From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.0 (2014-02-07) on dcvr.yhbt.net X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-ASN: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.0 required=3.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,BAYES_00 shortcircuit=no autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.0 Received: from localhost (dcvr.yhbt.net [127.0.0.1]) by dcvr.yhbt.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id EE67D1FCC7; Tue, 27 Dec 2016 08:28:36 +0000 (UTC) Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2016 08:28:37 +0000 From: Eric Wong To: misc@80x24.org Subject: not just Free Software, but freedom from software Message-ID: <20161227082837.GA3850@starla> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline List-Id: Whenever possible; I'd rather not rely on specialized software or complex data formats, at all. Less code means less auditing, less security bugs, less bandwidth, and less storage space consumed. In other words, I prefer to use basic/common/reusable tools instead of specialized, less-used ones which require more auditing, take more time to download, or won't run on old hardware. 7-bit clean US-ASCII text is universal by now, and has been for several decades. So I'm happy I can read my own writings from the early 90s with just about anything. Had I chosen some complex format, I might not be able to read those anymore, or would have to run some unwieldy, possibly proprietary software to decipher it. So I'm glad I made that decision to use plain text back then, even before I'd heard of software freedom. As an aside; I do use UTF-8 nowadays for preserving peoples' names in attributions (and only that purpose). I often do not have the correct fonts installed, but fortunately my editor seems to preserve unrenderable bytes anyways.