Re: redisplay system of emacs

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> writes:

> I disagree that it's non-judgmental.  Preserving ecosystems is a
> positive value.

No, it isn't.  Underdeveloped countries have a stable ecosystem of
enough people dying early due to scarcity of resources that population
is maintained.  Or at least they had until their land became "owned" and
the flow of money meant that it was more effective to starve them
completely and use the land for producing lifestock fodder for the
countries delivering the guns to the "land owners".

Preserving the preexisting ecosystem would not have been a positive
value.  A positive value would have been giving (rather than taking)
them the means to improve their manner of living.

There are complex and stable ecosystems with parasites passing through a
multiple number of hosts in their development.

Preserving those is not a positive value.

Proprietary software has its own ecosystems.  Preserving those is not
the aim of the FSF and others.

And free software also has its ecosystems.  Not all of that which
happens in those systems is desirable.

But that does not mean that the term is inappropriate to describe
phenomena which are not planned, but make for dynamics beyond the
individual control of the software creators.

-- 
David Kastrup