Subject: Re: bug#14358: Option to use GraphicsMagick instead of ImageMagick

From: Richard Stallman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2021 23:52:30 -0400

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  > > Could you explain the significance of the quotation marks?

  > It was intended as a way of saying "we get it for free" (i.e. with no
  > effort) but realizing that at the end of the day we will still have to
  > work for it.

  > Sorry if my way of formulating this was unclear.

The meaning that I guessed was totally different.

That way of expressing a meaning is similar to
sarcasm: it states what you don't mean, not what you do mean.
In general, negative communication isn't clear, so I suggest
carefully avoiding.

If you had said, "as a bonus, we will get advantages X, Y and Z,"
it would have been fully clear.

The word "free" is a special pitfall.  I've taught myself _never_ to
use the word "free" except to refer to freedom.  If I mean "at no
cost", I say it without "free".  I am just as careful about this when
I describes someone else's views as when I state my own.

In a quotation, I replace "free" with "[gratis]"; that means "perse
said something that meant 'gratis'".  The square brackets are a
scholarly convention to state that one has emended a quotation.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)