rider6• 5 years ago

You know what they say, Emacs is a fine moral philosophy, all it needs is a better text editor.

unnah• 5 years ago

Yes, vim emulation is not going to cut it for today's generation. We need an emulator for Sublime Text in emacs. And another emulator for VS Code.

teitoklien• 5 years ago

idk, let alone vim, even native emacs is 1000x better then sublime text and vscode,

people who use vscode are just not the kind of people who would be interested in using emacs, and that's fine.

jrm43• 5 years ago

Oh man, this resonates quite a bit, as a perpetual "how can I find the perfect system that melds with my mind" sort of person.

For me, one of the biggest lessons is really teasing out the differences between what the computer can do and is good at, and what I can do. It's VERY easy to confuse the two. In fact, I think this is why I think most AI is completely overhyped.

Computers keep perfect records and can remind you of things. This is basically the only thing the computers can definitely outdo you, the human, on. They really can't think as good as you. I think a great example of this is the Mindmap/graph stuff prevalent in many note taking deals. I used to love these things (and they're fun) until I realized that my own brain is SO MUCH BETTER than this thing at this particular task. I make these connections far better than this thing ever can.

burrows4• 5 years ago

This is basically the only thing the computers can definitely outdo you, the human, on. They really can't think as good as you.

Can you give some intuition about “thinking”?

Is “thinking” what I do when playing chess? In my case probably not, but let’s say a grandmaster. Because if so, in that domain, whatever a computer is doing seems superior to “thinking”.

jrm43• 5 years ago

But for me that's a lot like "a car going faster than a person running."

Machines are good at well defined tasks, but not good at determining what those tasks should be, or even how to do them, etc.

User235• 5 years ago

I would argue that computers cannot autonomously do anything, anymore than a hammer can swing itself. It's only when some user sets them to purpose that they become operative. And while a computer can be set to task by another computer, ultimately some person started it going.

burrows4• 5 years ago

Human newborns can’t autonomously do shit either.

jimmyvalmer3• 5 years ago

The freedom argument immediately falls apart when asked to define "computer." Stallman appeared to be fine with his TI-30, but not the Xerox printer driver at CSAIL. What would he think of the flight control system of the plane he boarded for his all-expenses paid talk in Redmond?

User235• 5 years ago

Freedom isn't an argument, it's a principle. It doesn't have anything to do with computers per se. Look at the right to repair issues with tractors and other equipment that vendors actively stop their owners from repairing. We should be free to do as we wish with the machines we buy. If that's a PCB calculator we should be free to take it apart, desolder, and make whatever modifications we like. If it's a programmable computer, which includes PostScript printers, then we should be free to modify its programming.

I'm going to hazard a guess that he'd say the owner of the plane should at the very least be able to inspect the source code and compile it. I won't speculate as to whether he would say the owner of the plane should be free to modify the software in a way that made the plane less safe, but I would hope not.

jimmyvalmer3• 5 years ago

Freedom is a principle. Using it to legislate consumer law is an argument, a bad one.

tremon• 5 years ago

But speculation is half the fun!

I'd hazard a guess that he would say that the owner of the plane should in fact be "free" to modify the control software of the plane, but that the owner (airline) would then be required to re-certify the plane as well. And that might mean that the Free argument extends to the airworthiness test suite used by the manufacturer as well.

zekrioca2• 5 years ago

This “bynarism” of you with freedom is interesting. Freedom is also a spectrum. First, “computer” is related to the machinery, whereas “compute” is with the concept of manipulating information, from where the morals being talked about in the article and from where freedom arise. Second, I wonder why someone who defends freedom in the software realm has to cope with all “permutations” of all device drivers. You may make mistakes at times, and you may be right, wrong, neutral, not necessarily in this order.

aidenn02• 5 years ago

It's striking to see the first time the author used a computer was in 2006. Given that it was in university, they aren't that much younger than I am yet my first time using a computer was about 20 years earlier, and there were computers in my primary school.

pantalaimon• 5 years ago

He only started using a computer when his humanities studies forced him to do so - he just wasn't interested in computers.

aidenn02• 5 years ago

I was required by some humanities teachers in highschool in the 90s to turn in typewritten work. In at least one case it was required "Times New Roman, 12pt, double spaced" so a typewriter would not have sufficed.

mbrodersen3• 5 years ago

I enjoyed reading the talk. But must also admit that his way of thinking is a bit alien to me. I see questions of freedom and autonomy as much larger issues than just whether you can tinker with your computer software or not. And I don’t appreciate the constant looking down on people who doesn’t want to spend their time fiddling with their software. I am very happy that OSS exists. But let’s not assume that people who prefer to use commercial software are somehow giving up their freedom. It reminds me of the argument that if you don’t own guns you are not free. Swap software for guns and you can find people arguing kinda the same way. Which is fine. I just don’t think that narrowing your view to just software or guns when talking freedom makes sense. It is so much bigger than that.

yoyohello13• 5 years ago

The intention is not to look down on people, but too make people aware of the places they may be giving up freedom for convenience. We all do it in one way or another, it's required for modern life.

People who prefer to use commercial software are indeed giving up some of their freedom in exchange for convenience. Almost all of us willingly give up some freedom by not growing our own food, or building our own car. This isn't a value judgement, just an observation.

mbrodersen3• 5 years ago

I will argue that it is not true. Not using OSS or deciding not to grow your own food doesn’t mean that you give up any freedom for convenience. You still have the freedom to change your mind and start using OSS or grow your own food tomorrow. Having the choice to use OSS or not makes you more free than being forced to use OSS (or non-OSS) software. It might be true that the majority of people don’t know or have any interest in fiddling with OSS software. But that’s fine. Most people also don’t know how to build their own car or grow their own food. That doesn’t mean that they are giving up any freedoms.

1MachineElf2• 5 years ago

I would speculate, in retrospect, that the absence of tools for self learning that is prevalent in the proprietary app ecosystem conditions users, perhaps inadvertently, into not questioning things and conforming with the status quo.

I just want to claim that this the reason why MS Edge and Google Chrome do not have native bookmark tagging. Any feature that makes bookmarks easier to search cuts into the bottom line of Bing/Google.

agumonkey• 5 years ago

Good idea for Mozilla to push a few more features around this topic.

Nyxt has some auto tagging or summary features iirc.

zekrioca2• 5 years ago

You might be interested in this service [1][2].

[1] https://pinboard.in/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinboard_(website)

1MachineElf2• 5 years ago

I'm a paying user

throw_m239339• 5 years ago

Same with spellchecking when the "phone home" option is turned off. It's terrible. Now fortunately, there is a system wide Spellchecking function on Windows so one doesn't have to use Chrome's.

ReaLNero• 5 years ago

why MS Edge and Google Chrome do not have native bookmark tagging

A similar feature is lacking in file explorer GUIs, so it's likely a different reason.

My guess (from anecdotal experience) is most people don't use bookmarks, and those that do don't see value in organizing them. It takes too much discipline from the user to tag documents each time they are added. So the userbase for bookmark tagging is miniscule.

So ultimately, since so few users value the feature, no one bothers implementing it.

warkdarrior• 5 years ago

I wonder why no one added this feature to Chromium...

rramadass• 5 years ago

Nice Life Lesson !

The third lesson is that autonomy comes at a cost. It presupposes responsibility, and that is predicated on discipline. If you do not want to be responsible, if you prefer to be spoon-fed what life has to offer, then you remain in a state of heteronomy with its fake comforts. This is not about the Mac per se. It is about understanding your system.

Here I must stress that discipline is not the same as conformity with the established order. No! Discipline is a virtue. It is about overcoming your pernicious rationalisations; those that keep you trapped in a state of perceived helplessness. It is about deciding to be in charge of yourself and being prepared to deal with the challenges from a position of control. Discipline is about adding structure to a theretofore chaotic life.

Never mistake conformism or obedience with virtue.

Moral lessons from free software and GNU Emacs

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