Re: Emacs vista build failures

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Morning, everybody!

On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 05:20:16PM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > From: Richard M Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> > Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:05:28 -0400
> > Cc: lord@emf.net, drobinow@gmail.com, lennart.borgman@gmail.com,
> > 	hannes@saeurebad.de, emacs-devel@gnu.org, acm@muc.de, miles@gnu.org

> >     > When I ask myself, is the world better for having Emacs and Firefox
> >     > running on Microsoft Windows, the answer is an unequivocal yes -
> >     > people who hack on MS-Windows can thus do a better job.

[David K:]
> >     But their job does not in general benefit others.

Hmm.  What if that software written on w32 has satisfied users?  Let's
see, users of mobile telephones, users of automotive control systems
(which reduce pollution), Emacs itself (there is at least one Emacs
developer with his Emacs hosted on w32), .......

[David K:]
> >     So we are creating better opportunities for work that does not
> >     help the community.

"The" community.  That of Free Software is merely one of many
interlocking and interdependent communities.  My view, already
expressed, is that we have a moral imperative to contribute towards the
wellbeing of the world, not just our own restricted subset of it.

[Eli Z:]
> Are you saying that my hacking on the Windows Emacs doesn't benefit
> others, including Emacs on other platforms?

I'll say it benefits an enormous number of people.  It certainly
benefitted me back in the days of 20.n.  Without it, my day job would
have been much more frustrating, and I wouldn't have ended up
contributing to Emacs.

My impression is that a substantial minority, possibly even a majority,
of Emacs users run on this particular non-free OS, and that the cost of
supporting them is low by comparison.  Carry on doing it, Eli!

Again, what is the purpose of free software?  Is it an end in itself,
it's final goal being its exclusive use by everybody, or is it to
improve the world?  If the former, I hope the goal is never scored,
because then free software would by stymied, with nowhere to go.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).