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A comment on 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing. Parent comment

Re:25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG w... by chrisdevereux on Thursday November 21, 2013 @04:57AM (#6773894) 

  > Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  > Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call.
It made me wonder what's free-er about an ordinary phone call. Presumably, most of the software the phone companies use is also proprietary.

Does it become less non-free if somebody else runs the software? Or maybe it shifts the moral burden of using something non-free to somebody else?

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Re:25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG w... by andor on Thursday November 21, 2013 @11:38AM (#6775603)
It made me wonder what's free-er about an ordinary phone call.

You can use any phone that you like to place a call. You can even build your own phone. (Depending on your choice of phone you might have to rely on non-free parts like GSM voice codecs.)

You have the freedom of choosing between multiple service providers, all of which are interoperable. If you want, you can even get access to the underlying SS7 phone network and be your own provider.

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Re:25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG w... by revelation on Thursday November 21, 2013 @05:53AM (#6774030)
He explains this here: http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

Paragraph starting with "I firmly refuse.."

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Re:25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG w... by josu on Thursday November 21, 2013 @05:00AM (#6773908)
Isn't there an option for decentralized P2P communication?
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Re:25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG w... by bjelkeman-again on Thursday November 21, 2013 @05:10AM (#6773928)
Until something like Ekiga does multipart conference calls, a minimum of 10 nodes and more voice only, then it is hard for me to switch from something like Skype.
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Re:25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG w... by vorce on Thursday November 21, 2013 @07:17AM (#6774269)
Me and my buddies recently switched from Skype to Mumble+IRC. Works great, I like this setup way better. The big downside is of course that it requires a server.
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Re:25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG w... by bjelkeman-again on Thursday November 21, 2013 @03:14PM (#6777158)
Yeah, I was discussing that with my colleagues the other day.
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Re:25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG w... by chrisdevereux on Thursday November 21, 2013 @05:03AM (#6773914)
Sorry, should have pasted the full quote. Edited.
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Re:25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG w... by josu on Thursday November 21, 2013 @05:34AM (#6773988)
No problem, it was an honest question, I wasn't sure if such software existed.
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