Re: Meanness

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> CC: emacs-devel@gnu.org
>> From: "Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org>
>> Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 12:16:18 -0400
>> 
>>    We have a common goal here: improving Emacs.  
>> 
>> And the goal of Emacs is to improve the GNU operating system, and not
>> non-free operating systems.
>
> As long as Emacs is not sold to Microsoft nor bundled with it out of
> the box, no one can claim that I'm improving non-free operating
> systems.

Does that mean that you would not work on supporting Bash on Windows
since a Bash port has been sold to Microsoft by Interix and is being
distributed by Microsoft as part of SFU (Services for Unix)?  The same
appears to hold for GNU file and text utilities, and certainly for the
"GNU SDK" including GCC.

But that's missing the point.  Of course free software will also get
used and employed on proprietary systems.  It is one consequence of
their freedom.  The question was whether we should make it _our_ focus,
the focus of the GNU project.  Opinions differ.  But whether this
warrants the Guy Fawkes festival of strawmen burning we have seen in
response, I doubt.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum