It just shows how out of touch he is. Almost everyone I've worked with in my career has had a PhD. Not one of them have ever included "Dr" in their titles on emails or anywhere else. I've even worked with a few MD/PhDs who transitioned to software engineering, and they did not include "Dr" in their capacities as software engineers.
Hell, most of the people I know who have PhDs are at least mildly embarrassed if you call them "doctor". Or at the very least they roll their eyes and think the title is silly. This is in the US; I don't know about how people feel in other countries.
Granted, these are mostly (or even all?) people who received their doctorates in the past 10 or 15 years, and as such are a good 30 years younger than Stallman, so perhaps there is a generational thing at play here too, where the respect/desirability of titles like that has been dropping over time.
Using "doctor" as a title or a form of address is common in the academia, including in the US. It's also very formal, especially in spoken language. Hearing it in situations where such formality is not expected can be awkward and embarrassing.
I only ever see it with people in the humanities. In science... weird - more than weird, in general seeing someone who uses the Dr. title is a good indication of "you're going to read the worst shit ever hidden under an insufferable amount of vague verbiage".
To give another data point: in France I remember the university having to ask the local profs. to put their titles (Dr, Prof, etc) in their mail signature as otherwise students thought that french teachers were much less competent than e.g. teachers from germany who would have three layers of Dr. Eng. prepended
One common situation is introducing an invited speaker at a conference. After the first mention, you refer to the speaker using a mix of pronouns and names. Full name or last name would sound weird. Using first name works if the speaker is your friend and many people in the audience also know them as a person. Otherwise "Dr. Lastname" is a reasonable choice.
Academic websites are full of short biographies of speakers, lecturers, PIs, and so on. They are often written in third person. Again, "Dr. Lastname" is often the form of reference that sounds least weird.
Academic spam is often addressed to "Dr. Lastname", especially if the sender is asking the recipient to do something. Using "doctor" as a title is a safe default choice. It sounds respectful, it's very likely to be correct, and it saves the sender from guessing the gender (and possibly marital status) of the recipient.
If they paid the $100,000 why would they be embarassed? There's probably a psychological explanation for their reasoning. M.D. is a "doctor", but a person with their PhD is a "Doctor of ..." If anything, I'm more inclined to believe someone with a Doctorate in anything other than medicine.
Perhaps the PhD holders don't want to be associated with the hubris that most medical doctors exude. For reference, google "endometriosis suffer" or spend some time researching medical malpractice.
It also is possible that a lot of kids coming out of the 80s got a bum deal on their education - or at least feel they did. Like, "it was too easy to get this degree" - from the standpoint of applying themselves, not the overall workload of getting a PhD. Medical Doctors who are board certified, that did all their rotations, and whatever else required, there's only one other doctorate that requires more workload, and that's psychiatry.
What should maybe be questioned is why someone needs a doctorate for "the world to learn from them."
Clearly you haven't had much interaction with German PhDs. It's very common to include titles in your name (this also includes lower ones) there. Although it admittedly has become less common.
Let's not even talk about medical doctors everywhere, or formal engineering qualifications, both are very often used in letters.
The argument is that they make a direct difference to the perception of the individuals competence (and I know that for medical doctors there is a direct effect on earnings). While I don't think it would make a difference for RMS corresponding with software engineers he might be thinking it does make a difference because of his interaction with other stakeholders. Not really defending it, just offering a different perspective.
The German "Dr. med" is a scam. They do 1 year of an irrelevant experiment that is sped up by p-value fishing and get the "Dr. med" thrown after them. They and their professors generally have no clue about the statistics used to validate the fake and irrelevant experiment.
They also omit the "med", which is much like omitting "h.c.". And they are very keen on using the title in general.
> While I don't think it would make a difference for RMS corresponding with software engineers
I think it does make a difference: many software developers might take him less seriously because of it. And that has nothing to do with the fact that his doctorates are honorary; same goes for someone who has completed a PhD program.
> Clearly you haven't had much interaction with German PhDs. It's very common to include titles in your name (this also includes lower ones) there. Although it admittedly has become less common.
Expat living in Germany here. You’re absolutely correct according to my experience. In fact, I’ve seen people with PhD put “Dr.” on the mailbox in front of their home.
This is false and insulting to people who earned real degrees.
He has an honorary doctorate. Which is about as worthless as if someone had the local trophy shoppe mint you a plaque that said "World's Greatest Hacker".
An honorary doctorate is still a doctorate, though. It doesn't have the usual academic requirements but it's not like universities just hand them out to anyone. It's supposed to denote a significant contribution to a field. Stallman did contribute significantly so I personally see no problem with it.
> but it's not like universities just hand them out to anyone.
No, but at least in the US, they're often given out for things other than achievement in a particular field, like as unofficial quid-pro-quo for large donations to the university.
Perhaps that doesn't damn the practice entirely, as many are awarded for extraordinary contributions, but it does add an unfortunate extra step, having to ask the question, "did this person get this honor because they did amazing things, or because they paid amazing sums?"
Moreover, it is completely aligned with how Stallman operates. Most people do not have doctorates, so universities and recipients can arbitrage the "doctorate" title by a socially acceptable lie wherein the recipient understands to not use it like one. Stallman doesn't do socially acceptable lies. You either give him a doctorate and let him use it like one or you don't give him one. Socially acceptable lies where people "agree to disagree" are how principles get bent and if he were also this way he would have bent long ago.
It's important to note that in Italy, the title of doctor works differently than in the German and anglophone world, and you are granted the title of "dottore" (doctor) with a bachelor's degree. A master's makes you a "dottore magistrale" and a PhD makes you a "dottore di ricerca" (research doctor)
> An honorary doctorate is still a doctorate, though.
A honorary doctorate is to a doctorate as a honorary citizenship is to a citizenship. It does not imply any rights or qualifications and trying to pass it of as the real deal may be (and in some places is quite explicitly) considered fraud.
Maybe universities should stop giving them out then. They can literary give any other honor but they choose to tie it to a doctorate and insult people who earn real degrees. How is Stallman the problem?
Sometimes, people create entire new fields of knowledge. The idea that somebody could teach Shakespeare about Shakespeare's work is ludicrous. The idea that somebody could teach what is open source to Stallman for a limited period of time does not have any sense. He coined the term.
Honorary doctorates are created for this cases, when the recipient is --the-- expert in the field. Is a shortcut to encourage this experts to became teachers and pass their knowledge. Win-win. Do we really think that somebody spending four years writing a these about emacs knows more than Stallman about a program that he developped since 70's?
Is abused to groom donors? Yes, Sometimes is abused, but is a perfectly legit way to became a doctor.
I know someone who does this. She also refers to other people with PhDs as "Dr" even if they don't typically refer to themselves that way.
I suspect it's some sort of cultural thing, and that with how much computer people tend to reject typical forms of formality we're just mostly on the far opposite side of whatever cultural thing it is.
This is very culturally dependent, you would be surprised at the # of openly proclaimed Drs in Central Europe - the academic culture inherited from the ancient German-speaking empires loves all sorts of titles.
But this is not relevant here, as Dr. Stahlmann doesn't work in Tübingen.
One exception that comes to mind would be Ferdinand Porsche. To this day the company is called "Dr. Ing. h. c. F. Porsche AG" (although I wonder if that changed with their recent IPO.)
I’ve worked with a handful of people with PhDs, that I know of, and about half of them signed off that way. One or two really wanted you to know about it.
Germany is also rather strict about it and using an academic title like doctor when you do not have the right to it can be considered fraud. A honorary doctorate is not considered equal to the academic title and has to be explicitly distinguished.
Is their choice not to use it, but is not a norm engraved in marble. For each one that declines to use the title, you would find ten in the Academia that will happily use it. It depends on if is a formal context or not.
